With a $.25 billion bond and override coming up the CCUSD PR machine was in full swing. "100% Excelling" was plastered all over the district website. They even set up photo ops for the press (with preschool children, who don't actually figure in the rating) and shamelessly touting, “MANY PICTURE, INTERVIEW AND VIDEO OPPORTUNITIES AT SCHOOLS ON OCTOBER 15TH” in its press release. Of course it worked for the Scottsdale Republic, which is notorious for journalism by press release.
So what does AZLEARNS excelling label mean? According to ADE it uses a complex formula to calculate these labels. Can you actually use these labels to compare districts. Of course not, since the forumla does not adjust for soci-economic background. So did any school in affluent Northeast Phoenix/Scottsdale not get an excelling rating? No, they all did. So excelling just means CCUSD matched their local peers. If you check the detailed test scores you can actually see that CCUSD underperforms its peers, but I'll save that for another day.
Here is where CCUSD is failing and not excelling. Take a look at the trend for the math section on the SAT/TerraNova for 9th graders. (AIMS scores are worthless, and with the DPA these aren't much better, but we are just focusing on the trend)
Year Grade9 PR
2007 69
2006 67
2005 73
2004 76
This hardly looks "100% Excelling".
I MOVED HERE 3 YEARS AGO FROM THE MIDWEST. THE DISTRICT IN WHICH I LIVED ALWAYS PASSED THE SCHOOL BOND REFERENDUMS. HOWEVER WHEN I SEE THE UTTER WASTE OF TAX PAYERS DOLLARS .
ReplyDeleteMY QUESTION IS WHY DO THEY NEED TO BUILD A NEW SCHOOL? WHY NOT ADD ON TO EXISTING SCHOOL? SURE HPOE EVERYONE GETS ON ON NOV. 6TH TO VOTE NO. THIS UTTER ARROWGENCE MADE ME REGISTER TO VOTE AFTER 3 YRS. WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP GET THE WORD OUT TO VOTERS ?
CCUSD already has about $23-4 million "in the bank" to build a new "core" high school for about 800 students. This should satisfy HS enrollments through 2019. This was satisfactory to CCUSD last August (2006). What has changed since that time? District taxpayers have not finished paying the bonds (+interest) for Cactus Shadows, which finished construction in 1999. Was the design so poor and the workmanship so bad that they want to shut down the existing CSHS (16 buildings, 200,000 square feet)?
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