Three weeks remain in the 2009-10 school year an we have just finished testing. We expect to see significant growth over the year before and we expect the schools down the street will have gotten even more growth and we will be reminded that the schools down the street did it right and we are somehow not as efficient or effective or committed or skilled or blessed or insightful or something.
In the meantime, we also moved the ball down the field on our plan to implement more multi-age classrooms and transform our teaching. We are preparing to return to a curriculum that inspires our children to think and create and spring out of bed in the morning and race down the street to El Milagro because there are things happening here that are worth learning. In the post-test celebration our students danced on the playground and I was reminded how much I miss seeing them find their rhythm.
Along the way we even challenged ourselves to find a solution to that stubborn dilemma that all teachers face in June: what to do with the kids that aren’t ready for the next grade. Retain them? Socially promote them? Transfer them to the schools down the street that have all the answers?
We decided that no one zeros in on student needs like we do. We decided that we wouldn’t have to retain or socially promote kids that weren’t ready… if we just get them all ready! And since kids learn and develop on their own time , we decided we would give each struggling learner their own timeline and gameplan for promotion… and multi-age classrooms allow us to do that.
So much is happening at El Milagro… even in the face of opposition and cynicism that we are somehow cheating or taking short cuts. If you read this blog you know… we are totally focussed on finding a better way. So we dip, even for a moment, into the fires, searching for that wisdom that even those schools down the street might learn from us.
The history of El Patio Restaurant is written in its walls. It is as old as California. Father Serra may have stopped here for handmade beef tamales on his journey north to build California’s first missions. His ghost is still in the corner, plugging the jukebox with strange coins and listening to classic ’60s low rider anthems and tejano ballads.
The API is California’s Academic Performance Index. It is a long and tortured statistical calculation that synthesizes each school’s test results into a 3-digit number. Every student at every grade and every subject area is calculated and “processed” like an elegant wood chipper that grinds otherwise healthy leaves and limbs into useful chips. It weighs the number of students that score proficient and reflects overall organizational growth from year to year. Every school in California is obligated to somehow reach the API promised land of 800 or face the fate of the mastodons.
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“And we know that if 50% of our students– especially 50% of our English language learners– don’t score proficient on the California Standards Test we will miss the AYP benchmark for the first time and we will go into Program Improvement. We know that. We are climbing a mountain. So we added a full hour to the instructional day and tried to target students who were borderline. And every teacher provided English Language Development to every student for :35 minutes every single day. Damn… that has to count for something!”
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?”
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?”
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. 
"El Milagro Weblog" 