A report came out that once again indicated that South Bend Community Schools failed to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress Numbers. You can read the story here.
A quote from this WSBT news report:
The South Bend Community School Corp. currently has 32 schools. Only six achieved AYP, down from eight last year and 13 in 2006.
“It’s pretty much what we expected,” said Robert L. Zimmerman, superintendent of South Bend public schools. “It continues to be a challenge for us.”
WOW!! Let me offer my opinion (which other than attending public schools…I have no expertise or training whatsoever in public education…so please…school teachers and administration…feel free to comment away).
What I know is that being the hypochondriac that I am, the last thing I need to do is obsessively pay attention to a heart monitor. Just thinking about it makes me nervous and gets my blood pressure going. Obsessively taking my blood pressure to see if it is high only makes me perpetually anxious about the reality that I have to take that test. I get fixated on it and the test itself drives my thoughts, etc.
In some way it seems like the ISTEP tests are like a heart monitor, and we are obsessively letting it drive everything in regards to our school system. Can I just say this out loud – I AM SICK AND TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT THE ISTEP!!
I’m not against testing. I know that there has to be some measure of progress – and I don’t have a better alternative, so a test seems in order. But the ISTEP test scores has been such an obsession that EVERYTHING now revolves around that stupid test – curriculum, time management, focus, attention, administrative meetings, goal setting, etc. The goal, de facto, of our school system has become, not to educate our children, but to get them to pass the ISTEP (and we aren’t even doing that well!).
I’m glad that starting in the 2008-2009 school year the ISTEP will be moved to the Spring (whose genius idea was it to put it at the beginning of the school year just after summer break to begin with?). But if I were the Indiana Superintendent of Schools, I would either find another test or even rename this one! Even if you still give the ISTEP, call it something else. And by doing so dethrone it! Decenter the ISTEP. Quit making it the central guiding force in our school system.
If you want good health, you concentrate on diet, exercise, stress management, and all the things that make for good health. If you concentrate on the blood pressure test itself, it just makes you obsessively demented!
ISTEP test scores can’t measure honest and good improvement if it is reported as a percentage of pass/fail. Children’s achievements can’t be celebrated if they really have made progress but haven’t crossed over the threshold of the ISTEP requirements. Individual teachers no longer have the freedom to teach children from the teacher’s academic strengths and what the children need to know, but are now driven by nervous administration (and who can blame them) to get their kids to pass the ISTEP.
What about kids who honestly don’t “test” well, but are really academically quite bright? What about the kids who really had an off week because of something in their home and it happened to fall on ISTEP test week? What about students with special needs/education? Can ISTEP measure these things?
Consequently, for students who don’t do well academically, it has become in our best interest (because of ISTEP testing) to remove them from the system so that their test scores don’t pollute our total scores. Yet, those dropouts will still remain in our community and now what? (commit crimes? etc.) What is our drop out rate in the South Bend Community School Corporation?!
Can the ISTEP measure the morale of an entire staff at one of these schools that is not passing? Can it assess the mumbled response to the question, “Where do you teach?” because there is a twinge of embarrassment that they teach in one of those “failing schools”? Can that stupid test quantify the cynicism and discouragement that comes over a faculty when those test scores get published, once again, in the South Bend Tribune?
My vote would be to rename ISTEP or get something else all together. And then for a season, let it be a background assessment and let the South Bend Community Superindendent, all of the Principals, administrators, and teachers barely mention its existence and focus once again on the individual students who, for this academic year, are in their care. And with their years of experience and training let the teachers figure out how to truly educate each kid…and not be driven by the dreaded I-S-T-E-P.
If my humble suggestion doesn’t work and it only makes things worse, we can try something else, but surely we can see that what we are doing doesn’t seem to be fixing the problem. In fact, according to the report – fewer schools this year acheived their yearly progress goals than last year, and the year before that.
Sam I Am 
A M E N!
This is great insight and I agree with your article. There are so many variables with students. Students are individuals with different abilities and environment issues.
