Asking The Right Questions

In the Sunday, July 25 edition of the Republican-American there was a very interesting letter from Board of Education Commissioner Paul D'Angelo.

In the letter Commissioner D’Angelo calls for radical changes in the Waterbury School System. It is his opinion that the status quo is no longer acceptable if Waterbury students are going to succeed in the 21st Century. I agree with Commissioner D'Angelo, however I have some concerns regarding the direction he takes with his proposals.

While I know that serious changes need to be made to our Education Department to ensure all of Waterbury's 18,000 students have the tools they need to succeed in life. I also am one of the first people to praise the teachers and administrators in the school system who bring their best efforts to their jobs every day of the school year.

To truly evaluate a schools performance, you can't just look at one aspect of the school, there is a lot more going on that will never show up on a test. When a district is looking at this much data, you have to make sure you are asking the right questions. Currently the City of Waterbury and the State of Connecticut only looks at the passing rate of students in successive years. While the argument can be made that the scores should improve as the teachers perfect their educational techniques, taking that approach gives the public a very poor view of the true results.

The purpose of the CMT, the CAPT, and the annual review of test results is to show that the schools are doing everything they can to improve our students as they move through the system. With a system as large as Waterbury, however, there are many variables that are well beyond the teachers and administrators control. True reform will only occur when we hold the teachers accountable for the aspects they can influence. Bashing teachers for situations they cannot influence is unfair to everyone.

With that in mind, I encourage the Board of Education to start looking at the questions they are asking when they look at the test results. From my years of scientific study, I have found that asking the right questions is as important as the answers you receive. To illustrate my point, I'll use Wallace Middle School as an example.

1. How many students who took the 8th Grade CMT at Wallace in 2010 took the 6th Grade CMT's in Waterbury in 2008?
2. How many of those students stayed in the Waterbury Public Schools during the 2 years in between?
3. How many of those students improved 1 level (1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc.) between 2008 and 2010?
4. How many of those students improved 2 levels (1 to 3, 2 to 4, etc.) between 2008 and 2010?
5. Did any students degrade 1 level (2 to 1, 3 to 2, etc.) between 2008 and 2010?

These questions are important because they allow us to focus on what is (or is not) working in our schools. If we have a student transfer to Wallace in September of their 8th grade year from Bridgeport (as an example), and the student is reading at a 4th grade level, how can we hold the Wallace teachers solely responsible for the students test scores in March? As the saying goes, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

If we can identify the students that are staying in the school system, and track their results over the course of several years, then we can truly identify what is and isn’t working in our educational system. Only by asking the right questions will we get the answers we need to best serve the students of Waterbury.