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27 Sep 2006 - 17:56
I promised myself last year that I would start going to school board meetings. So last night I did. The meeting was quite frustrating, but there was one terrific surprise: Irvington sixth graders — Christopher's class — earned the top scores in the county on the ELA test.
questions This means Christopher is surrounded by high-scoring, competitive kids who are setting the pace for him, as he is setting the pace for them. Good. (The fact that our standards are lower than California's, Indiana's, Massachusetts' and those of every industrialized country on the planet is another story, of course.) Still, the strong scores of Christopher's 6th grade class raise a couple of issues. Grade deflation, for one. I came to believe last year that the reality here in Irvington is the exact opposite of the grade inflation meme. The reality here, and in other affluent suburban middle schools I'm hearing about, is grade deflation. I don't have the patience to belabor the point; suffice it to say that I've heard from other parents here that their children, like Christopher, experienced harsh grading last year, harsh grading unleavened by feedback that would help them improve their work. Grading like this, for instance:
Those are two grades, two Ds, assigned to two different papers & written on the bottom of one. No other comments, just a curt "Are you trying to do the work at all?" addressed to Christopher in front of the class as he stood by her desk to receive the verdict(s). (What was that we were saying about a caring community?) More than one middle school parent has watched his child's confidence wilt and his interest in a subject he once loved dissolve. A child will take no for an answer if that's all he hears. So will most adults. Our sample size is small, of course, but there was a moment at the transition to 7th grade meeting that struck Ed and me as significant. One dad raised his hand (we parents always have to raise our hands & speak only when called upon), and asked Principal Fried what his overall impression was of this sixth grade class. I suppose you could ask such a question for any number of reasons, but it struck both of us as a veiled request for reassurance. I say this because of the strikingly negative conversations about Christopher that I had with school personnel throughout last year. Most memorable was the one with the math chair who, when I said, "Christopher has to learn math for college," responded by saying, "He has to learn math to graduate from high school." She said this as if graduation from high school were in some doubt, as if even thinking about math in college was an egregious case of parental overreaching. It was bizarre. She'd never met Christopher, he was earning Bs in the accelerated math class, a fact she'd pointed out to me earlier in the exchange, he'd had 4s on every state math test — and she's talking about whether he'll have what it takes to eke out a pass in Algebra 1? UPDATE 10-28-2006: He was earning Bs in an accelerated math class whose teacher had been instructed to "hold down the number of As." Maybe when I finally study statistics I'll learn how to "partial out" a formal policy of grade deflation. That's the way it was last year.
Back to ELA: the English teachers were handing out Cs and Ds like dyed eggs on Easter.
And now we learn that our kids have the highest ELA scores in the county.
There's something wrong here.
When your child is doing his best given only minimal instruction in writing and his ELA scores are amongst the highest in the county, he shouldn't be getting Cs and Ds on his papers — and he certainly shouldn't be given "flat" Cs and flat Ds with no hope of improving in the future.
Under these circumstances — low grades and high scores — the school's refusal to provide students and parents with samples of 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' & 'D' student work is a red flag.
what's different about this class? UPDATE 9-29-2006 Mind fog. What's different about this class is that they had two hours of ELA instruction a day, every day, day in and day out. We owe this decision to last year's principal Scott Fried and, I assume, to his Assistant Principal Raina Kor. I'm grateful to them. What I don't know at this point:
The other question is: why the sixth grade? Assuming their scores this year aren't a fluke, which I have no way of gauging, what was different for these kids? I would bet the ranch it's not the teachers — not in 6th grade ELA, unless the English teachers for the A team (the kids were divided into two teams with different schedules) were fantastically good, which is possible. I have no way of gauging that, either. If our district were open to input from parents, I would ask the administration to investigate the amount of afterschooling and tutoring going on in Christopher's class. Everyone I know — almost all of them parents of 6th grade (now 7th grade) children — is engaged in substantial afterschooling, teaching, reteaching, and private tutoring. Parents in every other grade are reteaching and hiring tutors, too, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that our cohort is doing more of it. Two reasons. First, this is the class with the family who has had a college professor tutoring their kids for years now. This is an open secret; everyone knows about it. Simply knowing that your child is in a class with a kid who's being taught at home by a college professor has a galvanizing effect. At least, it did for me. Second, Christopher & me. Irvington is a tiny little district, and Irvington Middle School is a tiny little school. Everyone knows I've been afterschooling Christopher for two years now — or, if they don't, their kids probably do, because Christopher tells the kids at school. I proselytize afterschooling every chance I get, and the idea could have jumped to other parents beyond my immediate circle of friends. I say this because while I haven't been able to change much that the school does, I've had the experience of sitting in a meeting and suddenly hearing another parent, sometimes a parent I've never even met, say something that I know had to have originated with me. I've been working on my understanding of education for two years now, and I've become fairly good at tapping into the pro-content/pro-mastery thoughts most parents already have but haven't put into words.
