Do AYP transfers create solutions for kids or new problems for schools?
The state releases its list of schools today that made adequate yearly progress and those that didn’t, setting off a chain of transfers of students out of Needs Improvement schools to higher performing schools that met AYP, as mandated under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
But many parents wonder about the wisdom and the timing of AYP status.
Here is a copy of a note that one parent sent to the state Department of Education about the late timing of this process:
I am very concerned about the timing of the release of even preliminary ESEA (AYP) results.
Please help me understand why it takes until late July for April test results to be made available. I understand that principals and districts must certify results, but these tasks should be of the highest priority. Georgia DOE deadlines should be tight and enforced.
School starts three weeks from today and parents still do not know how AYP status will impact their child. I am a DeKalb county resident (sigh!) and the uproar of AYP transfers affects every single high school student. You can’t imagine the distraction, the massive rescheduling required for receiving schools, and the waste of energy each year.
I understand that DCSS bears most of the responsibility for this issue, but the Georgia DOE holds all of the cards since it controls the data and the release of the data to parents. Please tell me what the Georgia DOE will do differently next year to release AYP data at a reasonable, not last-minute, date.
Here is a note to me from a DeKalb parent about whether these transfers even improve student outcomes:
Have you ever addressed in your coverage of the DeKalb County School System whether the mandated AYP transfer program for students actually improves student performance?
I ask because at the county presentation Dr. Beasley confirmed that the county has never tracked academic progress, graduation rates or rate of return for the millions of dollars invested in implementing the AYP transfer option out of Needs Improvement schools under NCLB. All of that money invested in a program to which we have no clear understanding if it even works for these students who leave their home schools.
Better solutions for fixing schools must exist rather than creating chaos in other succeeding schools. Mark your calendar for certainly, if we must receive all of these transfer students, we will not have settled schedules, classrooms, teaching and support staff until after Labor Day when counts are determined for teaching points; one month of education compromised due to lack of foresight.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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105 comments Add your comment
alm
July 21st, 2011
10:27 am
I don’t know.
yagottabekiddingme
July 21st, 2011
10:28 am
@Lynn: “some transfers even said they moved for better access to items to steal not an education.” See my blog name for comment.
Cere
July 21st, 2011
10:33 am
How to fail on purpose? You just boycott test day. Attendance is a large part of the formula.
@alm – no – at Lakeside, my child had every other class outside in one of the 21 trailers on campus that year. There were absolutely no extra restrooms available for those students (21 trailers can hold at least 400 students.) They had to find time during class change (4 or 5 minutes) to get all the way in the building, to a locker, to a restroom and to class. Impossible when the hallways are packed with students. The transfers have been a disaster for Lakeside. I have asked for data for a very long time showing how these students perform after the transfer. Or if they even end up graduating from Lakeside or anywhere else. No such data exists. (An aside: Texas tracks each and every student to graduation and holds principals and the superintendent accountable for each student’s whereabouts and success.)
Teacher Reader
July 21st, 2011
10:35 am
I know that myself and other parents of young kids are keeping our eyes on the transfers and are seriously considering other school options or moving because of the over crowded schools caused by these transfers. Transfers aren’t addressing the problems or helping the children. Transfers do not have to happen, but have become the norm in many places, as it’s easier to transfer kids around, than let ineffective people go or get to the root of the issue. One of the problems is that many administrator have little classroom experience, so they themselves have no idea how to fix the problem or what effective teaching looks like, so they go with the easier route.
On the Way Out
July 21st, 2011
10:42 am
This is a FEDERAL mandate. It will not help to contact any state officials.
Go Panthers!
July 21st, 2011
10:47 am
@Flawed
Yes. So all of this imbalance coupled with unrealistic statistical requirements for pass rates on tests (tests that can be proven in parts as racially-biased against some minorities, logically inconsistent with how they phrase problems in disciples like math and regionally incomparable due to local curriculums) is a set up for failure. AYP will never be a national achievement even though it will soon be a national requirement.
