It is SOL season here in the state of Virginia. Students are taking a test which determines if their school will meet adequate yearly progress AYP or not. That one measure determines if a school is deemed to be successful or a "failing school." I just read the other day that the term "failing school" didn't really enter the public conversation until the onset of No Child Left Behind.
I think it is pretty sad that we choose to measure the quality of our schools on one set of tests. It doesn't take into account all of the other things that our schools do. We don't test students on how they are learning to behave in society or how compassionate they are, or on how well they can sing or play an instrument. With regards to AYP we don't care about their knowledge of social studies or science. It is focused only on English and mathematics.
The ridiculousness of this system is that one elementary school in the division that I work for is considered a "failing school" because one subset of the student population failed to meet the AYP in one subject. The overall scores were good enough to pass. I hear that the stress on those teachers this year has been really hard on a lot of them.
I think we can do better. We should keep testing schools so that we have data to work from, but we need to stop punishing schools for things that might not be in their control to fix.
What do you think? Am I right or wrong? Why?
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