‘No Child’ legislation labels schools unfairly
Editor:Regarding “Crunch time for Castro — School hopes new English curriculum will boost lagging scores” (April 21, 2006):
It is unfair to judge Castro Elementary as a school “needing improvement” on the basis of just one measure — the STAR standardized tests results — especially when that assessment tool is so flawed.
There are many excellent schools in the United States serving mainly socio-economically disadvantaged students and English-language learners that did not show improvement in test scores for every subgroup as required by the No Child Left Behind legislation, and were therefore labeled “needing improvement” or “failing.” These labels on schools demoralize teachers and administrators, and hurt the students they serve.
Communities should use a variety of measures to evaluate the quality of our schools. For example, we should measure the learning of individual students over time in addition to norm-based standardized tests. Assessing relative progress can help us gain a clearer picture of how well a school is educating its students.
Joseph Chee
Ada Avenue