This is what makes me so angry about the CRCT testing scandal. If everyone had stayed honest, this fallacy would have been revealed much earlier and NCLB reform and repeal efforts could have been mounted years ago, supported by fail rate statistics. We still have a democracy that is persuaded by sheer, raw numbers. But, the numbers have to be somwhere near accurate to align with proper reform measures, to know where and how to target your most aggresive efforts.
If it’s broke, you fix it; if it LOOKS like it ain’t; you don’t. If the numbers are wrong, you try and fix the wrong thing while the thing that needs to be fixed gets worse. APS is not the only example of this as we will soon see. Ask Texas, the state where all of this crap began.
Lynn
July 21st, 2011
10:47 am
@yagottbkiddingme…. I thought the same thing until I talked to an Administrator who confirmed the story and also pointed out that the number of campus security offices had increased from 1 to 5 to deal with the imported gang problem. As I said, the receiving school wasn’t perfect by any means but the level of issues the transfers brought with them were unprecedented.
Atlanta Mom
July 21st, 2011
10:49 am
@dunwoody Mom,
Encourage students to no show up on testing day.
Atlanta Mom
July 21st, 2011
10:49 am
*not
David Sims
July 21st, 2011
10:50 am
The very notion that transfers improve educational results is laughable. Those transferees coming from the low-performing school are the reason those low-performing schools had low performance. They will carry their inferior learning ability to the higher performing schools, which will reduce those schools’ performance for next year.
Dunwoody Mom
July 21st, 2011
10:53 am
@Atlanta Mom, that would only hurt the child right? If a child needs to take and pass a CRCT to move on to Middle School or High School or Grad test, you certainly do not want to put that in jeopardy by not having your child in school that day.
Dekalb taxpayer
July 21st, 2011
11:00 am
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some parents transfer their students just for the transportaion stipend.
Todd
July 21st, 2011
11:02 am
This whole No child Left Behind Act is a well intended joke. Most parents are pretty well educated. There was no AYP then. If you take an honest and fair look at this school “Mess”, Having kids to pass this Test, teachers don’t stand a chance of being successful. There are large scale behavior problems that that school can’t handle and that many parents wont handle.
Cere
July 21st, 2011
11:04 am
There are retest dates. The only way for this madness to stop is for people to put their foot (or pencil) down.
Ray
July 21st, 2011
11:05 am
AYP is nothing more than a political stunt created to make schools look bad. Just like the snipe hunt that is the charter school movement – waste of time.
But as long as we can use these topics as bad evaluations for school, we can feel better about being deadbeats who don’t want to pay for real solutions.
The love affair with ‘tax cuts’ in Georgia translates to prioritizing flat screen TV’s ahead of education. Period.
Atlanta Mom
July 21st, 2011
11:06 am
NCLB requires 95% attendance. Generally speaking, I think most schools can identify 6% of the population that is not going to make “the grade” that year. And remember, the trick is to make AYP every other year. Then you never have to take transfers.
David Sims
July 21st, 2011
11:13 am
@Go Panthers! You said that “tests…can be proven in parts as racial biased against some minorities.” That interests me. Please identify which tests you mean and give examples, from each test, that show how it is racially biased and against which minority the bias goes. At present, my opinion is that the test isn’t biased, but, rather, that people of some races are usually smarter than people of others, and as a result the average score of smarter races is higher than the average score of the less intelligent races.
ha
July 21st, 2011
11:29 am
doesnt anyone get it yet NCLB is doing exactly what its suppose too. Every school in the US will be on the NI list… 2014>>>>>100%. its not going to ever happen
NCLB was designed to destroy the public school system so vouchers could be used. do the research on it
Diane Ratich even has said that was the plan by some of the eduhawks
Ray
July 21st, 2011
11:50 am
ha -
Yup.
