Where There's Smoke, There's Fire....Or Not...

If I'm not quite as well rested this week as I should be while preparing for the opening day of school, it's with good reason. This past weekend my family and I endured our smoke detectors going off indiscriminately at all hours of day and night for no apparent reason. We changed batteries, cleaned every detector, reset our system, all to no avail...apparently at some point these things just fail and have to be replaced. Fortunately, the alarms were not shrieking in response to a real threat of fire, but they were telling us there was a problem. Sometimes how we interpret information is more important than the information itself.



This past month, North High School received its test scores from the state of Michigan. North improved in every tested category except social studies where we stayed above 90% at 94% proficient. This effort by our students reflects a concentrated effort by staff to focus on literacy and writing in particular. Our writing scores on the state's standardized test increased by 6% while many schools saw declining writing scores this year.

In addition over the summer, we received notification from Newsweek that North was again named one of the top 1000 high schools in the States. We increased the number of students taking AP tests significantly while maintaining a pass rate of close to 70%.

How then, one might ask, is it possible that North does not meet the federal government's standards for "Adequate Yearly Progress" or AYP? Elsewhere on this blog is a lengthy explanation for how that determination is made, and on what basis. However, at first blush one might look at AYP status and use it to determine whether a school is in trouble. It's a kind of fire alarm for schools.

In this case, the truth is that North does have an issue - just not the one that it may appear to have - much like my own home fire alarm situation. While overall our school is doing exceptionally well (in fact is one of the very best schools not just in Michigan, but in the country), we have an achievement gap issue which is recognized in our AYP status. The gap between certain sub-populations in our school and our highest performing students is too big. Our goal is to eliminate that gap without sacrificing performance at the top.

On this blog, check out the link to our High Schools 2.0 plans, as well as the narrative on AYP to see some of our plans for attacking this achievement gap. While I don't believe in the methodologies being employed in the Federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, or particularly in our state's interpretation of the data points, all of us at North firmly believe that all children can and should succeed. The idea behind the law is sound despite its flawed implementation. Nevertheless, we are focused on getting better and leaving no child behind - for real.

Sometimes when the alarms go off, all is not as it seems - North is a tremendous school, and successful in almost every way, by almost any measure. Still the AYP alarm has helped us focus on our one real deficiency - closing the achievement gap that exists. We made tremendous progress this last year, and expect that progress to continue in 08-09.

Some say that NCLB's goal of 100% proficiency by all students by the year 2014 is unrealistic. It may be, but I do believe in the "shoot for the moon and if you miss you're still among the stars philosophy". In the midst of all of our accolades and successes we can't ignore the real meaning of an occasional alarm.