Not On the Test Revisited

NCLB (the federal No Child Left Behind law) makes me grind my teeth for lots of reasons.

This very cool song pretty well sums them up…

Now go visit Tom Chapin’s web site, Not On the Test.

For those of you who want the lyrics, Tom generously published them on his other web site, tomchapin.com.

Not On The Test
by John Forster & Tom Chapin
© 2007 Limousine Music Co. & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)

Go on to sleep now, third grader of mine.
The test is tomorrow but you’ll do just fine.
It’s reading and math. Forget all the rest.
You don’t need to know what is not on the test.

Each box that you mark on each test that you take,
Remember your teachers. Their jobs are at stake.
Your score is their score, but don’t get all stressed.
They’d never teach anything not on the test.

The School Board is faced with no child left behind
With rules but no funding, they’re caught in a bind.
So music and art and the things you love best
Are not in your school ’cause they’re not on the test.

Sleep, sleep, and as you progress
You’ll learn there’s a lot that is not on the test.

Debate is a skill that is useful to know,
Unless you’re in Congress or talk radio,
Where shouting and spouting and spewing are blessed
‘Cause rational discourse was not on the test.

Thinking’s important. It’s good to know how.
And someday you’ll learn to, but someday’s not now.
Go on to sleep, now. You need your rest.
Don’t think about thinking. It’s not on the test.

Thanks to Tom Brandt for hooking me up with the video!

What’s So Complicated About IK?

Click here for the new HSD 1J grading policy: IK (03-10).

Then, to see how easily a middle or high school teacher can implement this policy, check out this page and scroll down through the guidelines.

So, What Else Did the Board Discuss Last Tuesday? (Tempest in a Teapot, Part 2)

From my comments on The Oregonian Forum re Lighthouse:

The irony in this discussion of the Board’s faux “division” is that our OSBA Lighthouse Project instructors are competent, experienced, and successful education professionals who are, as the Board is, locked into a rigid program that needs data on the Board’s performance as measured by future student achievement, and therefore [the program] cannot adapt or change to improve.

Also ironic is that of all the topics the Board discussed last Tuesday, this one is merely “sensational,” while the other topics were much more relevant to the continued improvement of student achievement.

The Board received updates on the District’s rollout of standards-based grading (see Policy IK) accompanied by increased professional development in classroom assessment — the day-to-day, moment-by-moment feedback teachers give to students about learning, which, according to exhaustive research, is our most powerful teaching tool.

The Board also continued the discussion about the upcoming renewal of the HSD 1J Strategic Plan that will involve a large cross-section of the HSD community. Board members Adriana Canas, Rebecca Lantz, and Hugh O’Donnell will serve on a core committee with 27 other community representatives to determine which of the current plan’s objectives have been met, which should be maintained, and which still need work. The core committee will also deliberate on perceived need for new objectives.

Following the work of the core committee, still more educators and community members will serve on action teams that will determine the steps needed to realize the objectives.

Any volunteers?

Dividing the Board? Not.

An article in today’s The Oregonian suggested that a recent discussion at a Board work session on Tuesday, September 14, centering on HSD 1J Board of Directors training, is dividing the Board. Certainly we Board members have differing opinions, but is it really news that we disagree on something? We disagree all the time, but we come to consensus, or, in formal meetings, vote. And nobody walks away mad.

The Lighthouse Project appears to be dividing, instead of unifying, Hillsboro school board

My comments on the article are as follows:

Wendy, just a slight course adjustment here…I’m with John on the ponderous waste of time, and I’d just as soon discontinue the project. But with four Board members (and probably five, but the fifth was missing from the meeting) wanting to continue the project, it doesn’t much matter what John or I have to say.

Perhaps you didn’t have space in your article, but it would be nice for folks to know that we, the Board, are lab rats in the Iowa Lighthouse Project. Not that that’s a totally bad thing, but because the Iowa folks are gathering data based on our performance as a Board over the next few years, the content and delivery of Lighthouse instruction has not, and cannot be, altered or the data gathered might be less valid and reliable as compared to other Board’s performances nation-wide over the last few years. That’s just the facts of life in a research project that depends on good statistics.

And that’s a piece of the picture that none of us had explained to us going into this thing.

The best thing we learned from Lighthouse was to follow up with District administration on Board expectations. The rest has been to micro-analyze District performance data (an admin job) and encouragement to micro-manage our administrators, which is something that the Oregon School Board Association has discouraged in the past, according to all our training to date. At least until Lighthouse.

I’m all for high-performing Boards of Ed, and I think we have a very conscientious group, but we barely have enough meeting time and opportunity to take care of A-1 priority issues, let alone waste time with the glacial pace and questionable learning opportunities of Lighthouse.

If the Lighthouse curriculum could be condensed and presented the way a competent teacher would be expected to present it, I’d be willing to go for it, but not the way it is now.

Bottom line: this Board is made up of seven reasonable adults, and our differences of opinion on the Lighthouse Project are no big deal. Certainly not enough to cause a “division” among us.

Last, I “feel” the comment by Mad As He** talking about irony. Remember, Mad, I’m a retired teacher. Part of my (latent) mission as a Board member is to encourage better, more differentiated professional development that is actually welcome and valuable, and positively affects student achievement.

Further comment:

singa September 17, 2010 at 6:58AM

“The school board needs to be conversant enough to be critical consumers of the reports put in front of them by staff thus enabling them to ask appropriate questions and set reasonable and challenging educational goals for the district. The next step is to set reasonable parameters for the admin. to work within to achieve those educational goals through board direction and policy.

In the end the buck of district performance stops with the board.”

Right as rain, singa.

