More on NCLUT (no child left untested)

The dirty little secret in Texas is that we have what appears to be a 30% drop out rate as a result of all the testing. Administrators manipulate the drop out figures so they are oh so low, but just last week they realized just how bad the drop out rate is. So, now all that’s left in the schools are the white over-achieving children and their scores are so high and it looks like Texas is making huge gaines. It’s not the case at all.

Also, in the DFW area there are a lot of private LD schools. I’m talking at least 20. The one near me has 800 students. Many of these kids came from public school. More kids not factored into the test scores.

There’s a little book called “How to Lie With Statistics”, first written in the 1950’s but the statistics and the methods of lying remain the same forever. It was a required text in one of my statistics classes and I highly recommend it to anyone who tries to read education so-called “research” and “data”, most of which isn’t.

Here’s an example, speaking of the dropout rate. I lived for a while in a remote northern community (Fort Saint John, BC for anyone who would like to look it up). This kind of rural area does not have a tradition of academics, and many of the young people choose non-academic careers which is fine; but those who were trying to succeed in school had a number of difficulties including prejudice and low expectations.

The school system published a report saying they had an 8% dropout rate, which appears very low. I was skeptical; looking around the community and talking to people it was easy to see that over 30% to 40% had never finished high school, and more like 90% in the native Indian community. How could that be?

Well, looking into it, I found that they were not exactly lying; just they didn’t mention that the dropout rate was 8% PER YEAR over five years from Grades 8 to 12, and besides, most Indian kids weren’t counted at all.

Now you can’t exactly add up percentages, it’s a question like compound interest. In the first year you lose 8% out of the original 100, leaving 92. Second year you lose 8% out of the 92 or (rounding) 7.4, leaving 84.6. Third year you lose 8% out of 84.6 or (rounded) 6.7, leaving 77.9. Fourth year you lose 8% out of 77.9 or (rounded) 6.2, leaving 71.7. Fifth year you lose 8% out of 71.7 or (rounded) 5.7, leaving 66 out of your original 100.
And there you have it! With a dropout rate of only 8%, you have 34 out of your original 100 not graduating, agreeing with observations.

And then that only includes kids who actually registered in Grade 8; the official policy of the time was to repeat Indian kids at least once as a standard in kindergarten and 90% of the time a second time in Grade 2, so they hit Grade 8 already aged fifteen to sixteen, and it was legal for parents to sign permission for a kid to leave school after age fourteen (if the school even enforced the attendance laws), so many Indian kids never bothered to go to a high school and so weren’t counted as dropouts.

Easy to get a low dropout rate, isn’t it?

In fact, this kind of game is going on all the time. There was some recent news that here in Quebec under 50% of boys and under 60% of girls are finishing secondary school in the allotted five years (here, grades 7 to 11; before judging about lower standards, we *also* have two to three years of free public junior college) . However it isn’t quite that bad; very many finish in a sixth year in school, and many others do adult ed; the actual number who finish some way or another is around 70% to 75%, which actually compares quite favourably with the numbers for rural BC above.
Another news report said that in the US the percentage of young people who start high school who then go on to finish is also in the 75% range, so this seems to be a general pattern, despite how people play with the numbers.

Note that one report fudged the dropout downwards to make the school system look good, while the other forced it upwards to create shock news. In fact both were describing pretty similar situations!

When you see a number, you’ve *got* to ask:
Where does this number come from? Who is measuring it and why? What biases are they bringing to the situation?
What is the basis for this number? How was it measured and on what group?
What controls were used to make sure this number is accurate?
Is this number an honest comparison to other numbers, or was the measurement basis different so they are apples and oranges?

Good advice for the present political scene too …

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60 minutes just did a nice little piece on Houstons school system and the ‘model’ school used. LOL leave it to politicians to :twisted: help the teaching profession. What ever happened to honesty?

:!: Sad isn’t it?

I’ve pretty much maintained that the “Educational Problems” are not that of the Teachers and thier “qualifications”…..
It’s the Administration and thier Money & Numbers. (IE: Staffing and to, in some cases, get the the SD to loosen thier purse strings to get materials needed to adequately teach.)

Any parent that has a child with difficulties should know this. When I have “problems” with my childs education…I currently skip the teachers (since they have a small voice, apparently, and sometimes remain “tightliped” in fear of reprocutions) and go right to the top!!!

I’ve also witnessed more then one day in the life of a teacher. Both Reg. Ed and Learning Support. You all need some roller skates…LOL…

You all do the best you can with what you got….pat yourselves on the back!!! 8)

Have a good year!

For some interesting reading on NCLUT (aka No child behind left) take a look at www.fairtest.org— also interesting stuff re: the ridiculous educational testing teachers are being subjected to.

—des