What are the real literacy numbers in Walled Lake?

At a recent Walled Lake Schools Board of Education Meeting, Assistant Superintendent of Learning Services, Cathy Kochanski, gave a presentation about the district's literacy data. The district has put a focus on improving vocabulary and informational text assessment results, and, although there has been some improvement, it is clear that barely more than half of students are achieving at or above grade level; most are 1, 2, or even 3+ years behind.

During the meeting, board member Shayna Levin asked why scores have been so low in these areas to begin with. Kochanski gave a curious answer. She said students who speak a different language at home have different academic vocabulary skills and that numbers for that population of students has increased over the years. Kochanski also said that students from economically disadvantaged households may talk less at home, and their data parallels with vocabulary and comprehension data. She also mentioned students with speech and language delays and difficulties may also struggle in these areas. When Levin asked a follow up question, about breaking out those populations from the data, to look at data for students who don't fit into those populations, Kochanski said "The data is different. While that is not something that I felt super comfortable sharing out in public, I'd be happy to share that out with the board at a separate time. I don't want to call anyone out for the data. I don't want to paint a negative picture for any of our subgroups or populations in any negative way but I'm happy to share that data with you separately." 

What Are They Hiding

Why wouldn't she want this data to be public?? Why would the district not want to talk about these numbers? What are they hiding? How can the district make an honest assessment of where it is when it refuses to ask - or to answer - hard questions like this?

Do Better

We cannot expect different results if we continue doing the same things. Our students are struggling, our teachers aren't being given the tools they need to succeed, and our district continues to decline. We must do better!

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