Advanced Learning Testing Updates
The district's Advanced Learning office reports this (bold mine):
However, shortly after the Advanced Learning Office posted the calendar, staff learned that an existing district database that had been expected to aid scheduling could not be used. As a result, staffers were required to create a new database, entering all referral forms by hand. This unanticipated process has caused some scheduling delays. Additionally, a district server glitch inadvertently blocked a number of notification emails before the first October testing date. For these reasons, not all families could receive the email notification of their school’s testing date in time.
If this is the case for your family:
The district is grateful for your patience as we work to schedule all referred students for testing.
This all makes me sad because it was not just one thing. There were multiple issues. Did the IT office not clearly understand what AL needed to do and its timeframe? Or did IT communicate to AL that AL couldn't use the database (which seems weird and silly.)
The saddest thing? That the district continues to spend most of the time and resources of AL in testing and retesting. Not delivery of service to students. And, that it continue to not bother the Superintendent or most of the Board one whit.
However, shortly after the Advanced Learning Office posted the calendar, staff learned that an existing district database that had been expected to aid scheduling could not be used. As a result, staffers were required to create a new database, entering all referral forms by hand. This unanticipated process has caused some scheduling delays. Additionally, a district server glitch inadvertently blocked a number of notification emails before the first October testing date. For these reasons, not all families could receive the email notification of their school’s testing date in time.
If this is the case for your family:
- Your child will receive a new test date. Any families missed on their school’s designated testing date will be rescheduled.
- Look for an email by Wednesday. When a new date is scheduled for the student, families will receive a reminder email no later than the Wednesday before, listing time, date and location.
- Missed rescheduled tests can be made up. We recognize that this is short notice, so please know that if your family has a conflict for any reason, Jan. 23 is the test makeup day for all students. We are committed to ensuring that ALL students referred by the Oct. 8 deadline are tested.
The district is grateful for your patience as we work to schedule all referred students for testing.
This all makes me sad because it was not just one thing. There were multiple issues. Did the IT office not clearly understand what AL needed to do and its timeframe? Or did IT communicate to AL that AL couldn't use the database (which seems weird and silly.)
The saddest thing? That the district continues to spend most of the time and resources of AL in testing and retesting. Not delivery of service to students. And, that it continue to not bother the Superintendent or most of the Board one whit.
Comments
How ridiculous is it that HCC is a shambles of a program and yet the district spends all its time testing to get into the shambles of a program. All its time testing and it can't get the testing right.
HCC
And isn't this yet another large scale email glitch a while ago?
reader47
-sleeper
I wouldn't put your snark away, you may need it. In the olden days, the testing was pretty straightforward and all results were mailed out by the end of January. Appeals were done in Feb. and things were pretty well settled by the beginning of March. Who knows for this year?
Now it's a new and exciting process each and every year. What has happened that now we are required to re-invent the wheel every year?
-oldie
The effect of this testing and self-contained classrooms in Advanced Learning is to create a de facto segregated private school within SPS. As outlined here (https://books.google.com/books?id=jCyq7KDP240C&lpg=PA138&ots=3EYzgXupt_&dq=CogAT%207%20research&pg=PA138#v=onepage&q&f=false) and elsewhere, the CogAT creates significant racial disparities in identification of giftedness, and those disparities only grow when paired with the MAP. And the department apparently does not even track data for low-income students. This effectively means we are spending lots of time and money to legitimize the exclusion of low-income students of color from advanced learning opportunities.
Could we better allocate the $1.375 million and 5 staffers currently being used to determine which students we should deny access to high quality curriculum? Certainly, and its best use would perhaps be to provide incentives and supports for schools to serve a demographically proportional cross-section of their populations with Advanced Learning, or perhaps to train teachers in more effective ways to differentiate instruction in their classrooms.
Many proponents of self-contained AL use an analogy to special education to support their case. But just as it's been determined that we're underserving our SPED students when we keep them in self-contained classrooms, we are underserving everyone else when we keep our high quality curriculum behind a velvet rope.
HP