States Help Schools Hide Minority Students' Scores
 

:( :eek: :mad: but not totally surprised that it is being done.

Quite lengthy but it gives great examples and cases from various states.

States are helping public schools escape potential penalties by skirting the No Child Left Behind law's requirement that students of all races must show annual academic progress.

ADVERTISEMENT

With the federal government's permission, schools aren't counting the test scores of nearly 2 million students when they report progress by racial groups, an Associated Press computer analysis found.

Minorities — who historically haven't fared as well as whites in testing — make up the vast majority of students whose scores are being excluded, AP found. And the numbers have been rising.

"I can't believe that my child is going through testing just like the person sitting next to him or her and she's not being counted," said Angela Smith, a single mother. Her daughter, Shunta' Winston, was among two dozen black students whose test scores weren't broken out by race at her suburban Kansas City, Mo., high school.

Under the law championed by President Bush, all public school students must be proficient in reading and math by 2014, although only children above second grade are required to be tested.

Schools receiving federal aid also must demonstrate annually that students in all racial categories are progressing or risk penalties that include extending the school year, changing curriculum or firing administrators and teachers.

The U.S. Education Department said it didn't know the breadth of schools' deliberate undercounting until seeing AP's findings.

"Is it too many? You bet," Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said in an interview. "Are there things we need to do to look at that, batten down the hatches, make sure those kids are part of the system? You bet."

Students whose tests aren't being counted in required categories include Hispanics in California who don't speak English well, blacks in the Chicago suburbs, American Indians in the Northwest and special education students in Virginia, AP found.

Bush's home state of Texas — once cited as a model for the federal law — excludes scores for two entire groups. No test scores from Texas' 65,000 Asian students or from several thousand American Indian students are broken out by race. The same is true in Arkansas.

One consequence is that educators are creating a false picture of academic progress.

"The states aren't hiding the fact that they're gaming the system," said Dianne Piche, executive director of the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights, a group that supports No Child Left Behind. "When you do the math ... you see that far from this law being too burdensome and too onerous, there are all sorts of loopholes."

The law signed by Bush in 2002 requires public schools to test more than 25 million students periodically in reading and math. No scores can be excluded from the overall measure.

But the schools also must report scores by categories, such as race, poverty, migrant status, English proficiency and special education. Failure in any category means the whole school fails.

States are helping schools get around that second requirement by using a loophole in the law that allows them to ignore scores of racial groups that are too small to be statistically significant.

Suppose, for example, that a school has 2,000 white students and nine Hispanics. In nearly every state, the Hispanic scores wouldn't be reported because there aren't enough to provide meaningful information.

Rest of the article

Re: States Help Schools Hide Minority Students' Scores
 

If it's being done with the fed. govt's permission, how can you not know the extent of the undercounting?

"Is it too many? You bet?"---->translation.. dayum, yall caught us.

CT4, I think Mary McCloud Bethune is weeping again.....

I am afraid to bring children into this world.

This is tragic, IMO. If the scores are not counted, then there is a strong possiblity that the students who have low scores can be overlooked and therefore still left behind. :(

I agree... I was so shocked at this that I just don't know what to say right now.

I read about this in the Seattle times. My jaw is still dropped. Part of me isn't surprised though. I am saddened and p*ssed about it!

As a graduate school psychologist in training, I was alarmed by this article. What alarmed me even more was that my classmates didn't seem to think it enough of an issue to engage in a debate when I brought it up in class today.

Got this in an e-mail...
 

I searched for a place to post this...Hope this is it...


The "Certificate of Completion or Attendance" that is being offered in lieu of high school diplomas, is a part of Bush's "No Child Left Behind". This is how it works:

It is for students who are unable to pass both the Language Arts and Math portions of the 10th grade ISTEP. Students must take the same 10th grade test over in the 11th and 12th grades until they pass both portions. If they are unable to pass the 10th grade test by the 12th grade then they have two options:

1. Drop out and go to a GED program or,
2. accept a "Certificate of Completion" - it is NOT a diploma. Once a student accepts it, they cannot ever get a diploma or a GED. A
certificate of completion means that a student can never (as long as they live):

1. go to the armed services
2. go to college
3. go to trade school
4. go to journeyman's school
5. go to beauty school
6. go to culinary arts school
7. get a federal loan in their lifetime

This is the portion of NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND (2001) that Bush slipped in during the 2004 revision of the NCLB bill. It has not been publicized. At a high school in Indiana, in 2005, there were 87 seniors in the graduation class. Five got diplomas and 82 got "Certificates of Completion".

This is being referred to as the "Paper Plantation". It is better for students to drop out and get into a GED program so they may seek other forms of education, later in life, if they desire to do so. All 50 states have "Certificates of Completion or Attendance".

Please pass this information along to EVERYONE you know who has school age children. Clergy, please preach it from the pulpits. Our people MUST know this information. Thank you & stay blessed.





Linda Newman, M.Ed.

ESOL Instructor

LakeRidge Elementary School

Re: Got this in an e-mail...
 

I got it as well. From doing some research on the net, this is NOT true.