The “I Ching” teaches that “Before there can be great brilliance… there must be chaos.”
This is PART 4 in a series of blog posts that document our research, strategic thinking, observations and debates as we take on one of the last vestiges of the industrial revolution: the practice in schools of organizing kids into grade levels according to their chronological age.
There are often more questions than answers.
If we group our students according to their level of mastery and not by grade or chronological age;
If we defy all standard practice and industry norms and cultural mores and the hallowed “way we do things here”;
If we defy American tradition itself and simply assign children to classroom groupings according to what they are ready to learn next…
We must prepare to answer the questions. So we started by asking them ourselves:
Maureen asked: “Is it LEGAL to group kids for instruction– and eventually assign them a standardized test– according to their proficiency levels?” and “Is it ethical?”
Melinda asked: “If all kids take the California Standards Test according to their mastery level… and all kids end up scoring Proficient… won’t that look like we are cheating?”
Ryan asked: “A lot of our students are at different levels of proficiency for different subjects. Some are proficient in math but not language arts. So the state would have to provide our students with two different tests– two different grade levels. Are they going to be able to do that?”
Lowell asked: “So you are talking about ‘dummying down’ the rigor just so you get higher test scores?”
Anthony asked: “Isn’t this just a sneaky way of avoiding accountability as a charter school?”
The Wizard asked: “If we are labeling and re-labeling students by something other than a traditional grade level… won’t that effect our funding from the state?”
Ivonne asked: “If kids are grouped by mastery levels… and they don’t move to the next level until they demonstrate mastery of the level they are on… what happens to the kid that never demonstrates mastery? Are we going to have 19 year-olds on our K-8 campus now?”
Kira said: “It sounds like your plan takes a lot of pressure off the teachers with those AYP goal and other requirements by the state of California.” Then Kira asked: “But if you do that, and now kids move to the next level only after they score Proficient on the CST… haven’t you now transferred the pressure from the teachers to the students? What if you have students whojust aren’t good test takers? Are they stuck in elementary school forever?”
Conchita asked: “If you establish an age limit at El Milagro, and declare that you can’t stay here after the age of , say 14… but they still haven’t demonstrated mastery of the 8th Grade Test, are you just going to socially promote them to high school?”
And “How is that any different than what we do now?”
Maria asked: “What about students transferring in during the school year from traditional graded schools? If their child is a 5th grader, they are going to want them placed in the 5th grade!”
The Wizard is entitled to two questions so he asked: “How might our technology infrastructure play a role in helping students advance?”
pk asked: “Do you trust the California Standards Test… let alone the state standards… to serve as the benchmark for mastery before students can advance?”
Ricky asked: “Is this a protest against NCLB and the state’s accountability system… or a legitimate response to what the data tells us?”
Jonathan noted: “There are a lot of ways to demonstrate mastery of state standards other than by a standardized test. Are you giving the CST too much credibility as the main determiner of students moving forward? Are there other ways kids can demonstrate mastery of the state standards?”
RT asked: “Isn’t this a return to tracking? Not that I see a conspiracy in every new idea, but we have been down this road before. Isn’t this just another systemic guarantee that the same kids that always get left behind will still get left behind?”
Annie asked: “Can’t you achieve the same thing within the existing system of grade level groupings?”
And since we are married she asked: “You just aren’t happy until you are on the verge of getting fired, are you?”
Questions reflect the depth of the chaos. Or predict it.
So what if we organized our students for instruction according to the martial arts, mastery-based model that is thousands of years old instead of the archaic, age-driven system that we all perpetuate today?
In Taekwondo and other martial arts, students are assigned a white belt until they demonstrate mastery of ALL of the techniques, blocks, kicks, forms, and philosophies that are taught at that beginning of the learning continuum. They advance through the curriculum- color belt by color belt– until they reach the level of black belt. There is a high price to pay for not mastering all of those blocking and striking techniques if you spar with another black belt so Taekwondo instructors tend to promote students only when they are ready to be promoted.
So today I am throwing the first brick in the revolution. Right through the freaking window. Today it will be one brick. Tomorrow another. And then another. And I’ll invite you to pick up a brick or two as we get the momentum leaning our way. We are going to change El Milagro. And this blog is going to chronicle the change– the revolution– brick by brick by brick. 
This is the anniversary of my first blog. I have now been blogging for a full year. 59 posts, 147 comments and countless hours and caloric expenditures of creative energy later… here I am. Somewhere.
It’s Week 2 of the California Standards Test and students are fingering their math facts like an abacus. Many of 
And this morning, they will each complete question number 21– a pre-algebraic word problem with one absurd possible answer choice, one answer choice that will trick a number of children who aren’t yet test-savvy enough to smell a rat, one answer choice that is correct and one answer choice that goes down smoothly…a sugar sweet placebo to remind us all that standardized, multiple-choice tests are to the disadvantage of the children that actually think. But they don’t know if they got question #21 right. They don’t know if they fell for the tricks and the traps so they cannot make mid-flight adjustments like they do on their video games. They’ll never know.
But imagine what our teachers might do with the data if they could get it back next Tuesday. As they unwrap the tangled trends: 
It is Day 3 of the 2009 California Standards Test and it is quiet across the campus. Still. Ghost-like. Except for the traffic up on I-5 whistling like a turbine and leaning ceaselessly into the North wind. The South.
Now we are in it. And that heads-down, pencil-gnawing silence of testing is mixed in with a healthy dose of celebration. Every day. Today the staff will play the 7th and 8th graders in flag football. Yesterday there was a school-wide movie, a huge game of “Capture the Flag” and a chess tournament. The day before we cranked the music up and danced on the black top. Testing time is also a celebration of learning. We equate it with the team that practices all week long for a big game on Saturday. The practice is fun… but it doesn’t compare to the rush of competing in bright uniforms against another team.
"El Milagro Weblog" 