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.
And teachers can’t make a child to want to learn. Society has more influence to the desire to learn for a child than teachers. With the media today, it’s all about now, I want it, I’m cool, look at me, get this and you’ll be happy. And we wonder why?
I think it helps seperate good teachers from the bad..
Good teachers become teachers because they love their subject and they love children. In any situation regarding education, a personal connection, some sort of recognition of the mutual humanity of the teacher and student, SOMETHING deeper and more profound than an easy paycheck has to be the motivator.
Bad teachers become teachers because they love a short work year and unionized job security. They often do not even see their students as human beings, rather as inconveniences, job tasks if you will.
She sounds like a Teacher Ratchet. Was she a twin sister to Nurse Ratchet?
Some still aren't afraid of those categorizations. while the "tags" may be slightly different, the concept remains the same.
And they’ll protect cucumbers from STD’s.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I blame them both.
**BOTH** the good and the bad are cooperating with NEA Marxists who are determined to destroy our nation, Constitution, freedom, economy, and everything we value.
Obviously you live in an area without massive illegal immigration...for the time being.
Same here. When I went to K (1968), kids knew their colors, letters and numbers, but that was about it. I think the standards have changed, but the methods don't meet the standards.
or, is that "it be hugh!"?
That's "separate" from the Latin, separo. (At least, that's how Mrs. Clausius explained it.)
On this issue, John Taylor Gatto is so wrong it is scary. What he is doing in this statement is lumping in instruction with exposure. A child with hundreds of hours of exposure to text can probably be taught the basics in 100 hours of instruction. The problem is that some kids come to school not even knowing left to right or up down orientation. They do not know that these squiggles correspond to sounds and to meaning. They have no concept of word.
Once concept of word is attained, the child is literally hours away from reading basic text. The problem is getting them to concept of word. That is the time the parent spends holding a toddler reading the same book over and over, pointing to a page and asking them "What do you think is happening?" and reading nursery rhymes. When the ground work is laid down by parents, any good teacher has an easy job. When the job is not easy, even though the exposure is there, that is when we the reading specialists come in and try to decipher what is going on to prevent the attainment of literacy.
One problem is the graded structure. Not all six year-olds are exactly six years old. Even those born on the same day are not equal in personal or physical development. But every child included in an age range that amounts to a fifth of their previous life is placed in the same class-room. The solution that the school system offers is to start the process first a year and then two years earlier. That still doesn’t solve the basic problem: apples and oranges are put together in the same box and it is left to the teachers somehow to sort them out. I don’t know what the solution is, and that is reeally because I don’t know how todefine the problem. Every school is a bit like a boot camp, but without the necessary brutality.
Remember, with athletic & social involvements taking time and financial priority, many parents seem to see academic performance as only one goal in a range of qualities they want to see in their children.
My younger son could not learn phonetically. Some people just don’t take in information orally very well. They have to be sight readers. It is like some people are unmusical while others can memorize whole songs at one hearing. The problem with schools is that they are either or. They teach a class only one way.
Make that aurally. Nothing wrong with his taste! ;-)
Thanks a bunch.
“That’s despite having 95 percent of its students receiving free lunches ... “
Uh, okay.
” I’ve come to the conclusion my youth was wasted learning spelling and grammar.”
It used to be it was wasted shooting pool. This is a strange country.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.