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The Cranky Taxpayer |
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State Takeover |
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For 2005-06, Richmond had one of the three Virginia schools facing Year 4 sanctions for English (Chandler), two of the six schools facing Year 3 sanctions in English (Mason & Woodville), and four of the nine facing Year 3 sanctions for math (Elkhardt, Wythe, Boushall, and Woodville) under the No Child Left Behind Act.. For more information, see the State Education Department web site. As a reminder, here is a quick summary of the consequences of being listed:
The Governor's Partnership for Achieving Successful Schools ("PASS") formerly provided "interventions" that looked a lot like some of the remedies that soon will be required under NCLB. More recently, PASS looks to have morphed into a much less prescriptive effort to connect the schools to the community. The things the PASS teams are doing (professional development, curriculum analysis, testing, tutors, and mentors) are not exactly rocket science. If those techniques work for PASS, we will be left to inquire why Richmond did not deploy them earlier and why it is not now doing so on its own. Unfortunately, the PASS program is not generating any data that can be used to manage or evaluate it. Indeed, documents in the state Education Department suggest that Richmond has been cheating on the 9-weeks testing. We can hope that the future will bring more proactive intervention from the state (and that the interventions will be more aggressive than the State Superintendent's nonfeasance regarding the Richmond Superintendent's violations of state law and the Education Department's hands-off approach to Richmond's cheating on the PASS testing).
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Last updated
08/13/09 |