Point is, the current 7th grade class has amongst its parents a vocal afterschooling mother who also happens to be a professional writer.
If we took a survey, would we find that the parents of Christopher's friends have done more supplementing of their kids' education than parents in other classes?
It's possible.
grade deflation in Irvington
no grade inflation in the suberbs
Spanish teacher grades a project
teachers versus superintendents
article: deflation at BU, inflation at the Ivies
-- CatherineJohnson - 27 Sep 2006 Back to main page.
Please consider registering as a regular user.
Look here for syntax help.
I have a family motto for the education system -- better than I feared, worse than I'd hoped. I think there must be some mathematical model out there that schools follow to make sure parents are never so unhappy that they mount an insurrection. But never so good that you attract additional families and students. -- LynnGuelzow - 28 Sep 2006
Good news on the ELA scores. I imagine that it's a double edge sword -- the scores will reduce the likelihood that any real reform can take place. -- LynnGuelzow - 28 Sep 2006
I'm suffering brain fog.....the difference is that the sixth grade had two hours of ELA instruction which, with some of the teachers, involved actual content. This was a Scott Fried innovation, and a good one. We'll see if there's a bump in 6th grade scores next year, too. The rest of the meeting, which I have yet to describe, was wretched. We have a huge drop in scores at the 8th grade - "huge" meaning 13%, but still - and the entire meeting was a study in collusion, excuse-making, and scapegoating. The administration started out saying that two English teachers had abruptly taken maternity leave, so the kids had substitute teachers for the year. But they moved on from that & blamed a group of new students, most of whom had some kind of "issues" - although most of them weren't out-and-out IEP kids like mine. They were 504C kids, or kids receiving "building services." So it's their fault our 8th graders score badly. THEN they went on to say that the 8th grade test is "more difficult" than all the other tests, and the kids "bounce back" in 10th grade, when they take Regents. The school board president affirmed that, yes indeed, his own kids' scores declined in 8th grade and "bounced back" in 10th! No context given; no recognition of the fact that politically speaking Regents tests have to be scored very, very easily and in fact are scored easily. Not one person, including me, asked a critical question (of course none of us had this data prior to the meeting, so we were trying to process everything on the fly). But parents did ask questions like, "Shouldn't the state be looking at itself? Shouldn't the state be asking itself why it writes difficult tests?' The asst superintendent then proceeded to confuse everyone by saying that "some tests are scaled differently" so "you can't compare across grades." Unbelievable. Every parent there seemed to agree that "we can't compare across grades." It was a masterful performance on the part of Ralph N. Brilliant. Then the board president congratulated the administration on such excellent scores, and added with great sensitivity that "It's too bad that new students depress our scores but I guess we'll just have to keep trying to do our best to teach every student who moves here." So we ended up scapegoating a handful of children and patting ourselves on the back for being committed to educating them. unreal -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Sep 2006 For some reason the rest of the comments thread isn't showing up, though I see it in the edit window. Here it is: Meanwhile it turns out there are 10 districts in Westchester County with scores as high as ours (or higher) who either don't show a decline over the years, or whose decline is half the size of ours. Those districts didn't come up at the meeting. Nor did any hint of a plan to prevent the decline in the future. Of course, we don't need a plan, because we can be confident that the scores "will bounce back up." -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Sep 2006
One last thing: Irvington has a reputation for doing a bad job with special ed. People in the "services" world will actually roll their eyes when they hear the word "Irvington," and I myself advise parents not to move here. So the idea that we have huge numbers of special ed kids flocking to the district is nonsense. The kids they're talking about are very high end kids. -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Sep 2006
I've seen the same phenomenom at our board meetings. To protect my sanity, I am temporarily not going to anymore board meetings unless something really important comes up. I have no idea what that would be. Anyway, we scape goat the new kids too. It's so easy to do. I asked the DofC? privately if she controls for movement in and out of town, as we now have VERY granular data and they easily could do this. Surprisingly, we do not control for that in evaluating our data. It's really wierd, because our 6th graders did extremely well on our rather easy CMT test, 95% met "goal" or "mastery." Our 7th and 8th graders didn't do nearly as well, but there are lots of good reasons for this having nothing to do with the curriculum. The 6th graders, now that was due to Everyday Math. They are fully capable of believing absolutely contradictory propositions at the same time -- every positive aspect of performance is linked to Everyday Math, every negative aspect is not linked to Everyday Math. This is why I can't go to meetings for awhile. -- LynnGuelzow - 28 Sep 2006
