Join the conversation

The Opportunity School has the Cutest. Logo. Ever. That little owl is just too sweet. It would be a shame to close the school for that reason alone.

I would disagree with some of the links in that college entrance and high school graduation rates are NOT necessarily indicative of good teaching. It's rather Eurocentric, paternalistic... oh, I don't know. (Insert some college-y word there for what that is for me here. LOL The point being that education isn't some standard product manufactured by various brand-name schools, the quality of which can be easily measured by each "batch" of students that comes off the line...)

Different children learn in different ways. When you look at the educations of Westinghouse and Edison, you see that they're markedly different... and yet both men were great inventors. I see no reason whatsoever that different schools shouldn't cater to different sorts of students and their families, and all the boats can go their own way to separate destinations. :]

It truly would be a shame to close a school ONLY because of dismal test scores, particularly if the parents are happy with the education their children are receiving.

Mrs. C--I agree with you that one-size-fits-all education strategies are a non-starter. Let's keep our Westinghouses and our Edisons on distinct paths. Still--and this won't surprise you--I can't be as sanguine about persistently dismal test scores. If some kids aren't mastering the basics, they have few prospects later on, even if their parents are satisfied (which often they aren't). Edison and Westinghouse could both read and write reasonably well, and they had a lot of other skills in common. These days, illiteracy and innumeracy won't get a child very far, unless you can figure out how to star on a reality show, which would likely celebrate ignorance.

For me the big issues are when you pull the plug on a failing school, how you measure its success (with better, but not diluted, assessments and measures), and what kinds of supports you offer so the school can succeed.

Oh, I *do* understand where you're coming from, Claus. But I'm trying to be fair in that evaluating a school only on test scores misses the fact that the children's abilities may differ from the standard.

For example, I feel it is unfair to judge my son G's school by his performance on the MAP tests. No matter *where* he is educated, he will always be autistic and currently needs "social skills" training. He will always be behind speech-wise. You could set him up with an English language expert from Oxford and he'll still likely refer to many common nouns as "stuff."

He will go to vocational school next year. He needs to learn to advocate for himself, how to tell people that he needs help in socially acceptable ways.

It bothers me that all the extra things, the very special things, that this school does for G are overlooked when AYP is measured. If, for example, my son's reading abilities were to go DOWN percentile-wise because he's concentrating so hard on socially appropriate classroom discussion, I think that's ok. No boss is going to want to hire a young man who must say what he thinks at all times. (Sigh. We're working on it, but let's just say when he goes to vocational school, he won't be studying customer service.)

And to see a school that goes out of its way to take those kids that other schools might not be as diligent about helping bothers me immensely.

That is a good question, though. How do you think a school should be fairly measured? After all, if a school is using tax dollars it should be accountable to the taxpaying public. Would it be unfair to ask that special schools get special sorts of standards?