Castaways

Ahhh back from hiatus. What has been happening while I was out of the country? Lets see. Same old thing? Hope not! Let’s look at the highlights:
Langston Focus School (is it still a focus school? Focus on what?) gains accreditation. Sounds good doesn’t it? But let’s look into it a little deeper. Danville hired a company to help them get accredited. So who did they hire? Pearson Educational Measurement. Now who designs and writes the SOL tests? Surprise! Pearson Educational Measurements. Despite the fact they were the high bidder Pearson was awarded a $139 million contract by the Commonwealth of Virginia to produce the SOL tests even though they were $35 million more than Harcourt Assessment. Well discussions of the wisdom of the DOE are for another day. The point here is simple, the same company that is helping Langston pass the SOL’s is the same company that is testing them. Conflict of interest? Perhaps but let’s look a little further.
Part of the Langston “plan” was that the state gives a little leeway to “special schools”. A part of that is that they do not have to meet the same requirements as other schools. So the fact that Langston is “accredited” takes on a new meaning. Let’s look at what accreditation means for Langston. Here are the “accredited” scores: English-59, Math-48,History-31, Science-39. Compare that to GWHS “accredited” scores: English-90, Math-82, History-75, Science-76.
So as you can see accredited rates don’t really mean much in Virginia’s watered down standards. How about NCLB (No Child Left Behind)? Ooops, they failed in every category. Another interesting statistic: Of the five teachers in the district provisionally licensed all five are at Langston! Way to go!
Again the cause of this problem is poor leadership from the top. The emperor has no clothes. THAT my friends, is the naked truth.