Lynn
Are you in Connecticut? Just curious as I am in a CT District using EM (Monroe) as well-
Dee Hodson -- Main.DeeHodson - 28 Sep 2006
Hi, Dee! -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
Lynn Unbelievable The administration and board scapegoat new students? I was shocked when I heard this going on. (Did I ever tell you my line about that - I'm amazed at my ability to continue being amazed ?) It's true -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
scratch that comment about 10 districts not showing a decline etc. the figures I was looking at when I wrote that had 3s & 4s together -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
Dee I am in Northern Connecticut (Granby). We supplement in the district like crazy with teacher created worksheets. At best it looks like they spend about 30% of their time doing the worksheets (which look a lot like CMT stuff) and about 70% doing EM. The town and schools have experienced huge growth in enrollment in recent years. In 5 years, the student body has grown 15%. Most of the growth has been at the high school. Some grades have grown more than others (the 7th grade grew up 6% in one year, the 5th grade class grew 5%). -- LynnGuelzow - 29 Sep 2006
Meanwhile it turns out there are 10 districts in Westchester County with scores as high as ours (or higher) who either don't show a decline over the years, or whose decline is half the size of ours. Those districts didn't come up at the meeting. Nor did any hint of a plan to prevent the decline in the future. Of course, we don't need a plan, because we can be confident that the scores "will bounce back up." -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Sep 2006
One last thing: Irvington has a reputation for doing a bad job with special ed. People in the "services" world will actually roll their eyes when they hear the word "Irvington," and I myself advise parents not to move here. So the idea that we have huge numbers of special ed kids flocking to the district is nonsense. The kids they're talking about are very high end kids. -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Sep 2006
I've seen the same phenomenom at our board meetings. To protect my sanity, I am temporarily not going to anymore board meetings unless something really important comes up. I have no idea what that would be. Anyway, we scape goat the new kids too. It's so easy to do. I asked the DofC? privately if she controls for movement in and out of town, as we now have VERY granular data and they easily could do this. Surprisingly, we do not control for that in evaluating our data. It's really wierd, because our 6th graders did extremely well on our rather easy CMT test, 95% met "goal" or "mastery." Our 7th and 8th graders didn't do nearly as well, but there are lots of good reasons for this having nothing to do with the curriculum. The 6th graders, now that was due to Everyday Math. They are fully capable of believing absolutely contradictory propositions at the same time -- every positive aspect of performance is linked to Everyday Math, every negative aspect is not linked to Everyday Math. This is why I can't go to meetings for awhile. -- LynnGuelzow - 28 Sep 2006
Lynn
Are you in Connecticut? Just curious as I am in a CT District using EM (Monroe) as well-
Dee Hodson -- Main.DeeHodson - 28 Sep 2006
Hi, Dee! -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
Lynn Unbelievable The administration and board scapegoat new students? I was shocked when I heard this going on. (Did I ever tell you my line about that - I'm amazed at my ability to continue being amazed ?) It's true -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
scratch that comment about 10 districts not showing a decline etc. the figures I was looking at when I wrote that had 3s & 4s together -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
Dee I am in Northern Connecticut (Granby). We supplement in the district like crazy with teacher created worksheets. At best it looks like they spend about 30% of their time doing the worksheets (which look a lot like CMT stuff) and about 70% doing EM. The town and schools have experienced huge growth in enrollment in recent years. In 5 years, the student body has grown 15%. Most of the growth has been at the high school. Some grades have grown more than others (the 7th grade grew up 6% in one year, the 5th grade class grew 5%). -- LynnGuelzow - 29 Sep 2006
sometimes it's better than you think
I promised myself last year that I would start going to school board meetings. So last night I did. The meeting was quite frustrating, but there was one terrific surprise: Irvington sixth graders — Christopher's class — earned the top scores in the county on the ELA test.
