Eduleadership

As I was entering our standardized test data into a strategic plan template this morning, I saw that one of the options for the various subgroups (Native American, African American, Latino, Free/Reduced Lunch, etc.) was:
n < required

In other words, No Child Left Behind does not hold us accountable as a school for this group’s performance, because the group does not contain enough students.

I can appreciate this from the perspective of statistical validity – it’s not fair to say a school is doing a poor job on the basis of the test scores of a small handful of students.

But neither can we ignore the students in these small groups. Indeed, a commitment to equity demands that we never think of a group as insignificant, that we never think of a child as ignorable.

We owe our attention and dedication and best efforts to the education of all children, even – and especially – if they are but a small fraction of our school’s population.