The First State to Withdraw from the Common Core: Indiana!!!

With the stroke of his pen, Governor Mike Pence recently signed a law withdrawing Indiana from the Common Core (see news coverage here, here, and here).  Will this open the floodgates for more states to withdraw from the Common Core and lead to an end to this attempt at national educational standards?  Those of us who oppose a top-down, command-and-control model of education can only hope.  It can also be said that this and other possible future withdrawals from the Common Core do not go far enough.  Ultimately, responsibility for education should be in the hands of a child's parents, not a government bureaucrat (whether at the state or federal level).

At Some Point, Silence Equals Complicity

Recently, a letter from a parent to the administration at his child's school regarding high stakes testing appeared in the Washington Post (see here).  This is part of a long-overdue national dialogue about high-stakes, standardized testing and the difference between education and schooling.  As Illinois schools are set to transition from the ISAT to the PARCC test, it is time to talk about eliminating these tests entirely.

Opening on Minooka 201 School Board: Part II

This post is a follow up to my previous post regarding Don McKinney's resignation from the Minooka 201 school board (see here).  As a result of this resignation, the Minooka 201 school board will be appointing someone to serve until the next school board election.

According to the District's news release, "[t]he Minooka School District #201 Board of Education will be accepting resumes to fill a vacant board of education opening (will serve until the next board election Spring 2015).  The Board will accept resumes through Wednesday April 2, 2014 at noon.  Resumes can be mailed or dropped off at the Minooka School District #201 superintendent's office, 30 W. Church Street (Entrance #12 located on the Massasoit Street Side), Minooka, IL 60447."

You can find more information regarding the opening on the Minooka 201 school board here.

To Criticize Your Boss . . . Or Not?

So, recently as part of the assessment of the GoMath pilot program, the teachers in the pilot program were asked to fill out a survey regarding their thoughts about GoMath and Saxon Math (see here).

Regardless of what you think about the merits of either math program, what jumped out at me upon reading these surveys were two things.  First, teachers were required to put their names on these sheets.  In other words, they were not anonymous.  Now this was basically putting the teachers into a position of potentially criticizing the choice of their employer who was pushing for the GoMath program to be adopted district wide.  There are very few employees who would feel comfortable criticizing the choices of their employers in such a manner and potentially being regarded as a troublemaker or being retaliated against.  Many employees will simply not be honest under such intimidating circumstances.

Second, in the last question regarding making a choice between Saxon Math or GoMath, there is a phrase in the parentheses that reads “Only submit the comments you are willing to be accountable for.”  This, of course, could easily be interpreted to be a veiled threat of retaliation if a teacher (who remember is identified by name) happened to disagree with the course of action that the administration wanted to see adopted and had the audacity to document such disagreement on the survey.  Not surprisingly, a number of teachers chose not to write any comments in this section.  I don't blame them.

I can tell you from personal experience that if you want an employee to give you honest feedback, you solicit such feedback on an anonymous basis and make it clear to them that there will be no possibility of retaliation for such feedback.  As a person who has served over 23 years in the military and filled out an uncountable number of surveys created by the military, I have never seen a "command climate" survey (which essentially asks for feedback regarding the leadership abilities of a commander and his or her treatment of subordinates) or any other survey asking for feedback about some military program that was NOT anonymous.  Why?  Because when you want honest feedback from someone who is in a subordinate position (such as lower ranking soldiers to those of higher rank, or teachers to administrators or any employee to employer), you solicit anonymous feedback and make them comfortable that there will be no possibility of retaliation.

The only way to ensure that the teachers were honest in their opinions about the GoMath program was if they were not in fear for their jobs and/or of being retaliated against by having to submit their opinions with their names attached.  Again, the teachers were asked to potentially criticize the choices of their employers and be in fear of their employers’ reaction.

In order to ensure that this was a fair assessment of the GoMath program, the administration should have conducted a survey that was entirely anonymous, and it should have clearly stated that the administration sought the honest opinion of the teachers, both good or bad, and that they would not be subject to any sort of reprisal for their opinions.  The fact that they were told to “Only submit the comments you are willing to be accountable for” makes the survey entirely suspect.  This is simply not the way that an employer obtains the honest opinions of their employees.

If GoMath truly is the best math program for the students of District 201, there should have been no concern about obtaining the honest opinions of the teachers.

Next Minooka 201 School Board Meeting

The next meeting of the Minooka CCSD 201 school board is Wednesday, March 19, 2014. The Committee of the Whole Meeting starts at 6:00 p.m. in the board room (the old library) at the Minooka Primary Center located at 305 Church Street in Minooka. The Committee of the Whole Meeting will be followed by the regular Board Meeting at 7 p.m. Both meetings are open to the public, and everyone is encouraged to attend. You can find the agenda for each of the meetings here.

Opening on Minooka 201 School Board

School board member Don McKinney has resigned from the Minooka 201 school board (see here).  The school board now has 45 days to appoint a replacement.  This typically involves asking interested persons to submit resumes and then conducting interviews.

Next Minooka 201 Education Committee Meeting

The next meeting of the Minooka CCSD 201 Education Committee is Wednesday, March 12, 2014. The Education Committee meeting starts at 5:00 p.m. in the board room (the old library) at the Minooka Primary Center located at 305 Church Street in Minooka. Education Committee meetings are open to the public, so everyone is welcome to attend.  You can find the agenda for the meeting here.

One of the topics on the agenda is a discussion of the Go Math pilot program.  The administration is recommending that Go Math be implemented in every kindergarten through 5th grade classroom for the 2014-2015 school year.