BOARD BRIEFING-ACHIEVEMENT REPORT

Just a quick write on the presentations given to the board related to the TAPR report on STAAR results, Attendance, Graduation, College and Career Readiness.  Also the results of how Achieve 3000 has supported student achievement.

The TAPR report went fast and furious as Arispe just showed the slide and said this is what it is with no substance behind some of the information where the district is struggling or the plan to address it, if the plan is in place or what will be done.  With at least 40 schools under PEG you would think major things would be taking place.  But as we hear all the time, great powerpoint.  Paz has become the new Needham as she hails the reports with so much enthusiasm but can't tell you what it means.  Our students are not College and Career Ready, our SAT/ACT is low.  While we want students to be on grade level and reading by 3rd grade, we still have thousands who have slipped through the cracks and won't be ready.  You can't just forget about them to focus on others, those are the students who will impact our society until 2025 when the goals is to be reached.

So we get to Achieve 3000 and the monotone robots of Charles and the new girl in Curriculum.  So they prepared written statements and read off of them which tells you they needed to make sure the message was exactly how Scribner wanted it because this program is costly and implementation was bad.  But what we heard here is that Lexile scores have risen as students sit through 40 lessons and that indicates to them that students have learned much more.  The more you read the better you get, etc. so there is bound to be growth.  How much of that growth translates into comprehension, analytical skills, etc. we don't know.

Many questions that our leaders don't know to ask were left unanswered.

*How does the growth in Achieve 3000 correlate to the TEKS and mastery?

*What are the benchmark scores after going through a semester of Achieve 3000?  If there is growth there then it should show?  We don't get to see that.

*How has it impacted teacher time as they are required to do it two days a week?  Apparently teachers are to pre-teach and then students get on the computer.

The board is so excited about it that they feel Achieve 3000 is the savior of all that ails FWISD, in that case why have teachers?

The PD figures presented by Curriculum didn't say if it was on site training or teachers who went on their own time.  Forced fed PD is not differentiated, it is compliance.

So any of you see anything different?