News Room:
Letter to the Editor
HIGH SCHOOL REFORM
Students’ achievements were misrepresented
Barbara Miner’s opinion expressing doubts about Milwaukee’s small high school reform initiative included inaccurate and misleading information (“Secondary education,” Crossroads, Feb. 1).
Miner wrote: “El Puente and Shalom, often held up as examples of successful small schools, did not have any students taking the ACT in 2001-’02. Their graduation rates, respectively, were 49% and 52%.”
These claims are false. Eleven students at El Puente and Shalom took the ACTs in 2001-‘02. Graduation rates for these schools, as reported by the Milwaukee Public Schools Office of Diversified Community Schools to the Department of Public Instruction, are 96% and 97%, respectively.
The small schools and the students who choose them should not have their performance misreported and their achievements ignored.
Miner’s mistake is that she draws on graduation statistics from an MPS report that does not consider the specific education plans, accelerated credit earning models and graduation requirements at El Puente and Shalom high schools.
As for the ACTs, MPS simply did not seek that information from partnership schools like El Puente and Shalom; therefore, an MPS report incorrectly registered no partnership school students taking the test.
These inaccuracies highlight a major challenge facing committed reformers: documenting the performance of diverse and effective small schools and innovations in a system that is accustomed to standardized “one size fits all” data-gathering and reporting.
MPS must develop more flexible and accurate accountability practices if we are to realize the new vision of secondary education that holds so much promise for our community’s families and children.
Roberta “Bobbi” Aguero
Small schools development
Technical Assistance & Leadership Center
Milwaukee
Download: “Students’ achievements were misrepresented” PDF (46 Kb)
