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"I am a gardener." Chance, the gardener.

December 26, 2005

let the games begin....

State and county optimistic about superintendent hunt
Inquiries begin coming in a week after job ad was posted



By Anica Butler
Sun reporter

December 23, 2005

With a wish list completed and advertisements running nationally, the search for Anne Arundel County's next superintendent is under way.
Bea Gordon of the Maryland Association of Boards of Education is leading the hunt and says that inquiries about the job are already coming in, a week after the job posting was placed in a national education publication and on the association's Web site.

Gordon said 150 community and staff members attended three community forums and another 150 submitted written responses to help Gordon and her associates from MABE figure out what the school system is looking for. The input was the most Gordon has seen in a superintendent search in Maryland, she told the Anne Arundel board of education at its meeting Wednesday night.

Board Vice President Tricia Johnson said it wasn't just the quantity of responses that wowed her. "I'm impressed with the depth of input you got," Johnson told Gordon at the meeting.

While culling the feedback and responses, Gordon said she and her colleagues "looked for overall themes, recurring comments people made."

With that information, Gordon met with the board, and a description of the ideal candidate was created.

The Maryland Association of Boards of Education Web site lists the ideal candidate as a visionary who is passionate about public education; an open and inclusive communicator; an experienced educator; a manager with administrative, budget and financial experience who works well with others; a politically savvy advocate; and an ethical leader. Applicants are asked to write a narrative on each of the criteria as it relates to their personal experience.

The advertisement lists the minimum salary as $200,000.

Gordon told the board that a brochure about the job also is being worked on. She doesn't think it will be very difficult to find a new superintendent because Anne Arundel County has a lot to offer, she said.

"We do have a lot of issues, but I don't think they're insurmountable," she said. "It's a matter of finding the right match."

Screenings of the applicants are scheduled to begin in February.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-ar.schools23dec23,1,6136477.story?coll=bal-education-top

December 14, 2005

a very eloquent message for our county:

Superintendent and School Board Parent Forum

Annapolis High School

December 12, 2005



Superintendent Mann and members of the AA Co. School Board:



Following are the remarks I read aloud at the forum. The points in italics were added for this letter.



I commend the interim superintendent and members of the school board for initiating this forum. For more than 3 years, I have anxiously followed the darkening cloud that has fallen over the schools, the teachers, and my children. I appreciate the opportunity to voice my concerns; and I hope the school board will continue to host these forums on a regular basis and publish the proceedings and follow-up.



I have two daughters at South River HS; one is a senior and the other is a freshman. As a way of listing my concerns, I will outline some of the issues that they endure on a daily basis.



My freshman daughter stands 4 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 95 lbs. Every day, she carries a pack that weighs about 50 lbs---a feat no one in this room could accomplish for more than half an hour. She carries this enormous burden because she does not have time to go to her locker. So, my first concern is: why can't the school day be extended by 15 minutes, to give her a chance to go to her locker to exchange books, or, for that matter, to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water?

· The myth popularized at Back-to-School night was that the students do have time to go to their lockers and bathroom. The reality is that, with 2700 or so students rushing madly through the hallways at the same class-change time or having to walk the length of the building to get to the next class, there is no time---or space---to go to the bathroom or locker.



Every day, the girls get up at around 5:30 a.m., to catch a bus at 6:30, to start school at around 7 a.m. Why must the day start so early? I have read that changing the daily school start and end times would cost $2-3 million dollars; I believe that making this change is a matter of will, and the threat of additional costs is a convenient excuse to avoid making changes.



My other serious concerns are all encapsulated within the collateral damage caused by the No Child Left Behind mandate, an educationally empty and insidious program, which, among other issues, has resulted in more tax dollars spent for little gain, relentless testing for little purpose, scripted pacing guides that have turned teachers into robots, and volumes of homework for which little guidance or real teaching preparation can be made. Here's a rhetorical question: If, on the one hand, we celebrate diversity, how, on the other hand, can we create a military-style, lock-step, cookie-cutter approach to education?

