flag banner.jpg (11288 bytes)

 

 

ARE WE DOING “EXTREMELY WELL.”  WHEN HALF OF THE STUDENTS FAIL THE STATE MINIMUM?

Superintendent Bailey writes self-serving articles to the Random Harvest claiming that our schools are doing “extremely well” in the state mandated tests. The actual results do not support his claims.

Below are the results for the state mandated English tests from 1999 to present. The numbers show what percent of the student population passed and failed.

 

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE STUDENTS BETWEEN THE 4th AND 8th GRADE?

Below the results of the 4th and 8th grade English tests.

 

 

4th grade English

8th grade English

 

FAIL

PASS

FAIL:

PASS

1999

52%

48%

63%

37%

2000

50%

50%

63%

38%

2001

41%

60%

62%

38%

            2002

29%

71%

55%

46%

2003

26%

74%

49%

51%

2004

2005

31%

32%

69%

68%

54%

44%

46%

56%

 

The students are doing better at the 4th grade level, before they get 4 additional years of instruction in our district. The seven year average for 8th grade English is that more than half of the students have failed outright. The longer the students stay the worse they do. What kind of instruction do we really have? In good schools, all students pass the tests. Our children deserve much better instruction.   

 

STUPID PARENTS HAVE STUPID KIDS

  The administration is very good at inventing excuses for their failures.  They blame their failures to provide reasonable quality education to our children on “socio economic factors”. “Socio economic factors” is bureaucrat speak for poverty.  Listening to them, one would think that the Spencer-Van Etten school district is a hellhole of poverty, which makes it impossible for them to teach the kids any better than they are doing.   Freely translated from bureaucrat speak, the administration’s excuses go like this:- We have poor parents in our district.   The parents are poor because they are stupid.   Stupid parents have stupid children; so, therefore, one cannot expect them to learn much despite our valiant efforts.-

  The pretext is false; because the state mandated tests show that the kids are smart and are doing better in the lower grades.  The shortcomings in the teaching start to show up in the 8th grade tests.

 

THE LONGER THE STUDENTS ARE IN OUR DISTRICT, THE WORSE THEY DO. OUT OF 20 AREA SCHOOLS, S-VE HAD THE GREATEST DROP IN REGENTS DIPLOMAS.

 

The March 18th 2004 issue of the Star-Gazette reported how many Regents diplomas were awarded at 20 area schools between 2001 and 2003.  Fourteen schools had improved from 2001 to 2003. S-VE was not among them.  We were one of the four schools that had declined in those years. Our district was, in fact, the district that had declined the most. The students receiving Regents diplomas had declined by 34%. It could have been worse, had the state not reduced the passing grade on the math exam from a 55 to a 39.