Principal Says System Creates Recipe For Failure

She calls test "humiliating" to non-English speakers, says playing field not level.

The principal and teachers at McKinley Elementary, in one of San Jose’s poorest neighborhoods, were disappointed and angered by state school rankings released today.

They were disappointed because the school received the lowest possible rankings — compared not only to other schools statewide but also to schools of a similar socioeconomic level.

And they were angry because they are convinced that the state’s Academic Performance Index system, with its English-only test, sets up their predominantly non-English-speaking students to fail.

“I’m not opposed to hard tests and accountability,” Principal Edith Edwards said Tuesday. “But to make children take a test when they don’t have a clue what it says. . . . For them, it’s humiliating.”

Edwards complains that the state’s test creates a system in which “the playing field isn’t level” for her students. McKinley’s neighborhood, just off Interstate 280 near McLaughlin Avenue, is home mostly to poor, uneducated Latino families with a high transiency rate.

Students who speak little or no English make up 70 percent of McKinley’s student body. Only four other schools in Santa Clara County match that level.

With a score of 398 on its state test in 2000, McKinley dropped three points from its score the previous year. Schools that have trouble improving in their quest to hit the state API target of 800 risk a takeover by the state, which also could fire the principal or even shut down the school.

McKinley does devote significant energy toward improving students’ reading skills. Edwards has stressed reading over math, figuring that literacy is the first step to learning any subject.

So each day, each class — from kindergarten to grade six — spends 90 minutes first thing in the morning on reading. In the afternoon there’s one-on- one tutoring, and the school also has an outreach program to parents that stresses the importance of reading.

Parent Laura Rosales, strolling on school grounds in the lunch hour, said in Spanish that her first-grader already was interested in reading, and doing fairly well at it.

But Edwards’ approach is to not rush the non-English-speaking student. Before the state implemented the API system, she had adopted a seven-year program designed to gradually move a student from instruction in Spanish to English. Parents signed on, requesting and getting waivers from the state’s 1998 ban on bilingual education.

The program has significantly improved students’ reading skills, she says, but the process isn’t fast enough to show up on SAT-9 scores.

“There’s been a lot of learning and growth here,” she said. “With alternative assessments, we don’t look so bad. With SAT-9, we just did a lousyjob.”

So now she is faced with continuing the program in place — which could mean penalties in the state’s rewards-and-punishment system — or tearing it up for something else.

“It’s like we started climbing Mount Everest when it wasn’t a competition,” Edwards said. “We got one-eighth of the way up, and all of a sudden they pushed us back to the bottom, and told us to start over.”

Last year’s low scores qualified the school for a state grant, and an evaluation from an outside expert to help raise test scores.

In addition, Edwards has implemented some “cosmetic” changes, especially in math, to help boost test performance.

But she worries about whether the stigma of low test scores will cause teachers to flee to more affluent districts. McKinley teachers face the prospect of state penalties, while seeing their counterparts at other schools reap rewards.

“These children need the best teachers,” said Margaret Young, McKinley’s reading specialist. “With all this accountability, who will come to work with the least advantaged? Who will be left?”

For API test results, please see the following URLs: Alameda County – http://library/docs/AlamedaAPI0101.htm Monterey County – http://library/docs/MontereyAPI0101.htm San Benito County – http://library/docs/SanBenitoAPI0101.htm San Francisco County – http://library/docs/SanFranciscoAPI0101.htm San Mateo County – http://library/docs/SanMateoAPI0101.htm Santa Clara County – http://library/docs/SantaClaraAPI0101.htm Santa Cruz County – http://library/docs/SantaCruzAPI0101.htm



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