Well, let's take a look at the article:
Things look worst for Cox Elementary in Dade City, ....
Okay. What was the native language of the reporter and/or editor?
Things are looking pretty worse around the whole nation , as far as I can tell ....
Posted on 05/03/2007 8:10:43 AM PDT by devane617
LAND O'LAKES - About 950 Pasco County third-graders - that's 260 more than a year ago - might have to repeat the grade after failing the FCAT reading exam this spring.
Things look worst for Cox Elementary in Dade City, where fewer than half of the school's 85 third-graders performed at grade level on either the reading or math sections of the test. Last year, more than 60 percent of the school's third-graders were reading at grade level.
Cox is one of nine county schools facing sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind Act if it does not show overall improvement in student achievement this year.
FCAT results released Wednesday also showed that just 63 high school seniors passed the exit-level reading exam, of 347 who took it, and 63 passed the math section, of 185 who took it. The success rate on reading was up slightly, but still below 20 percent, while the math rate sank a bit to 34 percent.
The remaining FCAT scores are not expected for at least two weeks.
Most of the attention this year goes to the third-grade results because they went down after several years of increases.
State and local officials pointed to a continued upward trend since 2001, calling last year's results a "spike" that did not follow the otherwise smooth line of improvement. In Pasco, for instance, the outcome is better than that of 2005, though below last year's numbers.
This year, 19 percent of Pasco third-graders scored at the lowest level on the reading test. That's worse than the 14 percent of a year ago, but better than the 20 percent of 2005. In math, 14 percent received the lowest mark, improved from 15 percent a year ago and 17 percent in 2005.
"When you look at the scores over a six-year period the trend is moving in a positive direction and it's continuing that way. There was a spike in that trend last year, " superintendent Heather Fiorentino said.
She used Cox as an example. Though the school showed a one-year 17-point swing down in the percentage of children reading at or above grade level, it actually had a slow but steady increase since 2003, when just 35 percent of Cox third-graders were reading at grade level, Fiorentino noted.
That's despite having 95 percent of its students receiving free lunches and 89 percent having limited English abilities.
"We're not saying we don't have more work to do, " she said. "But they have moved up and that's a positive thing."
She and her staff did not buy into what some are calling the "cohort effect." That's where you explain away a year's results by saying the students were exceptional.
"I don't think you can just explain it away by saying ... 1998 was a really great year to be a baby, " said research and evaluation director David Scanga, who figured it would take some time to figure out why last year's third-graders did so well.
Fiorentino liked to look at several positive aspects within the test results. For instance, a majority of Pasco third-graders did better than the national average in reading and math on the Stanford Achievement Test section of the FCAT.
Also, Mary Giella Elementary reduced the percentage of lowest-performing students in reading to 11 percent from 24 percent; and Lacoochee Elementary saw its percentage of Level 1 readers drop to 9 percent, from 19 percent, while it increased the percentage of students at grade level or higher in math to 73 percent.
Pine View, Sand Pine, Longleaf and Trinity Oaks elementary schools continued to have success, with more than 80 percent of their students reading at or above grade level. Longleaf had just 1 percent of students at Level 1 in math, with 91 percent at grade level or above.
The state releases much less information about the senior retakes. No school by school results, for instance. Still, Pasco officials were heartened by the general improvement of the district passing rate, noting that those few who continue to take the FCAT as seniors are "our most struggling students" yet they have not dropped out.
Scanga added that a preliminary look at 11th-grade repeaters shows improvement in the passing rate, too. Most important, assistant superintendent Sandra Ramos said, is that Pasco sophomores succeed on the exit-level exam, which is first given in 10th grade.
"We want 10th-graders passing on the first time, " Ramos said.
Hear.. hear!!!
Don't get too depressed. People can survive anything, even 12 years of schooling. It usually takes a few years in the working world for them to come to their senses though.
When I first read that (pre kids) I thought he was exaggerating. But it took my kids 10 hours. 20 minutes/day over 30 days.
For the uninitiated, JTG was NY State Teacher of the Year about 15 years ago.
How many of these students are immigrants, legal or otherwise? How many speak English as a second language? "That's despite having 95 percent of its students receiving free lunches and 89 percent having limited English abilities."
