The Virginian-Pilot
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The Virginia Board of Education on Thursday adopted pass rates for English and math tests for the next four years.
The required pass rates on Standards of Learning tests will remain at 82 percent in reading and 80 percent in math through 2013. In 2014, the required pass rates on both tests will jump to 100 percent, as required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Pass rates are used to hold schools accountable for increasing the performance of all students.
Patricia Wright, state superintendent for public instruction, said the targets are reasonable because Virginia will be implementing "rigorous" new math tests in 2012 and reading tests in 2013. Scores tend to drop in the first few years a new test is given.
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Pass rates do not determine who is promoted
The public needs to understand that "pass rates" on state tests have little to do with passing in the accepted sense. A student who demonstrates no proficiency at all on a state test is usually passed to the next grade at the end of the year.
This social promotion was what NCLB was designed to end. Districts were supposed to recognize that they could never make Adequate Yearly Progress by promoting all the way up to high school students who were still unable to read above a fourth-grade level. If a district promotes only 3% of the failing readers in each grade, we should not be surprised to find 30% of the tenth-graders can't read.
NCLB would work fine for any district willing to group students by skill level rather than by chronological age. Alas, parents don't show up at meetings demanding that their children be kept in fourth grade until they can read at the fifth-grade level. Remedial reading teachers do not demand that kids stay back. Results might be different if there were any sort of consequence for students who failed the state tests in early grades. There are none.
wake up - that day dawned long ago
"But hey, maybe it's not such a bad idea to become a country that has very few civil rights and that will throw lower performing people on the trash heap so we look like we are doing better (sarcasm intended)."
Too late, we already do and most Americans are just ignorant about the fact, or think "but it isn't my child's school"
This is the face of "top-down, centrally managed, unionized" education.
"that's ambitious for many
"that's ambitious for many of our subgroups"
gee and we used to call them students
now they are nameless, faceless, subgroups
What???
I am a staunch education supporter but am amazed to stupefied at the 300-400 lb cop (one of 3 no less) who wrestled down then plopped his whole weight on a citizen in Richmond yesterday without giving any reason for arrest except resisting arrest! He had tried to ask Eric Cantor why he refused to debate his opponent. We as citizens have a right to be heard, to question, and to expect responses. This not only smacks of royalty snubbing us lowlings but stormtroopers with jackboots on our necks! Where is that Nazi baiter Beck when we need him?
Virginian Pilot be ashamed that this is not only NOT front page banner, it doesn't seem to be here at all.
(hence the out of place comment)
Nope .. no superman there
"Eighty, 82 percent, quite honestly that's ambitious for many of our subgroups."
Why in 2010, after 45 years of spend spend spend, is 82% proficiency ambitions? Are we saying that people can be identified by group (Lord knows what that means), and that certain people will be less likely to have the faculties to succeed?
I have a neat idea about educating our children. Let's stop telling them that they are all equal, and then dividing them into groups, or worse, subgroups.
Only an idiot would assume that the children are unable to process what is going on. In the 60s and 70s children understood why there were 3 levels of 4th grade; some people are above average, some are capable, some are remedial. Our children know which kids have no business being in class with them, and we confuse them by denying it.
Everyone does not deserve a medal, a lesson all of our children need.
Just another lame excuse...
Yup...just another lame excuse by the State of Virginia when it's unable to meet Nationally established standards...it's no wonder the Chinese are light years ahead of us...
Gosh, I wish I was Chinese...
Yes, the Chinese have some advantages, one of which is that they can expel any student who isn't measuring up and then they don't have to include them in their data. Our schools have to take everyone and they can't kick them out just because they don't perform well. But hey, maybe it's not such a bad idea to become a country that has very few civil rights and that will throw lower performing people on the trash heap so we look like we are doing better (sarcasm intended).
We need to bring back
We need to bring back discipline in the schools...instead of giving them candy for a job well done, pull out the stick and smack those fingers when you misbehave and/or don't study and do your homework, etc. All those parents who had the candy handed to them are now raising their kids the same way...i.e. NO SUPERVISION and the let them "learn at their own pace" philosophy is bringing us down in terms of educational prowess. Heck, kids today don't even know where Timbuktu is? And without a calculator, they can't even figure out how much McDonald's cheesburger is going to cost them.