Subscribe Share this page

Past Extra Credits All issues

"'What that means is that Wyoming schools have promised—we promised you, we promised your parents, we promised the federal government—we promised everyone that we're going to work very, very hard to make sure that no children in Wyoming get a bad education,' [Superintendent of Public Instruction Trent Blankenship told the Arp Elementary School students]."

"Blankenship said afterward that the No Child Left Behind accountability requirements will mean changes to the Wyoming Comprehensive Assessment System. 'It's administered in grades 4, 8 and 11, and we need to redesign an assessment system that assesses children in grades 3-8 and then once in high school,' he explained after the ceremony. He said he hopes the new system, unlike the current WyCAS test, will be more than just an 'autopsy' at the end of the school year. 'WyCAS is central in that it returns data to us about how our children are performing. But WyCAS can be much more than that. The state assessment system can be something that helps us to help students learn how they are performing relative to performance standards throughout the year as well as at the end of the year,' he said."

"Before the assembly, Blankenship and the others toured classrooms, including a 1st grade class and a 2nd grade class, and met informally with students. Because the school met its goal of reading 24,000 books this year, up from 18,000 last year, Blankenship began the assembly by asking which of several activities students will require of Principal Janet Materi: kissing a cow, eating a bottle of ranch dressing or dyeing her hair blue. The children voted to make her dye her hair blue, the school color."