Before The School Year Starts

Maybe you have already bought back to school supplies. Maybe you are not a procrastinator. Maybe you are not squeezing the last few days of vacation out of the summer.

But my advice this week, based on my Facebook feed and an email I got from a worried parent, is this:

1. Check the bus schedules, if you expect your child to take the bus, NOW. 

For some Ann Arbor high school students, 
the bus transportation may be 
provided on an Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority bus.

Don't wait until next Sunday or Monday when everything is closed. If there is a problem (and I have heard about a few), you are much more likely to resolve it before the school year starts if you try to solve it now.

So:
--Look the schedule up (in Ann Arbor: http://a2schools.org//site/Default.aspx?PageID=5392)
--If there is a problem (for instance, if your child would have to walk more than 1.5 miles, or cross a very busy street without a crossing guard or light), then I would suggest doing multiple things:

• Call Transportation and ask for a Router to discuss the problem, in Ann Arbor: (734) 994-2330
• Fill out the Parent Question and Concern Form
• Let the school principal know your concern as well 
• If necessary (if you don't feel like you are getting a resolution) then bump up your concern to the Superintendent and the Board of Education.

And by the way, it helps to know your rights: you can read the Ann Arbor Transportation Policy in Board Policy 3760.R.01 which can be found in Board Docs. 

2. Did your child have a crummy year last year? Are you worried that will happen again? Take Action Now. For instance: 

It's OK to request a meeting: Summer vacation is over for teachers and principals--you should feel free to write an email or place a phone call asking for a meeting. (If it's simple, maybe you don't need a meeting--but anything complicated, ask to get on the schedule!) Don't feel badly about asking to meet with the principal or with teachers or counselors--they are there to help you problem-solve. If you have complicated/multiple issues, it may help for you to describe the problems in advance--but that is not a requirement. It is better to ask earlier, before the school year is well underway.

Is it possible that your child's difficulties are due to an undiagnosed learning disability or other issue that would be covered by special education statutes and would qualify your child for additional services? Sometimes (not always) a telltale sign for this, is that your child did well in elementary school because they are smart, but as the work (and school day) gets more complex, they have trouble with a specific class or classes (even though they seem to be trying); they have trouble organizing (even though they are trying); all of a sudden they are failing classes.
If you have been wondering about whether your child would qualify for additional services under an IEP or 504 plan, it is your right to request an evaluation. (You can also have someone do an evaluation for you at your expense.) Once you request an evaluation, the school district is "on the clock" to provide it--so it really is in your interest to request this early. 

3. There Are Resources To Help You!

In addition to teachers, principals, and counselors, don't forget that other parents have a wealth of knowledge. If you are new to the school, the PTO is a great place to start.

If you have issues with special education or truancy, the Student Advocacy Center can be a great resource for you. It has Sample Letters for requesting an evaluation or disputing decisions around special education.

Another great resource in Ann Arbor is the Ann Arbor Parent Advisory Committee for Special Education (AAPAC for short), a group of parents that have children who receive special education services and who work to improve services to kids. They have experienced parents who are often liaisons to specific schools, and they have regular meetings as well.
[Note: some of the other districts have similar groups as well.]

The Michigan Alliance for Families has a parent mentor available to all parents in public schools (that includes charter schools) who can be very helpful--for instance, reviewing an IEP to see if it addresses the concerns that an evaluation might raise.

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Guest Post: Teachers, Statistics, and Teacher Evaluation

Have I mentioned that I love guest posts? 

Priti Shah, an AAPS parent and a UM psychology professor read a version of this during public commentary at a school board meeting, and she followed her comments up as a formal letter. I liked it so much that I asked if I could post it here. The reason I asked is that I think we need to understand what good evaluation would mean, and why the system being imposed on teachers by the school district is not a good system. And by the way, if you have never spoken at public comment (or haven't recently), I encourage it!

Dear Ann Arbor School Board Members:

This letter follows up on my comments during the public comment period of the Ann Arbor School Board meeting in January 2016. I spoke about the new teacher evaluation system.

As a reminder, I’m the parent of two children in the Ann Arbor Public Schools (11th and 6th grade). I am also a Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, and my research areas are in cognition and cognitive neuroscience and educational psychology. I base my comments on my feelings as a parent as well as based on the research evidence regarding teacher evaluations.

Priti Shah

The reason I wanted to speak was because I am very concerned about the climate of respect and collaboration teachers and administration that has been eroding in the Ann Arbor Public Schools and the impact on our children.

