Here's a quick recap of today's news conference with Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata with more to come later.
Tata said he'll ask the school board to adopt a new policy saying that middle school students should be enrolled in Algebra I if they're projected to have a 70 percent chance of success by EVAAS. Tata said the new policy would only allow professional judgment to be used to place students in Algebra I and not to keep them out.
The use of professional judgment to exclude students from Algebra I has been a contentious issue.
Tata said enrollment in Algebra I is projected to hit 6,000 students this fall, compared to 4,500 this past school year and 3,000 in the 2009-10 school year. Even with the increase in enrollment this past school year, Tata focused on how scores essentially stayed the same and didn't drop dramatically as some feared would take place.
UPDATE
School board vice chairman John Tedesco said he asked staff to draft the new policy following his dissatisfaction over the Algebra I presentations at the last ED task force meeting.
Comments
Thank you all for hanging in
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 18:11 — loriacThank you all for hanging in there. I cant believe it's been almost 2 years since the SAS report was made public, and how little outcry there has been. (especially from Mr. Barber). A big thank you to Mr. Tedesco and all of you who worked so hard on this. Now this SHOULD make national news, but I won't hold my breath. I'd love to understand why some staff and some of the previous board were so invested in keeping kids out of this class.
Yes, This is wonderful!
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 16:03 — RKCurtrightThanks to JT and ED Task Force for all your efforts and work in getting this to Tata and staff for implementation. You deserve the recognition for direct improvements for all students every school can have. We all look forward to more improvements to come I'm sure. This is one thing all board members have agreed to and JT deserves a lot of credit for all the work he did to help make this happen.
Keep in mind this is meant
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 13:22 — KeungHui (author)Keep in mind this is meant to be a quick recap of the press confernece. Tata didn't specifically mention Tedesco this morning. I talked with Tedesco after the event. He'll be mentioned more in the print version running tomorrow.
Hats off to conservative leaders!
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 13:11 — Get_the_factsI agree, I've been in some of those meetings and Tadesco has rolled up his sleeves, looked at the facts and drove this policy change for the students and parents who don't have a voice. The doors to this gateway class have been closed for too many for too long! The new policy will provide more access to rigor and college prep classes for poor and minority students who are able to be successful. We voted into power leaders who would take decisive steps to help break the cycle of poverty by supporting higher expectations for Wake students. Hopefully, we can begin to build bridges to the nay sayers who think that conservatives are not in favor of a quality education for all. Quite the contrary!
Yes, John Tedesco
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 12:48 — LongtimeLurkerYes, that needs to be acknowledged.
John Tedesco has been the key to all of this. If you subtract him from any part of this, it would not have happened.
I'm not supposed to comment
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 13:30 — KeungHui (author)I'm not supposed to comment on the online stories so I'll respond to you here on the blog. I'm disputing what you're calling errors. It's still the case that EVAAS is projecting a 70 percent probability of success in the class. You can say that a study showed they had a 94 percent success rate when place but it's still a 70 percent probability. I will adjsut the section on professional judgment.
OK, Keung, I've posted a partial retraction
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 23:39 — LongtimeLurkerOK, Keung, I've posted a partial retraction at the on-line version of today's story per the comment I made abut the meaning of the 70% figure. I made a small but important technical error in my claim there and I appreciate you contacting me about it. As I said I respect your work. I will try to be more careful.
Thanks Keung
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 13:54 — LongtimeLurkerThanks Keung, I'll need to be convinced about the meaning of the 70% figure but I very much appreciate your effort and respect your intent to get things correct.
I hope you will double check your understanding of that concept, as will I. Meanwhile, I'll back off on saying anything more than the two posts I already put over there. And I will edit or delete them (if that's still possible) or retract my comment, if I come to understand that I am incorrect in my understanding.
I think the engineers at SAS showed how out of touch they are with us lay people's conceptual grasp of probability when they designed the terminology of this metric. Its truely a difficult concept that they have saddled us with.
One misunderstanding
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 14:58 — lferreriThere's one layperson's misunderstanding that can be cleared up from the data given at the last meeting. Many people assume that students at the 70% plus prediction level are either evenly distributed among the prediction levels or are part of a normal distribution with most students falling between 80-90% like a bell curve. Some people even go so far as to say that most students must fall in the 70-80% range since they assume that the data is a bell curve with a mean of 50%. Actually the data given at the last ED task force meeting shows that about 78% (10,778 out of 13,829 accounted for) had a probability of success greater than 90%. We have a lot of very competent students who have been excluded from advanced math classes in the past.
Over 5000 students took 8th grade Algebra last year up from 3,322 the year before. Yet the passing rate was 94.6% on the EOC for 8th graders which I consider to be excellent. I think our students are capable of a lot more than we have given them credit for in the past. I'd like to see us apply this concept to other classes as well since I doubt that our underestimation of ability occurs only in math classes.
