On Saturday I attended a meeting of my education sorority. One of the items we discussed was Friday's release of report cards for North Carolina's Public Schools that now include a letter grade for schools. The majority of schools that received letter grades in the C, D and F range are schools that serve mainly those students who live in poverty.
The majority of schools that received grades of A and B were those serving more socio-economic advantaged students. This report card grade was based on EOG test results, a test that is taken in a 2-3 day period with students being tested on all they have learned in one school year. It was mentioned in my meeting that if a teacher gave a report card grade based on one test given during a grading period, parents would be beating down the principal's door and calling the superintendent or school board members objecting to the grading system. However, when our state legislature does something similar with this letter grade report card to the teachers and schools in our state, there is little reaction from the community.
All the schools in North Carolina are being graded based on a sample of a 3-4 hour reading test and a 3-4 hour math test that is given under intense pressure to students in grades 3-12. The results of these two testing session are used to determine what a student is capable of doing and how well a school is performing. The grade given to schools has little consideration of how much growth a school makes. The performance scale is focused on how many students are on grade level on a few days in May each year. It matters not that a student doesn't test well because they witnessed domestic violence in their home the night before, that a student has only had the meals provided for them at school over the last month, that a student has only been in the United States for 3 years and is not a fluent speaker of English but is tested and expected to be on grade level using English after 3 years, or that a student might be taking the test with a headache or minor illness but is afraid to miss school and take a make-up test. We should all be up in arms over how our state legislature has mandated that schools be measured.
I happen to work in one of those schools that didn't fare very well on the state report card. 99.9% of the student I work with live in poverty and have bigger worries than school - they worry about their next meal or if someone in a gang might bully them the neighborhood they live in. At the same time, these students are growing more in performance than their counterparts elsewhere in the district who live in affluence. The thing is, these kids come to kindergarten often having heard very little English and never have experienced being read to daily the way kids from more affluent households have been. The teachers at my school put in long hours trying to push their students in order to get them closer to that grade level mark. They are making tremendous gains. The majority of students grow more than one grade level per year. Under this letter grade system for schools, because many of these students still score below grade level expectations, the school is punished. The system does not factor in the fact that a student may start Kindergarten functioning at the level of a 3 or early 4 year old. The child may make more than one year's academic growth, but if they started a year functioning at the level of a 3 year old, at the end of Kindergarten, they might just be at the level of a 4 year old. By third grade, this same student might be functioning at the level of a 1st or 2nd grader and has made great gains since starting school, but if they are not on what a test given on a few days on May considers to be grade level, the child, the teacher and the school can be labeled as a failure.
The letter grade system only punishes and demoralizes those teachers who work in the most challenging of situations. When a teacher is worried over if a child had a meal, has clean clothes or if they were victimized in their home the night before, academics are not the main concern. These teachers worry over the basic needs of their students - food, clothing, safety. Academics come in second to the basic needs of these students. Yes, as teachers we push the kids academically; however, if a kid comes to school having not slept because they heard violence in their home or neighborhood, letting the child sleep and get rest in a place they feel safe might be more important at that moment than whether or not the child can read on grade level. Our legislature needs a wake-up call to the realities of what many students in our state have to face on a day to day basis. Our schools work tirelessly day in and day out to do everything possible insure that each student is all that he or she can be. Rather than focus on who's on grade level, we need to be focused on what can we as a state do to help all our students reach their potential.
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