I start with three assumptions: 

(1) we all want the very best teachers possible,  

(2) we all want them to have the resources they need to provide the best possible educational experiences for each of our children, and 

(3) we want to be able to do all that without wasting our hard-earned resources. 

I strongly believe in setting high expectations and rewarding high quality work.  And as an educational scientist, I believe very much in high quality, research-supported teacher evaluation.  High quality evaluation should be valid (that is, someone who is rated as a “good” teacher should actually be a good teacher and someone who is rated as a “bad” teacher should actually be a bad teacher) and reliable (that is, evaluation shouldn’t change too much depending on who is in one classroom or which day the assessment occurs). Validity is a very hard nut to crack, because it depends fundamentally on one’s definition of what a good teacher is.

The new teacher evaluation system relies on two components: (1) student growth on a menu of standardized tests and (2) the Charlotte Danielson teacher evaluation system.  I would like to outline my concerns with respect to both of these approaches in terms of validity and reliability.

Student Growth

While I understand that incorporating student growth into teachers’ evaluations is mandated by state law, I want to highlight that the use of student growth—and how a teacher contributes to that growth--is problematic from a statistical perspective.  The American Statistical Association, in their policy statement on the issue, point to numerous concerns with respect to using student growth data for teacher evaluation purposes.  Most studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions. Student growth measures are not highly reliable, in other words. 

Most studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in 

test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found 

in the system-level conditions. Student growth measures are not highly 

reliable, in other words.  

A good teacher may look like a bad teacher depending on the composition of students in his or her class.  A group of Ann Arbor students in AP English may not show huge growth on a standardized English test because those students are already performing at ceiling on the test; their teacher might be rated as ineffective because there was no growth.  A teacher whose students may need safety and security (and warm coats and breakfast) may do an outstanding job and yet the circumstances that they are dealing with might lead to minimal growth on a standardized test. 

Another problem with using test scores to evaluate teachers is that relevant test scores are not available for many subjects taught by teachers-- my children have taken outstanding courses in subjects for which there are no standardized tests used: engineering design; communications, media and public policy; orchestra; art.  Some of these teachers will only interact with students once a week for an hour.  Evaluating these teachers on the performance of their students in subjects that they do not teach, and students that they rarely see, is absurd.

Furthermore, there is good support for the idea that teachers change their practices in light of these high stakes evaluations, often removing activities that promote critical thinking and creativity to spend more time on tested materials.

Most importantly, growth rates for different years for the same teachers vary widely, suggesting that these measures are not very reliable indicators of teacher quality and highly influenced by exactly which random kids they are teaching. And unfortunately, students will spend increasing amounts of time, and the district increasing amounts of money on high stakes tests that assess learning to the detriment of resources spent on other activities.

The Ann Arbor Public Schools would like to focus on growth for the bottom 1/3 of students in hopes that this will be an incentive to reducing the achievement gap.  Unfortunately, having 1/3 of the data to work with will mean a massive reduction in the possible reliability of the data because of smaller sample size.  And the bottom 1/3 is a dramatically different benchmark standard across teachers (i.e., you cannot compare growth across teachers if one is using the bottom 33% of the students in AP English and another the bottom 33% of students in guitar).

The Charlotte Danielson Framework

The second proposed component of the new teacher evaluation system is the Charlotte Danielson Framework. On the surface, this is a reasonable measure that involves administrators evaluating teachers on a systematic set of 76 items that are likely to be positively associated with teacher quality. 

Again, a good measure of teaching quality an assessment requires two key features: it needs to be reliable – in that the same teacher would be rated the same across time by different people—and valid—that is, that a good score on the means someone really is a good teacher.  Unfortunately, the reliability or validity of this framework is just not clear, based on the extant evidence.  Sure, you’ll hear some relatively high numbers from the people who sell the Danielson system but they are based on expert coders watching the same lessons on video.  Consider rating a baseball player for 15 minutes during a game.  If he makes a home run that day, your two independent raters will rate him similarly. If he strikes out, the two independent raters will rate him low. It’ll look like your rating system is highly reliable. That’s how reliability of these observational methods is tested. This is just one of many problems associated with such classroom observation methods.  

I point the board to a 2012 article in Education Researcher by Harvard School of Education Professor and University of Michigan PhD Heather Hill for a more technical discussion of these and related concerns. And at the same time I appeal to your common sense: Look at the rubrics and ask yourself—have you ever had a terrible teacher who could check off all the boxes and look like an “effective” teacher because they could use the right lingo and implement the criteria superficially?  Have you ever had a stellar educator who inspired and motivated you to succeed but didn’t see eye to eye with the administrators’ views on how classroom seating could be organized? Might there be a teacher who can shine during such a formal evaluation process but shows active disdain for some students throughout the school year?

