WHAT IS NYACK PIE?
Nyack Partners in Education is a non-profit group of parents, teachers and other community members who are dedicated to improving public education.
Working often from the outside, we have raised a number of issues including alternative learning methods, the effects of race and class in school, and how all members of the community can contribute.
Last year, PIE granted more than $3,000 in seed money/or various educational projects including tutoring, environmental trips, hands-on learning events, and extra reading instruction.
One of the most important things we do is to try to help adults with information, guidance, and support as their children pass through the Nyack schools.
We 're open to the public and urge you to join our meetings, twice a month at HeadStart of Rockland, Depew Avenue, Nyack.
WELCOME BACK!!
Nyack Partners In Education greets you at the start of a new school year. It's a time of exciting possibility: students and teachers are fresh and a great sea of learning lies ahead. There should be a sense that, with hard work, your child can learn anything!
Part of our job as adults it to try keep on top of what's changed in school and what it means for our children's education. Nyack PIE is here to help.
Just as school ended last June, we managed to pass a budget. In and of itself, that doesn't mean much, but we hope it indicates a Nyack/Valley Cottage unity that's been missing for a number of years. We also re-elected two experienced school board members in Mary Wallace and Pierre Davis and hope the school board will address some fundamental educational issues this year.
Because this is a time of possibility, we've dedicated this newsletter to the subject of tracking, bound to be an area of debate no matter who's running the ship. We hope you find this newsletter helpful as your child navigates the coming school year.
The only way to improve what happens in the classroom, to keep tabs on your child's progress, and to hold our schools to the highest standards is to make your voice heard.
You came out to pass the budget. Now, come out to help run the schools!
IS MY CHILD BEING TRACKED?
(A Quiz for Parents)
Has your child been in a class with the same group of kids year after year?
Yes ____ No____
Do your children get roughly the same grades no matter how much they study? Yes___ No___
Is your child's homework too easy? Does it seem to be the same material this year as last year? Yes___ No___
Do you get the feeling that your children know their level: "Oh, I'm a B-student Mom."? Yes___ No ___
Is your child rarely surprised or challenged in school? Yes___ No___
Is your child mostly in class with children of the same racial makeup?
Yes___ No___
If you answered "yes" to one or more of the above questions, your child is probably being tracked. For more on what tracking means, see this special issue of the PIE Newsletter
HOW DOES TRACKING AFFECT MY CHILD?
Tracking limits your child's education.
Tracks are given fancy names, but basically they translate into Smart, Average, and Dumb. Once your child is placed in a track, his or her expectations are set. Nyack District statistics show that children very rarely change trucks.
An Average child isn't encouraged to take advanced classes. Children labelled Dumb too often get a watered-down curriculum. So-called Smart children are kept apart from the rest of the school.
One example: a recent Nyack graduate got a college basketball scholarship, but because of the low track he'd been in, he didn't have the background to do college level courses and almost lost his scholarship. He had spent four years in high school doing two years worth of work.
There have been more than 700 national studies of tracking, 85% of which have
WHAT IS TRACKING?
Tracking is grouping by ability. The idea behind it is that children are born with a certain amount of intelligence. As a result, the school system decides how much children can and cannot learn.
HOW DO THEY DECIDE MY CHILD'S TRACK?
The decision affecting how much your child will learn in high school begins early. Your child's track is pretty well decided in elementary school by a combination of testing and teachers' recommendations. The tracks become fixed in Middle School.
In Nyack, grouping begins in kindergarten. When your child registers for school, there is a state-mandated screening test to decide the gifted and those in special education.
By first grade, children who test low in reading go to Reading Recovery, a remedial course.
Through second grade, teachers observe the children and give them tests including math and cognitive skills (reading and writing) to identify high and low achievers.
In third grade, those who score highest on tests (about 3 children per grade) are put in one classroom where the teacher has been trained to teach the gifted. Lowest scoring children get reading and other help funded by state Title I money.
In other words, by age 9, your child has probably been placed in a track, and statistics show it's next to impossible to change that decision.
Nationwide, roughly 90% of students stay in their assigned track.From third grade through fifth grade, the gifted continue to be clustered together. In addition, there is grouping within each class: the teachers may put slow readers in one group, medium in another, fast in a third. The district's policy is that these groups should be shuffled during the school day, but that doesn't always happen.
Entering the Middle School, the Smart and Average groups are mixed m sixth grade. A low, compensatory education group - identified through fifth grade tests - stay in separate classes.
