Friday, March 12
City Pages: Built to Fail - No Child Left Behind
From City Pages: Built to Fail:
By almost any measure, Edina boasts one of the finest public school systems in the country. Even average eighth-grade students in the district post test scores that rank among the top 20 percent in the nation. Ninety-one percent of the graduates go on to college. The district is run by Dr. Ken Dragseth, who was named National Superintendent of the Year in 2003 by the American Association of School Administrators.Unintended or planned? Planned I'd say. GWB should be tried for treason I think. Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 3/12/2004 04:17:00 PM
No wonder a community survey revealed that schools are the number one reason people choose to live in Edina.
So it was quite a surprise last year when Dragseth received a call from Minnesota Commissioner of Education Cheri Pierson Yecke, informing him that Edina had been put on the state list of schools that had failed to make 'adequate yearly progress' under the terms of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The reason? State records showed that three of the 53 students categorized as 'Asian/Pacific Islander' in the Edina system had not taken the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments test, putting that subgroup below the 95 percent participation level required by nclb. As it turned out, the three students had taken the test--bureaucratic error was appealed in time to remove Edina from the failure list. But Dragseth is still rankled by the experience.
'We have 7,200 kids in our district. The reality is, if just a few kids in a certain subgroup don't show up for the test, the whole district can be classified as failing and put under restriction,' he says. 'That's just asinine. I tell this to parents and they say it can't be so, but it is. I'm an old math teacher and statistician, and I know when I've been had.'
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