Forty-One

We recently received a letter from our school district offering to let us move our son from his school to one of three other elementary schools in the district. Parents of children in two other schools received the same offer. The school district has to make the offer -- and has to pay for the transportation of any children whose parents take it up on the offer -- as part of Idaho's implementation of No Child Left Behind.

My wife, who works in the district and is in a position to develop her own informed opinions of the quality of the elementary schools -- because she works with children who have attended each of them -- feels that we are lucky to have the school we do. The school district feels otherwise about it, by law.

For the district to change its mind, the school will have to make Annual Yearly Progress goals again next year. That means it will have to meet 41 benchmarks. I know this because the letter from the district said so. It did not say what the 41 benchmarks are. Nor did the school district website. Nor the state school board website.

If I look at the school's "report card" on the school district website, I learn that in the 2009-2010 school year, it did not meet a benchmark for proficiency in three subjects. (I learn nothing about the 2010-2011 year from the website, but the letter says it made AYP this time around.) Ok -- in 2009-2010, 91% of the students were proficient in reading, 86% were proficient in math, and 80% were proficient in language, beating the overall benchmark by at least 5%. But of those who have "limited proficiency with English," not enough tested proficient in any of these three areas for the school to make AYP that year. Not enough information is available to figure out what these benchmarks were or by how much they were missed.

Does this seem a bit odd to you? By definition, wouldn't those with limited proficiency with English not be proficient in Reading and (English) Language?

It strikes me as odd that there are 41 benchmarks. It strikes me as odder that there is no clear listing of the 41 benchmarks available to a reasonably intelligent person who spends two evenings trying to find one. This searching did glean a few pieces of information, however. For instance, one of the benchmarks is simply testing at least a certain percentage of the children. I wasn't able to figure out if this was one benchmark or three (i.e., one for each area tested).

Theoretically the school could fail simply for holding standardized testing in the middle of a flu epidemic. But since it routinely tests 98%-plus of its students, I guess there's some contingency for that.

One of the schools that we are allowed to select for our son is the elementary school on the reservation, attended only by Native American children (at least in statistically significant proportions). From the district website, I can also learn that this school on the reservation had 59%, 41%, and 35% of its students, respectively, test proficient in the 2009-2010 school year.

Yes, that's right. The law requires to school district to keep a straight face when it gives me the option to move my son from his current school -- which is not up to snuff according to the rigorous standards devised by our government -- to a school where far fewer children perform well according to the same tests but which is up to snuff according to the same set of standards.

-=-