I appreciate the extreme difficulty but necessity of evaluating teacher effectiveness, but I can confidently state that just by moving from rating teacher on one subset of the criteria annually to rating them on all four will not necessarily positively impact the reliability or validity of the measure. Indeed, it is likely to reduce the quality of the ratings, the validity of the measures, while simultaneously increasing burden on teachers and administrators. Just because there are more items does not mean an assessment is better.   Neither do I think that the vast majority of highly effective experienced teachers are going to change and become less effective. At my own job, our evaluations become less frequent with greater seniority; this makes sense to me.

Recommendation

Given that teachers must be evaluated, and that none of the proposed methods are particularly reliable or valid, I would probably use a combination of metrics as proposed by the school board. However, I would (1) try to minimize burden on the teachers and administrators (as in, not that many hours of time), (2) involve teachers in decision making at all phases (to get input on what they think should be included and what is reasonable and won’t distract them from their real work), (3) include not just administrator evaluations but peer evaluations (that is, ratings of other teachers, who often know more about what goes on in classrooms), and (4) consider also input of parents and students.   

A proud mama moment: my son wrote an article advocating the inclusion of student ratings of teachers for the Skyline Skybox (http://readtheskybox.com/201601/why-students-are-the-best-tools-when-it-comes-to-teacher-evaluations/); while I think student evaluations can be problematic in some situations, he makes an excellent point.   Student evaluations, based on specific questions regarding teaching effectiveness (not just “was this a good class” but whether the teacher seemed to care, whether students respect the teacher, and so forth) can actually be better predictors of student growth than observational methods.  And I can tell you that parents in our community are pretty well informed regarding which teachers seem engaged, caring, and effective. Parent and student surveys are cheap.

Conclusion

We need to start with some basic assumptions in revamping the teacher evaluation system in Ann Arbor.

My first assumption is that most of our teachers are smart, hard working, and caring professionals. I have observed far, far, more excellence in the Ann Arbor Schools classrooms on my many visits and interactions with teachers than I have experienced ineffective teaching.

Second, the Ann Arbor school system needs to maintain its leadership position regarding school administration and governance as well as quality schools.  The reason we have such outstanding teachers is that they want to work in our district.  We want to attract the very best teachers, not drive them away with unnecessary busywork.  Let’s interpret our state’s laws in a manner best suited to our teachers and students instead of jumping through hoops that may well be unnecessary.

Finally, let’s all agree that we want to expend our time and money on what helps our children learn, and that we do not want more and more of our money go to for profit testing companies, consultants to train administrators and run workshops teachers on evaluation rubrics, software so that administrators can rapidly rate teachers on numerous criteria quickly in the classroom at the press of a button.

Thanks for your time, and I’m happy to have a longer conversation with anyone who would like to talk to me.

Sincerely,

Priti Shah

A few references:

http://www.amstat.org/policy/pdfs/asa_vam_statement.pdf

https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/getting-teacher-evaluation-right-challenge-policy-makers.pdf

Hill, H. C., Charalambous, C. Y., & Kraft, M. A. (2012). When rater reliability is not enough teacher observation systems and a case for the generalizability study. Educational Researcher, 41(2), 56-64.

Guest Post: A Parent Reviews Her Child's M-STEP Results, and Learns...

A guest post by Naomi Zikmund-Fisher about the M-STEP results, and what they mean.

Last week, we finally received my children’s scores from the M-STEP test they took last spring. My son, a fourth grader at the time (now 5th) and my daughter, a high school Junior (now senior) both took the test. For more on that decision, you can read here.

In the interest of maintaining some of their privacy, I’m not going to share how my kids did on the test. More to the point, it probably doesn’t matter how they did on the test, as their performance on this first round appears to be being largely discarded.

As a former teacher and administrator, I probably know more about how to read a score report than most parents. Theoretically, I should be able to get all there is to get out of these scores. So, here’s what I learned from looking at my children’s score reports:

1. Last spring, my children were doing about as well in their academic progress as their teachers said they were. There were no real surprises. You could have looked at their report cards and gotten the same information that M-STEP gives you.

2. That information is wildly out of date. They took this test in a window from March to May. I got the scores in January. Whatever new information may have been useful in the scores is no longer pertinent.

