An excerpt from the Los Angeles Times article Cheating on tests found at two Los Angeles schools:
Locally, at six charter schools operated by Crescendo, principals were ordered last year to require teachers to review the state tests in advance and then use that material to prepare students. L.A. Unified recently closed those schools in the aftermath of the scandal.
Such episodes underscore the pressures and pitfalls of testing systems that, nationwide, increasingly affect teacher and principal evaluations and whether schools achieve acclaim or censure and penalties.
This is the product of high stakes testing. It places the pressure on principals, teachers and students to “perform”, whatever that means. In our state, the ed reformers, with the assistance of the state PTA, will try again during the next legislative session to put a greater emphasis on testing as an indicator of the “success” of a school, a principal or a teacher.
Charter schools live or die by test scores. If the test scores of a charter school averages out to a number that is lower than the requirement set by the state, that charter school is either placed on probation or they are required to close their doors. If after two or three years, the time period varies from state to state, the charter school does not “perform” up to the set standard, then the charter school is closed.
According to the Washington State PTA government relations coordinator Ramona Hattendorf in her newsletter for July:
- · The Merit/SIG schools (who received federal money to improve outcomes) are required to make student growth a significant factor in evaluations as a condition of their grant.
- · The Seattle School District adopted an evaluation system last year that factors in student growth. It uses two-year student growth averages. As part of the evaluation process, teachers set goals around student growth. While failure to meet goals doesn’t necessarily affect the evaluation, low growth will trigger more oversight/intervention. Alternatively, proven growth opens up career opportunities.
It will be more difficult with fewer resources and larger class sizes due to the financial crisis of the state and the nation for teachers to provide more with less
And, how fair is it to evaluate one teacher based on the two year growth of a student? What about the teacher the student had previously? How does that play into the evaluation process?
There is too much emphasis placed on “student achievement” evaluations based on test scores nationwide thanks to the Race to the Top crusade headed by Arne Duncan and supported by President Obama.
If we are not careful, we will see the same kind of cheating in our state that we have seen in New Orleans, D.C. and Los Angeles.
Seattle Education 
There are a few issues with closing schools. If the school is actually closed permanently then there is a loss of an anchor in that community. The students then need to be transported to other areas to attend school. This cost money and can take a lot of time out of the student’s daily life, commuting from home to school, and leaving less time for after school activities and homework or a lack of sleep from trying to make up for lost time.
What actually happens with these “school closings” is that these schools are usually converted into charter schools. That was the original method used by Arne Duncan who with the backing of land developers turned public schools into charter schools in Chicago’s southside during the re-gentrification of that area. Charter schools needed space so they would take over public school property sometimes incrementally and sometimes the entire school in one gulp. Property is expensive and the charter franchises couldn’t pay for these buildings or didn’t want to. Now many of these spaces that charter schools inhabit are leased to the franchises at $1 per year by the school district. Pretty good deal considering many of these charter school raise money, many times in the millions, with very little overhead and paying teachers a low wage with no demand of financial transparency. See Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality?, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/29-10.
The other “turnaround model” is to fire half of the teachers or the principal and replace the staff. This does not address the cause of children not learning. It does not address the effects of poverty, hunger, illness, family problems or simply the teacher not having enough time to address all of the needs of each student so that they are prepared to learn.
We have overwhelmed our teachers with larger class sizes, less materials and books and yet more responsibilities such as main-streaming students into the general population and now tracking mandatory testing which is required four times each school year here in Seattle between the MAP test and the mandatory state test. The needs of the students and school staff are not addressed by simply closing a school and only mask the underlying causes of children not being ready to learn or having the opportunity to learn.
It’s all a matter of common sense.
Dora
A problem in discussing this with supporters of reform is that they see the closing of a school as a good thing. Are there some ideas out there for how to deal with that?