“Adequacy! It’s so … whelming. To be charitable, perhaps this school had to overcome lots of daunting obstacles on the road to adequacy, but it seems so American somehow to trumpet one’s own institutional mediocrity as a victory.”
Actually, making AYP goals under NCLB is not mediocrity. What it means is that the literacy goals at the three measured grades (4, 8 and 11) in several areas were all met. This is not necessarily an easy task as it involves seeing improvement in reading, math and science as well as improvement in dropout rate and graduation rate.
So, far from being mediocre, the school has a right to celebrate. The thing is the goals increase each year…thus why they are called adequate yearly PROGRESS. The ultimate goal being that 100% of the student body is achieving at grade level.
So before you dismiss this as being a tribute to mediocrity, perhaps you should check your district’s website and see for yourself what they have achieved in order to make that claim. Districts are required to publish their AYP goals annually to the public.
Perhaps then you will see that, far from being mediocre, meeting these goals means that the staff has improved in many areas…something more and more schools are failing to do.

“Adequate yearly progress” or AYP is a term of art from, I believe, the No Child Left Behind Act.
But I agree with you. The banners sound weird and depressing.

Here is a link to the Dept. of Education website where they describe what is meant by Adequate Yearly Progress.
www2.ed.gov/nclb/accountability/ayp/edpicks.jhtml
And, if your concern is with language, please don’t pick at the school. These are not state goals but rather federal goals set under the Bush administration’s NCLB legislation.

How could you possibly write this post without referencing Bill McNeil’s musings on adequacivity? I wouldn’t have thought it possible.

Helen and hlvanburen are right it is NCLB nonsense. I despise that legislation. The same standards don’t apply across all states, and they can tweak their year of year standards. The result is garbage in, garbage out.
Even worse is the underlying faulty logic. Using their logic you treat diabetes by repeated blood sugar testing coupled with starvation when the measurement is wrong. You can also jump out of airplanes without a parachute by making year of year of adequate progress. First jump off a stool, then a step ladder, etc.
No I am not a public school teacher. I have children in the public school and I hate the time wasted prepping for these useless tests.

That’s the goverment’s terminology, formulated under the Bush administration. If they didn’t make adequate yearly progress, the school would have lost control over some of its money, might have had to fire some of its staff or the administration or might have lost local control to the state. It’s a fairly big deal. I have yet to meet a teacher or an administrator who isn’t happy to tell me in great detail, off the record, how much they hate No Child Left Behind. One of my co-workers said her daughter’s school is testing this week and is bribing the kids to pay attention on the tests by letting them skip their actual math tests (the ones that are for the actual work they do in the classroom) or letting them drink soda pop in school. Last fall I was at an actual pep rally prior to one of these tests where the teachers threatened the kids that they’d get rid of their sports teams and make them stay after school to do more work if they didn’t make AYP. At one of the local schools kids ARE coming in before or after school to do additional work. It’s an incredibly big deal to these schools.

Rod,
I have three brothers and a sister-in-law who teach in vastly different public schools. None of them get all summer off, with continuing education and certification, band camp, and other requirements.
One teaches in a large urban school district, where those who can afford to have either moved to the burbs or sent their kids to private schools. Thus they end up with the least-supported students. The principal recently proposed replacing half of the teachers with computers and “adults,” which means more staff, but fewer certified teachers.
Another teaches band in a smaller urban district that is highly immigrant — Mexican, Guatemalan, Vietnamese, Burundian, etc. He raised more than $10,000 and 80 instruments for the program in one year and has increased participation in the band program each year and the school now advertises it as a reason for students in other district to come to Godfrey Lee. But the district is eliminating 6th grade band next year to meet budget.
Another teaches Spanish and ESL in a rural district with quite a few immigrants from the Americas, Russia, Ukraine, and Bosnia. They are eliminating several positions next year. Steve admits they have some fat they can still cut without cutting to the bone.
Karen teaches Chemistry and AP Chemistry in a rural district that has both fantastically bright students and very poor students. The teachers are in rebellion against the administration because the superintendent did not report several instances of bomb threats and guns in school last year.
These conditions and constant pressure to “teach to the test” are where teachers are working these days. Why do you think they still do it?
Peace,
Randy G.

so instead of a tribute to mediocrity, it’s a fine example of newspeak.

“Adequacy” at one time had a positive meaning – prepared and ready to meet a challenge, as in “adequate for the task.” Somehow it morphed into a synonym for average or, as in the case you cite, meeting minimum requirements.

“Adequacy” at one time had a positive meaning – prepared and ready to meet a challenge, as in “adequate for the task.” Somehow it morphed into a synonym for average or, as in the case you cite, meeting minimum requirements.
I think that might have to do with a world system that only assigns value to the top performers and holds the ‘merely average’ in contempt.

Most of the posts here completely miss the point. Dreher isn’t eschewing the idea that the school met its academic goals. He is spoofing the terminology used…”Adequate”
Seriously, people. Ya think we could come up with a better term?

Most of the posts here completely miss the point. Dreher isn’t eschewing the idea that the school met its academic goals. He is spoofing the terminology used…”Adequate”
Seriously, people. Ya think we could come up with a better term?
So what is wrong with being adequate?

