People around the country are pushing back against the ed reform/privatization agenda.
Check out this video at:
Christina community doubts DE Dept. of Ed’s decisions
Board President John Young speaks out. Why didn’t the former Seattle School Board President Michael DeBell say this or any other of our school board members for that matter when our former Broad superintendent continued to manufacture these worthless agendas?
Dora
Christina community doubts DE Dept. of Ed’s decisions
| By LeAnne Matlach of WDEL 1150 AM News |
It’s a plan they chose, but members of the Christina School Board say the transformation plan for partnership-zone school, Glasgow High isn’t being executed as they thought.
Board president John Young spoke out at Tuesday night’s board meeting after several Glasgow teachers were relieved of their positions.
The transformation plan the board chose for the school required teachers to re-interview for their positions but Young says too much importance was placed on interviews.
“From what has been described to me thus far by effective teachers, it appears we have centered on the sole metric of a high-stakes interview process that was not executed to fidelity by either governing instrument, the MOU or the partnership plan,” he said.
Alison Kepner with the Delaware Department of Education says the Christina School Board were the ones who choose how the interview was going to work.
“They outlined in their Partnership Zone plan how the interview process would go and included the questions that would be asked,” she said. “So no one went into this interview not knowing what was going on.”
Teachers who were let go from Glasgow have the option to transfer to other schools in the district.
The Department of Education is currently studying what the regulatory and fiscal effects will be if Christina does not participate in Race to the Top and the Partnership Zone.
“There were about $11 million dollars in federal school reform dollars that were being targeted for Christina,” Kepner said.
Seattle Education 
Nancy and/or Elizabeth; we’d love to have you write something for the Parents Across America blog about what’s going on in Christina; from a more bird’s eye perspective, to inform other parents and community members about what’s going on. Please contact me at leonieh@parentsacrossamerica.org if you might be willing. Thanks!
Yes, I certainly do think that Mr. Board’s sticking his head into our business in the early 2000’s had HUGE negative impact in this district. The business roundtable and pols spent a mint on high-stakes testing and Vision 2015 directly took charge of inserting themselves into several of the now-failing CSD schools.
Especially read Elizabeth’s post today in retort to the Vision 2015 attack on Mr. Young:
http://elizabethscheinberg.blogspot.com/2011/04/another-day-another-misinformed-opinion.html
Elizabeth, Nancy and others: how much of these policies, do you think, derive from Eli Broad’s earlier announced plan to “virtually take over the Delaware school system” and the fact that you have had several Broad-trained superintendents ( and state ed commissioners) in a row?
See
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/2011/04/a-guide-to-the-broad-foundations-training-programs-and-policies/
thanks,
Thank You for picking up this story. While Mr. Young has been singled out by the media as the most vocal, there continue to be other board members in Delaware and Christina who question the destabilizing and unproven nature of education deform.
For more: http://www.elizabethscheinberg.blogspot.com
Elizabeth Scheinberg
CSD BOE
I was present at the meeting when the Christine Board decided to invite the teachers back. That decision rapidly created an unexpected and inappropriate firestorm of accusations and lies published in the Wilmington News Journal from the State DOE Secy, the Governor, the US ED Secy, US Senator Coons, the State Chamber of Commerce, the Mayor or Wilmington and the Urban League. The question was posed: “are 19 teacher’s jobs worth $11 million” the amount of RTTT funds that state officials froze in their unsupported and untrue claim that the Board’s decision was tantamount to a full rejection of the reform itself.
The reform model chosen for Glasgow High School was transformation and it had looked promising to the community when plans to create sub-school academies were announced last fall. By late spring, half of the 81 teachers had decided to transfer out rather than re-interview for the new academies.
It was curious for those in the audience last week to hear that the interview panel appeared to be applying a subjective cut-off number to the remaining teachers, almost as if it was predetermined. We wondered if there was a federal interest at work here. Did the US Dpet. of Ed wish to establish here in Delaware that RTTT can be tough on teachers and scapegoat a significant number (as they failed to do in Rhode Island)?
In inviting the teachers back, the Christina Board was responding to evidence that district administration and others conducting the re-hiring process violated both the MOU and the Partnership Zone plan. They never rejected the reform plans. Yet that was the lie immediately erupting from DDOE that was the “news” splashed in headlines over the next week.
The fantastical clamoring that followed the Board decision to protect these teachers denied due process was a shameful, dishonest and indefensible PR spin by business roundtable types, many of whom have been appointed to DDOE jobs by Governor Markell.
That the powerful in Delaware politics and business publicly pointed fingers and wedged phrases like ‘change is hard’ and ‘this is harming the children’ into a dizzying spin with dizzying speed showed just who thinks they have something to lose here (hint: it aint’ the children).
Charter, choice, vouchers, venture capitalists, big test consultants with fancy products to sell? You bet.