The 11 month school year is a program at our Title I elementary schools (Carver, Lexington Park, and Green Holly) which brings some students to school 5 weeks before the rest of the students return. For four weeks the students at school get intensive instruction (10 students per teacher) in fundamental reading and math skills, along with activities such as staging their own olympics with each class representing a different country. There were 170 students in the 11 month program last year because of teacher shortages, and the school system hopes to have 300 enrolled this year.

I visited the 11 month program at one school last year and was impressed by the way the students seemed to be connected to the learning activity. In a 10 student class, if one student isn't paying attention, the teacher can easily see the student's attention wander and quickly draw the student back. Indeed, when I watched the process I began to wonder if 10 student classes might not be the answer for improving all the test scores at Carver, Lexington Park, and Green Holly.

But here's the problem - other early start programs such as Head Start have resulted in early improvement which disappeared as the students progressed through regular classes in the school. Even though the 11 month program is being funded by Federal dollars, those are still our tax dollars and we have a right to know that they are being spent in an effective manner.

Is the 11 month program effective? Watching it I thought so and so did Dr. Richardson and Dr. Fulton. But what we think isn't what matters. What matters is whether the students are becoming more proficient.

According to a school system representative, the desired outcome is that students would move toward becoming proficient at the grade level where they are, i.e. if they were not proficient last year in third grade, we want them to either test as proficient or more nearly proficient in fourth grade this year.

When I asked what data, other than stories such as mine, was available, the school system's answer was interesting. The system's representative says they only got the MSA test results back on June 20, and they have not yet analyzed the results to the level of being able to say there was or was not improvement. But with or without improvement in childrens' proficiency, the 11 month program is going forward. The Federal grant will continue.

The real question is, when will we know if the program is just another way to spend money or a successful and cost effective intervention for students not making adequate yearly progress? Dr. Martirano, is it reasonable to continue spending effort on this program without having evaluated its effect in an objective manner? How many years of evaluation will be needed before we know for sure what the results are? Is this program a good use of tax dollars?

I don't expect him to answer right away, but the community should have an answer before another renewal. If it works, let's try to find out why. If it doesn't work, let's try to find out why and create a better way to get the skill improvement the students need.

If we focus resources on a program that doesn't work, some children will become too old to be eligible for the next program - a program which may work. It's not fair to those children to lollygag about getting the data analyzed. They get a year older every year and pass from grade to grade, still not proficient.