It's that time of year again. St. Mary's County Public Schools must submit its updated Master Plan to the State Department of Education. Part of that process is supposed to be an objective evaluation what is working and what is not. The reason for this evaluation is a requirement in the No Child Left Behind Act to use data to evaluate the school system's progress.

I'm no fan of the No Child Left Behind Act. I think it simply funneled a lot of money to testing companies who were too often not competent to score the tests they sold. One year over 4,000 teachers who actually passed the certification tests were told by a testing company that they had failed. The State of Utah sued its testing company. I have heard a number of horror stories about incorrectly graded High School Assessments that would have prevented students from graduating if parents hadn't insisted on reading their child's tests.

But I have to say I really like watching the school system deal with the fact that it isn't perfect in teaching every student. For much of the school year the school system pretends to be perfect. When it does something silly, such as assigning a teacher without computer training to teach a middle school computer technology course, it pretends everything is just wonderful. As Mrs. Dudderar said to the Board of Education last Monday, the system has successes and challenges. Apparently, there are no failures.

We celebrated the students' performance on the SAT tests last week. That highest ever score is a great success. But Carver Elementary School is a school “In Improvement.” That's a “challenge.” What have we done to help Carver improve? We have lowered the class size to 16 or 17 students. That should make a difference, but I'm betting 10 would be even better. We'll see.

Spring Ridge Middle School is also a School “In Improvement.” There the school system chose to add a counselor, an academic dean, and an assistant principal. Why not lower class sizes at Spring Ridge too?

Lexington Park Elementary School didn't make Adequate Yearly Progress last year. What will Lexington Park get to keep it from joining the “In Improvement” group next year? One teacher and four additional paraeducators. I guess we'll be running a test to see if smaller class size (as at Carver) is more or less successful than adding paraeducators (as at Lexington Park). Oh, and the relocatables that were on the list for last year at Lexington Park have not yet arrived. When Margaret Brent is completed and the students moved into the new building, Lexington Park is supposed to get some additional classrooms. One wonders where the children are now that will fill those relocatables?

In addition to Lexington Park being in danger of being “In Improvement next year, and Carver and Spring Ridge being “In Improvement” this year, our whole school system is “In Improvement” because its Special Education students are not reading as they should. The school system has decided to add a sound field system (an amplification system) to those special education classes, at least at Spring Ridge Middle School. Research says those sound field systems improve learning.

That should be fun. The walls in those classrooms are very thin. Imagine the middle school students in that modified open space school finding and adjusting the volume level to have loudness wars with the adjacent classroom.

Best of all the proposals for improving learning is the use of “formative assessments.” According to the Dictionary of Education, Formative evaluations (another word for assessments) “focus on identifying and understanding the internal dynamics of programs in operation.” One could call it “testing as you go.” Remember those weekly spelling tests we all studied for? They were formative assessments.

But in today's world you hire a testing company to help you. As Superintendent. Martirano has said, “We don't want to wait for the results. Formative assessments involve looking at individual monitoring of students and we can make adjustments immediately. “ He doesn't want to gloss over individualized instruction. So the school system has signed a contract with Performance Matters and is working with principals for a year-long training process.

Is he trying to tell us that principals of elementary schools with nearly 700 students will be examining individual performance on a student by student basis? I certainly hope not. The principals would never do anything for the whole school year but look at the formative assessment data. The point is not, as we learned when Mechanicsville Elementary school was saturated with Baldridge data last year and yet fell from the 4th best to the 12th best elementary school in the County, to have the data. The point is, as Dr. Martirano has said, to make adjustments immediately. It seems to me that teachers need the data. And I'm sure they will get it. They'll just keep administering spelling tests, math tests, reading tests, social studies tests, etc. of their own design and adjusting their teaching according to what children need to learn. That is, they will adjust their teaching if the school system will allow them to adjust the “curriculum maps” of what is to be taught when.