We find it appalling that there is no mention of an ISAT report on the upcoming agenda for the next board meeting at Madison School, on Monday, November 10 at 7pm.
District test results are not acceptable. Learning for All is not working.
Dr White, Dr Schneider: What are you doing about it?
12 comments:
I am outraged and disgusted! This is our town - not yours Schneider. Where is the accountability???!!! Our children are not your test subjects and White you are allowing this to happen. So is the BOE majority that allows White to do whatever he wants with no data, comprehensive plan or accountability. Shame on you all. We are talking about children who only get one chance at each grade, and you are taking their precious educations away to enhance your self interests on unproven ideology. And you are doing it with no data at all!!!!! Truly disgusting.
Dare I say White provides less data than Schuster! Where are the science ISAT data results? Where is any data analysis? Throwing a bunch of NWEA provided district reports in an incomprehensible 400 page report is not acceptable, nor is it analysis.
Outraged parent
Doesn't Turek set the agenda with White? Isn't Turek running for reelection? Voters need to remember that Turek is complicit in this come election time.
No spring MAP data analysis. Check.
No ISAT data analysis. Check.
No school ranking analysis. Check.
No Science ISAT data. Check.
No district plan on math. Check.
Out of control Super of Curriculum who shamelessly promotes his personal agenda (that he receives personal compensation from in the form of speaking engagements). Check.
BOE majority asleep at the wheel. Check.
Declining scores relative to other high performing districts. Check.
This administration will tell you that MAP is one data point and it doesn't really matter.
I guess the ISATs are only one data point as well and they too do not really matter.
Seems to me that any data point that shows learning for all is not working is "just one data point" and "not significant."
I heard Schneider and White want to eliminate MAP. The cynic in me thinks that is because without MAP there will be no data to prove that learning for all is a disaster.
Schneider does not like the MAP test because it shows that all children fall on different points on the bell curve. In his socially just world all children are engineered to be exactly the same and adhere to a one size fits all curriculum. Therefor, he must get rid of map. Then he can present his friends and say one size fits all is best practices and working.
MAP is not only a data point useful to judge student growth (individually and group) it is a tool that provides incredibly valuable information about instructing children where they show deficits to help them meet and exceed their growth targets (assuming teachers have been trained to analyze the results and instruct accordingly). Moreover, we have been giving the test so long now we have a ton of data trends as to grades, teachers, and individual students. It would be incredibly short-sighted to pull the plug not his test without a valid reason to do so.
Some more fun news, apparently this year's PARCC testing will be given and scored and schools/students will get score reports, but they will NOT be reported to the State - therefore no rankings next year based on state testing. Just another way to dodge accountability.
Those of you with younger children need to assemble en masse like the 1000 + did at a recent D86 BOE meetings and demand accountability to the community. Someone gained to analyze data who actually does so in a meaningful way. Someone to run special education, someone who knows curriculum and understands what this community wants - which is ongoing moderate improvement, not radical philosophical changes. If not now, when?
Those of us with young children have no hope because our BOE and DOL have no clue. Try talking to one of the BOE members besides Garg and Heneghan about any of this stuff. They will quickly demonstrate that they have very little grasp of what is going on in the schools, the history of how we got to where we are, what data has been presented, what the data says, etc... I don't expect the BOE to do the administration's job but I do expect it to be informed about what is going on in the schools as a general matter. They aren't and haven't made the effort AT ALL. How difficult would it be to talk to a couple of teachers and principals to get the truth? Or to spend an afternoon listening to old podcasts and reviewing BoardDocs to educate themselves. Plenty of parents have made that time, why hasn't the BOE? Do any of them care enough to make that effort? Or, will they continue to blindly believe and follow this administration as they did the last? The information is out there, it would just take a little time for White and the BOE to look at it and come to the unmistakable conclusion that Schneider and Benitis have been ruining our schools for 3 years.
I completely agree with the above statements. We cannot afford to get rid of MAP, or take PARCC tests that won't get compared to other schools. The district has not even addressed why our schools' ISAT scores have been falling so much in the last 3 years. Therefore, the scores will CONTINUE to FALL. Schneider and White are staying steadfast on their path to the destruction of a quality school district, while the majority of Board Members are perfectly content watching it.