3. The science and social studies tests measure curriculum alignment more than anything else. They are broken out by different smaller subjects (e.g. physical science, life science or economics, geography). You can see that in this sample of a child’s 4th grade science scores.

Sample M-Step information provided to parents, in this case for the science test.

When they say a child is proficient, what does that mean?

My children did best in areas that they had studied recently and worst in those from previous years. In other words, this test measured what classes they were taking, not anything about my children or about whether their teachers were teaching well.

4. The target area for “proficient” is, in some cases, shockingly small. Scores are reported graphically (among other ways) on a continuum of four ranges. Proficient is the second to the top and is the smallest area, sometimes by quite a bit.

But shouldn’t “just fine” be a fairly broad range of kids? When did we stop recognizing that “normal” isn’t a single point, it’s a spectrum?

Sample of information provided to parents. Note that the grey "margin of error" overlaps both the "partially proficient" and advanced categories, meaning that a child who scores in the yellow/gray overlap as "partially proficient" might actually be "proficient" on another day. Note also that the green ball of "proficient" is a much smaller area than the bars for not proficient, partially proficient, or advanced.

This picture shows the score graphic for the same student whose subject scores were above. This child is supposedly proficient in 4th grade science [the score is right in the middle of the green bubble]. As you can see, this is quite a feat, since the “Proficient” range is about 5.5% of the total.

What’s more, while it’s great that the score report acknowledges a “margin of error” around the score, that margin is substantially larger than the target itself. This means that three kids who score as “partially proficient,” “proficient,” and “advanced” might all know exactly the same amount of science. We sing the praises of one (and the wonderful teacher who taught her) while wringing our hands about another (and the mediocre educator she had) when there is truly no difference at all.

In the end, what I realize once again is that this data is designed to measure districts and schools much more than to give us any useful information about individual children. Even without the huge delay in score reporting, the amount of useful information, that you can’t find more easily somewhere else, about a single child is minimal.

It’s reasonable to say that the measure of a school or a district is how well its children are prepared for the next phase of life. The problem is, we’re substituting this test for the real answer to that question. We’re asking our kids to take hours upon hours of tests – time they could spend actually learning something – in service of measuring their school system.

If we already know how they’re going to do on the tests, then we already know what the answer we’re going to get will be. And if we don’t already know how they’re going to do on the tests, it’s either a really bad test or a school so out of touch with students that it should be obvious in multiple other ways.

I can say unequivocally, however, as an educator and as a parent, that the M-STEP given last spring was just plain a waste of my children’s time.

[When] Are We on the Same Team?

I'll start with a story I heard from my kids several years ago. I wasn't actually there. Every year my parents run a "grandparents camp" where the parents aren't allowed. (Cool, huh?!) And this story is from there.


Two of my nieces (sisters) used to fight a lot. Now they get along well, but back in the day, when they were closer to 8 and 10 years old, that wasn't the case.
So the story goes that they had been fighting while in the car, and they started yelling at each other,

"I'm telling Mom and Dad on you." "I'm telling Mom and Dad on you."

And my kids intervened (according to them), and said,

"What are you two doing?! You're on the same team! You're on the same team!"

*****************************
Side Note: You might be thinking (accurately) that this tells you something about my and my husband's relationship with our kids, and you'd be right...

*****************************

So anyway, I've been thinking about the relationship between parents, teachers, and the school board. Right now, trust is kind of low (between teachers and the school board/administration, for sure, and maybe between parents and the school board as well), and I've been wondering:

Are we on the same team? When are we on the same team?

Take me, for example.
I'm clearly in agreement with lots of the Ann Arbor school administration and board's initiatives: A2 Steam, the IB program, taking a clear stand against guns in the schools, just to name a few.

But I'm not in agreement with some positions they have taken on testing, on the processes for decisions, and on teacher evaluation.
[Quick summary: I believe parents have the right to opt students out of testing; that the end does not justify the means; and that you'll be hearing a lot about teacher evaluation in the coming weeks.]

But I AM completely in agreement with the school board and the administration on how much harder we need to fight to get adequate funding for schools--not just Ann Arbor's schools, but Flint's schools, and Detroit's schools, and Traverse City's schools, and Alpena's schools.

What's more, I really appreciate when the administration and school board are willing to stand up to the state and demand safe schools and well-funded schools.

********************************************

So I sometimes find myself torn. I want to support the school board and administration's work in Lansing; I want to support many local initiatives.

