A short time ago I wrote about Orange County Schools' lack of preliminary results from this year's end of grade testing. Wake County has already announced that as many as 10 of its elementary schools will fail to meet its AYP goals. I asked "Where are our preliminary results?"
In an announcement printed in the News of Orange County, Orange County Schools have announced that they too have preliminary scores from this year's EOGs.
And, things are worse than were generally expected.
While Central Elementary School was expected to enter Title 1 "School Improvement" status under the federal No Child Left Behind law, it was something of a surprise when OCS announced that Efland-Cheeks Elementary School is now also expected to be labeled a "failing school." That label means that parents at both schools must allowed to transfer their children to a choice of two better-scoring schools.
According to the News of Orange County article, parents of children at both schools can expect to receive a letter from the school district over the weekend asking them to decide whether they want to stay at their zoned school or exercise their right to change schools.
"The district will — pending final results — send out letters to all parents at both schools on July 27. Parents will be required to return the letters indicating their choice by Aug. 13. On Aug. 20, notification of school assignment will occur. School starts on Aug. 27 for traditional calendar schools."
As many people opposed to merging CES and HES have repeatedly stated, any attempt to address the problems facing Orange County Schools should address the problems at all of the county's schools. Why has the Board of Education steadfastly insisted on being so myopic?
If a merger between CES and HES is expected to improve the situation at CES, what school will be merged with Efland-Cheeks?
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12 comments:
Why was Efland-Cheeks ignored during the merger talks? Looking at the data, Efland-Cheeks was just as likely as CES to have problems.
Solution: mass redistricting.
Remember who drew up the current district maps? There is no denying the hard, cold facts. It was Shirley Carraway (with support from Dennis Whitling and Liz Brown). What a fine mess they have made of the Orange County Public School System. They have failed the very children they were supposed to help. Now they want to make everything better by disbanding HES.
Shirley Carraway will be gone in October. It is up to us to make sure Dennis Whitling and Liz Brown are gone next May.
Great question - why did the board ignore ECES when parents repeatedly mentioned the ECES overcrowding, test scores, and high growth indicators? Those of us who spoke at and watched each meeting saw clearly that the board was targeting the year round calendar and HES school of choice rather than directing their attention to the children and the educational shortfall in our public schools. Not once did they discuss the CES or ECES school improvement plans - rather they spent their time discussing Wake county legal concerns with year round schools and chasing a balanced SES while making it clear they didn't want to redistrict. Do you think now they will address the academic concerns of our school system?
As long as HES remains a "school of choice", mass redistricting won't work unless the students going to HES are taken out of the equasion.
Redistricting isn't going to solve anything. Until each child in Orange County has involved caring adults in their lives who want them to learn and have the ability and skills to help them do so, there will always be failing children, unfortunately. I think socioeconomic status, free and reduced lunch, blah, blah, blah has little to do with the problem. There are white AND black, AND Hispanic children not performing as well as they should. Teachers, principals, and the school board cannot change this fact, nor can they perform miracles. Until parents and guardians are held responsible for seeing to best interest of their children, how on earth is shuffling kids going to help? The color of the child or the family's income is a lame excuse in my book. I personally am by NO means well off, but I try hard to help my children and their peers know how important an education is. I feel some type of community outreach program is a more feasible solution. It is up to all of us as a society to help another. If only we could stop looking at each other as rich, poor, black, white, free and reduced, etc. we may start to show some progress. We all have at least one thing in common. We are human beings. There is a start!
I applaud Allan for giving us all the opportunity to voice our opinions.
Well, Allan's better half has decided to finally post an opinion...
In all honesty, I have been plagued by a lot of apathy towards the whole HES situation because the school board has made it pretty clear that facts and data don't really seem to mean squat to them. They seem to be hell bent on doing whatever they want to do, so my attitude has been to move on and find a different situation for our kids.
When Allan and I moved from Chapel Hill to Hillsborough three years ago, it was with the understanding that the Orange County schools were quite good. Property wasn't as expensive as in Chapel Hill, and yet our child (we only had one at the time) would have the benefit of some of the best schools in the state. What the heck happened???
It seems to me that with the release of these awful preliminary scores, there should be a renewed spark for parents throughout the Orange County school district to put up a fight and demand better for our kids. I believe that parents at ALL the schools in Orange County should try to attend the August 6th school board meeting and demand answers from our esteemed school board members.
This is no longer just a HES issue. All of the kids in our district deserve so much better than this. I am the product of a horrible school system in NC (K-12), and I don't want to see this district become that. I will do what I have to do for my own kids to have a great education, but I hate to see a school system that was once a source of pride fall flat on its face. Someone needs to answer for this and tell us how they are going to make it right.
Redistricting WILL solve a lot of the current problems. We do not live in fantasy island. There are serious problems within our community that is sad. Poverty is amongst us, even if some can't see it. Redistricting will help achieve socio-economic parity if done correctly. All kids, black, white, hispanic, etc. should have equal chance to a quality education. Unfortunately, it is hard not to look at the data and see that some races are not achieving as high as others in our current school system. So lets redistrict and see if we can't help the system out. Sticking our head in the sand is not going to be the solution.
It seems we just went through redistricting. What good did it do? Test scores are worse now. Is anybody looking at WHY there are failing children? I hardly doubt it is because there aren't an equal number of minorities at every school. My child isn't going to perform better just because he is put into a classroom full of white kids from rich families. If that is what people honestly think, I would love to know how it will happen. It's a crying shame that these underachievers aren't being directly addressed specifically on a more individual basis. I continue to have a hard time believing it's the “school system" that is failing them. I feel for all the teachers in the OC schools right now. If I were one, I would certainly feel the finger was being pointed at me. There are so many wonderful teachers in Orange County schools who work very hard and are the bulk of the "system." To be told over and over they are failing the kids has got to make them think about choosing another profession!
Redistricting will FIX the last redistricting. Redistricting WILL address lots of the problems IF it is done correctly.
Could we please stop addressing the students who are working below grade level as "underachievers"? That gives the impression that they are not trying as hard as they should or do not care if they succeed or not. That simply not a fair characterization. These children should be addressed as "at risk" from now on.
Thanks!
For the person who said, "My child isn't going to perform better just because he is put into a classroom full of white kids from rich families. If that is what people honestly think, I would love to know how it will happen." I found a few links to help you understand how it could happen.
http://www.williams.edu/wpehe/DPs/DP-61.pdf
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/16/4a/9f.pdf
Now, assuming you used "rich white kids" to mean "students at the high performing school who do well", these two documents may shed some light. There is something called the "peer effect" in education, which means that an individual's achievement is partially determined by his peers.
In other words, if you stick an "at risk" or "underachieving" or whatever student in a class of successful students, there's a good chance that he will improve.
Unfortunately, the reverse is true as well. Say that Group A is made of 10 high achievers, and Group B is made of 10 low achievers. You would expect that if you mixed the two groups, their test scores and other metrics would become average.
However, not only will the aggregate scores become average, the individual scores will also become more average. In other words, the high achieving students will start doing worse!
The second paper finds that the peer effect is strongest in 4th grade and diminishes as the kids get older.
On another note... why are so many of the posters here anonymous? You don't have to use your real name, but if you at least make up a name, it would be much easier to respond to individuals, to see that "Anonymous #3" in this thread is the same as "Anonymous #8" in another one, etc.
I'm anonymous because I kept having trouble logging on to my Google account and it just got frustrating!
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