Nyack's seventh grade is where tracking takes hold. If your child is placed in a high math group, he or she is on track to leam calculus in twelth grade: a nationally recognized gateway to getting into a good college. In the same way, if your child takes advanced science, he or she is on track to be learning physics: another gateway. Though Social Studies isn't supposed to be tracked in seventh grade, your child will often end up with the same group of students in most classes. Once there is tracking in one or two classes, scheduling forces your child to be tracked in all areas,
Eighth through twelfth grades are heavily tracked. Your child will either be in the highest level. Advanced Placement (AP), Advanced (AD), Regents Level (RL), or General Level (GL). With the new state mandates, your child may not earn a diploma if he or she is in RL and GL courses.
Finally, national studies have shown that tracking is often inaccurate. An off-day on a test, a difference of two or three points, how your child looks or speaks may determine how much the school offers them.
WHAT ARE THE
ARGUMENTS FOR TRACKING?
1. Smart students are held back by slower learners. They have to wait around while Average students struggle to get the point. For a very small percentage of the most gifted students, this may be true, but test reults show that the majority of our students are hurt by tracking. Tracking provides smart students with the best teachers, facilities, and curriculum, while the rest gets what's left.
2. Students feel better about themselves if everyone in their class leams at the same speed.. Studies show that tracking lowers self-esteem. When students know their fate has been decided — "You're smart; you 're not" — they often stop trying.
3. Teachers teach to one level and,so, do a better job. Tracking demoralizes many teachers. Too often teachers who 've been in the system a long time are "rewarded' with advanced classes. That means new and young teachers get the difficult classes filled with students who 've
SO, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE TRACKING?
Tracking only helps a fraction ofNyack's students, but the parents of the children who do benefit tend to be those with the most influence in the schools.
In the words ofJeannie Oakes, a professor at UCLA and author of KEEPING TRACK:
"White and wealthier families, in particular, have fought to maintain a system that guarantees their children will have a rich curriculum, extraordinarily well-qualified teachers, a peer group who is very much like them in terms of background and values and interests. The political pressure from those groups to maintain that system is extraordinarily great...."
WHAT HAS NYACK DONE ABOUT TRACKING?
To Nyack's credit, over the last few years, the district has made some positive steps towards de-tracking:
• The Wings program for so-called gifted children was eliminated in elementary school and teachers got some training in working with mixed-ability classes.
• Sixth grade Math and English were de-tracked last year by mixing the Smart and Average groups into one.
• The Science department has reduced the number of tracks and encouraged more students to take more advanced classes.
In all cases, de-tracking has resulted in higher overall test results. The district's data shows that de-tracking has improved scores and understanding for most students and that the Smart have not been slowed down.
WHAT
CAN I DO?/. Find out what track your child is in. Talk to your principal, your child's teachers and advisors. Find out if your child is on track to do advanced work in high school.
2. Ask to see your child's records. Every parent has a right to see their child's reports, test results, and any teachers' comments.
3. Request the best classes. Tracking won't disappear tomorrow. In the meantime, you have a right to place your child in the most exciting, stimulating classes. Ask for them and, no matter the level, make sure the teachers are rotated so that everyone has a shot at the best. Make sure the school understands you expect your child not just to succeed but to excel.
4. Support de-tracking. Tell your principal how you feel about tracking, Ask teachers if they will help get rid of tracked classes. Pay attention to changes in curriculum that promote higher learning for only a few. Request that the school board hold an informational meeting about tracking and let them know
CHANGES AT THE TOP
The summer saw some important changes in personnel in the district. Valley Cottage hired a new principal: Brenda drier. Fred Prelaw has left as Director of Curriculum, and Mary Anne Evangelists has come on as the new Assistant Superintendent More on all this in our next issue.
HAVE A GREAT YEAR!
What do you want from your child's education?
Certainly, part of it is high achievement: the best test scores, the chance to go to the finest college. But there are other things we all want that are harder to measure.
One of the finest resources our district offers is its mix of students — and the social and moral education that comes from working with such a diverse group. We assume that anyone who chooses the the Nyack/Valley Cottage schools for their children truly values our wide range of people. It's another part of the excitement of a new school year: who will I meet? What new culture will I come in contact with?
Nyack PIE is concerned that tracking blocks that mix. Why go to a school with such a wealth of difference if your child ends up with the same 25 students most of the day? We don't want the kind of school where our children only mix with others on the sports field or after hours. Instead of fostering understanding, that kind of segregation threatens to strengthen prejudices and ignorance.
This school year, like any other, has the possibility of being a great one for your child: rewarding, challenging, educational. Let's make sure that those possibilities aren't just talk but truly exist.