Voluminous statistical evidence for the sheer wrong-headedness of NCLB by respected educational authorities is available elsewhere

NCLB was a partisan dictate created by an educational administrator with no classroom experience and a questionable reputation and a lawyer---not by educators

NCLB promises to pay districts for opting in, but the amount is only 8% of the school's budget, which does not cover the cost of the required testing; in AA Co., this is a mere pittance and certainly not worth the false values of educational achievement it claims

NCLB's ultimate value is the enormous profit it affords to the educational industry by allowing the industry to establish educational standards, unchecked and unproven, and then sell the teaching materials to achieve those standards

NCLB, in addition to imposing an educational regime, also directs high schools to turn over students' personal information for military recruitment purposes

A highly structured curriculum is appropriate for some students (eg, special education and underachievers) and specific courses (eg, math, science, and grammar); it is inappropriate for higher level learning and enrichment

My daughter, who entered high school with wonder and curiosity and energy, has become cynical about school; her spirit has been crushed


With the volume of work as it is and the rigid, arbitrarily devised make-up policy (dictated by the pacing guide) that work must be completed by the next class period, my daughter is afraid to attend field trips and even take a day off when she is sick.


My daughters each spend 6 hours or more each night doing work that may or may not be reviewed, in some cases has not been presented or explained (because the teacher did not have time, because of the relentless pacing guide), and may require resources that must be bought or the internet, which not every child has access to.

My senior daughter was assigned 9 weeks of AP biology material (nine chapters) over the summer---with no assistance from a teacher---and no subsequent review when classes started; were told later that the students were assigned this summer home work because the curriculum did not allow time to cover it during the year

With the millions of budget dollars spent on books, still we have had to buy books: we paid $54.00 for an AP English text (not a book of literature but a classroom textbook) for my senior daughter---which did not arrive until the end of October---and approximately $7.00 for a literature text for my freshman daughter.



Block scheduling, which was originally intended as a class time period in which to extend and enrich learning, has been reduced to a means of covering more material but only superficially. The teachers and students have no time to enrich or extend because the pacing guide dictates the schedule---educational content has been reduced to bucket lists of factoids: children don't learn literature or history, they learn language to pass tests.

Block scheduling and the AB- or ABC-day is, albeit confusing, a great opportunity for real learning---if the blocks are used as intended
Not every subject should be scheduled for 86 minutes; the arts, a lab, literature, and history lend themselves to large blocks of time; short, intensive blocks of time (eg, 45-50 minutes) may be better for math and skills
The definition of "rigor," has been co-opted by partisan rhetoric; a rigorous education is not a military-style, one-size-fits all, lock-step process of cramming information for a test
All children must be appropriately challenged; standards without purpose or meaning serve only to teach children about duplicity and cynicism


Between marking period tests, benchmark tests (which generally are flawed), and state proficiency tests, my daughter now takes eight major exams each year, in addition to unit tests and quizzes. The pressure she experiences is not in proportion to the value of these major tests.

Educational research has shown that testing is:

Only one, narrow means of measuring learning

Superficial because knowledge and retention are developmentally specific

Not an accurate measure of higher-level thinking and reasoning

Other research-tested methods, such as portfolios, are far more revealing about learning and achievement



Going forward, I would like to see

· AA County, and in fact, the entire state of Maryland, opt out of NCLB

· A shift away from the philosophy of education as a business model

· The control of public education returned to the teachers, who have been trained to teach, and restricted from the influence of special interest groups, including the business community, the politicians, the military, and religious proselytizers

· A shift away from huge, factory-like regionalized schools toward smaller schools



Opting out of NCLB is not only possible, many states and districts in states across the country already have opted out, and more continue to withdraw



Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your published responses and follow-up.


Sincerely,

Mike Pittard

December 13, 2005

several thoughts and ideas...

Our interim School Superintendent and our Board of Education hosted a community forum for input and ideas on the future of our schools. The following are comments I delivered.


