According to Johnny Winston, Jr.:
On June 19th the board held a brainstorming session to discuss future district directions. This included developing agenda items for the board and committees. For the 06-07 school year, the entire board will focus on: 1) Attendance, Dropouts, Truancy and Expulsions; 2) Budget Process; 3) Math & Literacy; and 4) Equity. Many items were discussed for committee agendas and the committees themselves will prioritize them
More than once in the last several weeks, I asked Carol Carstensen via e-mail whether she’d support a task force or pilot program to look at more effective reading programs than those used by the district, and she has not given me an answer.
Here is what I posted on May 26:
Carol Carstensen provided the third grade reading scores for students who had been in Reading Recovery in first grade. According to the 2003-04 WRCT results of former Reading Recovery students, only 57% scored at or above grade level, not 89% as Carol suggested in a comment. . . .
I suggested to Carol that it might be wise for the district to pilot a curriculum stressing systematic, direct, and explicit instruction, since Reading Recovery does little of those. A pilot would tell the board whether another curriculum would help students even more.
She’ll probably say no way.
Her silence loudly says, “No way.”
Ed- Since literacy is one of the focus items listed by the Board for the coming year, it sure appears as if they intend to look at reading. Unless reading and literacy are mutually exclusive, which I don’t think they are…
David,
In my mind, we have three issues.
First, whether the board will seriously look at reading programs which could be more effective and cost less than current programs. Maybe the goal means that it will.
Second, whether the board and administration will solicit community input or rely solely on administrators and board members who are wedded to the status quo in reading.
Third, Carol’s lack of response to numerous attempts to get her opinion on whether she’d support a task force to look at a program that succeeds less than 60% of the time, not to mention Carol’s misrepresentation of Reading Recovery as succeeding 89% of the time.
Carol clearly failed on responsiveness.
Ed: I do hope they look at reading, but I don’t think that reading is the *only* important issue at hand. I think some topics are worthy of community input, but I worry that community input on reading (or other curricula-specific topics) will only result in angst and arguement. There are at least 2, if not 3 or more, accurate points of view when it comes to ANY curricula.
I trust the current Board to review literacy issues- that’s why I voted for them! What we, as interested citizens, can do is to make sure that they get information on all the different viewpoints and then let THEM hash it out with the administrators.
At another time and in another post, I’ll cover why any old curriculum won’t teach reading.
For now, I ask why you trust the board to deal with reading, while you serve on a task force to look at equity. Does that mean that you don’t trust the board on equity issues?
Reading is a vitally important equity issue, maybe even the most important one, since students can pretty much kiss their academic success good-bye if they don’t learn to read fluently by the end of third grade.
The equity task force would better serve students by asking how the district can address the inequity of the reading gap for low-income and minority students. The task force could ask how the MMSD can address equity for a non-reading sophmore, as well as all the graduates who can’t read.
I serve on the ETF because I was asked to serve on the ETF. The Board needs a wide community perspective on the Equity issue and I’ve been active (along with the Northside PTO Coalition members) over the years on the issue. The ETF is an amazing cross-section of Madison and the Board will do well to heed our advice, in my opinion. So yeah, I DO trust the Board to have an honest, open, intelligent and well-reasoned discussion about Equity when they see what the ETF has generated.
Reading (and other specific curriculum matters) are not part of our charge. Curriculum does get into the mix in a larger sense though. Folks can read our current (or as current as the MMSD has posted it) work on the BoE webpage. It would be impossible, for example, to say Reading Program A is more equitable than Reading Program B, within the framework of a Policy; however, assuming the MMSD uses Reading Program A and it is wildly successful, BUT the MMSD only uses it at Falk and Gompers, and other schools are suffering (via measurement of disaggregated data)from using Reading Program B (or no reading program whatsoever), then I’d hope that our Equity Policy would be the vehicle to get Reading Program A implemented at every elementary school in the district. That is, of course, my personal opinion of how a new Equity Policy should work.
If you, or anyone, has opinions, suggestions, etc. regarding the policy, we will be having public (and Board) input sessions in the fall. We are currently simplifying some language in our document to make it more “user friendly” and, therefore, more accessible to the community at large. Such feedback will be considered, integrated as needed, and then the whole thing will be drafted into a policy format by Clarence Sherrod….after that, we will make some changes etc. before the Board takes it on. By then, it will be exhaustive in scope and yes, I do trust THIS version of the Board will handle it’s approval (and/or subsequent modifications) appropriately.
By the way, every ETF meeting is open to the public!
David,
You described a very real sitution in the MMSD when you wrote:
“. . .assuming the MMSD uses Reading Program A and it is wildly successful, BUT the MMSD only uses it at Falk and Gompers, and other schools are suffering (via measurement of disaggregated data)from using Reading Program B (or no reading program whatsoever), then I’d hope that our Equity Policy would be the vehicle to get Reading Program A implemented at every elementary school in the district. That is, of course, my personal opinion of how a new Equity Policy should work.”
Strategy #5, as proposed by the task force, would seem to address the problem when it says that the MMSD should, “Adopt consistently rigorous, culturally inclusive, evidence (research)-based curriculum, and teaching and assessment practices district-wide.”
So once the task force completes its work, how do you see people using #5 to force the district to use reading programs that are more equitable?
For that matter, how do you see people using any of the policy to raise issues and make any improvements to equity? The policy statement without an “enforcement” mechanism will be useless. Can the task force look at some citizen-initiated process to raise equity issues to the board and administration? Current board procedures severely limit even board members from adding items to meeting agendas. Can the task force look for ways an individual or an organization can get an equity issue onto an agenda? As it is, an issue can only be raised by someone speaking for 3 minutes before a board meeting, and then the issue usually gets ignored.
Ed:
You have raised a very REAL problem with the Board- it’s difficult to get any single “issue” addressed, be it a policy violation or anything else. One of the reasons I pushed for this ETF was that the Northside PTO Coalition thought the current policy (and the Equity Needs Index and Equity Resource Formula) weren’t being applied properly district-wide. I raised this question at a Board meeting and President Keys told me “the Board will go down that road if they Board chooses to do so.” So yes, in the end, the Board has the power to do as it likes. This is an issue with ANY elected body. I suppose citizens could file a legal action claiming willful violation of Board policy. It was cheaper (and took longer) to lobby the Board for the ETF. It took about 3 years if I recall!
There is an element of the proposed policy which has not been discussed the the task force as a whole yet (no quorum at last meeting) at my suggestion. It calls for the new position of “special assistant to the superintendent for race relations” to be the clearinghouse for any issues relating to the Equity Policy.
I think it will be up to the Board to be sure the Equity Policy has some teeth to it. Heck, it’s up to them to be sure that ALL their policies are enforced, right? I too am eager to hear how the Board members feel about enforcement aspects of such an important policy.
David,
A special assistant sounds like an possiblity, but make it a position that reports to the board, not the superintendent. Any position attached to the superintendent will not be independent of the superintendent, meaning the position will only defend the administration, not independently raise equity problems or push the administration to do more on equity.