It is just unfathomable that our teachers had a full day of professional development on election day, but instead of taking advantage of this day to help solve the math crisis occurring at Madison and HMS, or analyze test results and see where kids need more help, Schneider made all of the teachers listen to him drone on about Learning for All?! If Learning for All was a good idea, believe me, it would have started working the last THREE years. Hasn't anyone ever wondered why NO SCHOOLS of TEACHER EDUCATION are teaching this? The real, qualified experts who have degrees in curriculum rely upon data and use specialists to help the who children need it. Schneider is taking us all backwards into the days of the one room schoolroom!
Just like there are different levels of care in a hospital, there needs to be varying levels of support for our children in school. If one medicine doesn't work, the doctor tries another. Dr. Schneider doesn't see this. He insists that his ONE type of medicine WILL work, regardless of the bad results. He has not given any guidelines or alternative direction for teachers to take when his plan doesn't work - yet blames PARENTS and TEACHERS for not understanding his plan? What IS his plan? What ARE his guidelines? Look at the pilot materials he gave our kids at HMS and Madison! He is not qualified to be in charge of curriculum.
If a patient develops an allergy to penicillin, doctors don't continue to give penicillin to that patient. They try another medicine. Yet D181 does not. Schneider persists, until the the child and family are forced to take their child to another, more efficient hospital with doctors who listen. The teacher is left frustrated, and feeling bad, but Schneider does not. He is not administering the care. While he sits comfortably in his office, parents and teachers are forced to watch our children suffer, or, must start paying for private schools and tutors.
We know that doctors need labs and blood tests in the same way that teachers need some test results. Yet White and Schneider feel that our children don't deserve professional, analytical tests. They think it is OK for teachers to "feel" and "guess" what our children's abilities are! If our trained doctors need tests and data, then WHY wouldn't our teachers? They are not psychic. They can't judge our children's abilities based on what they THINK our children are.
This plan has not, and will not work. All of our children are NOT THE SAME. The MAP scores prove it. Special education assessments prove it. The scores that used to put children in more, or less, challenging classes proved it, too. Teachers and parents want our district from 5 years ago back, when children were taught according to their ability and they left school with a real sense of competence, success, and confidence. Simply PERFECT it with opt in and flexible grouping, not fixed tracking. But stop wasting time on a one size fits all curriculum!
Part 1: This might explain what's going on in our district;
http://www.nas.org/articles/Achievement_Gap_Politics
"First, you have to understand that educational policy is consumed by the achievement gap, which is the disparity between groups of students on most educational measures, particularly the groups of race and socio-economic income—and, if I'm going to be honest, it's race that generates the most intensity. I don't just mean that this is the number one priority. It's the only priority. The achievement gap pervades every corner of American educational policy discussion. Nothing else matters. No Child Left Behind was entirely about the achievement gap and measuring schools to see if they'd closed it. Obama's Race to the Top is just another take on the achievement gap—again, focusing on testing and this time holding teachers responsible if they can't get low-performing students to improve.
In the public domain, you'll hear two contrasting views about the achievement gap, its cause and solution. The first is the progressive view, the one associated with "progressive education," which holds that social injustice, institutionalized racism, white prejudice, and other societal ills cause the achievement gap. Progressives want to fix the achievement gap by moving underachieving students closer to high-achieving students whenever possible, arguing that tracking and sorting are evils that create underachieving “ghettos” that perpetuate, or even cause, the gap. In schools with a majority minority population of underachievers (i.e., inner city urban schools or charter schools specifically created for these populations), progressives push for community involvement, encouraging teachers to support their students in every aspect of life and seek to make the curriculum "relevant."
So progressives push for underachievers to spend more time with achievers who will model desirable behavior. When achievers aren't available, progressives seek to create the value system within the child and the community by demonstrating their involvement and cultural acceptance."
