City School Stories

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, March 10, 2011

The general public should carefully consider the data recently released by the school district regarding the academic performance of the students at Audenried High School.  This information was not presented at the time that the decision was made to turn this school into a charter school.  It appears to be a hastily constructed response to the criticism that has been directed at the school district administration regarding their decision to turn this school over to an outside manager.

This reaction is almost identical to the one received by the Meade School community when it was placed on the Renaissance alert list in the spring of 2010.   It was a shocking announcement.  For several years prior to being labeled as a failing school, Meade had achieved Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) on the Pennsylvania State System of Assessment  (PSSA).  Meade had succeeded over the course of this time to positively transform its school climate and to make considerable instructional progress. The staff at the school was upset and confused by this determination.

In response to this development, the Meade teaching staff sent a letter to Dr. Ackerman. They requested a meeting with her in order to review the school’s data.  When Dr. Ackerman received this letter she responded by making a phone call to me.   She told me that she had no intention of meeting with my teachers.  Instead I needed to come to the central office in order to meet with her and David Weiner, the director of the district’s accountability office.

“We will explain your data to you”, she said.

Dr. Ackerman’s secretary scheduled this meeting for later that day.

I arrived at Dr. Ackerman’s office at 6:00 p.m. the appointed time.  In addition to Dr. Ackerman, and Mr. David Weiner, several other members of her cabinet were in attendance.

As the meeting began, Mr. Weiner distributed a folder to each of the meeting participants.  In the folder was a copy of Meade School’s School Performance Index and copies of the prior year’s student, teacher and parent survey results. There was a one page document that showed the change in data for Meade School’s PSSA from the 2008 to 2009 school year.  There were several errors in this document.  Percentages were transposed and inaccurate. This was the sum of the information which he presented

Mr. Weiner started his presentation by stating, “We have ten years worth of data that indicates that Meade School is a low-performing school.”  He continued by stating that the Accountability Office had reviewed student growth in grades 3, 4, and 5 at Meade in order to determine academic progress.  According to his analysis, students at Meade were not achieving a year’s worth of growth.

Although he referenced that he had ten years of data indicating Meade’s status as a low performing school, at no time in his presentation did he produce any information to support this claim.

I said,  “ten years worth of data for Meade would be less than reliable or valid.”

I explained that Meade has been a K-8 school for only the last five years.  Before that it was a K-4 school. During that time there had been a myriad of different kinds of assessments administered at different times to different populations and grade levels of students. Some of these test were-norm-referenced assessments, like the CTBS Test, the SAT-9 Test and the Terra Nova Test.  Others were criterion-referenced, including various grade combinations of the PSSA Test.

I also noted that the population of Meade School had changed significantly over the last ten years, due to student mobility.  Therefore, any review using this hodge-podge of limited data would present an inaccurate profile of the academic growth of Meade School students during a ten-year period.

It concerned me that Mr. Weiner did not consider any of these factors when he gathered his data. Since the differences in the design and intention of these various standardized tests precluded them from being used to make statistical comparisons to each other, and since they had not been implemented in any consistent fashion, no valid multi-year analysis could or should be made using this information.

I asked, “Are you using the information provided by the state PVAS (Pennsylvania State Value -Added Assessment System)?”

He replied, “ No. The Accountability Office has developed our own value-added method of calculating student growth for the students in the district.”

I was puzzled by Mr. Weiner’s statement that Meade School students are not making more than a year’s worth of growth.  I said, “When I look at the state’s PVAS information on the Department of Education’s on-line data system, the students in grades six, seven, and eight are making more than a year’s worth of growth.”

Mr. Weiner responded, “You have sixth, seventh and eighth grades?  I thought Meade was still adding on grades.”

My concerns regarding the accuracy of Mr. Weiner’s data collection methods were heightened by this remark.  This statement caused me to seriously question the credibility of the information that Mr. Weiner was presenting on the progress of Meade School.

The stated intention of this meeting was to provide me with a clear explanation as to why a significant change was being made to the instructional program of my school.  Mr. Weiner’s presentation did not accomplish this objective.  After listening to his analysis of Meade’s student performance data I had little confidence in the accuracy of his information.

As a result of my first hand experience with Mr. Weiner, I now carefully consider any information that is presented by the data chief of the school district.  The information, which he is offering regarding the academic progress of Audenried High School, should also be carefully scrutinized in order to determine its reliability and validity.

This is a reasonable expectation that any education professional should graciously acknowledge.