Miss Scarlett
July 21st, 2011
11:53 am
In my county you can only transfer into schools if the grade level at the receiving school is not at capacity. Each year there is a list that says ABC school can accept so many transfers into any given grade level. For instance, if 3rd grade at a receiving school is full it cannot take transfers. At that same school, if 4th grade is not at capacity, it can take transfers. We have never operated where all transfers must be accepted regardless of overcrowding. How is it our system does it this way and other systems don’t?
atlmom
July 21st, 2011
11:58 am
miss scarlett: apparently, that is illegal.
Paulo977
July 21st, 2011
12:11 pm
Helena
“forcing them to accept “subpar” poor kids who “brought down our successful school” and just couldn’t keep up with their standards — and the words carried an unsubtle whiff of racism/classism”
That is what it is really intended to do…weed out the lower SES kids , in one way or another !!! NCLB was well crafted to maintain the status quo!
BibbTeacher
July 21st, 2011
12:14 pm
The school transfers are a real web of mess. Yes, my school has not AYP for so long that we are part of SIG. However, each year the question of which secondary indicator held us back is there. One year you make the increase in pass rate and all catergories except attendance 94.8%; then special need students are transfered to two schools to consolidate services (we’re one) and that year you end up needing just one more speacial needs child to pass.
The transfer program is a blessing and a nightmare. It’s good to see the parents transfer their brillant angels (trouble makers and do not care students) but the flip side is parents that take the good students out.I was laughing with the principal of another school who said that we really helped them out with AYP last year – 7 of the Jrs that transfered passed all tests with honors, just having those 7 scores back at our school would have made AYP a chinch.
There is no simple answer besides each teacher teaching their heart out and praying that they have a group of students that take advantage of the effort.
Digger
July 21st, 2011
12:29 pm
Big deal, so the school gets even dumber with transfers. Doesn’t the basketball team improve dramatically?
Active in Cherokee
July 21st, 2011
12:39 pm
In talking with some educators here in Cherokee, they are very concerned about AYP over the next couple of years. Some of the schools here (like many in the suburbs) will be looking at Graduation Rates near 100%, 98% passing on testing, and ridiculous attendance from the students – not to mention the ’sub-group’ argument.
These percentages can only go so high – once you start hitting 98-100% of passing/graduation not even the Walton/Riverwood/Northview’s of the world will be able to make AYP every year. That shows a broken system of evaulation, not a failing school. When this happens where will students ‘transfer’?
BibbTeacher
July 21st, 2011
12:45 pm
Aside: Our department is having lunch while we are having a pre-school work day (don’t worry, we are not on the payroll and using my personal laptop). The registrar dropped in a second ago and we were laughing at the reasons that parents bring their students back. Here’s a quick list of why parents bring their students back the the failing school:
1) They are not trying to help. The student is failing their classes because of not doing homework; too many absences (I had a student return just before the end of the year they had 27 absences in my class before they transfered and 32 absences at the other school).
2) They (the receiving school) also enforce the dress code. Their child can’t wear gang colors (it’s all they have 20 red, blue, or black outfits?)
3) The administration is crazy – the child only cursed out a teacher, got into a few fights, keeps being accused of distrupting class.
btc
July 21st, 2011
1:21 pm
Anyone know when the 2011 AYP results will be published on GADOE or AJC?
On the Way Out
July 21st, 2011
1:35 pm
after 2:00 PM today
Maureen Downey
July 21st, 2011
1:36 pm
@btc: Later this afternoon.
Go Panthers!
July 21st, 2011
1:59 pm
@ Davis Sims – http://fairtest.org/racial-bias-built-tests
Thank you for your question and your opinion. I’m very happy to offer scientific proof to support my assertion. But, if that is all that you got out of everything that I said, you might be indicative of the biggest part of this problem, bigger than any flawed test or any student or parent from any background.
And, I didn’t say “racial biased;” I said “racially-biased.”
***
@ Active in Cherokee – Exactly to your following comment:
“These percentages can only go so high – once you start hitting 98-100% of passing/graduation not even the Walton/Riverwood/Northview’s of the world will be able to make AYP every year. That shows a broken system of evaulation, not a failing school. When this happens where will students ‘transfer’?”