Ideas on modifications in policy and practices for our county schools:

The recent campaign to standardize textbooks purchased in our county have resulted in books which are no longer in line with the classroom curriculum. In honors Biology, the county endorsed curriculum includes worksheets and homework assignments on information not provided in the the textbook. To refer students to the Internet to supply the additional resources and references adds demands on a student's time and assumes that all homes have updated technological resources. Assignments based on web resources can be frustrating to the student if the capabilities at home or the capabilities of the software or website are not totally consistent and adequate.

We have been asked to purchase the English Textbook in our student's AP Literature class and numerous novels for use in the English Honors class. Along with the many fees and costs of field trips, the calculator, supplies and dues, the costs associated with sending our children to school has sky-rocketed.

Re-evaluate the use of severely flawed county-developed curriculum (pacing guides and scripts) and tests in core subjects. The organization of Math and Science in particular has been of great concern to the teachers. The tests are often clumsily written, confusing and often incorrect.

The current testing program has inhibited a great deal of both teaching and learning opportunity. The county has most recently been asking for county tests (benchmarks) in Science to apply as half of the student's grade. With so many tests, the curriculum and classroom experience has become a race to measure diluted and abbreviated learning, extinguishing discussion, analysis and creative thinking.

The practice of expanded AP and IB programs have extinguished the opportunity for other, perhaps more useful classes and courses for students of individual and varied ability. In freshman year, the choices for Science are limited to Earth Science, at a lower level or Honors Biology. By the next year, the choices for these students will similarly include AP or nothing much. By their Senior year, the kids have few choices at our children's levels academically but to take course loads of all AP classes. The real goal of this program is the thrust to prove the school's "progress" statistically and not to publicize the many flaws of this program which include a growing group of students with poor preparation causing performance and a growing teaching staff with poor preparation to teach these classes.

The teachers have to be treated as professionals. Their credentials and training should very certainly be evaluated as to quality but to remove them professionally from the process and volition in curriculum development, test development, choice in instructional materials, choice in organization of classes, distribution of students in ability level, etc. leaves the classroom atmosphere often impoverished of creativity and ineffective and mechanical for students and teachers.

Beginning with the class of 2009, the students are required to pass a state exam in each core subject. The quality of the exam is questionable and reduces the teaching to a directed goal toward the test, period. The mentality of such testing-based educational policy has marginalized the experience for teacher and student alike and has attached itself relentlessly to the core foundations of our schools. The value and even reliability of these tests has been a carefully guarded secret and the results of such an expanded testing protocol on our classrooms are on the way to destroying the learning environment entirely.

Block scheduling in Middle and High School reduces the class time and increases class load for the teachers. It is argued by the National Research Council that the reduction in class time gives an already shallow-in-scope AP or IB program further reduced value. Other schedules exist that offer varied course choice but do not compromise the student or teachers class time as greatly. The use of a flexible block schedule could provide, in coordination with departments and individual teachers, the ability for a more appropriate use of time within an overall block schedule. http://books.nap.edu/books/0309074401/html/index.html entitled: Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools (2002).

Rethinking county participation in NCLB:

NCLB requires states to develop, administer, and assess standardized tests in grades 3,4,5,6,7, and 8 in reading and math and soon in science. It
also requires states to develop, administer, and assess standardized tests in high school in reading, math, and science. Developing, administering, and assessing these tests takes money. A lot of money. The research that has been done by the federal General Accounting
Office (GAO) estimates that from 2002 to 2008, states will spend approximately $3.9 billion to $5.3 billion simply on developing and
administering the annual assessments required under NCLB. This number does not include the funds required to develop, administer, and assess special education students and English language learners. NCLB does not say that states must use standardized tests to show Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). However, standardized tests are cheaper and easier to develop, administer, assess, and report on. Given the fact that NCLB is already under funded, there's no way that states can develop more comprehensive systems of assessment without more funding. AYP does not track the progress of individual students over time. The solution, then, is to provide a growth model which demonstrates over time what the accomplishments are for each student in relation to a set of goals and standards. Student accomplishments are measured in a
number of different ways, including -- but not limited to -- scores on standardized tests. ( http://www.fairtest.org/arn/links.html )