You can click here for the
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 14:21 — KeungHui (author)You can click here for the wording from the guidelines for 2011-12.
Well, this is the suggested wording C&I distributed
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 15:01 — LongtimeLurkerWell, this is the suggested new guidelines C&I distributed at last week's ED Task Force meeting. And I have a couple of distinct thoughts about it.
It is not the guidelines for last August (2010) that defined the math placement policies that the administration agreed to and that were hammered out in the ED Task Force. This document was not used by the schools to effect the biased Fall 2010 and Spring 2011 math placement that is the subject of the matter at hand. It was drafted later and distributed this last week to a very unwelcome reception and an open identification as inadequate for the challenge at hand.
Rather than refelcting the clear guidelines agreed on last year, this document is seriously, perhaps intentionally ambiguous, illustrating either incompetence or the intent of C&I to continue to drag their feet (for which I will now warrant there will be some serious consequences). Personally, I would like to see the two women who presented THIS mess as the suggested course of action for 2011/2012 dismissed or demoted. Its not like this concept of guaranteed access is new to them. They've PERSONALLY been fighting it vigorously for six years. So one has to wonder why the criteria remain so ambiguous in these "recommendations."
This is exactly why we see an actual School Board Policy being developed now. Because many schools refused to follow the guidelines they were presented last Fall.
This was not merely a suggestion last year. The WCPSS administration made a considerable show of saying the guideline - using EVAAS recommendations without Teacher Judgement as a factor - would be followed. Then an ongoing scrimmage to get E&R to satisfactorily document that the guidelines either WERE or WERE NOT being followed ensued all through the fall. That report was never released - presumably because compliance was so poor that it could not be admitted. So today hopefully marks the end of this phase of the struggle to FORCE compliance on schools who have intentionally defied the administration.
Click here for the 2010-11
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 15:36 — KeungHui (author)Click here for the 2010-11 criteria.
OK, yes this is the rubric : incompetence or obfusication?
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 22:33 — LongtimeLurkerOK, yes this is the rubric for Algebra placement in 2010. Even in the Spring 2010 phase, when EOC rather than EVAAS scores were used, it was patently against the placement criteria to use professional judgement to track a child downwards when the other two indicators were for higher placement. The upper part of the sheet makes that clear. That was the WCPSS official criteria, but most schools ignored it as of Spring 2010. Then with EVAAS scores last Fall teacher's professional judgement was still to be used only to move children higher, never lower, than indicated by the objective measures.
So in the 2011 draft "suggestions" sheet presented at the ED Task Force last week by C&I math administrators (notably way too late to affect this Fall's placement decisions), the introduced ambiguity over the relative clarity seen in the previous year's sheet certainly seems to be evidence of either intentional obfusication or incompetence.
Put that together with the fact that they were going to send out blank sheets to be hand-filled out by the individual middle school administrators rather than electronic rosters listing the EVAAS-qualified students, and we can see little evidence that they had the ability/intent to fix the disasterous lack of compliance that we saw in many middle schools in 2010-2011.
Put that together with five years or more of vigorous resistence for there being ANY criteria prior to this, and you know pretty much everything you need to know about this subject.
recommendations versus enrollments
Sat, 08/13/2011 - 10:31 — garnergradIs there data that distinguishes between day one enrollment and day 20 enrollment?
25% of my son's Algebra class dropped before the 20 day enrollment deadline (if you're enrolled after day 20 you must take the EOC). If 40 kids were "recommended" or placed into the class yet only 30 actually stayed in the class, does the school get credit for 100% enrollment (the 40 kids they placed) or 75% enrollment (the 30 kids who took the EOC)?
Are the kids who get placed but drop out by day 20 counted as having been placed? Is the drop rate a statistic anybody is tracking? Also, is anybody tracking what math class all these successful kids are enrolling in for 9th grade? Are they taking geometry/algebra II or are they taking algebra again?
I'd be more concerned that
Sat, 08/13/2011 - 10:56 — woodstockI'd be more concerned that there are teachers who apparently cannot teach 25% of the qualified students enrolled in her class. Sounds like teacher training is more the issue.
Blame the teacher?
Sun, 08/14/2011 - 11:38 — garnergradSo if a kid drops out it has to be the teacher's fault? If a kid goes home and says, "I got a bad grade in algebra, it's too hard, the teacher is unfair, let me take regular math," do we blame the teacher, blame the school, or blame the parent who says it's fine to drop out? (we're talking about the first 20 days of class before it goes on their HS transcript.)
Students who are "qualified" to take algebra, still need to suck it up and do the difficult work of learning algebra in order to succeed.
Maybe you are right, maybe
Sun, 08/14/2011 - 11:46 — woodstockMaybe you are right, maybe teachers today have no role in motivating students and helping them realize their potential. Maybe their only role is to do serve well-prepared and motivated students... because we all know that every 15, 16 and 17 year old is confident and understands their capabilities and, without fail, will automatically maximize their potential in every class.
