“results tend to fall, the higher the grade level”.
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Gosh, how much did that conclusion cost?
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Qualitatively speaking, not a surprise for a wealth of reasons.
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Quantitatively speaking, what does Dr. Bennett conclude from this?

With due respect to quibbling over test rigor and “freedom and flexibility” to adapt schools, these are deckchairs being arranged as we sink deeper and deeper.
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Are we going to be treading the icy waters, still believing government is going to somehow appear on the horizon to rescue us from our unaffordable idealism and blatant corruption, or as citizens, are we going to demand responsibility from all?
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On this issue: School boards and administrations that ask and explicitedly explain where the money's going, Parents that either parent or get out of the way so the kid & society have a chance at a productive citizen, Unions that put performance before seniority, Core academics that trumps athletics and the arts, and most of all- Citizens that give a damn.

This has nothing to do with where the kids go to school, how much is being spent on schools, blah, blah, blah. Let's see the ISTEP results broken down by family income level. The more the family makes… the more the family values education… the more support the children get at home… the better they do on these sort of tests…

These scores will be used to bash schools and how schools need to be fixed. Listen I can switch all of the students from low-scoring IPS elementary #X to high-scoring Carmel Elementary and the scores will not change.

Anyone who bashes the specific school does not understand the problem. The problem is the lack of value Hoosiers place on education. Weather Urban or Rural schools.

I wish I had the solution to the problem – forcing people to care – but the solution is NOT basing schools in order to privatize the,.

Stephen may have something here.

In my day, in rural Indiana, everyone valued education–the widow next door, the volunteer fireman, the liquor store clerk, the banker…whether they had kids in school or not.

Those days are gone, sadly.

And they won't come back with vouchers, more money thrown at the problem (directly), or less-strident union rules.

It comes only with each and every student having a non-school adult (parent, uncle, friend, whatever) take 100% responsibility for EVERYthing that child learns and does at school. Classroom and otherwise. Social and mental.

Until we get that, the above poster is correct. This is economy-driven. The more we “want,” the more we, as parents, pay less and less attention to school, because we're too busy earning money for our “wants.” I know lots of parents, too busy for their kids, whose kids are coasting through school, just getting by, and at some point, that won't fly.

We'll not solve the problem quickly because it didn't come about quickly. Quick-fixes are not genuine…they're just being used by pandering side-liners who want to further one agenda or the other.

We fix it when we all want to fix it, and when we step up to make sure every child in school has an adult overseer who will not let up in the demand for quality public education.

For instance, who's gonna tell my enxt-door neighbor, both parents working 50 hours a week, that they're not paying enough attention to their son and his education? He's 16, just started to drive, and he sneaks out fo the house every weekend. He gets Bs in school and if he were my kid he'd be sirtting at my study table until he gets the higher grades he's capable of getting. But he's learned, at a too-young age, what it takes to get by.

Abbie,

Care to compare ISTEP scores?

How does charter schools vs public schools v private schools compare?

Looks like a lot of the charter schools, including the vaunted KIPP school, did no better than IPS, some much worse.

Christel house w. Christel DeHaan's $$ did better. Irvington Community charter did real well.

Check the private schools- some of them like Holy Angels Catholic that serve the inner city population did very poorly. Which isn't to say that Holy Angels isn't working hard… it's just a pretty overwhelming challenge.

Thank you, bit, for that does of reality.

So, at the end of the day, it's mostly about money, and from whence you come, huh?

TA is on the right track here, but I just don't see it happening.
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Know the jokes about Lit. Ph.D.s employed as your barista? That is the perception of what a good education will get you. Up to one's eyebrows in debt and pouring lattes for the hucksters of the world.
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Biggest education lie I learned about after graduating with a B.A. in history? That employers valued liberal arts majors. What a load. Yeah, they “value” them because after most of them find out that no one values their skills, they just become another source of cheap, exploitable labor.

TA I don't always agree with you but this time you hit the bulls eye.

Being a parent is hard work if done right. Most family earners have to work more hours to make ends meet… but we must not let work or play interfere with raising our children. Making sure that education comes before play, sports or socializing should be set in stone.

