Below is a portion of the February 15 Pleasantdale School Board Meeting. Due to technical difficulties, the first two hours of the meeting were not recorded. The recording begins during the discussion of ITBS test scores.
At the January meeting, a parent pointed out that she noticed a five year trend of sagging scores in the area of math computation between grades three and four. This drop in scores over the last five years was not noted by district statistician Dr. John Wick. Dr. Wick mentioned at the January meeting that anytime the scores drop more than 8 points, it should be a concern. However, over the last five years, scores have dropped between 16 and 25 points every year.
This trend should have been noted by Wick who has been contracted for $100,000 over the last five years to analyze students scores. We plan to show you one of the error reports passed out to students and the tutorials assigned as homework to help RAISE THE SCORES! Sadly, this test only measures how well our students can perform on the test, not necessarily what they know, their depth of knowledge or how their learning aligns to the curriculm.
We think you will find this last hour particularly informative, especially the open forum comments in the last two segments. Enjoy!
Thursday, February 16, 2012
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6 comments:
Why is Beth Tegmeier on the school board? She contributes nothing to the discussions. Other than a comment on the kitchen topic, she said nothing. Does she research the topics? Is the discussion over her head? Does she have an opinion about anything being discussed? Does she understand the discussion? What a disappointment to the people that elected her to that board. It seems like the only reason she is there is to present recognition certificates and vote in the majority. Time to take a look in the mirror Beth and ask yourself why you are on the board because it's obvious that it is not for the betterment of the students or to represent the residents.
Thank you to Doug Gilman, Kim Barker, Steve Rockrohr, and Derrick (?) for speaking up for our kids. It is time for the Board to open their eyes to what is going on at the district instead of closing their ears to the b-s the administration puts out there. I too wonder why some of the Board Members are on the Board. I am sure they have good intentions, but unless you are willing to ask questions and make your superintendent accountable...your intentions don't help.
Dr. Wick is FOS.
Matt, you have it wrong.
The first thing he said was not to do timed tests.
A failed experiment, If I remember.
2007/2008 school year.
Please get your facts straight.
Dr. Wick isn't the only one that's full of it.
For years Mark, Meg and Matt have been saying that ISATs don't mean anything, it is a useless test, the bar is set so low, they don't care about the ISAT, etc.
Yet, for the last several days/weeks, all we have been doing is prepping your kids for the ISAT. At the middle school kids are given packets to take home for homework. At the elementary school, kids complete practice test after practice test in class.
Rather than wasting everyone's time now, the three aMigos should just erase and change the answers once the test is over.
It's the same thing really, it's called cheating!
My kid came home tonight w/Math homework (advance 6th grade level) and said they had to do ISAT test packets today in school, so the teacher didn't have time to explain how to do the homework to the class. Now the kid is struggling with how to do the homework tonight(doesn't understand the concept because the teacher didn't have time to explain it).
Common sense would say -- let the teacher's focus on the lessons and concepts to teach; not how to take the math section of the ISAT. If they teach them the correct concepts, they will do fine on any test the school provides.
Worked when we were kids.
Teach concepts – who has time for that? Why do you think that there are so many children being tutored? I don’t remember anyone being tutored when we were kids. Maybe it’s because teachers used to teach concepts, now they don’t have time - they are too busy teaching testing strategies! Thank you Dr. Wick!
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