kitchen table math, the sequel

A picture is worth a thousand words.

It's all here.

The silencing of parents and taxpayers.

The righteous rejection of accountability (a school superintendent who cannot be criticized "in public").

The standing rule that parents can speak for themselves only,^* followed by the dismissal of parent concerns as merely "personal."

And, finally, the core belief that school personnel possess a natural right to do what they want to do.

No matter what.


that said .....

That said, I'll add that I've seen nothing as bad as this in Irvington. Not even close.

Of course, I also haven't seen anyone with the ba*** to ask whether the Board is planning on rehiring the superintendent right in the middle of a board meeting.

Whoa.

I wonder what the school board will make of this parent?

If they're smart, they'll realize she is trouble-with-a-capital T.

She's not the only one.

Back to Irvingtonland, I gather there are quite a few parents in town who want to see the district move to something more akin to a business model.

Good idea! (I think.) In the business model -- not that I know anything about the business model -- I believe folks have the expression, "Make it go away."

That's what this school board needs to do with this superintendent -- and with this parent.

[ ummmm..... I'm not saying the parent should "go away." I'm saying the problem this parent represents should go away. ]

The superintendent needs to move on to another district; the board needs to move on to other business. They need to dump TERC, Connected Math, and whatever constructivist text they're using in the high school (I assume this parent was exercised about something to do with TERC, though I don't know) and be done with it.

Make it go away.

School boards and administrators need to develop street smarts.

Yes, on paper it says that boards and administrators wield absolute power.

But in reality no one wields absolute power, not even the most brutal totalitarian dictators (something we'd all know if our schools taught history instead of social studies).

Administrators and school boards need to start horse trading like the rest of the world.


update

Actually, there are probably plenty of savvy administrators who know how to horse trade, and who do horse trade.

Or, perhaps more likely, there are probably plenty of savvy administrators with the political good sense to pick and choose their battles.

Probably school boards, too.

That's not what we see in this video.

________________


^* hit refresh a couple of times if page doesn't appear

When we moved to New Jersey back in 1993, one of my first decorating endeavors was to write a "watch out for" list on a post-it note, then stick it on one of my kitchen cabinet doors. Over time, it needed scotch tape.

Yes, that's my decorating style. You should see the rest of my house (sigh). I guess you could say I'm a practical gal. Function over form. But that's another story.

The post-it listed growing trends in our nation's schools. At the time I had only two kids, and they were two and one, but I've always been a bit of a forward thinker.

It was a brief list; after all, it had to fit on a post-it. But it said things like, politically correct historical facts, whole language, and a few other things I've forgotten.

There was one other item on that list. It said in bold letters constructivism.

That post-it stayed up for about six years--until I'd seen the word enough times that I couldn't possibly forget. (Yes, my brain is that small.)

Actually, for a while I thought constructivism wasn't in my school. At kindergarten enrollment, nobody announced "We have constructivism here." At Back to School Night, it was never mentioned. No memos came home about it.

I realize now that our school district (and maybe everybody's) doesn't announce philosophy or methodology or even curriculum to parents at all. It's none of our business.

Slowly, over time though, I saw constructivism's effects. No need to go into them here.

So here I was, more aware than most parents, and only because I had an education degree, and yet it still took me several years to realize that my school was saturated in constructivist thinking.

And it wasn't confirmed or admitted to me until 2006, when the principal, with whom I was conducting a frustrating dialogue about TERC Investigations, said to me, "Well, you know, Linda, we've always been a constructivist school."

Had I not put that post-it on the cupboard in 1993, I would likely still not have put two and two together (pardon the math pun.)