Some info on Pasco County: As of 2000, the population was 344,765. The 2006 census estimate according to the U.S. Census Bureau for the county is 450,171. Its county seat is Dade City, Florida. It is the 50th fastest growing county in the country with a 30.6% increase and has grown by 105,403 residents since the year 2000.
It sounds like the county is being overrun by immigrants.
In the the 80’s I taught at a college where 80% failed entrance examsand spent a couple of years in remediation. When I asked the director how she got results when 12 years of K-12 had not she replied that the schoolteachers were not PhD’s in reading. It was sickening to meet those kids who had been so cheat4ed, and it is infuriating that it is still going on.
Bingo. My son’s third grade teacher couldn’t pronounce most of the words on his spelling list - I found it unremarkable that he did poorly on spelling tests.
Well, let's take a look at the article:
Things look worst for Cox Elementary in Dade City, ....
Okay. What was the native language of the reporter and/or editor?
Things are looking pretty worse around the whole nation , as far as I can tell ....
I hear your side from my daughter who teaches high school students. As good a teacher as I believe she is, it's very difficult, to say the least, to teach 16 and 17 year olds high school subjects when they can barely read.
A couple of years ago she had 3 pregnant 16 year olds in one class, one of whom was pregnant with her second child. It's clear to me that such kids aren't interested in learning, why bother to go?
Such children are destined, by their own choices and lack of parental guidance, to be a burden on society whether they attend high school or not.
The public school system may have played a part in this failure but the primary responsibility for it shoud be placed firmly on the parents, or lack thereof.
She attends a terrific school, Tatum Ridge Elementary, in Sarasota. It's a public school.
The cream Will RISE TO THE TOP!.......Gotta go tend the cows.....
Many years ago I was watching news of a Chicago teachers strike. A reporter asked one of the picketing teachers what her job was at the school.
I swear, I’m not making this up. She said, “I teaches English”.
In Hillsborough County alone, the foreign-born population grew by more than 80% to 1.1 million. This equals four times the growth rate of the overall population. Currently, foreign-born residents make up 13% of the county. In addition, 23% of residents report speaking another language besides English at home.
"Immigrant advocates in the Tampa Bay area understand that the 2.7 million immigrants currently residing in Florida are not going home any time soon. As a result, they believe that helping immigrants assimilate will only result in a safer, more productive society."
Tampa Bayers who are anti-immigration oppose any type of help that they believe will encourage immigrants from staying or encourage more immigrants from coming. They cite that they oppose immigration primarily because of the strain it puts on social systems, and the resources it takes away from legal residents.
In Florida, for example, $1.2 billion is spent annually in educating the children of illegal immigrants – money that opponents believe could be better spent. Opponents also believe that the influx of illegal immigrants in Tampa Bay has resulted in more traffic, pollution, overcrowded schools, and the lack of affordable housing. Additionally, opponents state that illegal immigrants hurt the economy because they send a large percentage of their wages back to their respective countries.
Illegal Immigration in Tampa Bay
Once you start investigating an issue, more often than not, you see a link to immigration as one of the root causes of problems.
That's right.
What about the illegal aliens children that don't even speak English, much less read it.
And what about the children from the slums that speak Ebonics? What about them?
</sarc>
Based on what I see published and at work, I’ve come to the conclusion my youth was wasted learning spelling and grammar.
In the state of NY, from 4th grade on, Language Arts are not taught to students. It's not required. They are not taught nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, verbs or how to diagram a sentence. Phonics are also not taught. Neither is penmanship. I assume that this is how most schools operate.
Their ultimate goal is to have the populace dumb enough that it will vote only for socialist candidates.
And they are patient. From what I can see, this has been going on for at least 30 years. They are slowly increasing the speed of the dumbing down.
I have a less expensive idea!
Send all the failing kids to the Sylvan Tutoring Centers for the summer.
By September, not only would they be able to pass the government exam, but they would be a grade ahead of their classmates who passed.
Oops! I forgot. Sylvan is a private company. The Marxists running our schools can’t abide with **profit** ( gasp!)
While that is true, the problem is that the socialist NEA has been trying to prevent or discourage the cream from rising in the interest of total self-esteem in all students.
The advantage I had in the public school systems of the 1950s and 1960s was that they weren't afraid to categorize/group according to performance into the Advanced, Average and Slow-learner castes and then encourage us to "raise caste".
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