Saturday, September 29, 2018

Quick note on the Chandler Elementary invalidation

I'll do a longer post with some thoughts (and maybe explanations?) on the new acccountability set-up, but note that the state also has invalidated Chandler Elementary's 2017 MCAS scores:
This year, in comparison, not only were Chandler’s scores lower, but students who left the school after 2017 did much more poorly on the 2018 MCAS; the mean student growth percentile for those test-takers fell from 72 to 21 on the English portion of the exam and from 70 to 15 on the math.
The superintendent's response is puzzling, to be polite:
Ms. Binienda said she also doesn’t know what violations occurred, saying the district has largely been uninvolved in the state’s investigation.
″(The state) hasn’t shared what they are,” she said, adding she still hasn’t seen evidence Chandler broke any rules in its administration of the MCAS in 2017. “There’s nothing I can say about that.”
Ms. Binienda also said the school didn’t do anything different during the latest testing period, aside from assigning a central office administrator, Marie Morse, to oversee the process at the school this spring. She also believes the situation at Chandler is an isolated incident.
The state clearly thinks that something was broken, if the scores are invalidated. If we don't know what violations occurred, we can't say that they're isolated.

UPDATE: Okay, to briefly talk about Clive's column on this (and continuing the theme that I don't know anything beyond what I read): any time spent at all with this new Commissioner would tell you that there's no way he's making anything a charter.
Also, he can't just do that! Chandler would have to go back to underperforming, get stuck, get declared chronically underperforming...and even then, this wasn't a recommendation the prior Commissioner, who was much more actively interventionist, ever made!
Let's keep our fears within the bounds of this system.

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