Rather than looking exclusively at the family income levels of underachieving schoolchildren, why not contrast the performance of children from broken homes versus those from two-parent homes? I think it would be quite enlightening (to some of us, and disregarded by others.)

Repeating a theme no one wants to admit. Besides concerns of emphasis on home where education is valued, concerns about schools having equal facilities or funding, etc. etc. —when will it be okay to admit that the more difficult the test the larger percent of the population is not academically able to achieve a passing score. We have dumbied down colleges in order that more can attend–remember the point that everyone needs a college education while colleges used to be set up to serve those from the upper 20-25 percent of the population based on IQ or whatever measure you believe in. Reality is not a politically correct thing.

None of this is news on account it is not new. Every year you expose kids to a failed system they will perform less well-it is the socialist problem. Switch kids from where they are to Carmel and don't change their IQ and they will fail as they did before. Only news here is the new excuses offered by the losers.

It's a failed system all right. All of the penalities and sanctions are against the wrong people. NO accountability for the student or the home. Given this SAME exam 30 years ago we'd have the same results if not worse.Were we a nation of morons then? The curriculum has been upgraded every year. If you believe all of this hype you'd think we were a nation of dummies- were not. Other countries don't even bother to try to educate the handicapped or the lower income like the U.S. does. Funny, AbTool's charters fare no better than the despised IPS. People will get wise to this pretty soon. IPS enrollment is fine for the first time in years. Parents aren't buying into the hysteria.

It's a failed sytem all right. No accountability for the student our the home. Funny how the charters fared no better than the despised IPS. Parents are getting wise to this as IPS enrollment is better than it's been in a while.

A state wide reject rate of 40% reflects “education world” where failure is tolerated unlike the real world that is not a socialist model and folks don't put up with cold coffee 40% of the time.

If a guy jumps off a building and dies instantly, it might cost taxpayers a burial, benefits to his family and whatever contributions he was making to society. If he jumps and he's in a wheelchair the rest of his life with nurses and therapy, maybe the price goes up and we grumble about the cost of his stupidity. When an innocent third party is brought into this world because it's a subsidized, societally accepted choice of lifestyle, we not only pay initially, but potentially for the rest of the child's life. Poor parenting is statistically linked with abuse, neglect, obeisity, low graduation rates, drug usage, incarceration, teen pregnancy, etc.
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If you really, really care about ISTEP scores, then there are issues that are a “burner on too long”, like school “flexibility” and test rigor. There are also “the bedroom's on fire” issues like citizen participation, parenting standards, school administration, and teacher competency. It's not fun to deal with, but the bedroom- more like the house is on fire.

What does this mean “failure is tolerated unlike the real world”? You mean in the real world, if you 'fail' you get fired from your job? So, if a fourth grader “fails” the ISTEP she should get kicked out of school (“fired”)?

Nice.