When the realization hits that this is everybody’s problem, that is when this thing will start to change through legislation. Unfortunately, at-risk schools and students will have spent nearly a decade and a half in turmoil before the reform process even gets started.
btc
July 21st, 2011
2:18 pm
@On and Maureen: Thanks!
Maureen Downey
July 21st, 2011
2:24 pm
@BTC
Results just released. See new blog
atlmom
July 21st, 2011
2:37 pm
go panthers: um,isn’t legislation how we got here in the first place? well meaning non educators?
Observation
July 21st, 2011
3:13 pm
@David Sims, 11:13 am (and also expressed in other posts on other blogs): “My opinion is that the test isn’t biased, but, rather, that people of some races are usually smarter than people of others, and as a result the average score of smarter races is higher than the average score of the less intelligent races.”
This sounds like a basic definition of racism to me!
DeKalb parent
July 21st, 2011
4:34 pm
Well Chamblee Charter High School failed to make AYP but is still a receiving school. This school has shouldered the burden of AYP transfer students EVERY year while other schools were magically exempted. DCSS administration has such contempt for this school that they continued to pack the school with extra students even while their own engineers drafted reports showing the school crumbling, unsafe and over crowded. This year half the school will be demolished and thus the school only has seats for about 600 students but has a student population of approximately 1500 students. This means that the school is overcapacity by 900 students yet DCSS insists on using the school as a receiving school. A monster trailer park has been created on the only athletic field at the school. More trailers are in the parking lot.
Perhaps the AJC and some of the local media should visit.
Grady Glass Walls
July 21st, 2011
4:35 pm
The APS teacher who graduated from Grady HS and who presented this year’s APS Vals and Sals speech gave real insight into Grady. Grady may have students who go to elite schools, but if you are black you better be careful. At Grady, there is a glass wall between the races that has been there for years. I understand that the parents of children attending the elite schools shored that racial glass wall up during APS’ high school transformation.
So if you are black and poor, bypass Grady in favor of North Atlanta. Otherwise, you might attend a school that is excellent for a chosen few only to find that you end up in the all black, under-resourced, poorly staffed classes. You likely would have fared much better at Carver or Mayes.
Grady parents need to get over themselves. Other APS high schools graduate all black students headed to elite schools & not primarily children from white or affluent homes (which would have made it there no matter where they attended school because of strong parenting and other cultural influences). Your attitude starts early when you look at the previous posters fearful response that your privileged children might have NCLB transfers this year. If your kids are so smart and your schools are that great, maybe you should learn to share?!
Disgruntled Employee
July 21st, 2011
5:53 pm
I taught in a district that actually tracked the numbers. In Florida I taught at an inner city high school that lost students each year to transfer options. The students who left our school actually did WORSE when they went to suburbia. Their scores dropped. Many of your best teachers are teaching in schools that do not make AYP and so are many of your worst but that applies to all schools.
Nikole
July 21st, 2011
6:58 pm
@ msbssy—-If you live across the street from Arabia Mtn, you are living in a middle class neighborhood. The statement was that the students are upper/middle, meaning upper AND middle class students. The main point being, ARABIA NEEDS TRAILERS JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER HIGH SCHOOL THAT MAKES AYP.
Carl
July 21st, 2011
7:42 pm
Everyone seems to be being very politically correct about this whole thing. Nobody seems willing to just come out and admit that there are some students who just aren’t going to contribute and nobody wants those kids in their schools. Theoretically all types of kids are capable of learning; realistically, when you look at a case by case scenario, that isn’t how the world works.
How does the transfer rule help anything in systems where over half the schools fail to meet AYP?
