Even Numbers Got Limits

9.29.11 By Noel Reyes

Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings
But you push too hard, even numbers got limits
Why did one straw break the camel’s back? Here’s the secret:
The million other straws underneath it.

—Mos Def

The first faculty meeting of this school year was a lot like the first faculty meeting of last school year. And the one before that. The ingredient they all shared was an administrator reciting slide after slide of student achievement data on standardized tests, and then comparing that data to other schools in the district. And it’s not hard to understand why: these numbers have the power to close, open, merge, “takeover,” or “turnaround” entire schools, sometimes uprooting and rearranging the children, families, and communities they serve. Right now, this is the data that matters most.

It shouldn’t be.

Last June, many of the ninth graders I taught in my first year of teaching graduated. Now, they are in their first semester of college. I think of them often, and they remind me of a number that should matter more: the percentage of BPS graduates who go on to graduate from a four-year university. If we really care about college degrees—if we really mean it when we say that’s our goal for every student—then shouldn’t we at least know how we’re doing?

It’s bad enough that so many of our students don’t make it to graduation. But what we should know, for the ones that do, is whether or not the education they received in our schools adequately prepared them for college. We should know what their strengths are, and in what areas they are struggling. This information, much more than the numbers that we know now, could guide our efforts to improve. We know we’re not properly serving the ones who don’t graduate—but are we serving the ones who do?

Another number that should be more important than standardized testing data is the graduation rate. The real graduation rate. Schools often mislead when they offer their dropout rate instead of their graduation rate, because it allows those students who didn’t graduate but never officially dropped out to fly under the radar. Schools also often report that 98%, or maybe even 100% of their seniors were accepted to college. This popular statistic often hides the fact that there may be only half as many students left at senior year than started as freshmen. And that’s the real number—what percentage of students who began in 9th grade are accepted to a four-year university? This is a more manageable number to know, but this is another number that never makes it to the PowerPoint slide. I suspect that very few school leaders know this data by heart, but most could tell you—without looking it up—what percentage of 10th grade students passed the MCAS.

As a teacher, I play this game, too. I’ve prepared students for the ELA MCAS for the past three years, and have been praised for high passage rates. So high, in fact, that educators across the district have noticed. Far fewer seemed to notice that many of those students who passed the test didn’t actually graduate from 10th grade. If only I was as good at preparing kids to graduate. Even now, I know exactly how many of my students passed the MCAS last year. Does this mean those kids are prepared for college? I don’t have any numbers on that.