The best way of knowing is learning from someone who actually knows, actually has the content knowledge. Immediately, Indiana government schools are behind the eight ball when it comes to testing what teachers have taught. That is because we don’t test teachers for content knowledge and would be horrified to learn how little they actually know. So, we turn to folks like Andy Gammill (who probably does not have control over the captions on his story) who is surprised unpleasantly by the latest ISTEP test scores. There are sorts of people to whom everything is new and thus a surprise but ISTEP test scores ought not be in that category since they have stunk since they were conceived.
To his credit, Andy provided data in the form of a chart which shows that the longer that kids are exposed to government schools and their conclusively proven failed model, why, the worse kids perform. But, socialist systems don’t perform and no one should expect that they could. Government schools are the singular outpost of socialism in America-it is like Russia where collective farms still dominate agriculture. No one expects collective farms to perform either except the brain dead ideologists.
It is Andy’s parroted view that the new ISTEP is sui generis and its results cannot be compared with anything else. That view is false. ISTEP data can be very useful in the hands of anyone who has taken the time to understand it or who has bothered to improve his own understanding of educational testing by reading easy books like Measuring UP by Daniel Koretz or any number of books by Charles Murray. Cynics might suspect that the change from fall to spring was done primarily to elude “progress” reports for NCLB. There is no escape for school districts in continuing to lie to kids, parents, teachers, and the tax paying public so long as NCLB exists the IDOE will eventually have to tell the truth, namely, that Indiana government schools are not making any progress and certainly cannot if all performance increases are backloaded into the final two years of the allowed time period.
This dirty little secret, as they say, must have been a surprise when Tony Bennet opened up his desk that smelled so bad at IDOE . But, his conclusion, without taking swipes at his unlamented predecessor, that “We have to stop cheating children with the status quo” is right on the mark. However, he ought not define it as a problem because that infers that there might be a solution for low test scores. There isn’t. Eugene White expressed disappointment with IPS low test scores which Andy described as “staggering low”. Well, they have been staggering low for decades and the Indiana Standardized Test for Educational Progress (ISTEP) has shown no progress to speak of over those same decades.
If, Indiana were at 90 and were given 10 years to get to 100, most folks would NCLB-wise shoot at a solid 1% gain per year. Indiana government schools aren’t most folks and so AYP has been a solid joke in Indiana with our drones hoping to retire before anyone notices that there hasn’t been any AYP (“adequate yearly progress”). This is a Bennet problem now because if IDOE stops the lying then the government schools will look bad, you know the old saying about tell the truth and then run like hell? But, they are bad schools, as bad as when A Nation At Risk was written or Capitalism and Freedom, for that matter. It is NOT POSSIBLE to improve them.
So, IDOE lied to the public about AYP for years and they continue to lie, covering up for their 150 person school board, educational lepers who congregate in Indianapolis to pass laws. But, NCLB is a federal law, a Ted Kennedy brainchild and so our lepers continue to lie to the public in the hope that the law will be altered long before its impossible provisions come into play. Their view is almost like another couple of generations and no one will know what mediocre even means. And, decades of lying actually give them some hope that dumbing down the people will make it easier to control them and to pick their pockets.
Well, what about IDOE taking over poorly performing schools? With what? They have no talent at IDOE to manage even a single school. So, what would they do? They would hire some broken down failure to come in and give the appearance of change and hope for things to blow over. You would think that there are a great number of poorly performing schools but I’d bet good money that each of them is accredited. What do you suppose those accreditations are worth? Sure, and OJ is still working pretty hard to find his wife’s real killer.
Note in passing, Marshall High, scene of Eugene White’s strongest efforts to improve things looks pretty bad for 8th grade reading. My guess is that his efforts are leading that school back into the toilet. But, perhaps is not if we would measure things differently. IDOE used to have a ranking system using predicted vs actual on the ISTEP. Using that measure, places like Carmel didn’t look so hot and schools that currently look terrible looked quite a bit better if actual teaching was being done in the school. A test for progress when progress isn’t occurring or even likely is sort of a silly enterprise. I can assure all that taking Carmel teachers to Marshall and Marshall teachers to Carmel would not alter the fact that the IQ in Carmel is very high and at Marshall is very low in comparison and we all know that IQ is the single best predictor of academic success, or should know that.

“So, if a fourth grader “fails” the ISTEP she should get kicked out of school (“fired”)?”

How about 'failed', or held back. I'm certain that Dixon didn't mean that kids should be 'kicked-out'.

Kids need to know that there ARE indeed penalties for failure. Alas, kids are not allowed to 'fail' at anything anymore…bad for their poor widdle feelings.

When the record is no longer excused or measured by “intent,” education will be discovered where it exits- outside government.

Two Points on this issue my friends.

1. Look at history and I have brought this up before. The creators of the ISTEP test in the very begining had a designed failure rate of 40%. Check with the administrators who fought it at the time.

2. If Dr. Bennett is going to take over underperforming schools and his old school Greater Clark has only 63% passing based on his way of doing things would the goal be to lower the state average by 7 points? If not please share with me how he is going to raise with almost no one left at INDOE that knows anything other then the political agenda?

Peace Dude.

Dixon said failure is not tolerated in the real-world. “Not tolerated”…what does that mean? And how does that apply to educating a young child. Not passing a standardized test…”Not tolerated”. What does that mean?

Dixon said failure is not tolerated in the real-world. “Not tolerated”…what does that mean? And how does that apply to educating a young child. Not passing a standardized test…”Not tolerated”. What does that mean?