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