I don't want to support testing. I don't want to support activities that alienate and frighten teachers. I don't want to support pushing anything through without due process (except in an emergency, obviously).

*********************************************

And as I reflect on my children's interactions with their cousins, I think the appropriate answer is:

Sometimes we are on the same team. And sometimes we're not.  But a lot of the time, we're really on the same team, in that we all want the same thing--excellent schools.

Yet we don't necessarily agree on how to get there.

You know what? I don't think that is a bad thing.

*********************************************

I hope we can remember that when it comes to Lansing and funding or keeping guns out of our schools, no matter what our local differences are, we will need to unite.




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Ten Thoughts for the Last Two Weeks Before School Starts

1. M-Live has an article, that says there may be a tentative agreement between the teachers and the Ann Arbor school district. I have no idea if it is true, but here is the article (along with a document that looks authentic). If you haven't already read it, take a look, and see what you think.

One thing is for sure--even if there is a contract that ends up being like the tentative agreement referenced above, I think it's going to take a bit more to mend fences between the teachers and the administration.

2. Apparently, a lot of people were unaware that Powerschool is owned by Pearson Systems. Yup. Pearson has been in our district with Powerschool since 2007 (and many, many others too)--and probably earlier with textbooks. The alternatives to Powerschool are also owned by big corporations. I guess the question is (and I don't know)--what kind of data does Pearson get to use and keep about us and our children? What kind of safeguards are there? (And starting this year, I believe grading will also be done in Powerschool.) Powerschool is a *huge* convenience--but based on my facebook feed this afternoon, parents need to be convinced that our data is safe.

3. Riding my bike past the "Pathways Campus" today, I decided I like that name, much much better than the old A2Tech name. It implies that there are multiple ways of getting to the same destination.

4. Please--as you turn your thoughts toward the school year--take my survey and offer some meaningful critiques of the Ann Arbor district's new web site. It's my impression that a lot of stuff that was on the old web site is not on the new web site, but I don't know if that's true, that is really based on some cursory searches that I have done. What do you like and what don't you like? Take the survey!

5. Want to be a guest blogger? Let me know.

6. Back to School Helpline: From 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. you can call 734-660-9911. 
Email:  backtoschool@a2schools.org 

Now that helpline is truly a great idea--I have often gotten panicked questions from parents in the last few days before school. I hope it works well (in other words, I hope that they have the staffing to handle the call volume). I also hope that the people answering the phones have the correct answers at their fingertips.

At the end of Rick's Run, 2014.
I got my son to come with me! Thanks Joel!

7. Let's talk about Rick's Run! It's a fundraiser for Ann Arbor Rec & Ed scholarships, in memory of Rick DeKeon, a favorite PE teacher at Northside Elementary who was also active with Rec & Ed. I ran last year (the inaugural run) and it was at Pioneer, and it was freezing cold. OK, actually, I half ran and half walked, and it really doesn't matter, you can run or walk. It's a little bit earlier this year so it should be a little warmer (October 24th) and I'm signing up! Join me? (Maybe I should form a team...the blogspots?) You can register as a family or an individual right here, and tomorrow (Monday! August 24th) is the last day for a discount. Who's with me?!

[I went searching for the piece I wrote about Rick DeKeon and the Northside naming of the gym in his honor, and now there is a new gym being built over at Northside--so I'm wondering if the new gym will also be named after him.]

8. There is a really interesting lawsuit coming out of New York about how standardized testing can (or can't)--certainly shouldn't!--be used to evaluate teachers.


New York: Controversial teacher evaluation method is on trial--literally--and the judge is not amused

and a Slate piece on why this is a big deal.

9. Also in New York, where about 20% of students opted out of standardized tests, the New York Times reports that school districts will not lose money.

10. John Oliver takes on standardized testing!



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Guest Post: This is How Our Public Schools Die

Occasionally someone volunteers to write a guest post! I think this post, by Steve Norton, the Executive Director of Michigan Parents for Schools (written in his capacity as a parent, but with the knowledge he brings from MIPFS), is worth your time! He calls it a "companion piece" to the parent letter that was sent to the Ann Arbor school board and teachers' union. (See this post.)

The little embedded video--all of 11 seconds long--is from the movie Independence Day--a movie I've never seen. This holiday should remind us all of our rights and responsibilities as Americans, and that's really what Steve's post is about! (And that's why I've got the text colors set up in red and blue!) --Ruth


By Steve Norton




Everyone who cares about education in our community ought to be paying attention to what is happening right now between the leaders of our school district and the union which represents Ann Arbor teachers. Not to take sides, or to point fingers, but to understand the awful consequences of policies crafted over many years by "think tanks" and lobbying groups who hold tremendous power in Lansing. What we are seeing here today was scripted long ago, by those who hold community governance of education in contempt. Should we continue to follow their script, or should we start writing our own?