Test standards and major research groups such as the National Academy of Sciences clearly state that major educational decisions should not be based solely on a test score. High-stakes testing punishes students, and often teachers, for things they cannot control. It drives students and teachers away from learning, and at times from school. It narrows, distorts, weakens and impoverishes the curriculum while fostering forms of instruction that fail to engage students or support high-quality learning. In a high-stakes testing environment, the limit to educational improvement is largely dictated by the tests - but the tests are a poor measure of high-quality curriculum and learning. In particular, the emphasis on testing hurts low-income students and students from minority groups. Testing cannot provide adequate information about school quality or progress. High-stakes testing actively hurts, rather than helps, genuine educational improvement.


There is a large body of evidence that says that the move towards accountability is having unintended consequences. In some cases, these consequences are disastrous: data that shows that untested subjects are not being taught, the Council of Basic Education report that social studies instruction is down. In our own county teachers are quoted as stating that information not tested or organized into rote learning for regurgitation in prefabricated 5-paragraph format has disappeared. Writing skills have suffered as students learn to rewrite prefab essays and are no longer challenged to find or experiment with a style or a voice of their own. (http://www.fairtest.org/arn/Packer_Transcript.html, http://www.lessonplans.com/commentary.htm , http://www.sptimes.com/2002/07/14/news_pf/Perspective/Formula_writing_teach.shtml, http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2001-08-22-ncguest1.htm)


Test preparation is on the rise and it's a multi billion dollar market now that shares growing revenues with other opportunistic educational industries of tutoring and "support services" to testing. Our students are learning the skills for test-taking and the educational researchers have coined a new phrase to describe them; they are the "bubble kids." Many academic and research papers have provided information on the many destructive forces of a testing-orientation to school reform. http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/epru_2002_Research_Writing.htm

The Government Accounting Office, the Center for Research in Evaluation, Student Standards and Testing, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Education all rejected the NAEP proficiency measure as "fundamentally flawed." And yet, we continue to offer the scores for evaluation of our school progress...why? No research supports NCLB’s contention that the way to improve schools is to test every child every year research argues against the use of such high-stakes testing as an instrument of school reform. Tests that serve as useful monitors lose their credibility, validity and value when high stakes are attached. As researcher Donald Campbell noted many years ago, the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the more the indicator and the users are likely become corrupted.

Anne Arundel County:

With change, comes an opportunity to step out of our former structure of thought and practice. With the resignation of our former Superintendent, we have a new day, a new opportunity, a new chance to evaluate the "progress" we have made in our schools and apply what we have learned and experienced to a new, better vision for the education of students in our county.

December 02, 2005

a most comprehensive and intelligent statement

The following 10 points made by the National Council of Churches echo a growing national concern over a destructive path for our schools when we naively go along with a political plan which has enormous entrepreneurial interests and profoundly damaging academic practices.

( the highlights are mine. )

Thursday, December 01, 2005

National Council of Churches on NCLB
Click here for a pdf copy of the NCC's ten “moral concerns” about NCLB:

Ten Moral Concerns in the Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act

A Statement of the National Council of Churches Committee on Public Education and LiteracyChristian faith speaks to public morality and the ways our nation should bring justice and compassion into its civic life. This call to justice is central to needed reform in public education, America’s largest civic institution, where enormous achievement gaps alert us that some children have access to excellent education while other children are left behind. The No Child Left Behind Act is a federal law passed in 2001 that purports to address educational inequity. Now several years into No Child Left Behind’s implementation, as its hundreds of sequential regulations have begun to be triggered, it is becoming clear that the law is leaving behind more children than it is saving. The children being abandoned are our nation’s most vulnerable children—children of color and poor children in America’s big cities and remote rural areas—the very children the law claims it will rescue.

We examine ten moral concerns in the law’s implementation.