- 38.8% scored a '4,' which the Asst Superintendent characterized as "mastery."
- 63.9% scored a '3.' (If memory serves, the state uses the term "meets standards" for 3s.
- 5.4% scored a 2 and 0% scored a 1.
questions This means Christopher is surrounded by high-scoring, competitive kids who are setting the pace for him, as he is setting the pace for them. Good. (The fact that our standards are lower than California's, Indiana's, Massachusetts' and those of every industrialized country on the planet is another story, of course.) Still, the strong scores of Christopher's 6th grade class raise a couple of issues. Grade deflation, for one. I came to believe last year that the reality here in Irvington is the exact opposite of the grade inflation meme. The reality here, and in other affluent suburban middle schools I'm hearing about, is grade deflation. I don't have the patience to belabor the point; suffice it to say that I've heard from other parents here that their children, like Christopher, experienced harsh grading last year, harsh grading unleavened by feedback that would help them improve their work. Grading like this, for instance:
Those are two grades, two Ds, assigned to two different papers & written on the bottom of one. No other comments, just a curt "Are you trying to do the work at all?" addressed to Christopher in front of the class as he stood by her desk to receive the verdict(s). (What was that we were saying about a caring community?) More than one middle school parent has watched his child's confidence wilt and his interest in a subject he once loved dissolve. A child will take no for an answer if that's all he hears. So will most adults. Our sample size is small, of course, but there was a moment at the transition to 7th grade meeting that struck Ed and me as significant. One dad raised his hand (we parents always have to raise our hands & speak only when called upon), and asked Principal Fried what his overall impression was of this sixth grade class. I suppose you could ask such a question for any number of reasons, but it struck both of us as a veiled request for reassurance. I say this because of the strikingly negative conversations about Christopher that I had with school personnel throughout last year. Most memorable was the one with the math chair who, when I said, "Christopher has to learn math for college," responded by saying, "He has to learn math to graduate from high school." She said this as if graduation from high school were in some doubt, as if even thinking about math in college was an egregious case of parental overreaching. It was bizarre. She'd never met Christopher, he was earning Bs in the accelerated math class, a fact she'd pointed out to me earlier in the exchange, he'd had 4s on every state math test — and she's talking about whether he'll have what it takes to eke out a pass in Algebra 1? UPDATE 10-28-2006: He was earning Bs in an accelerated math class whose teacher had been instructed to "hold down the number of As." Maybe when I finally study statistics I'll learn how to "partial out" a formal policy of grade deflation. That's the way it was last year.
what's different about this class? UPDATE 9-29-2006 Mind fog. What's different about this class is that they had two hours of ELA instruction a day, every day, day in and day out. We owe this decision to last year's principal Scott Fried and, I assume, to his Assistant Principal Raina Kor. I'm grateful to them. What I don't know at this point:
- would this class have been first in the county the year before, when they had the normal 1 hour of ELA instruction?
- was the extra hour of ELA instruction the cause of their high scores?
The other question is: why the sixth grade? Assuming their scores this year aren't a fluke, which I have no way of gauging, what was different for these kids? I would bet the ranch it's not the teachers — not in 6th grade ELA, unless the English teachers for the A team (the kids were divided into two teams with different schedules) were fantastically good, which is possible. I have no way of gauging that, either. If our district were open to input from parents, I would ask the administration to investigate the amount of afterschooling and tutoring going on in Christopher's class. Everyone I know — almost all of them parents of 6th grade (now 7th grade) children — is engaged in substantial afterschooling, teaching, reteaching, and private tutoring. Parents in every other grade are reteaching and hiring tutors, too, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that our cohort is doing more of it. Two reasons. First, this is the class with the family who has had a college professor tutoring their kids for years now. This is an open secret; everyone knows about it. Simply knowing that your child is in a class with a kid who's being taught at home by a college professor has a galvanizing effect. At least, it did for me. Second, Christopher & me. Irvington is a tiny little district, and Irvington Middle School is a tiny little school. Everyone knows I've been afterschooling Christopher for two years now — or, if they don't, their kids probably do, because Christopher tells the kids at school. I proselytize afterschooling every chance I get, and the idea could have jumped to other parents beyond my immediate circle of friends. I say this because while I haven't been able to change much that the school does, I've had the experience of sitting in a meeting and suddenly hearing another parent, sometimes a parent I've never even met, say something that I know had to have originated with me. I've been working on my understanding of education for two years now, and I've become fairly good at tapping into the pro-content/pro-mastery thoughts most parents already have but haven't put into words.
