z46\doc\web\2000\11\orecim.txt Arizona Republic , 1 Nov 2000 Minorities fail AIMS at high rate Up to 80 percent of Arizona's minority high school juniors are at risk of not graduating in 2002 because >they have not yet passed the AIMS test, leaving some of the exam's staunchest supporters talking >about change. In the past month or so I have sent you items such as the above originating in several states, as often as not talking about majorities as well as minorities. What the stories have in common is that they deal with states which have established barrier exams and then discovered that the majority (in this instance about 80 percent) of their kids (in this instance mentioning minorities only) are incapable of passing them. Where is Jaime Escalante when we need him? (Banished along with all his smarts to the woodshed by the educational establishment.) At the same time we have seen studies which compare current curriculum and competencies to those of the past which find those in the current schools degraded by from two to four grade levels. Here in Oregon we haven't put such barrier exams in place yet, although it was the intent of Vera Katz and her people to make the CIM just that, except that the legislature (breathe a sign of relief) wouldn't go along. In any event, it was admitted by the DOE that the original versions of the Oregon state tests were developed without regard to the state standards (different committees, who didn't talk to each other, drew them up). That bureaucratic atrocity has been partially rectified by test changes more compatible with our dumbed down standards (I say that based on comparative data, which I have sent to some of you in the past). None the less, kids still aren't doing well on the Oregon tests. But most important of all, our kids also aren't doing well on the national standardized tests. (Despite DOE claims to the contrary.) As Chuck showed in a chart a couple of years ago, there has even been a sharp drop in the performance of our best and brightest on those tests. As for the current COG tests we use, they didn't tell us much, and what they did tell us seemed to have no credibility, as we discussed at a recent board meeting. (My belief is that the COG won't ever do much for us except make us feel good about the fact that we are conducting testing of some sort, whatever the tests may mean.) What that tells me is that the Oregon Common Curriculum, that was dumped during the Katz regime so as to make way for the current curriculum with its copycat federal standards/benchmarks, was a superior curriculum and produced far better results in terms of educated children. It was locally created, time tested, tweaked to a perfection of sorts, and left room for local folks to deal intelligently with local needs and interests. Let's face it. The district has gone along with the state DOE and bought into their fads and foibles in the classroom, for the past decade. No doubt there is an element present of the fact that we have to go along to get along, the law being what law is. But enough is enough. We keep braying to the legislature about the need for more money. We keep complaining about Measure 5 and what it did to us (yes, I opposed Measure 5 because it promised to do exactly what it did: put the final nails in the coffin containing local control). The only control we seem to have is doing what the state tells us to do. They tell us to jump. We only ask, how high? As for money, take a look at our general fund budget since Measure 5. The influx of state money has just about doubled the size of that budget, but we still haven't been able to buy textbooks, adapt our school buildings for making every kid technologically literate, keep our buildings in repair, or maintain the kind of educational and extra curricular programs we used to take for granted. And like all the rest of the schools in the country (see recent reports and articles I have sent you on the subject), we can't figure out what in hell happened to degrade the performance of our middle and high schoolers. Well, it's as plain as the nose on your face. Sure, looking out from inside your face, you can't hardly notice your nose, and that's the problem. We have when tryng to evaluate our problems from within the narrow, parochial viewpoint of our system. We can't see our nose. But hold up a mirror and you get the picture. The mirror is the research that has been coming out of the NICH and elsewhere in recent years, research that takes credible issue with the Vera Katz/NCEE program that she, Barbara Roberts, and Norma Paulus shoved down our throats with the blind and accommodative subservience of the legislature (except for a few hardy souls like Ron Sunseri). The consequence: Too many middle and high school kids can't read their dumbed down textbooks. Too many kids don't have the math competency to step up to Algebra I or geometry. So what are we to do? Stop yawping about money and begin asking for local control free of the demands of STW, performance based programs (the CIM/CAM strategy, that is), and all of the regulative nonsense that prevents us from operating a system that educates kids instead of grinding out happy little dummies to staff the workforce, have been cured of homophobia, love Mother Earth and know how to use a condom. Practicing what I preach, besides fellow school board members and staff, I herewith include our representative legislators, state and national, on distribution. That includes Greg Walden and Gordon Smith, who were parties to the original crime in Salem, and who continue to ignore the Tenth Amendment as they, along with Peter Defazio and Ron Wyden, deal with the further imposition of federal controls on schools. Enough is enough, fellows. Just get the hell out of the way (taking the federal DOE along with you) and let us fix what needs to be fixed. Finally, and apropos all this about tests and the educational bureaucracy: >Boston Herald >School board members vote to lobby for MCAS reform >by Ed Hayward >WORCESTER - In a stinging rebuke to MCAS, school committee members from across the state voted >overwhelmingly yesterday to lobby Beacon Hill to suspend the requirement students pass the exam to >graduate until officials make critical reforms to the testing system. Now why can't the Oregon School Board Association involve us in something like that instead of being a party to the crime? Bill William J. "Bill" Bonville 6030 Tunnel Loop Rd Grants Pass, OR 97526 tel/fax 541-476-5533 web http://home.cdsnet.net/~bonville