1. While it is a civic responsibility to insist that schools do a better job of educating every child, we must also recognize that undermining support for public schooling threatens our democracy. The No Child Left Behind Act sets an impossibly high bar—that every single student will be proficient in reading and math by 2014. We fear that this law will discredit public education when it becomes clear that schools cannot possibly realize such an ideal.

2. The No Child Left Behind Act has neither acknowledged where children start the school year nor celebrated their individual accomplishments. A school where the mean eighth grade math score for any one subgroup grows from a third to a sixth grade level has been labeled a “in need of improvement” (a label of failure) even though the students have made significant progress. The law has not acknowledged that every child is unique and that thresholds are merely benchmarks set by human beings. Now, four years into implementation, the Department of Education has stated it will begin experimenting with permitting 10 states to measure student growth. Too many children will continue to be labeled failures even though they are making strides.

3. Because the No Child Left Behind Act ranks schools according to test score thresholds of children in every demographic subgroup, a “failing group of children” will know when they are the ones who made their school a “failing” school. They risk being shamed among their peers, by their teachers and by their community. The No Child Left Behind Act has renamed this group of children the school’s “problem group.” In some schools educators have felt pressured to counsel students who lag far behind into alternative programs so they won’t be tested. This has increased the dropout rate.

4. The No Child Left Behind Act requires children in special education to pass tests designed for children without disabilities.

5. The No Child Left Behind Act requires English language learners to take tests in English before they learn English. It calls their school a failure because they have not yet mastered academic English.

6. The No Child Left Behind Act blames schools and teachers for many challenges that are neither of their making nor within their capacity to change. The test score focus obscures the importance of the quality of the relationship between the child and teacher. Sincere, often heroic efforts of teachers are made invisible. While the goals of the law are important—to proclaim that every child can learn, to challenge every child to dream of a bright future, and to prepare all children to contribute to society—educators also need financial and community support to accomplish these goals.

7. The relentless focus on testing basic skills in the No Child Left Behind Act obscures the role of the humanities, the arts, and child and adolescent development. While education should cover basic skills in reading and math, the educational process should aspire to far more. We believe education should help all children develop their gifts and realize their promise—intellectually physically, socially, and ethically. The No Child Left Behind Act treats children as products to be tested, measured and made more uniform.

8. Because the No Child Left Behind Act operates through sanctions, it takes federal Title I funding away from educational programming in already overstressed schools and uses these funds to bus students to other schools or to pay for private tutoring firms. A “failing” school district may not be permitted to create its own public tutoring program, but it is expected to create the capacity to regulate private firms that provide tutoring for its students. One of the sanctions provided is to close or reconstitute the “failing” school or to make it into a charter school, but in many places charter schools are unregulated.

9. The No Child Left Behind Act exacerbates racial and economic segregation in metropolitan areas by rating homogeneous, wealthier school districts as excellent, while labeling urban districts with far more subgroups and more complex demands made by the law as “in need of improvement.” Such labeling of schools and districts encourages families with means to move to wealthy, homogeneous school districts.

10. The late Senator Paul Wellstone wrote, “It is simply negligent to force children to pass a test and expect that the poorest children, who face every disadvantage, will be able to do as well as those who have every advantage. When we do this, we hold children responsible for our own inaction and unwillingness to live up to our own promises and our own obligations.” The No Child Left Behind Act makes demands on states and school districts without fully funding reforms that would build capacity to close achievement gaps. To enable schools to comply with the law’s regulations and to create conditions that will raise achievement, society will need to increase federal funding for the schools that serve our nation’s most vulnerable children and to keep Title I funds focused on instruction rather than on transportation and school choice. Christian faith demands, as a matter of justice and compassion, that we be concerned about public schools. The No Child Left Behind Act approaches the education of America’s children through an inside-the-school management strategy of increased productivity rather than providing resources and support for the individuals who will shape children’s lives.

As people of faith we do not view our children as products to be tested and managed but instead as unique human beings to be nurtured and educated. We call on our political leaders to invest in developing the capacity of all schools. Our nation should be judged by the way we care for our children.