My very deeply personal statement to Christina constituents. This is my opinion and only mine.
Dear Christina,
Tonight, I ceded to the political coercion thrust upon our district through the media manipulation and propaganda campaign purported by the Governor of Delaware and his Department of Education to cripple our board's good faith action to rectify what I truly believe was the poor implementation of the PZ teacher selection process.
I voted with my fellow board mates to rescind the April 19th board action to retain and retrain our teachers at their current campuses. There has never been a more tortured dilemma before me. I continue to believe that the Department of Education failed to promote collaboration when they chose to freeze our funding without expressing their concerns directly to the board and giving us the opportunity to re-evaluate and initiate corrective action.
The spirit of collaboration is now dead. There is no "kinder, gentler DOE," as representatives have so publicly proclaimed. There is no desire to learn and share best practices. There is only their way or the highway. Christina, for my naiveté, I am deeply sorry. I will not rest well tonight. The weight of this failure weighs much too heavily in my heart. While I am committed to continue the reforms that our community has supported, I will forever know that my vote on April 19th was right, appropriate, fair, and in the best interest of our students.
The vote I cast tonight, Christina, was for you, to walk the path delineated by the Department of Education, if Christina is ever to reclaim the $11 million stolen from our children. The future is in their hands. Apparently, it always has been.
Jack Markell for President, he'll be right at home in Washington D.C.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth
Branchburg NJ
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5 comments:
I heard the Board VP had a secret meeting with the Secretary of Education and was personally coerced and influenced?
Why did the board not know what was going on/wrong for so long? Does the Supt work for the Board or for the state DOE? Do we need to fix that?
Let DSEA hand the labor issues of their members.
As I said, the board needs to take corrective action on the person who deviated from the MOU without board approval.
Perseverance will always prevail. You stood with labor and their parent company failed to rise to the occasion.
Never surrender! Stay strong and with us>
I posted this comment at Delaware Liberal, and the questions are still valid.
I’m still struggling to wrap my head around what seems to be the core of the teachers’ complaints – that a single 20-minute interview decided their “fate.”
First: Isn’t that how real life works? If you bomb the interview, you don’t get the job?
Second: Isn’t that how tests work? If a student doesn’t answer the questions correctly, doesn’t the teacher flunk him?
Third: Isn’t it true that they wouldn’t have lost their jobs? That, in fact, they were guaranteed jobs, just at different schools?
So what’s all the whining about?
Anonymous,
I am happy to answer the questions you posted here and on DL. (Haven't been to DL in a couple days.)
1)The interview, according the to the PZ plan, was to be one of several metrics used to evaluate the teachers. At the April 19th public board meeting, the CSD HR director admitted that the interview was the only metric utilized. The board actually experienced an outcry from parents, teachers, alumni, and current students at Glasgow sharing their concerns that teachers who had made lasting and positive impact on their lives were being forced to transfer out. The board response was to scrutinize the process, which revealed to five board members that the two conflicting plans regarding the teacher selection process were implemented without fidelity. The board acted then to rectify the errors by retaining and retraining those 19 teachers at their campuses.
Yes, in the business world, an interview and a resume would suffice in measuring a potential employee's assets to a hiring manager. However, this process was to evaluate right fit, not potential employment. I believe that the district owed these 19 teachers, some of whom have been in their schools for 20+ years and may not have interviewed since then, a fair process. For me, having the interview serve as the only metric simply identified teachers who may not have tremendously strong interview schools but may build wonderful rapport with students. Since testing data was not a metric used, it's impossible to know if we selected teachers who already have a proven track record of success.
2) As for a student who does not test well: If I have a student who fails a test, I want my teacher identify why the student failed. A student can master the information and be unable to express it on a test. Conversely, the test can also identify students who can't or haven't for any myriad of reasons mastered the information. Either way, it becomes that teacher's responsibility to deliver the curriculum in a way that the student can learn from it. Most students will receive another chance, take another test down the road, some will earn accomodations based on disabilities, some will require extra teaching/tutoring time. Some students will simply not care about their education. But, we cannot give up on any of them even when those students want us to.
3) The 19 affected teachers were promised jobs in their areas of certification at other district schools. While I wouldn't call it whining, I think some of the 19 teachers deeply care for their school communities and their students. In the end, I believe they just wanted to be treated fairly by their employer.
I hope that helps answer some of your questions. Thanks for posting.
Elizabeth
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