Then later the teacher across the hall gave me some good rationale as to why I sometimes hate my job. And, quite frankly, it serves as the same rationale as to why I will not be staying in this position for the long haul. To understand, you'll have to take the time to visit this link: http://reportcards.edtrustwest.org/district-data?county=Contra+Costa&district=West+Contra+Costa+Unified&report_year=2010
The site provides a good snapshot of publicly available data ranked against the state's largest unified school districts. Along with rankings are grades that accompany the four indicators that help describe our effectiveness in serving our Latino, African-American, and low-income students.
The report uses information from California's Academic Performance Index (API), performance and improvement of students of color and low-income students, the achievement gaps between our white students and Latino and African-American students, and college readiness based on completion rates for the California college-preparatory sequence known as the A-G standards (your basic credits of English, math, science, etc.). I'll give you a minute to check out the site before you read on. You can check out other districts in our Contra Costa County too, or look at the stats for Oakland Unified in Alameda county if you are interested at all in the other districts nearby that TFA addresses. Go ahead, I'll wait.
I present to you the entire background of this study and report because even seeing what I see every single day does not make me any less surprised that our school district, West Contra Costa USD, is the ONLY school district in California that received an overall grade of an F. I knew that we were ONE of the most failing districts in the state, but I had no idea that we were (un)officially THE worst, according to The Education Trust - West, a statewide education advocacy organization working to close opportunity and achievement gaps for students of color and those in poverty.
In conclusion, on paper, we suck. And it's really depressing that a year of blood (check), sweat (check), and tears (double check) has done nothing to alter our grade ranking to anything other than another shade of F. I would argue that the study needs more qualitative analysis into things like about how much extra effort is required or offered by a district's teachers, about positive relationships between students and teachers, or even about the amount of violence, crime and poverty that exists in a community to draw a picture of what kind of life these kids live inside and outside of school. But then again, I know that if I were in one of those great districts receiving a B grade on the whole, hearing a district like WCCUSD make comments like that, I would tell my F-grade district friend that those are just excuses. After all, so many things in the educational world are data-driven, like district funding and college acceptance. And plus, these positive qualitative experiences that these kids are getting from us are much less effective when the kids aren't able to WRITE about it cohesively in a college application. It's so sad that these kids experience so much more than anyone ever knows, and yet these experiences are hindering their ability to learn HOW to communicate these experiences effectively. And that, my friends, is what we call a negative feedback loop. Negative on two fronts: they are falling behind scholastically of course, but they are also getting poor training in ways to communicate their feelings as a sort of release - kind of like, oh, I don't know... a blog.
Of course, that is to no fault of our English teachers; I totally understand the depth and breadth of what is required of them to teach to get our kids reasonably on track. Us math teachers can relate. The Executive Director of the organization that runs the study was quoted in the accompanying article that "the grades on these report cards provide district leaders and community members with critical information on how well their Latino, African-American, and low-income students are faring." While I know it is not meant this way, it feels like they are asking, "Do you even know how badly you're doing?" And the answer to you Dr. Arun Ramanathan is yes, yes we do. And while you think that your study will motivate us to try harder, we're just about at our capacity for trying. I may be speaking for myself, but I'm pretty positive that the majority of our staff tries really hard. And the members of the faculty who have no idea what the hell they are doing are here BECAUSE we are the state's F-grade district. Again: negative feedback loop. For those of us rowing the figurative boat (and the ones who may actually read your study), it is already known that the turnaround CAN be done, so your efforts are merely landing as another reminder that our data still says we suck.
On the bright side though, it's relieving to know that there are no districts worse than us. Things may be bad in WCCUSD, but I can imagine many ways where it could be worse - I'm just glad that scenario doesn't exist. I would wish that fate upon no one.
If you have time, check out the full written report here: http://reportcards.edtrustwest.org/sites/default/files/rankings/ETW_DistrictReportCard_2011.pdf
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