The district that I was looking is at Minneapolis Public School especially to Marcy Open School. I wanted to see the scores in Math for third and fourth graders. I saw that the third graders in 2013 when they took their math test they scored a 65.6% and fourth graders did 65.7% better than the following year. It was the same kids who took the exam where it made me see that the school is preparing them to be ready for the test. But the Mpls district thought that third grader from Marcy would score a 52,7% and fourth graders 50.4% after taking the math exams. (http://w20.education.state.mn.us/MDEAnalytics/Reports.jsp) One thing that surprised me was to see the English Learner weren’t doing that well especially fourth graders probability they were struggling of how to solve the problems because they were just learning the basic english language and not ready to take the exam (http://w20.education.state.mn.us/MDEAnalytics/Reports.jsp).When it comes to the achievement gap I could see that this school wasn’t focusing enough on the students who were English learners and assuming that they would do good when it came to testing. I think that they should find ways how to help them and their parents so they could be prepared for the tests that they would take and be at the level that the district wants every fourth grader should be. As teachers one should see how we can help the student who is struggling and how we can meet with their parents so we could build goals for them as they learn english and get used to the culture.
you thought of some great ideas of how we as teachers can help the kids close the gaps.
Great point about how resources are used. With the pressure of the testing, do you think that schools give the best resources or the most efficient? Or are those the same?