grade deflation in Irvington
no grade inflation in the suberbs
Spanish teacher grades a project
teachers versus superintendents
article: deflation at BU, inflation at the Ivies
-- CatherineJohnson - 27 Sep 2006 Back to main page.
Comments
After entering a comment, users can login anonymously as KtmGuest (password: guest) when prompted.Please consider registering as a regular user.
Look here for syntax help.
I have a family motto for the education system -- better than I feared, worse than I'd hoped. I think there must be some mathematical model out there that schools follow to make sure parents are never so unhappy that they mount an insurrection. But never so good that you attract additional families and students. -- LynnGuelzow - 28 Sep 2006
Good news on the ELA scores. I imagine that it's a double edge sword -- the scores will reduce the likelihood that any real reform can take place. -- LynnGuelzow - 28 Sep 2006
I'm suffering brain fog.....the difference is that the sixth grade had two hours of ELA instruction which, with some of the teachers, involved actual content. This was a Scott Fried innovation, and a good one. We'll see if there's a bump in 6th grade scores next year, too. The rest of the meeting, which I have yet to describe, was wretched. We have a huge drop in scores at the 8th grade - "huge" meaning 13%, but still - and the entire meeting was a study in collusion, excuse-making, and scapegoating. The administration started out saying that two English teachers had abruptly taken maternity leave, so the kids had substitute teachers for the year. But they moved on from that & blamed a group of new students, most of whom had some kind of "issues" - although most of them weren't out-and-out IEP kids like mine. They were 504C kids, or kids receiving "building services." So it's their fault our 8th graders score badly. THEN they went on to say that the 8th grade test is "more difficult" than all the other tests, and the kids "bounce back" in 10th grade, when they take Regents. The school board president affirmed that, yes indeed, his own kids' scores declined in 8th grade and "bounced back" in 10th! No context given; no recognition of the fact that politically speaking Regents tests have to be scored very, very easily and in fact are scored easily. Not one person, including me, asked a critical question (of course none of us had this data prior to the meeting, so we were trying to process everything on the fly). But parents did ask questions like, "Shouldn't the state be looking at itself? Shouldn't the state be asking itself why it writes difficult tests?' The asst superintendent then proceeded to confuse everyone by saying that "some tests are scaled differently" so "you can't compare across grades." Unbelievable. Every parent there seemed to agree that "we can't compare across grades." It was a masterful performance on the part of Ralph N. Brilliant. Then the board president congratulated the administration on such excellent scores, and added with great sensitivity that "It's too bad that new students depress our scores but I guess we'll just have to keep trying to do our best to teach every student who moves here." So we ended up scapegoating a handful of children and patting ourselves on the back for being committed to educating them. unreal -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Sep 2006 For some reason the rest of the comments thread isn't showing up, though I see it in the edit window. Here it is: Meanwhile it turns out there are 10 districts in Westchester County with scores as high as ours (or higher) who either don't show a decline over the years, or whose decline is half the size of ours. Those districts didn't come up at the meeting. Nor did any hint of a plan to prevent the decline in the future. Of course, we don't need a plan, because we can be confident that the scores "will bounce back up." -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Sep 2006
One last thing: Irvington has a reputation for doing a bad job with special ed. People in the "services" world will actually roll their eyes when they hear the word "Irvington," and I myself advise parents not to move here. So the idea that we have huge numbers of special ed kids flocking to the district is nonsense. The kids they're talking about are very high end kids. -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Sep 2006
I've seen the same phenomenom at our board meetings. To protect my sanity, I am temporarily not going to anymore board meetings unless something really important comes up. I have no idea what that would be. Anyway, we scape goat the new kids too. It's so easy to do. I asked the DofC? privately if she controls for movement in and out of town, as we now have VERY granular data and they easily could do this. Surprisingly, we do not control for that in evaluating our data. It's really wierd, because our 6th graders did extremely well on our rather easy CMT test, 95% met "goal" or "mastery." Our 7th and 8th graders didn't do nearly as well, but there are lots of good reasons for this having nothing to do with the curriculum. The 6th graders, now that was due to Everyday Math. They are fully capable of believing absolutely contradictory propositions at the same time -- every positive aspect of performance is linked to Everyday Math, every negative aspect is not linked to Everyday Math. This is why I can't go to meetings for awhile. -- LynnGuelzow - 28 Sep 2006
