You may be familiar with the age-old story called the “Myth of Sisyphus” where a legendary figure is banished for eternity to the struggle of rolling a boulder up a mountain. Just as the task is about to be completed, a seemingly inconsequential event occurs such as a strong breeze that creates enough disturbance to cause the boulder to roll back down the mountain and this struggle continues through eternity. I can’t help but relate this image to the onslaught that has been leveled against public education over the past several years. Most recently, the Arizona Department of Education created the Measure of Academic Progress, (MAP) System. Schools were rated on a five-star scale, five stars being high and one star being low. Parents and community members logically believe that this system is similar to a hotel or restaurant rating system, where one can determine whether a school is effective by the number of stars they received. Good schools are “fives,” and bad schools are “ones.” In fact, this system is misleading and confusing. The benefit of this type of assessment approach should be that schools are able to tell whether they have achieved at least one year’s growth with their students. The five-star rating system is not connected with this achievement. Rather, it judges one school against another based on how much progress a school had made in academic achievement over the course of a year. The failing of this system is that if a school has already achieved a high level, let’s say, the 95th percentile, and then reaches the 100th percentile the following year, meaning that all students performed at the top of the scale, the percent of improvement would be relatively small, 5 percent. Schools that started at a very low starting point, let’s say the 29th percentile, may have managed to reach the 40th percentile, still below the expected norm, but demonstrating a high percentage of gain, and may have been rated as a five-star school. While this information is interesting, it is also misleading and begs the question of why such a confusing system would be provided by the Arizona Department of Education. Let me give you another example. A couple of weeks ago I attended the State Board meeting where the AIMS Test was discussed. In response to the deplorable results of our current juniors, more than 35 individuals stood up to express concerns about the appraisal and in particular about the math portion of the test. Members of the statewide committee that developed the test came forward and produced a letter signed by several members of that committee which explained that they felt they “had been used and exploited.” What they had spent months creating was not, according to them, what was on the AIMS Test. In fact, items that were specifically not to be included were included by the test-making company, CTB McGraw- Hill. Another testifier, a university professor of math for more than 35 years, Dr. Fred Stevenson, stated that he had done extensive work in correlating the AIMS math portion with the math section on the SAT, the college entrance exam. At least 70 percent of the exams were correlated to each other. Dr. Stevenson explained that for unconditional acceptance to the University of Arizona, only 53 percent of those items were expected to be answered correctly for high school graduation. This was, in his words, “simply not reasonable.” It would seem logical that a math professor’s interests would be best served by having the most rigorous math curriculum possible. However, he recognized the inappropriateness of the level of the standard for high school graduation and failing of the testing process itself. So, confusion breeds suspicion. When that confusion is coupled with the enormous expectations placed on schools, it is no wonder our public has lost confidence in public education. I have to wonder what it will take to regain that public trust. We must identify what schools should be doing and then do that job well. I look at the expectations placed on schools and wonder if that goal is really possible. To amplify this point, consider the programs that have been mandated for schools over the past decade: From 1900 to 1920 we added nutrition mandates, immunization health mandates. From 1920 to 1950 we added vocational education, the practical arts, physical education, school lunch programs, or the job of feeding American children one-third of their daily meals. In the 1950s we added safety education, driver education, stronger foreign language requirements. Sex education was introduced, with topics escalating through the 1990s. In the 1960s we added consumer education, career education, peace education, leisure education, recreational education. In the 1970s, the breakup of the American family accelerates. Special education is mandated by federal government. We add drug and alcohol abuse education, parent education and character education. School breakfast programs appear. Now, some schools are feeding America’s children two-thirds of their daily meals. In some cases these are the only decent meals these children receive. In the 1980s, the floodgates open and we add keyboarding and computer education, global education, ethnic education, multicultural/ non-sexist education, English-as-a-Second Language and bilingual education, early childhood education, full-day kindergarten, preschool programs for children at-risk, after-school programs for children of working parents, stranger-danger education, sexual abuse prevention education. Child abuse monitoring becomes a legal requirement for all teachers. In the 1990s, we added HIV/AIDS education, death education, gang education in urban centers, bus safety, bicycle safety education, school violence prevention and increased emphasis on security. ln Arizona we have not added a single minute to the school year in decades. If you ask me whether we should demand high expectations and high standards for all of Arizona’s children, you will hear me echo the sentiments of my colleagues by saying,”absolutely.” However, when schools are expected to provide a fix for virtually every social problem imaginable in our society, there comes a point where we must stop and clarify our mission. As an educator and leader, I recognize the rich opportunities we have to impact the lives of our children. I fully understand the responsibility we have chosen to assume as a caretakers of our nation’s most important and well-grounded institution, the public school system. But it becomes increasingly clear that we we simply cannot do it “all” very well. If we are to focus on the goals embodied in the mission statements of America’s schools 250 years ago – where teaching basics such as reading, writing, and arithmetic skills, as well as cultivating values that serve a democratic society, were the two components of an effective school – we must decide the roles of parents, schools, and communities in this process. While, the “Myth of Sisyphus” is a wonderful lesson in persistence, it is a tragic tale that, when applied to public education, will not likely encourage the best and the brightest to enter our field. Unless we identify our mission, and be fair and accurate in how we test and report results, our dreams of educating all children to the best of their abilities will not be realized. The real results will be felt by the very children we serve because, unlike Sisyphus, their time with us is short. John Pedicone is superintendent of Flowing Wells Schools.



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