Love these comments by Roy Romer, superintendent of Los Angeles city schools - a job, he claims, is harder than being governor of Colorado or Democratic Party chairman:
Too many Los Angeles high and middle schools are too big. Many have more than 5,000 students. Romer wants schools configured in more manageable units — say, 500 pupils — so teachers can know students for four years "and everybody owns the results." In the Army, Romer says, "if someone can't march, the unit's response is, 'Hey, you're embarrassing us.' " He wants schools to feel similarly implicated in each student's performance.
Although many children are already performing well below grade when they arrive at kindergarten, the district has achieved dramatic improvement in elementary school test scores. Romer thinks this is because an elementary school "is a small learning community"...
The school district's dramatic improvement in elementary school scores is the result of a rigorous curriculum featuring instruction in phonics. Plus what Romer calls "really trained teachers — trained after they leave school," trained especially in how to teach reading. Plus teaching coaches in classrooms. Plus — Romer calls this "the real culture-changer" — diagnostic measurement. Tests developed by the Educational Testing Service to serve as models for other school systems return results in 24 hours, revealing what homework is needed and shaping classroom instruction for each child during the subsequent 10 weeks.
To those who criticize "teaching to the test," Romer responds: That is what flight schools do. Because we take flying seriously.
Heh.
Posted by kswygert at March 15, 2004 03:31 PM