njlauren
Posts: 1577
Joined: 10/1/2011 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: graceadieu What's the context here? From the article, it looks like the state is trying to set realistic short-term goals for schools to improve the scores of different groups of kids. If, say, 70% of black students passed math in 2012, it's probably not realistic to expect that anything the state could possibly do could make 91.5% of the same group pass math one year later. But 79%, that could be a realistic goal. Ideally, 100% of students from all backgrounds in all schools will be able to pass math. But that's not going to happen overnight. Generally speaking, setting a series of smaller goals that are achievable in the short term is a better way to motivate people to get things done. The problem is it doesn't work, as Bama said. While setting intermediate goals seems reasonable, the problem is like a lot of temporary things, they become permanent (lots of temporary structures out there, bridges, etc, that somehow become permanent). For this to work, someone has to evaluate each year and change the goalposts, which means they actually have to do something. So if they set the goal at 75% of X group this year passes it, then the rule should be changed that within 5 years 85% should pass it in group X..the real kicker behind this is the legislature sets a goal, and then when they figure out it will cost money to do it, leave it to local schools, the local schools don't have the funds, things don't get better, and so if in 5 years 77% read at level instead of 75%, even though it should have been 85%, they say "it was a target, not a real goal, but we improved". If they really want to do it, then there should be benchmarks in the law that says each year, it has to go up by at least 10%, or there will be accountability. Sadly, though, this is exactly what happens, it is diminished standards, and it isn't just with minority kids. The whole public school is taught dead to the middle, it is greatest common denominator.Instead of teaching to a higher standard, and grading kids by their abilities, stretching all the kids, they have a bland curricula that sort of works in the middle, but leaves the slower kids behind and leaves the brighter kids uninspired, bored and tuned out,but teaching to the middle is a lot easier.
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