Yesterday, my boss brought back information about our schools re-authorization process. Although we are a private alternative educational placement, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Education still 'approves' our program.
Start with an insane list of data. Insane because we must go back three years into our old records and pull out information that we were never tracking because the decision to track this information was just made - oh, and by the way, we are going to so poorly phrase the directions for data collection that most of the information is going to be useless because the different programs collecting it are going to record it in different ways. For example --
"C. Average Daily Attendance for AEDY student population at every grade level."What? How do you calculate this? From the FAQ --
Q: For data reporting purposes, how should AEDY programs determine “Average Daily Attendance?”
A: Average Daily Attendance should be calculated by taking the daily attendance of your student population by grade level (# of students you have in school that day by grade level) and dividing by the daily membership (# of students your AEDY program serves by grade level, even if they are absent that day).
That looks like the formula for a percentage. Not an average!!!
How about these two items.
M. Of the number of students in column B, how many at every grade level passed all 4 core content subjects (science, math, English, and social studies) while in your program?Do I recount the students who passed 4 core content subjects for item N? They did pass at least 3 of 4 core content subjects. What if someone else doesn't? Then the data collected is useless. I do not have a problem collecting and submitting data if it is a useful exercise. This is going to be a very time consuming and useless exercise.
N. Of number of students in column B, how many at every grade level passed at least 3 of 4 core content subjects (science, math, English, and social studies) while in your program?
AND NOW THE KICKER -- Going back to my original thought. Darrell Scott wrote this poem which I read in the intro to Chuck Norris' autobiography. I post it on my blog. Next day I start reviewing this packet of information regarding the application for our school. The first page I randomly flip to when I get the packet - the first item my eyes fall upon is as follows --
(3) A private alternative education institution shall: . . .(III) Be nonsectarian in all operations and shall not provide any religious instruction, nor shall it display religious objects and symbols on the premises of the institution.No God - in any form - allowed.
(FYI - 2008/09 AEDY Guidelines)
1 comment:
most schools keep track of their daily attendance rates in percentages... they like to keep above 95% attendance. and of course, you can do the average via the normal formula, but you just have to plug in percentages and get an average percentage.
but still... it all does sound quite queer. and you'd think they'd at least allow not necessarily religious instruction per se, but some education as to the different theologies out there. :-\
nice to see you posting again!
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