From the Board page on the HSD 1J website, http://www.hsd.k12.or.us/District/BoardofDirectors/tabid/64/Default.aspx :

“The Board of Directors received several distinguished accolades from the Oregon School Boards Association (OSBA), both collectively and individually, for their commitment to community engagement and developing their skills as Board members. The awards were presented at the 2009 OSBA annual convention in Portland, which was held in November.

OSBA Continuing Board Achievement
The Board received the Continuing Board Achievement award for the sixth-consecutive year. This award signifies the Board’s successful completion of substantial board leadership training activities through the Leadership Institute. The award represents the Board’s commitment to continually enhancing their skills to strengthen their effectiveness as a school board.

OSBA Leadership Training
Three individual Board members were recognized for their leadership achievements though engaging in OSBA’s leadership training last year: Patti McLeod, Rebecca Lantz and Carolyn Ortman received Platinum Awards.”

The Word’s Been Getting Around!

A great holiday message from WSWHE BOCES IN NY via Ken O’Connor.

Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy Chanukah to all of you!

Hybrid eTextbook

eDGe eTextbook

This article from Saturday’s New York Times (online edition) reviews a device that seems to bridge the textbook utility gap between laptops and e-readers like the Kindle.

Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., said that E-textbooks have special requirements that can be addressed by hybrids like the eDGe, she explained. “The devices have to render graphics faithfully, ideally with color,” she said, “and students should have the ability to take extensive notes and share them,” as well as have access to whatever interactive elements publishers provide.

Besides saving trees and reducing textbook costs (we hope), we may look forward to the increased well-being of students’ spinal health by eliminating the ubiquitous overweight backpack.

What’s High School For, Anyway?

During this deep and prolonged recession here in Oregon, we get to thinking about the costs of public education, especially secondary public education. (If you don’t think about it, that’s okay…I do, and I have to admit to a lot of ambivalence.)

Yesterday, the Orange County Register published an online artlcle about the differing expectations of teachers, parents, and students with regard to exactly what we should expect from a high school education.

This might be a bit of an overgeneralization, but I think of high school as both a beginning, and for many, an ending of formal education. Logically, a high school education needs to prepare students for life after high school, whether it’s joining the workforce and raising a happy little family, or going on to college and then joining the workforce and raising a happy little family.

In short, preparing students to be prepared for anything.

What do you think high school is for?

Grading Policy for Standards-Based Education

Today’s ASCD Express featured this link to a “new voice,” Ken O’Connor, on grading for learning.

Ken is not exactly a new voice. He wrote his first grading piece for the NASSP Journal (National Association of Secondary School Principals) in 1995, and I had the great fortune to take a two-day ASCD Institute from him in Albuquerque, NM, in 2000.

This is a great summary of the concepts that will help more students succeed in school.

Ken’s new 3rd edition of his comprehensive book on grading for learning is pictured above. It’s available from Assessment Training Institute (ETS) in Portland, Oregon, or Amazon.com.

Ken’s grading and assessment concepts should be part of every teacher’s toolkit.

New Sources for HSD 1J Information!

Hillsboro School District Coordinator of Communications Beth Graser has taken a page out of the Straight Talk book and now keeps our school district community informed about what transpires at regular Board of Director meetings prior to the official publication of minutes a month after the fact. English version, click  here. Spanish version click here. Go Beth!

The Oregonian newspaper has established an online education blog/forum to engage the community in discussion about education topics relevant to the Portland Metro Community. I look forward to lots of great discussions accompanied by the usual white noise. Thanks to Wendy Owen, intrepid reporter, for giving me a heads-up.

So where does that leave Straight Talk? No problema, folks.

I don’t have to report on the minutiae of Board meetings, and with The Oregonian taking a lead in metro education issues, I’m pretty much free to explore the topics that are strictly local. (Naturally, if something captures my interest, I’ll deal with it here, regardless of locality.)

If you’re wondering about the lighthouse picture, in addition to symbolizing a straight beacon of information and an intellectual safe harbor,  it’s a visual preview to reporting on a huge Board project that we believe will benefit not only the students of HSD 1J, but staff and community as well. It’s advanced professional development for the Board, and it has research proven results from other parts of the country.

I’ll report in more detail soon.

Trust Me

Trust is important to a school board. Very Important.

School boards want to be trusted by the folks who elect them, and school boards want to trust the person they choose to do the job of directing the school district, and that person wants to trust the people to whom he delegates the work that results in an educated student body.

Trust thrives on good information, i.e., truth. Trust suffers from disinformation, spin, and other forms of…well, to be blunt, lies. However, that doesn’t mean that unpleasant truth is unwelcome! Or that well-meant criticism isn’t acceptable to the Board.

For the record, I trust my fellow Board members, totally. I trust the Superintendent, Mike Scott, implicitly. I trust that patrons of the District who offer information to me have the same goals as mine — success for our students.

Deciding to trust is just that. A decision. But someone who told you it was okay to eat a really hot pepper might not be trusted with further gastronomical advice, right? That’s where I am as an individual Board member. Wondering if I want to bite on another hot pepper. The Thomas Middle School demolition issue was full of hot peppers offered by people who had their own interests in mind, not the best interests of our students. But our day in court provided lots of cool water.

In the near future, the Board will be listening to advocates of “urban renewal” for downtown Hillsboro. I’ll be watching for the hot peppers.

Aside from irony and allusions, I will continue to do my best to keep the patrons of HSD 1J informed of the actions of the Board of Directors sooner than they can glean from our meeting minutes that are approved a month after the fact.

I’ll follow this post up shortly with a look at how the Board is starting off the new school year. As always, our focus is on student achievement…for all students.