The Owl Newsletter

ISSUE 32 | MARCH 24, 2001

LET'S GIVE LAW-MAKERS SOME HELP

The Owl's been circling Sacramento at night, and has spotted law-makers hard at work. They are burning the late night candles drafting a new bundle of laws about governing schools. Perhaps it's time we helped them.

Help? Why not. They get plenty of help already from lobbyists representing the teachers unions, textbook publishers, school boards, and the rest. Let's offer them help they don't currently enjoy.

The Owl has a few suggestions in the accountability department. You probably have a few of your own. Give a look at the two proposals that follow. Then sit down and dash off an e-mail to The Owl, and share your favorites. The Owl will gather them together, and send them off to the policymakers who head up the Assembly and Senate education committees.

Send them to: edit@schoolwisepress.com.

There' s no telling what law-makers will do with our unsolicited advice. But the Owl will happily share all interesting comments in his next hoot-and-holler.

1. Remove the prohibition on reporting SAT-9 test scores at the classroom level.

We get to see how schools are doing, and how districts are doing. Parents get to see how their kids are doing. Is something missing here? Why can't we see results of students' scores aggregated at the classroom level? In Tennessee, they've been doing this since 1994, using gain-score measures to compare how much progress kids in self-contained classrooms are making year-to-year. They do this the right way, comparing same-kid-same-school over time. No surprise, some teachers are more effective than others. Read more about how Tennessee does it. And read about gain-score and value-added assessment as it's practiced in Tennessee.

2. Revise the accounting requirements so that school site level budgets and expenditures are reported.

The Owl hears that parents want to know where the money goes, not at the district level, but at the school site level. Their question is a wise one. Money is the resource most easily accounted for. But most districts don't have site level records of budgets or actual expenditures, let alone a breakout of central services (facilities maintenance, for instance) that go to each school site. When a parent or taxpayer asks how much money is spent at this school, they should be able to get an answer.

But enough of my hooting. How about yours?

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