As a concerned parent, I definitely want a strong and stable school district which can offer great programs, maintain reasonable class sizes, and avoid constant crises. But as an involved parent, I also know that what matters most for my children is their everyday interaction with the teachers and other professionals who educate and care for them. School is not a place where we send our children to download "facts" and memorize algorithms. A quality education helps teach our children how to think, how to ask the right questions, and how to understand those different from themselves. Together, parents and schools prepare our children to grow into thoughtful citizens and productive members of our community. That's not something which can happen without talented, committed professionals at every level, most especially in the classroom.

So what has our state done to help make this possible? More than twenty years ago, we placed the fate of our local schools largely in the hands of the state legislature, because we gave them control over the funding for our schools. Money isn't everything, but schools are dark and cold without electricity and gas, buses don't run without fuel, and programs don't exist without the people to implement them.

Since that time, districts like Ann Arbor have seen their per-pupil funding lag behind inflation nearly every year, to the point where the real spending power of our funding is  over 21% below where it was in 1995, even before retirement costs are subtracted. Overall state spending on K-12 education has stagnated over the last decade and more, and when the mandatory payments to the state retirement system are taken out, real state per-pupil spending is down 21% since 2002. Perhaps more important, the share of our state's economic product that we use to pay for education has gone steadily down over the last decade: in good times or bad, we are committing less and less of our income to support K-12 schools.

In response, local school districts have been cutting programs, laying off teachers, insisting on pay concessions from employees, and privatizing any services which can legally be contracted out. Class sizes have risen, offerings have narrowed, and teachers have not only had their pay cut but their resources slashed. The rise of high-stakes testing has pushed quality education aside for the sake of test prep. The system, and everyone it it, has been under more and more stress as the years pass by. For background on how this has played out in Ann Arbor, please see the presentation here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3W0G8KNKLfLempCX1BoUTJVMUU/view?usp=sharing

Make no mistake: this was intentional. Having restricted itself to a funding bucket that was no longer adequate for our schools, our Legislature alternated between years when they pompously announced that we "need to live within our resources" and others where they patted themselves on the back for increases which were really illusions. But the consequences of these choices, and the pain, played out at the local rather than state level as school boards were forced to oversee the dismantling of their local schools.

To add fuel to the fire, our elected state officials passed laws to ensure greater conflict at the local level. Starting in 2011, the Legislature made topics which had traditionally been worked out between teachers and school boards into "prohibited subjects" that could not be subject to bargaining and instead are under the sole control of the school board. Sensitive matters to teachers, such as staffing and placement, evaluation, layoff and rehiring priority, and the minimum standards for firing, were handed to beleaguered school boards as a replacement for adequate funding. "You won't get any more funding, but you can use these as leverage to whip things into shape." Already backed into a corner, is it any wonder that school boards were willing to use those new powers?

Furthermore, faced with constant pressure for financial concessions, rising health insurance and retirement costs, and now a real threat to their working conditions, is it any wonder that many teachers and their unions chose to fight back?

But why set this in motion? Well, if you believe - as many influentials in Lansing currently do - that "government" can never to anything as well as the private sector, and that it should be as small as possible, you want "public" education to be placed into private hands. The easiest way to do this is to get families to vote with their feet, and abandon local public schools rather than try to save them. The money follows the children - all of it. After all, who wants to stay on a sinking ship?

It is not necessary to get into the details of what has happened in Ann Arbor to recognize the pattern (for more, see the Parent Letter here [http://a2schoolsmuse.blogspot.com/2015/07/parents-ask-aaps-board-teachers-union.html]). We are being forced to fight over a shrinking pie. As the pressure continues, and the fights accumulate, our local public schools will be undermined, public confidence in them eroded, and talented educators driven away. This is how our community-governed public schools will die.

When you are in the middle of the fight, it can be hard to step back and look at the big picture. But for our community, it is essential. These kinds of battles will lead nowhere good - and the people who set the stage for this struggle know that. It's time we took it to heart ourselves.

