Why did Charleston County have more National Merit Semifinalists in the early 1960s than it does in 2008? Do you realize how much the county population grew during that more-than-forty-year period?Some testing results act as thermometers, especially if they can be compared over a number of decades. If we were to apply a thermometer to 2007's PSAT results in CCSD, we would realize that the patient, if not on his deathbed, is sinking fast. Allow me to attempt to put the most recent results concerning National Merit Semifinalists and National Achievement Semifinalists (named on the basis of PSAT results) in context.
PSAT's, taken in October of the junior year, are the SAT without its essay portion.
What does the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, as it is grandly named, measure? First of all, it's not an aptitude test: it's a combination of an achievement test and an aptitude test. Students need to be competent in algebra and geometry to score well on the mathematics portion; on the verbal portion they need to be competent in reading for ideas and understanding passages from essays, literature, science, and/or social studies. So, looking at results, how do you separate what the student has learned from the student's native abilities? The short answer is that you can't--at least not absolutely.
Back to the semifinalists. The College Board has an arcane system that, to simplify, allocates a certain number of semifinalists to each state based on its population. If all states had remained the same in population growth relative to each other over the last forty years, the number of state semifinalists in 1968 for South Carolina would have been the same as it is now. But South Carolina has grown faster than the national average.
What has happened to CCSD's results is that in South Carolina the upstate school systems are producing a greater proportion of high scoring students (both Merit and Achievement) than they were 40 years ago. Now, does that mean that the native ability of students in CCSD has declined during that time period? All those people from Ohio and points north who have migrated here should bristle at the suggestion!
Maybe you see where I'm going with this. We are left to explain the drop using the achievement component. That's what the educational system in CCSD must answer for.
The entire CCSD had a total of ten (10) Merit Semifinalists--and only the three from Wando didn't come from a magnet or charter school; CCSD topped that poor showing with two (2) Achievement Semifinalists--both at magnet high schools. How pitiful is that?
So, what are they doing in the upstate that CCSD isn't?
Per-pupil expenditure is not the answer. Neither are school buildings.
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Yep, and Gregg Meyers along with his toadie, Toya Green, would have us believe that James Island Charter High has "slipped" academically. But now we learn that this charter school is competative with the magnets WITHOUT all the protections and interventions provided by CCSD. What gives with this failure for so many CCSD high schools to keep up with the rest of the state?
The more things are said to change within CCSD, the more we discover they remain the same. Other schools in other school districts are learning the same sad truth. Toya Green, a candidate for reelection to the county board, in her League of Women Voters survey appears to be going right along with keeping it that way as she uses the right catch phrases like "closing the achievement gap" and focusing on "the district's report card" while ignoring problems that most contribute to individual student success or failure within a one-size fits all school system. Like so many profession board volunteers and resume builders, she's focused on the wrong things.
Other communities are having to deal with their own public school management. Too many are off the track or worse, picking up the pieces after a total train wreck.
Toya Green says she's for school choice, but her record says otherwise. Read her comments on the LWV website and compare them with the discussion now going on in Seattle...where her "mentor" (Toya Green's own word), Maria Goodloe, is now conducting that city's education railroad. Their committment to school choice and educational options appears to be in just as much danger and turmoil as ours. Like the educrats in Charleston, they are in full pursuit of higher test scores and school report cards over meeting individual student educational needs and potential.
This quote appeared recently in the "Save Seattle Schools" blog.
"Despite many words to the contrary, Chief Academic Carla Santoro and Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson are destroying what is special about alternative schools in the pursuit of the almighty WASL scores."
The post continues with this. "What happens to kids that are used to being able to go as fast and as far as they can in their learning when everyone now has to go at the same speed? And even worse, what about those who can't keep up with the pace and feel like failures in math now. Previously, those kids felt successful as long as they were learning, pushing themselves, setting goals and meeting them. But standardized curriculums with pacing guides reward only speed in learning, not creativity or exploration."
Think about certain favored magnet schools in Charleston when reading this quote. You might also ask, reallly, where is the promised AP Academy at Burke and how long will it be for the proposed partial magnets to be fully on line?
In Seattle they said, "Of course not all schools in the district are forced to use the Everyday Math curriculum. If you have high enough WASL scores, your school can be exempted from having to use this curriculum, like North Beach and others have been."
In Charleston, Buist is one of those schools that is an exception to the rules, but its school report card is counted with CCSD. But charter schools, by law, can also opt out, only their school report card, no matter how good or how bad, isn't counted toward the District's report card. Could this be why Toya Green opposes successful charter schools while supporting low performing charter schools as dumping grounds for CCSD's failures?
If a school board member like Toya Green is a parent who doesn't have to personally face the challenges of meeting unique need of individual students (her child is in a high achieving school that opts out of this rat race), how could she be expected to understand why this is a problem for others? She wants EVERYONE ELSE to have to deal with the downside at THEIR child's school, but not hers.
She wants to close the achievement gap at the expense of others, so long so long as her child is guaranteed to be in a different and more flexible school environment.
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