Sam, I agree with you. Andrew has consistently been on honor roll. He is in honors English and Algebra. He failed the English part of ISTEP and barely passed the math part. He said that they pushed so hard on taking the test that when the time came to take it he just didn’t want to take it. Kind of a mental melt down.
There are too many things to mention here but I can not believe what the schools are NOT teaching Andrew. Many things in history are not taught now because they want to teach more current events. Classic novels and some famous people aren’t even discussed. Makes me sad. If I didn’t have to work full-time, I would homeschool Andrew.
I also agree TOTALLY. Helene (7th grade) has always been High Honors.. for the last 2 years she scored perfect scores in language arts on ISTEP, and did well on the Math section.
Danny (6th grade) is ALSO High Honors yet scored only moderatly well on the language arts portion and scored 76 on the math portion..he brought the scores home and was not only devested..but feared that we would be disappointed and ground him for ‘bad grades’ (mind you he brought home a straight A report card the day before) … so, yeah.. one straight A student may do exceptionally well on the ISTEP while another straight A student may do poorly. ISTEP needs to be abandoned all together or seriously overhauled!!
Brilliant post.
Step one to de-emphasizing the ISTEP is to unlink school funding from ISTEP performance..
I remember those tests when I was in school. Several days of nothing but tests… Weeks of pressure and prep work before hand. What kid needs all that pressure? By the last day of the test I could care less and I would not even read the questions. I would just fill in bubbles and “wing it”. That was 20 years ago and still nothing has changed – HELLO – This is not working!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Sam, you need to run for school board. I would vote for you. What about the kids with special needs. It worries me for my children. Are they going to be pushed aside because of their bio-parents stupidity and addictions? Hopefully things will change SOON.
A few facts about ISTEP testing:
1. 2008-2009 school year ISTEP will be taken in the fall like before but also include a spring test with written response questions. 2009-2010 will begin full testing in spring.
2. Each state must provide a form of assessment to meet No Child Left Behind requirements. We have ISTEP+ as our form of assessment. Other states have their tests. ISTEP has improved since the inception of the test in the late 80’s. Like you said, maybe another name to change.
3. Most schools don’t meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) due to the special education sub group. Schools are scored on each sub group of greater than 40 students. If a school has less than 40 students in a sub group the school is not held accountability for AYP. Special Education students meeting AYP is very hard!
This form of accountability is hard to take for me as an administrator. If a 6th grade special education student is reading at a 2nd grade level, how can that student read a 6th grade ISTEP test. Yes, a special education student has accommodations to the ISTEP like questions being read to him except for the comprehension stories. Very difficult!
All educators need to believe or already do that ALL STUDENTS CAN LEARN! We can’t let the federal requirements of AYP and NCLB change the way we teach our students.
Let the true growth of the schools be evaluated on the actual scores of the students and how much or less they improved from last year. Not on the pass or fail percentage.
Randy, Thank you for filling us in. It is such an important subject. If the state knows that in the sub-group of special ed children aren’t going to do well on this test, generally speaking, why is it a sub-group like the otheres. It doesn’t give much hope for the system. Is school funding based on these scores? That can’t be good either. The state is then setting the schools up for failer. I agree that an improvement system would be better.
Thanks for the comments on the special ed children. I was one of those kids all through school. These kids are already dealing with enough issues. They certainly do not need a test to tell them they are behind the other kids, and it does not help the test score averages for the school systems either. They do need to revamp how they score the tests, and maby come up with a different kind of testing for not only the special ed kids, but the kids in the slower learning classes as well.
So, if I read the article correctly, the fact that we segment the school population into subgroups accounts for the issue of not meeting “Adequate yearly Progress.” And, more specifically, the area we are failing in is primarily in the special education subgroup. Seems like several schools would have met or come close to meeting the AYP if not for the special education subgroup. I wonder if that reflects the nature of the testing (I think Randy did a good job on that one…), the nature of the teaching (e.g., are they getting the resources they need to adequately do their job?), or both. It seems to me, this story could have easily focused on that as a story instead of an “our schools are failing” sort of tact.
I know there are reasons why these populations are segmented, but when it comes to the practicalities of funding and perception, I wonder if it is not sometimes counter-productive.