Our school leaders and educators need to set aside their legal weaponry, and quite literally beat their swords into plowshares. All the resources being used to further this standoff, the legal and organizational effort involved, would be better used to secure a settlement among stakeholders locally and to find allies across the state for political action. Those of us on the outside, parents and members of the community, have a job to do as well: we need to do what we can to plug the financial holes for now, and add our energies to the effort to force our lawmakers to do right by our children and our schools. It may seem trite to say "Fight Lansing," but if we do not, our future is clear - and it will play out just as they intended.


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Please Take the M-STEP Student and Parent Surveys

The Michigan Department of Education has put out parent and student surveys on the M-Step. I understand (at least on the parent survey) there is a comment section where you can put text. Use it!


Take the survey for students by June 12, 2015.

Take the survey for parents by June 19, 2015.



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Ann Arbor’s Move to Punish Opting Out: Even For This Test-Taking Family, It’s Bad Policy

A guest post by Naomi Zikmund-Fisher

If you look at the sidebar on the right of this blog, it asks that we assume that everyone wants the best for schools. There are (and I’m generalizing here) two general ways you can think about what is best for schools:

Philosophy #1: It is best for schools when schools are well funded, everything is going smoothly and achievement is high.

Philosophy #2: It is best for schools when each individual child, as a whole person, is getting what he or she needs.

As you look at those two possibilities, you probably are thinking that you don’t disagree with either of them. But one may seem more the way you look at schools than the other. Parents tend more towards #2 – we want our kids to get what our kids need. School officials tend more towards #1 – we want our schools to get what they need to serve all kids.

In a perfect world, these two views would never conflict. However, this being the real, imperfect world, they sometimes do. Recent issues surrounding Michigan’s standardized test, the MSTEP, have brought those conflicts to the forefront.

On the one hand, the law says that schools have to test the vast majority of children in order to maintain their government funding, which they certainly need. Philosophy #1 dictates that kids take the test. On the other hand, many parents say that this test is bad for children – their individual children and/or children in general, and therefore do not want their children to participate. Philosophy #2 says kids should not take this test.

During this most recent round of testing, much larger numbers of families than in previous years “opted out” of testing as a protest against the test itself and/or testing policy and/or to protect their own children from the effects of prolonged testing. The school district understandably is concerned with the possibility that this trend could cost the schools money they really need.

At last week’s School Board meeting, the Board had a first briefing on a policy to address this issue. It states that:

Failure to participate in all state assessments may result in exclusion and/or removal from any application-based school or program.

In other words, you let your child take the MSTEP or they cannot attend Ann Arbor Open, Ann Arbor STEAM,  Community, the IB Schools, or the Skyline magnets. And where are the opt-out families disproportionately clustered? At the school whose philosophy emphasizes the whole child and de-emphasizes standardized testing: Ann Arbor Open.

I am going to assume, for the sake of argument, that this policy is legal. Someone with more expertise than I can discuss that aspect. But let’s just suppose for the moment that it is legally permissible. Legally permissible is not the same thing as right.

And this is wrong.

Instead of taking a stance that says, “We respect what you’re trying to do but we don’t think it’s the right thing,” the Board said , “Agree with us or we will punish you.” But by “you,” they mean only parents of children in certain programs. If your child goes to a neighborhood school, there is no consequence at all.

What’s more, instead of opening a conversation with parents who are proponents of opting out, or even discussing the policy openly in advance of the meeting, they voted on it late in the evening and without the proposed policy being attached to the Board agenda.

I don’t think any person on the Board or any member of central administration can look me, or you, or anyone else in the eye and honestly say that they believe these tests are good for children. They may not think they’re as bad as some of us do, but they are flawed.

The Board sees this as purely a financial issue, even though no funding has ever been lost for failing to test enough children. Parents who opt out see this as a question of what is right for children. Faced with that conflict, what do we do?  The Board’s answer not only is to go with philosophy #1, but to flatly punish people for going with philosophy #2.

So I’ll say it again. This is wrong. It is a bad policy moved forward using bad process. If you agree with me, I hope you’ll let the Board of Education know.

Author’s note: At this point, you may be asking yourself:  who is writing this and where does she  stand on the testing issue?

Who am I to say this is wrong?

From 2002-2010 I was the Principal of Ann Arbor Open School. There were a handful of test opter-outers every year, and one year it cost us our “Annual Yearly Progress” certification. I do, however, support the idea that schools should not be able to get out of the fact that they are educating some groups of kids much better than others by only testing those who will do well. The emphasis on testing all children does have a point.