Don't dump on teachers
Sun, 08/14/2011 - 12:13 — garnergradTeachers do have a roll in motivating students, but they can't do it alone! If parents let kids off the hook, there's not much teachers can do. When my child gave me the pity party about how algebra was too hard, I told him to do his homework and figure it out. He did. Other parents might let kids drop to an easier math. That can't necessarily be blamed on the teacher.
Teachers can't be solely responsible for motivating kids without additional supports. A few years ago class sizes of 40 kids in middle school was illegal, but with budget cuts teachers are supposed to just deal with it. How fair is that? E Garner had extra math electives to provide support. Who paid for that? Offering after school tutorials takes teacher time, but it also requires after school transportation for kids. Who pays for that?
This conversation about algebra has been very short on discussion of resources. E Garner succeeded, but what resources were available to make it happen? The extra work costs somebody something. Who paid?
Is it extra work?
Sun, 08/14/2011 - 13:00 — Bob_SconceIt seems to me that every kid who's in 8th grade Algebra is not in the regular 8th grade math class. It should just mean that the same teacher is teaching something different. What other resources are involved? I'm not saying that there aren't any other necessary resources, and I can speculate (need for after-school help, for example), but I haven't heard definitively that there are, either.
Tedecso and Tata deserve a huge thank you
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 13:19 — mbgjwaltersJohn has relentlessly pursued getting accurate information about student placement and student achievement for middle school math. From comments at the ED task force meetings, some attendees thought we were spending too much time on this one issue, however it is shameful how many students are still prevented from reaching their potential due to inappropriate placement. When you look at how hard the teachers and staff at E Garner Middle School worked to provide a supportive learning environment, making a huge increase in the number of students in advanced math and how the vast majority of students were successful, it becomes apparent that this needs to be school policy. All QUALIFIED students deserve the opportunity to succeed and it should not be dependent on which school a student attends.
Thank you, John Tedesco. And thank you, Anthony Tata.
While the principal at E.
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 14:39 — DrActualFactualWhile the principal at E. Garner MS did great things with her students I asked her if the same could be accomplished/accommodated at a 4-track YR MS and she seemed to think it would be far more problematic. She had been able to modify the schedule to provide more time each day for math instruction which would present some issues when dealing with track out times. If math access is restricted due to YR calendar constraints, then perhaps MS should not operate on a YR calendar. I still await the data on school by school (traditional vs. YR) opportunities/placements.
Extra support and interventions
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 16:48 — garnergradI applaud E. Garner's success in getting students to achieve in Algebra! I think this point about the extra time in the school day for math instruction is key. E. Garner succeeded with lots of additional support and interventions for students. Has there been any financial support to help teachers do this? The extra tutorials after school, extra math electives during the day, "Algebra Lab" and other supports are necessary for success. Is there a cost to the extra support and are schools getting what they need to help students succeed?
I think Algebra is much harder to schedule in year round because you get some wacky class size issues due to track head counts, and without additional months of employment to address this, how year round schools are expected to cope? Last year lots of kids dropped out of my son's year-round algebra class, supposedly because parents hated the 40 student class size.
...
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 11:37 — SideburnsWhat a breath of fresh air. Instead of purposefully hiding the fact that children were intentionally being held back and/or incorrectly placed in remedial classes, we now have a School Board and Superintendent that want all children to achieve. Kudos to the Board members that pushed for this change.
We must not forget Rev
Sat, 08/13/2011 - 08:06 — VillageMentalityWe must not forget Rev Barber et al, that JOHN TEDESCO et al are responsible calling out the previous school board's/superintendent's egregious behavior in ignoring or intentionally sanctioning the placement of minority students in lower level classes to keep the test scores higher in the upper levels...
Correction
Sat, 08/13/2011 - 08:34 — EDSTARA very important correction to this way of thinking: Keeping the qualified minority and low income students out does not keep scores higher. In many schools, the minority and low income students who were being kept out were higher scoring than students given the opportunity to succeed. Not just a few. Many. We didn't lower the bar to let more kids in. This policy is to let kids in who are at the 90+ range. WCPSS is going from no bar at all to having a bar. At WFRMS, when they first placed the qualified students, the some of the students who had been overlooked for placement ended up with the highest scores in Algebra 1.
I don't think students have been kept out for fear scores would be lower.
Decisive steps were needed
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 11:14 — LongtimeLurkerDecisive steps were needed and decisive steps are being taken. My hat is off to Supt. Tata.
Thank you, thank you, thank
Fri, 08/12/2011 - 10:52 — DrActualFactualThank you, thank you, thank you Supt. Tata for doing what is right by the students. This will provide many more students the chance to get on the college track and be successful. Thanks to the Principals who worked to improve the schools to provide these opportunities and show that given the chance students can be successful. This is one time I hope every single BOE member will vote together.