Lynn
Are you in Connecticut? Just curious as I am in a CT District using EM (Monroe) as well-
Dee Hodson -- Main.DeeHodson - 28 Sep 2006
Hi, Dee! -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
Lynn Unbelievable The administration and board scapegoat new students? I was shocked when I heard this going on. (Did I ever tell you my line about that - I'm amazed at my ability to continue being amazed ?) It's true -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
scratch that comment about 10 districts not showing a decline etc. the figures I was looking at when I wrote that had 3s & 4s together -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
Dee I am in Northern Connecticut (Granby). We supplement in the district like crazy with teacher created worksheets. At best it looks like they spend about 30% of their time doing the worksheets (which look a lot like CMT stuff) and about 70% doing EM. The town and schools have experienced huge growth in enrollment in recent years. In 5 years, the student body has grown 15%. Most of the growth has been at the high school. Some grades have grown more than others (the 7th grade grew up 6% in one year, the 5th grade class grew 5%). -- LynnGuelzow - 29 Sep 2006
Meanwhile it turns out there are 10 districts in Westchester County with scores as high as ours (or higher) who either don't show a decline over the years, or whose decline is half the size of ours. Those districts didn't come up at the meeting. Nor did any hint of a plan to prevent the decline in the future. Of course, we don't need a plan, because we can be confident that the scores "will bounce back up." -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Sep 2006
One last thing: Irvington has a reputation for doing a bad job with special ed. People in the "services" world will actually roll their eyes when they hear the word "Irvington," and I myself advise parents not to move here. So the idea that we have huge numbers of special ed kids flocking to the district is nonsense. The kids they're talking about are very high end kids. -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Sep 2006
I've seen the same phenomenom at our board meetings. To protect my sanity, I am temporarily not going to anymore board meetings unless something really important comes up. I have no idea what that would be. Anyway, we scape goat the new kids too. It's so easy to do. I asked the DofC? privately if she controls for movement in and out of town, as we now have VERY granular data and they easily could do this. Surprisingly, we do not control for that in evaluating our data. It's really wierd, because our 6th graders did extremely well on our rather easy CMT test, 95% met "goal" or "mastery." Our 7th and 8th graders didn't do nearly as well, but there are lots of good reasons for this having nothing to do with the curriculum. The 6th graders, now that was due to Everyday Math. They are fully capable of believing absolutely contradictory propositions at the same time -- every positive aspect of performance is linked to Everyday Math, every negative aspect is not linked to Everyday Math. This is why I can't go to meetings for awhile. -- LynnGuelzow - 28 Sep 2006
Lynn
Are you in Connecticut? Just curious as I am in a CT District using EM (Monroe) as well-
Dee Hodson -- Main.DeeHodson - 28 Sep 2006
Hi, Dee! -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
Lynn Unbelievable The administration and board scapegoat new students? I was shocked when I heard this going on. (Did I ever tell you my line about that - I'm amazed at my ability to continue being amazed ?) It's true -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
scratch that comment about 10 districts not showing a decline etc. the figures I was looking at when I wrote that had 3s & 4s together -- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006
Dee I am in Northern Connecticut (Granby). We supplement in the district like crazy with teacher created worksheets. At best it looks like they spend about 30% of their time doing the worksheets (which look a lot like CMT stuff) and about 70% doing EM. The town and schools have experienced huge growth in enrollment in recent years. In 5 years, the student body has grown 15%. Most of the growth has been at the high school. Some grades have grown more than others (the 7th grade grew up 6% in one year, the 5th grade class grew 5%). -- LynnGuelzow - 29 Sep 2006
| WebLogForm | |
|---|---|
| Title: | sometimes it's better than you think |
| TopicType: | WebLog |
| SubjectArea: | IrvingtonSchools, LanguageArts |
| LogDate: | 200609271355 |