{"id":1105,"date":"2014-11-01T22:12:26","date_gmt":"2014-11-02T02:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/?p=1105"},"modified":"2014-11-01T22:12:26","modified_gmt":"2014-11-02T02:12:26","slug":"pittsfield-nh-school-success-or-a-big-fat-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/2014\/11\/01\/pittsfield-nh-school-success-or-a-big-fat-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsfield NH School: Success or a BIG FAT LIE?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NH Dept. of Ed along with<a href=\"http:\/\/pittsfield-nh.com\/sau\/2923\/shifting-to-student-centered-learning\"> Governor Hassan <\/a>has repeatedly referenced the Pittsfield School District as a great example of success in NH. \u00a0In fact, The Atlantic recently posted this article citing their self-proclaimed success.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with these kinds of glossy articles is they never really uncover what is actually going on in the school.<\/p>\n<p>One should always question School Administrators because we&#8217;ve seen example after example of schools &#8220;cooking the books&#8221; to fool parents.<\/p>\n<p>Pittsfield&#8217;s last NECAP scores are higher than before &#8211; BUT! &#8211; only 28 students in the 11th grade took the test. \u00a0According to other sources, there were nearly 60 students in the class when they entered PMHS as Freshmen &#8211; that means that they have nearly a 50% attrition rate &#8211; Students dropped out, went to alternative high schools, out of district placement, and so on. \u00a0Don&#8217;t be fooled! \u00a0Their reported test scores are all smoke and mirrors &#8211; look at where all the students have gone &#8211; AND look at where the graduating seniors are going to college (hint: mostly community colleges.<\/p>\n<p>Some have gone on to private schools, some are pulled for homeschooling, some drop out &#8211; You should always be suspect of schools claiming huge gains in test scores &#8211; remember Erasure-gate?<\/p>\n<p>They have NO data on their website about atriticion but many &#8220;dropouts&#8221; are simply listed as going into an alt program, so that they can keep their numbers up. LOOK closely at the data &#8211; very closely.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Drop out&#8221; is a misnomer in Pittsfield. It &#8220;really&#8221; doesn&#8217;t happen. School Board\/District policy is &#8220;Failure is not an option,&#8221; therefore Competency Based education is their answer. Also, those deeply troubled students don&#8217;t get to drop out anymore, they merely get an HQT (highly qualified teacher) to approve some &#8220;workable&#8221; solution to get them through. They don&#8217;t even have to be at school anymore.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the kids have been known to &#8220;party&#8221; at home all day and &#8220;graduate&#8221; anyway.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NH Dept. of Ed along with Governor Hassan has repeatedly referenced the Pittsfield School District as a great example of success in NH. \u00a0In fact, The Atlantic recently posted this article citing their self-proclaimed success. The problem with these kinds of glossy articles is they never really uncover what is actually going on in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[124,295,296],"class_list":["post-1105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-governorhassan","tag-pittsfield","tag-theatlantic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1107,"href":"https:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions\/1107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stopcommoncorenh.org\/sccnh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}