School Choice for All?

I stumbled upon an interesting blog post about school choice and politicians.

Stop the bus, my kid is getting off.

Enjoy!

The College Crunch

Christopher Guttentag wrote a very interesting commentary in the April 16, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek titled "The College Crunch: Why Getting in Has Gotten So Tough"

If prominent universities are becoming more exclusive, what can you do to set your child apart and give them the best chance for admission? Attending a world class high school may help.

A group of Rocklin residents has taken the first steps to creating a nation leading, world class high school in the Placer County area. You can find out more about this effort and what you can do to help at www.wscacademy.org.

How is My School Doing? Similar School Rankings

Do you want to see how your school compares to other schools with similar demographics?

The first place to look is the similar school rankings provided by the State of California. The naysayers in the crowd complain about this site, so I'll provide another source that has more details.

Just for the Kids California

This website is very comprehensive. Input the school district on the first page, click "go" and you will receive a list of schools in the district. Click on your preferred school and you will be taken to another page where you can select the test subject and grade level (you can even look at past years). Click on "select chart"

The next page will offer up variables based on ethnicity, etc. You can just accept the given data or change some of the variables. The given data is based on the school you have selected (it will make sense when you see it). Select display chart and you will see the results along with comparisons of other schools.

If you click on a chart you will see the actual data for the comparison schools along with their demographic breakdown. It's a great feature.

Beyond API

The end of August marks the release of STAR test results and API scores. It's a big moment for educators and administrators, but what does it mean to parents?

Problems with API

Can the quality of a schools be reduced to one number? The API score can give us some important insight into a school's performance but there are at least a couple of problem areas, especially for parents.

CBEE has complained about API for several years. One of the primary problems is the "goal" of 800 does not meet grade level proficiency in math, reading and other subjects (it would take 875). This problem was highlighted in a March 28th article by Dan Walters in the Sacramento Bee. But beyond this glaring shortcoming is a more important issue for parents.

API may give a snapshot of a school, but it doesn't tell you anything about the most important issue, how your child is doing. This information must be gathered from your individual STAR testing results. Grade level proficiency is the minimum acceptable result.

I had a discussion with a local educator about API scores and the number of children below proficient. I was told the school had until 2013 or 2014 to meet the standard. That may be fine for an administrative benchmark, but it's not okay for your child. Your child doesn't have until 2013/14 to be proficient. They need to be there now. A child below the proficient level is now stuck playing catch up. The longer it takes to get back to proficient, the more difficult their education will be.

I urge all parents to take a close look at their child's STAR testing results. If there is a subject below proficient make sure you make a plan to get them to proficient (or beyond) as soon as possible.

We're back...

The PEER website and blog are back in service. The web hosting for the site was hacked, and luckily the hosting company noticed the problems and shut down our server. Unfortunately if you attempted to get on the blog or website you were out of luck. The upside is we are back, ready with more content, and on a more robust system.

Stay tuned for some "back to school" posts!