Word: philadelphias
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...countdown time in Philadelphia's public schools. Just 21 days remain before the state reading and math tests in March, and the kids and faculty at James G. Blaine Elementary, an all-black, inner-city school that spans pre-K to eighth grade, have been drilling for much of the day. At 2:45 in the afternoon, Rasheed Abdullah, the kinetic lead math teacher, stages what could be called a prep rally with 11 third-graders. The kids, who are at neither the top nor the bottom of their class, have been selected for intensive review--as has a contingent...
...otherwise illuminated the plight of the nation's underserved kids. This is NCLB'S biggest achievement and the best reason for Congress to reauthorize the law. "At the end of the day, who can argue with holding schools accountable for all children?" asks Paul Vallas, outgoing chief executive of Philadelphia's schools and incoming head of the New Orleans school district. "Who can argue with not tolerating failing schools or with giving poor kids the kinds of choices that wealthier kids have? It's a civil rights issue...
...solution, according to David Berliner, a respected education scholar at Arizona State University and a co-author of a new book, Collateral Damage, that documents the cheating trend. The other solution is to make the state tests easier, a phenomenon known among educators as "the race to the bottom." Philadelphia's Vallas likes to joke that there are two paths to success for his city's schools: improve instruction for students "or give them the Illinois tests...
...evidence that NCLB is working, fans of the law love to point to schools that have reversed a long record of failure. Not far from Blaine, in a crime-infested part of town, sits M. Hall Stanton Elementary, everybody's favorite Philadelphia story. In 2002, only 12% of Stanton's fifth-graders were reading at grade level, and the third- and fourth-graders were engaged in what teachers called "gang wars." By 2006, 70% of fifth-graders were proficient readers, and the school was a model of decorum and learning, hitting its AYP goals three years in a row without...
...hard to say how much of the transformation can be attributed to NCLB. Much is due to changes made to the curriculum in Philadelphia and even more to Stanton's dynamo principal, Barbara Adderley. Certainly, she is a big fan of testing and accountability. She holds grade-level meetings with teachers in a room with two long assessment walls, which display the latest test results for every student. The walls show, at a glance, who's making progress and who isn't, and if it's the latter, Adderley and her team have a million creative ideas on what...