Cere
July 21st, 2011
8:16 pm
@DavidSims – I never believed tests could be biased either, but I have told the story of the time I watched as my 5 year old took some psychological/IQ tests. I was floored as the doctor read the questions out loud and then asked my daughter to point to the corresponding picture (poorly drawn pictures, I might add). She asks questions like, “point to the hinge”, “point to the drill” (my daughter got this one right as she had seen her dad with his drill out often) and “point to the luggage”, to which I raised a brow and whispered, “that’s not the word we use for it”… (we use “suitcases”). But the doctor said that these tests come out of Harvard and they use New England vocabulary – the testers are not allowed to substitute at all. So, you see, if a child is from a 2 parent home, where they have been introduced to hinges and drills and refer to their travel bags as “luggage”, they will score a very high IQ.
yagottabekiddingme
July 21st, 2011
8:27 pm
@Grady Glass Walls…I have volunteered for 15 hours a week at Grady for the last two years in the College Center…believe me when I say that Grady’s grads who happen to be black are attending (and recruited by) the best post-secondary institutions in the country. Every year, we have high achieving black (and white) students who strive and overcome, and are recognized by admission at this nation’s most elite schools—UPenn, Stanford, Brown, Cornell, Emory, etc etc etc. Don’t slam Grady. It WORKS!
DeKalb mom
July 21st, 2011
8:30 pm
Carl, the transfer rule doesn’t help any of the students in those areas, including those in the receiving and sending schools. In Dekalb, many of the students just fail in another location.
Parents have begged DeKalb administration for years to create a super academy where the transfer students who really want a solid education can go. Dekalb should use its millions of Title I money to hire the best teachers, use their grants for math and science labs, have free tutoring and an extended school day, enforce discipline and get the students out of trailers. But Dekalb has steadfastly refused to change the status quo and now the last high performing schools are sinking.
The current administration and BOE have succeeding in being tagged as a school system that is now worse than Clayton. Kudos to Clayton county. Jeers to DeKalb.
APS - Educational Disparity
July 21st, 2011
8:36 pm
@yagottabekidding, the Westmoreland speech notes that Grady has been racially segregated for years. Why?
Outside of the famed (and deservedly so) Communications program that you have at Grady, your numbers from last year indicate that the students who aren’t in that program may get no better of an education than other APS high schools.
Grady also did not make AYP in the sub-groups of black and economically disadvantaged. Did your school attempt to help those students or did it continue to funnel the best teachers and resources to the students in your magnet program so that you can brag about all of your top students going to elite schools?
The real test of a high quality school is one that can move all students up a level, not just keep the high performing students above the crowd.
Atlanta mom
July 21st, 2011
10:32 pm
Grady did not make AYP in 2010 because they had made AYP the two previous years, and thus received students who were not up to Grady standards. Typically it takes Grady 2 years to assimilate students and get them on track.
Every teacher at Grady offers either morning or after school tutoring. Every single one.
yagottabekiddingme
July 22nd, 2011
8:29 am
@APS: All I can speak to is the quality of the students who use the College Center as a resource. And while it’s true that our top students have ended up at elite schools (just like top students at all public and private schools), our very good students who carry strong B gpas or better and profess a desire to attend college are recruited by competitive colleges all over the country.
Grady just won a national award from The College Board for creating a college-going culture. Not every student wants to, or does, take advantage of the resources available to them. That’s their choice. But I’m proud to say the Grady offers MORE THAN other APS schools in terms of college planning and the results speak for themselves. Grady sends students to all types of post-secondary schools, the recruiters come back to Grady year after year. I guess there’s something good going on!
APS Parent #2
July 22nd, 2011
8:49 am
Taking nothing away from Grady students, I think the point is that the top students in all APS high schools and not just Grady are heavily recruited be elite colleges.
Top students have themselves earned their scholarships through their hard work and efforts. All APS schools have the framework in place to help students find scholarship opportunities. I am sure your parents’ college center is great and your kids have an easier road than the rest of Atlanta, but please remember that without the students there are no scholarships.
This should be about the kids.
Go Panthers!
