Let’s Fisk! AZ LEARNS/AIMS/AYP Presentation to the Board on 8/10/2010

The administration is making a presentation to the board at Tuesday’s board meeting to ‘explain’ the results and we assume answer why some (all?) of this information was withheld from the board until after it granted the superintendent a new 3 year contract.

You can find the presentation starting on page 43 of the August 8 board packet.

Let’s start with slide 2 where we find (click on any picture to enlarge)…


Of course what is left off here is the next sentence and an important part of the direction from ADE which states.

“This information may be shared with staff only on a need-to-know basis.”

You can find the full information and direction here.

What!  Need to know IS ok!  The governing board of our district is NOT on a need to know basis.  They don’t need to know this to make effective decisions about the leadership and direction of our district.  They don’t need to know that our schools have failed to meet a huge federal mandate (AYP). They don’t need to know that is the first time in four years our schools have slipped even the ridiculously low bar that the AZ Learns labels represent.

They can argue all they want that the governing board is not staff, in our opinion this was clear and plain deception, both on this slide and on hiding information from the board.

Next we get a slide with the embargo dates…


Here we see that AIMS scores were released to the public on July 14, the day after the awarding of the three year contract to the superintendent, and that the schools have had them since June 21.  But the disparity here is that the superintendent was quoted in the paper as saying…

“The board was fully aware of the AIMS results when they did my evaluation and extended my contract.”

So the superintendent is claiming that the board had full access to the AIMS results which were still embargoed, yet the AYP and AZ LEARNS where not revealed to the board because they were embargoed.  So why did they ‘supposedly’ release (fully aware) the AIMS scores on one hand but not the AYP\AZ LEARNS on the other.  Both were still under embargo.  And regardless,  a board member we contacted when asked if the board had been provided those scores and the labels, the reply was, “No we were not…”.  So let’s have it, CCUSD.  Produce the ‘fully aware’ results that you provided to the board (no longer embargoed) for the public to see so we can see who has misspoken.

The slide show continues with explanations of AYP and AMO and tries to set up an ‘excuse’ for the district loosing its Excelling labels.

 

Of course this is not the true reason, this is the effect. The cut scores were changed to align with the new math standards put in place in the Summer of 2008. The cause is the fact that our math curriculum is failing our students and is not meeting the new state standards.  The district's attempts at professional development and supplementing are not working either and the district failed to prepare the students for the new standards, standards that they themselves were part of. Adn let's talk about the 'drops in so many profiles' acorss the state.  That may be the case in the state, but it certainly was not the case in Northeast Phoenix and Scottsdale.



The slide show continues with the elementary math, reading, writing, and science scores presented and we find something curious with the math scores.  They don’t match what the state released for 4th grade. In fact they are significantly higher as presented and they don’t even add up to 100%:

From the state…



Maybe the scores from the state were wrong and those presented above are correct.  We have no idea, but they should at least add up to 100% or 101% based on rounding, not 117%. As far as the other math scores, you can see the across the board drop.

Next up is reading...



What the heck happened in 4th grade?  A 12% drop in passing.  We thought the cut scores, old text books, blah blah blah is\was the problem. Got an 'explanation’ for this? When you check the state results they claim that we had a 92% passing for reading for the 4th grade reading for 2010.

Finally the elementary scores finish with writing, you know, the same writing that has been a huge academic focus for the past 3 years, but of course we have a drop there too…



Elementary science scores are up next and they look great. Then we get some useless graphs showing were are not sure what and a comparison to Arizona averages, as if that matters.

So now the presentation is on the the middle school where our students showed large loses in math scores, proving that after 6 years of Everyday Mathematics and a year or two of Connected Math, our students are failing behind their peers.

So with the first slide showing the middle school math scores we find…



No error there, the presentation does not show the AIMS scores for middle school. Probably a good strategy to hide the horrendous middle school scores, but not really that intellectually honest.  We have no doubt that after this post they will be added back (‘oversight’) to the presentation, but you get our drift.

The next slide covers the Stanford 10/DPA results with an explanation that they are not comparable to last years results which used the TerraNova. While true, as a norm-referenced test they are comparable to EVERY STUDENT IN THE US which certainly would be helpful in determining how our district is performing. They have not been released to the public by ADE (budget issues they claim is the hold up) so we can’t wait to see these scores. In the presentation we find the Stanford 10 test scores are…



Yup, those scores are missing too. Nice.

Lastly, we get the slide that the district loves so much, the NVEC comparison (isn’t the NVEC a middle school sports league?).  A slide comparing CCUSD and our 6000 students to districts that are up to four times the size of CCUSD and have no where near the generous demographics that we have. Talk about apples and oranges.  And BTW, what the heck do we care what the test scores in Higley or Dysart are. Does that help us beat them in volleyball? Where is the comparison to districts and charter schools north of Bell Rd? We have them, why aren’t they shared with the board? Those are the schools that we compete with and take our students. 

This slide is pointless and to us just shows that the administration feels the benchmark for them is that they just need to beat other district's averages, while our students are really competing with not only neighboring schools, but eventually our students will be competing internationally for college admissions and for jobs.  This should be the true yardstick and it is the one that our educators eschew.

Regardless of the flaws in this presentation, what we need are solutions, not explanations.  Despite the missing test scores, what really is missing is what is the district going to do to fix this. They have had these scores since June 21, they have had plenty of time to formulate some (any!?!?) sort of strategy for improving achievement and one would think that the board would demand it.

As of now, we see no plan and no demands from the governing board, so it is likely Cave Creek Unified School District 93 will stay in its mediocre state for the foreseeable future.