State-of-the-Schools
The annual State-of-the-Schools address by Dr. Baehr was interesting and informative. We had a lot of questions from the studio audience, several emails and phone calls-so that we ran out of time and had to wrap up rather quickly. Unfortunately, we did not get to all the email questions, for which I apologize profusely. I have sorted the remaining questions and reserved those relating to the high school to ask at the January 23 meeting on Lowell High. Other questions will be brought up at the monthly meeting with the superintendent on December 8.
The studio audience included parent representatives and parent liaisons from the Bailey, Bartlett, Daley, Robinson and Washington schools, as well as school committee members Jackie Doherty, Kevin McHugh, Joe Mendonca and school committee member-elect Jim Leary.
One of the highlights of the presentation was identifying the mission of Lowell Public Schools as “A challenging educational environment in each school that supports ALL students to learn high level skills, concepts and habits needed for successful life-long learning in a democratic, multicultural world.” As Dr. Baehr pointed out, MCAS is not mentioned in the mission statement. That said, there was of course some discussion of MCAS scores, which are relatively flat statewide. To give some context to the test scores, we learned that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) ranked Massachusetts first in reading and mathematics for Grades 4 and 8 (based on Spring 2005 scores). So, what’s going on? It seems that MCAS is a harder test than most, with more writing and more open-ended, as opposed to multiple choice, questions. Massachusetts developed this test and set the bar for proficiency very high even before the federal government got involved with ‘No Child Left Behind.’ Now that the federal requirements have been grafted on top of existing state methods for tracking educational progress, our state finds itself in an untenable position – we are actually being punished for our high standards and lofty goals.
The studio audience included parent representatives and parent liaisons from the Bailey, Bartlett, Daley, Robinson and Washington schools, as well as school committee members Jackie Doherty, Kevin McHugh, Joe Mendonca and school committee member-elect Jim Leary.
One of the highlights of the presentation was identifying the mission of Lowell Public Schools as “A challenging educational environment in each school that supports ALL students to learn high level skills, concepts and habits needed for successful life-long learning in a democratic, multicultural world.” As Dr. Baehr pointed out, MCAS is not mentioned in the mission statement. That said, there was of course some discussion of MCAS scores, which are relatively flat statewide. To give some context to the test scores, we learned that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) ranked Massachusetts first in reading and mathematics for Grades 4 and 8 (based on Spring 2005 scores). So, what’s going on? It seems that MCAS is a harder test than most, with more writing and more open-ended, as opposed to multiple choice, questions. Massachusetts developed this test and set the bar for proficiency very high even before the federal government got involved with ‘No Child Left Behind.’ Now that the federal requirements have been grafted on top of existing state methods for tracking educational progress, our state finds itself in an untenable position – we are actually being punished for our high standards and lofty goals.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home