[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Duane Campbell

The California Department of Education and Superintendent Jack O’Connell organized a Achievement Gap Summit in Sacramento on November 13 and 14, drawing over 4000 educators and policy advocates for a two day conference. The presentations began with some basic facts; California student achievement is among the lowest in the nation and it is not improving. The California drop out rate is horrible. Any reasonable look at the evidence reveals this.

For over a decade, California and the nation have used one strategy for school; standards and test based accountability. The evidence is in. There has been little or no progress on reading scores and only limited progress in math. The summit focused on the gap in scores between White students, Black students and Latino students.

Here is a part of the problem. This summit was plush with consultants and policy advocates and very light on teachers as presenters and people who do the work in schools. You can not reform schools without bringing teachers along in the reform. Teachers make up the largest resource in the school. California has 14 years of standards based reform and 14 years of test based reform.

Remember the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Jackie Goldberg
Teacher
Former Member of the California Association

The only people still arguing about the merits of reducing class size are people whose children (or grandchildren) are in private schools where the class size is 10-15 students per teacher.

We spend millions of dollars a year in California on testing. Actually it is hundreds of millions of dollars on pencil and paper, largely multiple-choice tests which those who write and sell them say tell us whether or not children are getting a good education. Whew! I'm glad I got that off my chest. But truly, all over California, in the State Department of Education, in Superintendent O'Connell's Office, in the Legislature and the Governor's Office, everyone is congratulating themselves for having raised test scores on Standards' Tests that are based on the State Standards, and for which the Curriculum Commission and the State Board of Education have found the rare few materials that meet California's "rigorous standards." And yet, the scores in grades 4-12 are not as good.