Drape's Takes

I wonder if we really understand how much our actions outside of school drastically affect our performance inside of school; but not just our actions - or even those of our children. I'm talking about the actions and attitudes of greater society. Think big.

Consider for a moment, what might happen if Katy was really the name of an eleventh-grade student, sitting at the 25-yard line in the photo below, intently preparing to take her AP math exam.


With this level of support, might her academic performance improve? Might she be motivated to put in the time it takes to gain AP-caliber skills? Might those at home also push her toward success, even paying some of the price it takes for nations to be the best?


While many look to technology as a savior in times of educational distress, until we - as a society - learn to focus on what's truly important... we'll continue to get what we've desired all along. I just wish these desires would have reached loftier heights than the leagues of overinflated egos we continue to pay to entertain us in our weekend stupors.

I got an interesting piece of literature in the mail the other day from my daughter's school. Apparently, they didn't make AYP last year in the area of Language Arts. Consequently, they were kind enough to explain the situation for me.

Of the forty assessments measured by NCLB, [your friendly neighborhood] Junior High made AYP in 39 of the areas. As you can see, one sub-group at [your friendly neighborhood] Junior did not make AYP in the area of Language Arts. Our plan to deal with this issue is two-fold: 1) We will conduct a thorough review of the state core curriculum in Language Arts to insure that major core objectives are being adequately addressed in the classroom, and 2) we will begin implementing practice tests to allow students the opportunity to see the testing format and to gauge their performance throughout the year.

Because of NCLB, the federal government makes us test your kid to the max. Unfortunately, we screwed up and didn't get enough kids to take the Language Arts sub-test. Don't worry, we plan on doing better next year so that 1) you can feel confident that your kid is going to a good school and 2) we can still get that money from the federal government. Experience has shown that the best way to deal with this kind of problem is 1) to admit that we really don't know what is going to be on the test and 2) inform you that one of the critical skills we will be teaching your kid is to fill in the bubble.