Politics and the California Academic
Performance Index
The politics of public education determine programs,
practices and policies. Is California politics implementing a plan
that creates an educational mediocrity? The Academic
Performance Index (API) for all California public schools bears close scrutiny.
The California legislature passed the Public Schools
Accountability Act, which required all California students to take a test
with national norms. A system of tracking academic performance was
designed. All students in the state took the SAT9 test in 1998.
Using the national percentiles of each student for their baseline data,
a record was established about what percentage of the total school population
scored in each quintile (100% has 5 even quintiles of 20 points each).
That data established their original Academic Performance Index (API) score.
Schools were told they needed to improve their
intro number by at least 5% per year or face sanctions. They
were also given a weighted scale that demonstrated that the easiest
way to earn intro points was to improve the scores of the kids who scored
in the lowest two quintiles. The scale is below:
ACHIEVEMENT
PERCENTILE:
|
# OF API POINTS GIVEN TO SCHOOL
WHEN A CHILD MOVES TO NEXT QUINTILE:
|
|
1ST - 19TH QUINTILE
|
200
|
|
20TH - 39TH QUINTILE
|
***500***
|
|
40TH - 59TH QUINTILE
|
175
|
|
60TH - 79TH QUINTILE
|
125
|
|
80TH - 99TH QUINTILE
|
0
|
You will note that a teacher only has to move
one child from the 39th to the 40th percentile to get as many points as
moving 4 1/2 students from the 79th to the 80th percentile.
With the threat of sanctions if they did not improve their API, and the
reward of cash to schools who did, the focus of the state's teachers
moved to the lowest achievers. If the parents of the average
and better students knew this was happening, they would obviously be very
concerned that their child's education was being sacrificed in
order to free-up teachers to remediate the low achievers.
The API public disclosure literature referred to a weighted scale but did
not give any other information.
Provisions were made in the API tracking system
to earn points by improved test scores, especially of the lowest achievers,
but no provisions were made to deduct points when the scores of
the higher achievers dropped because their teachers were busy elsewhere.
The net result is a plan to give the appearance of improving education
but in reality was a plan to cluster student achievement more in the
middle. While this may, in some minds, be a "fair" way
to implement public policy in a democracy; history tells us that is is
the way to plan a decline in economic prosperity.
The same kind of "clustering to the middle"
practices are taught in the California state college and university
teacher credential programs. Under the guise of helping kids develop
a spirit of "helpfulness", student-teachers have been taught to use
their better students to remediate the weaker ones. It is
now common practice throughout the state, much to the chagrin of better
students who don't wish to be viewed as "superior".
It is the same kind of thinking that causes districts
to create "invisible" gifted programs. In this program,
children identified as having skills "in the gifted range" are not gathered
together to have higher level or faster paced instruction. They are
left in regular classrooms so that no one will "feel bad" because
that are not gifted! Presumably the teacher surreptitiously
slips special papers to the "invisible gifted student" when no
one is looking.
There is great danger to society and the economy
when such policies are implemented on a wholesale scale. How
can we thrive if we are not developing top students who later invent, create,
innovate, start or lead businesses, hire employees, and certainly - pay
taxes.
