Schools missing the grade
DailyProgress.com | Schools missing the grade
Six of the area’s nine school divisions failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress for the 2005-2006 school year, based on results from the Virginia Department of Education released Thursday.
You know what would fix this, separating government from education. The same way we have separation of church and state, we need separation of school and state. Privately funded schools are in a much better position to innovate, and are more response to the needs of the parents and students in the communities they serve. They don’t have to be standardized, and they don’t have to go through the bureaucracy that government funded schools have to go through to implement changes. They can also fire the people who don’t perform, and give raises to those who do, instead of having to deal with the unionized NEA and their stranglehold on the government schools.
Trevilians Elementary in Louisa and Orange Elementary are now in their second year of “improvement” status, for failing to meet progress benchmarks three straight years, and must offer transfer options and tutoring for students.
I realize that we can’t get to this overnight, and a good first step would be vouchers, but things like this offering transfer options? Come on, what good is offering transfer options to another school in the same bureaucratic system? The system still gets the same money, where is the incentive to improve?
The commonwealth passed again despite changes in its grading system and in who was tested.
Come on now, despite, or because of the changes? Who in their right mind is going to believe that the school system would make changes to make it harder for them to pass?
In addition, grades four, six and seven were given the test for the first time in 2005-2006. During the previous school year, third-, fifth- and eighth-graders were assessed.
Ok, look at the numbers here, they added in tests for grades that had taken the tests the previous year. Do you really think that makes it harder, or easier kids in those grades to pass the tests?