Schools in Need of Improvement

I agree that the system for evaluating schools is broken.  My reasoning is very different from those educators whom I have seen commenting in the media on this. 

Why can not we tell how well the kids are learning during the year long before they take "the test?"  It seems to me  that  to depend on these tests to tell us where we are is a bit bizarre.  "The test" should be a final sanity check. We should be evaluating students and teachers then correcting these problems as they arise.  Achievement First has far and away the best system for evaluating students on the fly that I have ever seen.  http://www.achievementfirst.org/our-approach/athena/

Beyond that, by the time kids take "the test" and the district gets the result, the kid is already a grade ahead.  Once kids get behind it is much more difficult to get them to catch up. 

I understand that the new teachers' contract was designed in part to correct this in part by evaluating teachers.  I cannot wait to see if that works.

Salem until recently used Everyday Math.  I understand they have backed away from that disaster more recently. I warned against it when they, the school district, first looked at this method and lobbied against it vehemently to no effect. I had a long chain of emails with one of the School Board members.  We are seeing the consequence of that bad decision now.  And these test results in math indicate that it is the kids who are paying the price for this weak math curriculum.