Greetings,

The 4^th grade test results put Scotia-Glenville Schools in 10^th place in the Capital District, with a mean score about 10 points away from the 670 minimum score of the top 10% schools.

The New York Teacher (June 2, 1999), reports that test scores are linked to district resources. The poorer districts score lower than the richer districts.

Parents who earn more money tend to be more highly educated and live in wealthier areas. They probably have an above average ability to learn, an above average interest and involvement in the education of their children, an above average chance of a stay-at-home parent, an above average ability to diagnose and correct reading and English problems, and they probably read more stories, or perhaps more difficult stories, to their children. Their children may also have above average academic capabilities.

Schools cannot replicate solid home learning environments–not at any cost. Even if schools reduce class size in the lower grades, the most favorable comprehensive study supporting reduced class sizes says that scores will improve by ¼ to ½ of a standard deviation, which would raise Scotia-Glenville’s mean score to 667 at most, and perhaps to only a paltry 663.31 from 660.47. This is not enough of an improvement at way too much of a cost.

Schools can do a far better job of helping parents help their children with relatively little additional cost. I believe if you let Joe Ann Barton concentrate her efforts on putting a decoded curriculum plan in every student's home, along with bibliographies of resources timed to classroom instruction, and require teachers to discover with parents the best use of these materials for each student, this will do far more to improve the education of our children than team teaching at the middle school, smaller K-3 class size, and pre-kindergarten classes combined.

This school needs to give parents a better way to assess the performance of their children. The school could report a child’s class rank by subject, in addition to letter grades. It should give parents more information about teacher performance, for example, the average change in grade equivalent scores for math and English for each elementary teacher. The school should also provide parents with cumulative IOWA scores so they can compare current IOWA scores with past years.

Table 1 shows our daughter’s IOWA scores from first through seventh grade. My wife and I felt third grade was relatively unproductive for our daughter. She had a teacher whose educational philosophy was "kids should have a good time at school," not "kids should be challenged to work hard at school." Years after the fact, I compared her IOWA scores by grade and they strongly confirmed our belief. Her scores had stagnated in third grade. This should not have been allowed to happen.

Our daughter’s reading score soared 4.7 grade equivalents in 5^th grade. You might be interested in knowing how that happened. She had a friend who, in a third grade talent show, sang "Castle on a Cloud" from the musical Les Miserables. She liked the song and when PBS aired the musical she recorded it and watched it several times. My wife borrowed a children’s book from the library about Les Miserables, and our daughter read it. Next, my wife brought home an abridged adult version of the book and she read that. Then our daughter insisted on reading Victor Hugo’s 1463-page unabridged book. By the end of fifth grade she had finished the abridged adult book and her reading grade equivalent score increased to 11.8. By the end of 6^th grade she had finished the unabridged book and her reading score increased another 2.4 grade equivalents by the middle of 7^th grade to 14.2.

One last example from the IOWAs. By 3^rd grade our daughter’s lowest IOWA score was on math computational skills. This school district has deliberately chosen to de-emphasize computational skills, but I believe poor computational skills inhibit the learning of advanced mathematical operations and concepts. So after 3^rd grade, my daughter and I studied math, about one hour a day for 30 days each summer, using Saxon math books targeted for one to two grade levels above her next grade level. During the summer after 6^th grade, we completed all 136 chapters of an eighth-grade, 460-page, pre-algebra text in 40 hours, with an average unit test score of 90%. We completed a difficult but attainable average of one page every 5 minutes.

By the end of 4^th grade her computational score increased 1.4 grade equivalents to 5.4. At the end of 5^th grade her computational score increased 2.6 grade equivalents to 8.0. By the middle of 7^th grade her computational score jumped 6.4 points to 14.4, and for the first time it exceeded her math problem solving score.

At the end of 4^th grade her total math score increased 1.8 grade equivalents to 6.6. By the end of 5^th grade her total math score increased 2.4 grade equivalents to 9.0. Our daughter was academically capable of understanding algebra by the end of 5^th grade. By the middle of 7^th grade our daughter’s total math score leaped 5.2 points to a grade equivalent of 14.2.

I think you can see how parents can use IOWA scores to greatly enhance their children’s education. Sadly, no one at the school helped us or encouraged us to do any of the things we did to help our daughter learn. No one at the school felt the need to point out weaknesses in our daughter’s education, or resources for strengthening them. We had to find both for ourselves. Although we are not teachers by profession, I think you can see that parents can play a large role in improving the academic abilities of their children.

This is not a story about over bearing parents breathing down the neck of their daughter to get good grades in school. Nor is it the story of a child genius. The only "proactive treatment" was about 120 hours of one-on-one math over 4 summers. The rest she did at school and on her own.

Neither schools nor parents need to be rich to give students great educations. Public libraries are free, and our total cost for the rather impressive gains in our daughter’s education was less than $75 per year. A Wall Street Journal editorial, "No Excuses," located in the appendix, reports on one New York City school in a very poor neighborhood that has moved from one of the worst performing districts in the country to having "middle-schoolers who score better than 93% of their peers nationwide in reading–and better than 96% of American kids the same age in math." It took a maverick principal and 13 years to get the job done. Along these lines, the board could look into changing the method and amount of principal pay in exchange for making principals accountable for school results on standardized tests. The better the school performs, the higher the pay. The board could also consider creating a much lower-paid tenure track and a potentially higher-paid performance track for new teachers.

Scotia-Glenville needs to solve more of its problems with in-the-box solutions. Hundreds of schools around the country and in New York prove the lie of better performance coming only at higher prices. Elementary teachers already have all the tools they need to do their job with excellence. It’s important to remember we are talking about teaching 4^th grade English, not 11^th grade chemistry.

To significantly improve the district’s academic performance, administrators, teachers and the school board need to use more of the same creativity they demand from students. The Apollo 13 astronauts worked with what they had to return home safely–despite impossible odds–and this school district needs to work with what it has to become the number 4 school, if not number 1 school, in the Capital Region. It can be done with the right kind of leadership. The only real question is, "Will you do it?"

Sincerely,

Jerry Moore

Sandberg (June 2, 1999), "Test results show resources matter," New York Teacher, page 7.