"The second view, what I'll call the conservative view of the achievement gap, also focuses on student values. But instead of encouraging teachers to respect the student's culture, conservatives say that parents and teachers of low-performing students are the cause of the gap, by failing to give the students the correct cultural values. Hard work, family values, commitment to the importance of education, and "no excuses," to quote the Thernstroms, who are major proponents of the conservative view, will close the achievement gap. The conservatives believe that higher standards are the order of the day, and that everyone can achieve if they just work hard. Conservatives hold ed schools in extremely low esteem, and feel that the progressive push to “understand” students and teach simplified (as they see it) curriculum contributes to the problem. The conservative view is held by most politicians of any ideology. Both NCLB and Race to the Top are based on this viewpoint—which comes along with a hefty dose of blame for the teachers, the ed schools that produce them, and the unions that represent them."
Continued Achievement Gap Politics http://www.nas.org/articles/Achievement_Gap_Politics
"People holding this third view—again, not a group—don’t talk much in public. Let's call this third view the Voldemort View: the View That Must Not Be Named. "
"And so, the Voldemort View: academic achievement is primarily explained by cognitive ability, and therefore the achievement gap is also most likely caused in large part by differences in cognitive ability. People with this view don’t promote solutions, primarily because in order to even start thinking about solutions one has to be able to discuss the possible cause and mentioning this cause is politically unacceptable. People who think it likely that the achievement gap is primarily cognitive don't usually risk mentioning it in public because it's a career destroyer. "
Hey: note to White and Schneider: late start/ early release is one of this community's non negotiables!!! How dare you bring it up in your boe report. There was a petition signed by a 1000 parents and a survey - the answer was a resounding no. But I guess neither of you care about parents or the fact that we just "resolved " this with the teacher contract.
Simple solution: get rid of learning for all! Problem solved! And no substitute teacher shortgage to boot. It shouldn't be this hard.
Also data is not an after thought. Your boe meeting agenda is pathetic! No isat analysis, no 5essential survey ( Monroe Madison teachers were scathing), no math plan, no school improvement plan, no science isats.
White: I no longer support you. You have let us down. You and Schneider can leave together. And take Benaitis with you.
Boe: get your act together and do something
Yes, White. Don't 1000 signatures mean anything to you? It is obvious that Schneider is telling you that a handful of "radicals" are lying, or causing problems for him. YOU fell for his lies and excuses, but it is time for YOU to wake up and analyze the facts.
Can 1000 signatures all be forged? Who is lying, 1000 tax paying people whose children are in this social experiment, or Schneider - the one who has no credentials or experience in elementary and middle school curriculum?
Can ALL of the parents who have sent letters and gotten up and spoken over the last 3 years ALL be radical liars? And if so, WHY? Unlike Schneider and the administrators, none of the complainers have anything to GAIN by showing up at BOE meetings or writing letters. NONE. In fact, we are all LOSING our time and watching our tax dollars be spent on HIS RADICAL ideas!
All Schneider had to do was LISTEN to teachers and the community, yet you have chosen to ignore us ALL. The only thing we are gaining is frustration and anger because YOU, the person we hired for transparency, has betrayed us.
Can't you see that Schneider is simply promoting his own theories? Everyone he brings to us for "expertise" are HIS colleagues and lecture buddies! They are not nationally recognized in the fields of curriculum. Look!
This is not acceptable. We all believe that children with special needs should be included, and that their needs should be met ---BUT NOT AT THE EXPENSE of ALL OF THE OTHER STUDENT'S NEEDS.
EVERY child needs to have the opportunity to LEARN and be challenged. THIS IS ABOUT EQUAL OPPORTUNITY for ALL - not the opportunity for non special ed children to be burdened with becoming tutors! Or for ALL children to be squeezed into a one size fits all curriculum. While children with special needs get individualized educations, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THE REST OF OUR CHILDREN? Someone needs to tell Schneider's friend, Kluth, that forcing the quicker learners to ignore their own abilities so that they can focus on becoming free child labor is NOT OK! Is she aware that our district has eliminated gifted specialists, and is now attempting to force all children into the same one size fit all program?
Put Dr. Schnieder back where he belongs - in a theoretical, utopian university setting! He has NO CLUE about the challenges that our teachers are facing or how to help ONE CHILD, let alone ALL CHILDREN. He has ruined our district because he cannot seem to get it through his skull that this is a SCHOOL DISTRICT - NOT A POLITICAL ARENA FOR FOSTERING SOCIAL CHANGE!
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