Where is the news about Duval’s district grade dropping?
Duval’s grade dropped from a B to a C. Duval wasn’t the only district whose grade dropped, something like 29 did but that doesn’t diminish the fact it is still news. Tampa, Orlando even Ocala have run stories about their district grade dropping but as far as I can tell Jacksonville has remained silent on the issue.
How can we have an honest debate about education when those charged with informing us don’t, when they have joined the districts all is well conspiracy?
Maybe the paper could de-code how we had more A schools and fewer F schools and still dropped a grade? Does every school grade count the same? What would our grade look like if the district was treated like one big school? What would our bottom quartile look like? Would we make gains? Meet AYP? Set a RTTP record? What if each section of town was a school district? What would their grades look like? Would schools still be seen as a disaster in this town? Would we be pleasantly surprised at the results or brought up short by our assumptions? I don't know what articles the education writers for the paper plan and abandon or which ones are smothered in the crib, but I don't see how a bland covering of each school's grade or the district's grade really furthers the education debate here. Why not compare the realities of the test with what people in the t-u on-line group think the test measures. We run around thinking that this test accurately measures reading level or reading comprehension or covers minimum-level learning objectives in english, math, writing, and science. If that is the case then how do we keep moving the objectives and keep talking about rigor? I think many would rather we pay Pearson a couple of hundred million dollars to create a test that measures something we all understood. Instead this test is all things to all people and produces some number with an artifical cut-line for success. Why not write about how we don't even know what's on it from year to year? Or why we compare this year's eighth-graders to last-year's? Why not compare the same kids year to year? Is there a reason for this? If we want to know why we should keep the test or abandon it and its offspring, maybe we should be more informed about what it actually is and not what we think it is.
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