News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Making sure Sisters students have mastered the "Three Rs" is more complicated than it used to be.
Like most schools in Oregon, Sisters is caught between wanting to set higher standards for students as they head into the 21st century, and ensuring that most students can meet those standards.
This year's 9th graders - the Class of 2001 - will be the first Sisters students to be required to meet new state standards for proficiency in areas such as math, reading, writing and speaking.
"We think students should be able to do certain things to be a good product of our education system," said Sisters' curriculum director Lora Nordquist.
But Sisters, like most schools, still won't require that students meet the new standards to get a diploma. That's because, as it stands now, a lot of students wouldn't meet the standards and couldn't graduate.
"It's not going to happen at the state level until we have the infrastructure in place to ensure that most of the students can meet the standards," Nordquist said. "I don't think you can just drop the bomb."
New state tests and local "work samples" measure student proficiency in math and writing in third, fifth, eighth and 10th grade. The tests and samples are supposed to test more than just the ability to come up with the right answer to a question.
For example, a math sample requires a student to do a problem, verify the answer, and also explain the process used to come up with the answer. Writing samples are scored on organization, fluency voice, and other criteria as well as content.
According to Nordquist, the standards are set pretty high, and students have to score well in every criteria in order to meet the standards.
The problem, Nordquist said, is that if the state insisted those standards were put in place now, "you're looking at going from 90 percent graduation to 30 percent."
Sisters did better than the state average in 8th grade assessment tests last year, and, in some scoring areas, Sisters students excelled.
But only 18 percent of Sisters students met the standards in all areas in math, and 55.6 percent met the standards in all areas of their writing assessment.
That's a long way from the Sisters School District's goal of having 85 percent of its students meet the state standards.
The difficulty in meeting state standards appears to be pushing their full implementation further and further away from becoming reality.
In fact, the state has cut back on the number of local work samples they require in math and writing from five per year to two or three. The state board of education thinks teachers need more training in how to score the samples. The number will be gradually phased back up, and other study areas will be added.
According to Nordquist, this doesn't mean the state is retreating from "standards-based" education.
"They're really insistent that it's not a retreat from the standards," she said.
Nordquist believes that the standards will be implemented slowly and in stages, perhaps linking the standards to requirements for class credit.
But the schools have a lot of hard work ahead before they finally set the bar of achievement at the lofty level set by the state.
"Before turning it into a graduation requirement, I'd like to see that we can get 85 percent of our kids to that standard," Nordquist said.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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