My children took the MSTEP this year. They attend Ann Arbor Open and Community. We decided that, while we think that standardized testing is a poor measure of student growth and school and teacher quality, and that draconian policies that require more and more testing diminish the quality of education for all, opting them out would likely not achieve much, and sitting around not taking a test wouldn’t get back the time wasted.

At the same time, I have a lot of respect for those who made the opposite decision. Good people with good intentions have different ideas of what to do, and I can’t fault someone for doing what they believe is right for their child. It is long past time for the Board to honor the real convictions of those who opt their children out by having an open, honest dialog about how to handle this situation in Ann Arbor, and I believe the proposed policy is a drastic step in the wrong direction.

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There's a New Group in Arbor Town; Parents and Teachers are Riled Up!

There is SO much going on these days. And while I was busy with my life, the school world spun madly on...In the last few weeks, the school board has pushed through two very controversial policies at an hour when most of us were sleeping, and without sufficient notice.

I'm talking about the Prohibited Subjects Policy, which I wrote about here, and Draft Policy 5060, which has gone through first briefing. The Prohibited Subjects Policy was first posted in board docs on the day it was voted on, and Draft Policy 5060--which tries to punish families in "application-based programs" who opt their children out of testing--wasn't even posted in board docs until an astute parent asked what that policy on the agenda was.

June 3, 2015 Update: Point of clarification--board policies do not jump unformed to first briefing. This policy, for instance, was discussed at the May 20 Governance Committee, which was a public meeting held at Skyline at 3:30 p.m. FYI, the Governance Committee is where all potential board policies are discussed. [I don't know that the public was there, but the public IS welcome.]

So, long story short, a new policy is not introduced for the first time at a regular BOE meeting; it goes to Governance first. The public is welcome at these meetings. 

And we, parents and teachers and citizens, have been asleep. I know. I--like so many of you--get up early to go to work; and the school board meetings start with almost two hours of presentations, awards, and public commentary. When people do show up at the meetings, they tend to leave after public commentary. Very few people stay around to the bitter end.

How quiet is it? At the last board meeting, Ann Arbor News reporter Lindsay Knake had this tweet:

The next morning, when I woke up, I laughed at this tweet.

This tweet would, of course, be funny--if it weren't so tragic. That means that aside from the school board members and staff required to be there, Lindsay Knake--who has been the education reporter for the Ann Arbor News for less than a year--was probably the only other (awake) observer in the room.

And that, itself, is a failure!

That is not the only failure.

I reject the fact that the board is not following its own, established, policies and procedures. (I'm not entirely sure if the policies were violated in actuality, because I wasn't at the meetings to see what time they discussed certain items, but I'm quite sure they were violated in spirit. Policies 1200 and Policy 1220 were put in place to ensure that items were discussed while people were still awake, and with proper timelines for giving notice to topics.) I wrote about these issues earlier in an Ann Arbor Chronicle article, Good Ideas, Flawed Process. So if I was calling out the board and superintendent on ideas that I thought were good, but the process was bad, you can be sure that I am upset about ideas that I think are bad, where the process is bad.

And I do think that both the Prohibited Subjects Policy and the Draft Policy 5060 are bad. (Look for a post tomorrow on Draft Policy 5060.)

I reject the idea that either policy had to be created or implemented now.

I reject the idea that either policy had to be brought forward without public discussion, sneaked onto the agenda.

I believe that by acting in this way, the school board and superintendent have unnecessarily inflamed passions with both teachers and parents.

It's puzzling to me--and so, so disappointing--that the board and superintendent have turned to poor process on these issues, when they had such a good model of process, and policy development, for the discussions around weapon-free schools. Why not build on that successful process instead?


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SO--What Next?

Well, there's a new group in town:

Ann Arbor Community for Trust and Transparency in Schools 

(AACTTS! We hope to have lots of AACTTSion).

Ann Arbor Community for Trust and Transparency in Schools is a new community group focused on how we as citizens and constituents can have a voice in shaping local and state educational policies and decision-making processes. We are coming together to understand and address issues that challenge the values that our community holds as partners in educating our kids.

I don't mind saying that the decisions on these two policies have done a lot to galvanize people. I personally feel that trust in the district is at an all-time low. But it doesn't have to be that way.

If you look at the top of this page, you will see that I have added a "page" to the blog for the AACTTS information. You can click on that tab, or you can follow this link.

Right now we are encouraging people to write to/talk to board members, and there are some sample letters on the page. One-on-one contact is good! Let board members know how you feel--about the policies, about the labor negotiations, about the process the board is using...

You can also sign a petition that is focused on Draft Policy 5060.

Sign the petition here.



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