"Here we come... Walking down the street..."

"Hey, hey, we're the monkeys..."   Well, not quite.  They are coming and they are walking down the street, but "they" are letter grades for each Indiana school.  The Indiana Department of Education has released the letter grades, but only to school administrators.  Letter grades will be released to the public on October 10th.  Want to know what our letter grade is?

Sorry, I can't tell you.  I can't tell you because it is not yet October 10th and because I have not looked to find our letter grade.  I want to write this blog post before I know if Silver Creek Elementary is ranked with an A, a B, a C, a D, or an F.  Why?  Because whatever our letter grade is, I know an important fact that it is not.  The letter grade will not be a measure of the quality of our school.

Hold on to this important axiom, quality can never be measured by a machine.  Quality must be measured by human beings using multiple measures.  Finding quality is an engaging process that can not be assessed by multiple choice test items and brief "writing to prompt" test items.  Human beings do not function in such rigid ways.  At least, we do not function that way in real life.

On August 13, 2012, I wrote a blog post, which was titled "Our School Ranked with F grade by State."  The next day, my blog was "Quality Schools: How Do We Know?"  I have attached the links to those blog posts.  If you did not get a chance to read them in August, you may want to check out the posts now.

Our School Ranked with F Grade by the State.
http://educationpirate.blogspot.com/2012/08/our-school-ranked-with-f-grade-by-state.html

Quality School: How Do We Know? 

http://educationpirate.blogspot.com/2012/08/quality-schools-how-do-we-know.html 

Here are a few important points about schools and school rankings:

• Our students have 5.25 hours of instruction every day, and that equals 945 hours per year.
• The ISTEP test takes approximately six hours.  Hmm?  Can six hours adequately measure 945 hours of instruction?
• The ISTEP assessment always has error in testing.  As an example, error occurs when students are sick during testing, when the directions are misread, when timing of the test is off, when a student refuses to answer the questions, when the test is graded incorrectly, when the question did not match the standard, etc.  Hmm?  How much error?
• Our goal for educating students is to assist them in learning useful knowledge, deep understanding, and to master skillful performance.  Hmm?  How deep does the ISTEP test measure?  How much of the ISTEP is asking for true real life performance?
• The letter ranking of schools does not measure the student's love for life-long learning, character, motivation, perseverance, or the ability to solve complex problems by working with a group (team).  Hmm?  The ability and skill to solve problems in a work-team is the number one characteristic business and industry wants in school graduates.

So, I do not know what our letter grade is.  What do I know about school letter grades?  Here are my predictions:

• Some Indiana schools will pass over 98% of students in a grade level on the ISTEP and will not be ranked as A.
• Some Indiana schools will be ranked as D even though the school community and students have improved their ISTEP scores.
• Some high quality administrators and high quality teachers will leave the profession because the school's letter rank is low and they do not have the resources to "play the letter grade game" any more.
• The company that creates, publishes, scores, markets the ISTEP test, and sells the state's school data to interested companies had a gross income of $1,450,000,000 (1.45 billion dollars) last quarter of 2012.  I wonder if "$1,450,000,000 times 4 equals yearly income" is a question on the ISTEP test.

If our school is ranked A, I will not boast.  If our school is ranked B, I will not weep.  If our school is ranked C, I will not blame others.  If our school is ranked D, I will not change my vision and goals for quality education.  If our school is ranked F, I will not resign; I will not give up.

Whatever our school ranks turns out to be, I will do what I do every day.  Come to school and:

• Greet the students as they enter school.
• Build a learning environment of trust and care.
• Make sure our students are asked to complete useful and relevant school work.
• Lead teachers to create lessons that are engaging for 100% of our students, that have differentiated learning, that are project based, that avoid memorization and embrace finding information, that ask students to develop deeper understanding.
• Through words, actions, and morning television announcements ask student to do their best work everyday; to become great readers, great writers, and great problem solvers.
• Ask students to measure their own learning and to improve themselves with teacher help.
• Avoid repeated use of practicing the test assignments, which is destructive to quality learning.
• Make sure that every school day has some fun for students and teachers.

What is the letter rank of Silver Creek Elementary?  I do not know.  What I do know is, if any person reads our letter grade and then sorts us into the winner or loser brackets, then they are taking the easy road.  Whatever our letter grade is, the letter will not tell you about our students, our teachers, our instruction, our learning community, or about me.

If you want to know about the quality of our school it will take more than six hours of testing, which is then scored by a machine.  It will take human interaction over a significant period of time.  Rest assured of this: I am proud of our school, our students, our staff members, our parents, and our learning program. At Silver Creek Elementary, we are the light.

Dr. David E. Losey, Ed.D., NCC, LMHC
Principal, Silver Creek Elementary School

writing as Dr. Robert, Educational Pirate.