Posted on 10/31/2003 10:15:11 PM PST by chance33_98
Rosa Park Parents Blame Testing, Not School
By MATTHEW ARTZ (10-31-03)
Berkeley school district officials are preparing for discussions on an administrative overhaul for Rosa Parks Elementary School, after standardized test scores released last week showed that student performance declined. “It behooves us to start looking,” said Carla Bason, BUSD’s manager of state and federal programs.
No administrative shakeup is imminent.
Most parents taking their children to school this week said it was the standardized testing system, not the school, that was really failing the students.
Results of the latest rounds of tests mandated under President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act have thrust Rosa Parks into year three of a mandated program improvement regime, requiring the district to implement at least one of several corrective actions ranging from staff replacement to implementation of a new curriculum.
The law requires substantial reforms for schools that fail to make what it defines as “Adequate Yearly Progress” on standardized tests for several years in a row, with each year bringing stiffer requirements.
If Rosa Parks fails to meet state standardized test score goals next year, the district will be required to draft a plan to overhaul the school—which could include reopening it as a charter, contracting out management to a private company or a state takeover. The district would have the entire 2004-05 school year to submit the plan.
The state would give BUSD discretion in drafting any plan, said Maria Reyes of the California Department of Education’s Title I Policy and Partnership Office. “It’s up to the district to do what they think is best,” she said. “I don’t think we’re going to second guess.”
Reyes said a plan for alternative governance would not force the replacement of second-year principal Shirley Herrera, who parents have praised for bringing stability to the school after four consecutive years with four different principals.
Rosa Parks first entered the program improvement track in the 1997-98 school year, Reyes said, after district tests showed lagging scores. To escape the process, the school must make “adequate yearly progress” for two consecutive years—which includes meeting state graduation and test participation rates, meeting mandated goals on math and reading proficiency tests and making continued improvements on overall test scores.
The school faces also another significant obstacle: It’s classified as a “schoolwide school”— a status offered to schools with high percentages of students in federal free and reduced-price lunch programs—which gives the school greater flexibility in spending federal grant money but requires meeting stricter standardized testing goals.
While many Berkeley schools only need to meet “annual measurable objectives” for the school as a whole and for economically disadvantaged children, all statistically significant subgroups at Rosa Parks must meet state standards.
This additional requirement didn’t factor into the Annual Performance Index results released last week, which showed that the entire school had dropped 20 basis points on a variety of standardized tests.
In August, a different round of tests showed that the school as a whole had surpassed state-mandated proficiency levels in English or Math but African American and economically disadvantaged students failed to meet state goals on both sections.
To improve test scores, federal law requires the school to provide tutoring for struggling students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
In two weeks, as many as 30 students will begin the first in a series of eight-week programs designed to help improve English and Math skills.
Rosa Parks was also required to provide tutoring last year as part of year two of program improvement, but the BUSD program—attended by 40 pupils—did not begin until February and only offered English assistance.
This year, the program offers six tutors—mostly UC Berkeley students—with study groups consisting of three to five students. Enrollment has been tricky, administrators said, and because all parents received notices describing tutoring options irrespective of whether their child qualified, the school had to reject applications from parents of several high-scoring students.
School administrators have been contacting parents of eligible students, urging them to apply. “The ones that I’ve called are interested, but that doesn’t mean they will turn in the applications,” said Mira Santos, a Rosa Parks administrator.
To meet requirements for year three, the district is requiring all teachers at the largely Latino school to enroll in Project GLAD, a teaching method geared to teaching mixed classes of native English speakers and foreign students.
The program helps teachers develop lessons that incorporate academic language so students are better prepared to take tests and read text books that rely on academic English, according to co-founder Marsha Brechter. She said the training can also help African American students—the subgroup struggling the most at Rosa Parks—if they come from an environment that does not use academic English.
Program improvement also allows parents to switch their children to other schools. Some parents have complained that since there were no openings in the other two elementary schools in their zone—Thousand Oaks and Jefferson—they had been forced to stay at Rosa Parks.
Bason said the district received approximately 20 requests for school changes from Rosa Parks. While some were denied due to lack of space in other schools, she said most requests were not related to concern over standardized test scores.
Most parents interviewed said they had no thoughts of deserting the school.
“The community is very motivated here,” said Cathy Duenas, the mother of a fifth grader, who said she was more concerned about the tests themselves than the student’s performances. She echoed several parents who expressed concerns about a district-wide trend toward larger class size, citing her son’s math class, which has one teacher for 37 students.
Parents were universally opposed to any administrative shakeup. “That would be ridiculous,” said David Richie. “They have a great group of teachers and staff. That would only mess that up.”
One seemingly insignificant requirement for standardized testing may soon land other Berkeley schools in a similar bind.
Schools are required by federal law to test 95 percent of students, ostensibly to ensure that schools don’t pressure failing students to forgo the test to improve scores. But California doesn’t demand that students take the test, and many Berkeley parents who oppose standardized testing have opted out.
Only three of Berkeley’s 15 schools met participation goals for tests released in August, and failure to do so for a second consecutive year would force them into program improvement as well.
Let's see, at probably 8G in tax dollars per student, that's $296,000. a year.
Ms Duenas' child is being left behind because Ms Deunas is a horse's behind.
I believe it to be the other way around.
I went to Roser Park school in the late 40's. It's located in south St. Petersburg, Fl..
Perhaps the infamous bus rider was named after the park? [or another park of the same name?]
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