July 22nd, 2011
9:43 am
@ yagottabekiddingme:
Amen!:-) Please talk about the black, single-parented, nationally-ranked speech and debate Posse scholar. She’s like top 5 in the nation in her division. Please talk about the black, ROTC student headed to West Point, choosing to serve his country in a time of war over going to college to frat parties and football games. Please talk about the fact the entire 4th WARD is IN Grady’s zone and North Atlanta has no government-subsidized impoverished neighborhood within their actual school zone (Morosgo does not count). Was a recent North Atlanta grad, a school that formerly housed an arts magnet, voted off of SYTYCD last night? And, please talk about the fact that people send their kids to Buckhead for the “prestigous” zip code, while inner-inner city Grady catches all of the fade about being “elitist.”
Never mind. I just did it.
@Atlanta mom:
“Typically it takes Grady 2 years to assimilate students and get them on track.
Every teacher at Grady offers either morning or after school tutoring. Every single one.”
ABSOLUTELY! And, thank you so much for making that point.
Grady is five blocks away from the projects and still gets the job done for any child who shows up to do the work!
@Grady Glass Walls:
As a graduate of one of the Buckhead schools and a former Grady parent, I can, without a doubt, say that your unprovoked attack is nothing but sour grapes and I am totally offended that you would bring that mess into this discussion. It is exactly that type of class-based LIE that got APS into this situation in the first place.
I am very familiar with both environments and have no problems telling you that you are, basically, just hating. Your comments aren’t backed by any proof and really have nothing to do with the question Maureen asked. Can overwhelming numbers of students who transfer to North Atlanta from a non-AYP APS school pass the required tests as a direct result of the transfer? Please provide examples for your answer to THIS QUESTION to support your claim. Because, if you take a look above, we have all provided proof that your claims regarding Grady are false.
Henry W. Grady High School is not perfect, but I am so sick of the Grady bashing. I brought up the fact that they didn’t make AYP to point out how ineffective the NCLB transfer option is and what it does to formerly AYP-compliant schools. These problems are nationwide, not just systemwide. But, in the grand scheme of things, Grady still gets the job done better than most. I know teenaged mothers from the ghetto who graduated from that Communications magnet as competent writers. PLEASE stop hating on that for no reason other than you’re mad at CINS, Step Up or Step Down and the ‘effin Junior League!
And, in terms of sharing? It is kind of hard to share with people who unfairly attack and mischaracterize your school’s success and its students and then want you to help them out. It’d be great if we could all work together. That is the ideal. But, the things that you said above are wrong and mean, and it’s hard to SHARE with a PARENT who is being wrong and mean about other people’s children and their publicly-funded education for no good reason at all.
Warrior Woman
July 22nd, 2011
9:52 am
@Ernest – There is no valid reason to restrict AYP transfers to members of the failing subgroup that haven’t historically done well in their home school. Sometimes the environment of the “failing” school is not the best for a student, so even if they haven’t failed, they also haven’t achieved at their fullest.
For strong students in failing schools, it’s a matter of resource allocation. Several years ago, we took the AYP transfer option from our Cobb County middle school, which “failed” AYP because of English-language learners. IF the class offerings had stayed the same from 6th grade to 7th, we would have stayed. However, the school improvement plan to meet AYP involved cutting advanced content and gifted classes to the minimum and shifting resources to English language learners. It is unfair to deny opportunities to bright students that they would have had at any Cobb middle school that met AYP. We transferred to ensure our children’s opportunities, as did at least half of the gifted students from the 6th grade.
Did that hurt the sending school? Certainly. Do I care? No. As a parent, my child’s education comes first.
Go Panthers!
July 22nd, 2011
10:30 am
@ atlmom:
“go panthers: um,isn’t legislation how we got here in the first place? well meaning non educators?”
Yes. Those legislators are elected by the people to pass laws for the people. If we have proof now that NCLB does not work for large numbers of constituents, we are all empowered to vote in educated, well-meaning reps who can reform or repeal it. Right?
Miss Scarlett
July 22nd, 2011
11:59 am
This is a correction to my post from yesterday. The conditions I posted for transferring to another school are based on Georgia HB 251 and SB 10. Those conditions do not apply for my AYP transfers. My mistake.