Thank you, Bud Livers. I, too, can’t stand NCLB. I didn’t realize that “adequate” was an official term under NCLB. My comment, as you rightly discern, was merely expressing befuddlement and slight distaste at the idea that “adequacy” is something to be proud of.

Whether the school meant it or not, it’s a good thing. Kids need less self-esteem and more realism.

“So what is wrong with being adequate?”
Nothing – it’s perfectly decent.

Flabby people. Flabby schools. Flabby politicians. Flabby government. Flabby culture. Flabby everything.
America is adequate.

The school should get some “Demotivational” posters from despair.com. Speaking of mediocrity, that was my personal favorite despair.com product. I had the T-shirt until it fell apart. It said “Mediocrity: it takes a lot less time, and no one will know the difference until it’s too late”, and featured a lovely shot of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. As a reward, the students at this school should be able to wear 15 pieces of flair, but no more. That would be showboating, and violate the Spirit of Adequacy.
My limited perception of public schools as a former student and new parent of kindergarteners is that “adequacy” is the ideal: they like a bell curve that’s all bell and no curve: everyone at exactly the average, sort of like in Lake Woebegone. Because kids who are too smart ask too many questions, and kids who are too slow ask too many questions. It saves a lot more time if the units, I mean students are more consistent.
[Note from Rod: Thanks for the tip -- I just added the Despair.com 'Mediocrity' poster to the entry. My brother in law works for Despair.com; the two young guys who run the place are very cool. -- RD]

“My comment, as you rightly discern, was merely expressing befuddlement and slight distaste at the idea that “adequacy” is something to be proud of.”
2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NASB)
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
Seems like an adequate goal from God’s standpoint, Mr. Dreher.

Mediocre is not the same as adequate.

Double amen and high five to Helen, hlvanburen, MH, and Randy G.. By me, NCLB is the work of the devil (yes, I exaggerate…a little); and the stories of Randy G.’s relatives ring true to me as a some-time public school teacher and child of teachers.
As to “adequate”–well, I don’t think it’s so bad. Schools and businesses are awash in insipid motivational posts of the type that the one Rod posted so magnificently skewers. It’s always, “Shoot for the stars!” or “You can do anything!” or “You just gotta BELIEVE in yourself!” Of course, as Chesterton long ago pointed out, the people who believe in themselves the most are in asylums!
The point is that we teach kids by the mythos and the rhetoric that anyone can be outstanding if they just want it bad enough, or that the whole country is like Lake Wobegone, where all the children are above average. At one place I taught, a vocational/GED program institution, I saw how pernicious this could be first hand. They’d encourage as many kids who finished their GED as they could to go on to the local community college. Part of this was that it helped statistics, but I think part of it was sincere belief in the ideology that everyone could succeed in anything and that manual labor was inferior (this despite the fact that they taught vocations and trades!). Out of the couple dozen or so that went to college over the years I was there, only two graduated, and only a couple of others really had the ability (they dropped out for other reasons). Most of the rest were bright, but not up to college-level work. They were of course fed the line that they could do ANYTHING if they just BELIEVED. Naturally, you wound up with a lot of disillusioned students.
So, as an antidote to such claptrap, I say at least two cheers for mediocrity and adequacy!

So there’s broad agreement that NCLB is bad. The problem is that when you have a bad government program, the solution seems to be even more of that program. I should write my senate and congress reps. That never seems to achieve anything, but if enough people do, who knows?

Considering that given their social class, students in an urban public school will most likely be fortunate to find something to do with their lives if they graduate that does not involve prison, adequate may be goal worth striving for for them.

I decided a long time ago that “adequacy” was a lovely concept, one that I would embrace in my daily housewifery–as an antidote to the absolutely insane images of perfection and excess that all forms of the media continually extol.
To set an adequate table, to maintain adequate order, to keep the children adequately clean and healthy–there is nothing wrong with any of this. It’s actually quite a sane way of looking at things and keeps one from despair.
(I may have rather elevated ideas about what an “adequate table” consists of, but even if it’s conceptually elaborate–always bread, salad, main dish, vegetables, fruit for dessert, etc. it’s still quite easy in practice. Or should I say “with practice”–and lots of it.)

Leah – that seems to me to be a very sensible way of looking at things.

There’s an elementary school nearby with the slogan “Meeting High Expectations” painted in extremely large red letters across the front of the main building. Why would you just want to meet expectations? Not, you know… exceed them?

“There’s an elementary school nearby with the slogan “Meeting High Expectations” painted in extremely large red letters across the front of the main building. Why would you just want to meet expectations? Not, you know… exceed them?”
Cool! Our NCLB goals are to have 100% of our students nation wide proficient (i.e. performing at grade level ability) in the core areas of reading, math and science.
How do you see us exceeding this goal?

How do you see us exceeding this goal?
By giving it 110%, that’s how!

“By giving it 110%, that’s how!”
Ah yes…if only NCLB measured effort instead of results, you’d be in like Flynn.

I saw a news story a couple of years ago about a woman who started an organization for “C” students. Her take was there was nothing wrong with being a “C” student. Isn’t that a bit refreshing after so much exposure to the idea that everyone must be special or brilliant?
Isn’t it better if people are able to be comfortable with “blessed mediocrity” as Thomas Mann called it, rather than fooling themselves that they are exceptional when in fact they are mediocre? What’s wrong with being average? It is, of course, great to be above average, but not everyone can do it.