So? You're not teaching common sense
U.S. school progress reports defy common sense
Mon Mar 22, 7:44 AM ETBy Patrick Welsh
At a faculty meeting recently, we teachers at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., received coffee mugs with the school name and the words "Fully Accredited" emblazoned in big, red letters. The principal's gift was a tongue-in-cheek award to recognize the fact that the school finally had reached the 70% passing benchmark on Virginia's Standards of Learning (SOL) exams and now was deemed worthy of full accreditation by the state board of education.
Even though I believe Virginia's high-stakes tests are dumbing down education, I couldn't help but be delighted that we'd hit the mark. I was tired of seeing the school publicly disparaged by the state for the past four years.
But my delight was tempered when I heard that even though we are in the state's good graces, we are on the federal government's blacklist for not meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress requirements of President Bush (news - web sites)'s No Child Left Behind Act.
Like most of my colleagues who were focused on getting students to pass the state SOLs, I hadn't paid a lot of attention to the federal law. But when I took a close look to find out where my school fell short, I didn't feel so bad.
The federal progress requirements defy common sense. Thousands of schools across the country that passed their states' exam benchmarks failed to meet NCLB's standards. Eighty-four percent of Florida's schools, for example, didn't make it; 78% of the Florida schools that attained an A rating under the state's standards fell short of the federal mark.
