Montclair, New Jersey, has long been proud of its fine public schools. But these days, not even good schools and good districts are exempt from the corporate reform steamroller. At present, a substantial part of the community is at war with the school board and the Broad-trained superintendent. A group of dissident parents, who happen to be among leading scholars of education —–including Ira Shor, Stan Karp, and Michelle Fine—wrote the following description of the turmoil in Montclair.
PREFACE FROM MONTCLAIR CARES ABOUT SCHOOLS:
Montclair, New Jersey is a progressive town with highly-regarded public schools noted nationally for successfully desegregating through a districtwide magnet system. Kids of all colors go to all schools; families of all colors, classes, and sexual preferences are welcome here.
But the town now has a renegade board of education issuing subpoenas to uncover names of critics posting anonymously on blogs and websites. And we have a schools superintendent, hired by the board in fall 2012, who lacks state certification but was trained by the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. The superintendent, Penny MacCormack, came to Montclair from the NJ State Department of Education run by Christopher Cerf, another Broad graduate. Liberal Montclair, which voted overwhelmingly against Republican Governor Chris Christie, now has a superintendent from his administration.
Our school board, appointed by the mayor, took a destructive turn a few years ago by embracing austerity, cutting effective programs and essential classroom aides, ending services needed by students, while piling up multimillion-dollar budget surpluses year after year. The board also tried closing two successful and integrated schools, a plan it abandoned only after sustained parent protests.
Things went from bad to worse after MacCormack’s hiring following a secretive search. In true corporate-reform fashion, the board and MacCormack have restricted comments by the public and the local teachers‘ union president at meetings. Community management not public dialogue is its stock in trade. MacCormack hurriedly declared that Montclair was woefully behind on adapting the Common Core standards; she pushed a new “Strategic Plan” with a new layer of quarterly skills tests in every grade. After some of these new district assessments somehow got onto the Internet in the fall, the board launched an investigation and issued its subpoenas – including to a fellow board member – the only one to publicly question the superintendent’s policies- and to Google and a local online news site in an attempt to find out the identities of a local blogger and online commenters critical of the district leadership.
The ACLU of New Jersey sued on behalf of the blogger and following public protests, including from the Town Council, the board has withdrawn the subpoenas seeking identities of online critics. But the board’s subpoena against its own board member is still live and demands him to turn over emails and phone records, in fact, virtually all records of everyone he talks to in the community. You can see the subpoena here.
Our group, Montclair Cares About Schools, came together last spring out of concern over the destructive direction in the schools. We speak at board and Town Council meetings, hold public forums and workshops, send letters to the editor of the town paper, and have an active and popular Facebook page.
In December, Montclair Cares About Schools presented to the board and residents a timeline of how we got to this sad point in our district. An edited and abridged version is below.
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Timeline of a Debacle: “Just Six Months Ago…”
(issued Dec. 16, 2013)
Just six months ago, Montclair Cares About Schools asked the board to please slow down their plan to impose a new layer of quarterly, district-wide tests. Had the board listened to MCAS instead of ignoring our suggestion, the costly and divisive events since last June 23 could have been avoided.
June 2013: MCAS posted a petition online asking the board to slow down implementation of the planned quarterly assessments. Within 48 hours, 370 parents and community members signed online and another 40 signed a hard copy. Since then, online signers have grown to 560. At the board meeting that night, Montclair High School students presented their own petition signed by about 578 students also asking to slow down implementation of the new assessments.
The board refused to respond to the pleas to slow down. Instead, it rushed ahead recklessly.
It rushed ahead even though the new quarterly assessments and related curricula changes mandated by Superintendent MacCormack would come in the same year as a complex and burdensome new teacher evaluation system imposed by the State.
July and August 2013: The district recruited more than 100 teachers to develop the new quarterly assessments for every K-12 class. The superintendent maintained the new tests were necessary to get students ready for the upcoming state PARCC exams scheduled to begin in 2015.
>The public was told that the district would generate open-ended assessments, attuned to the unique characteristics and concerns of our high-performing district.
>By summer’s end, despite great cost and rush, only the first-quarter tests and lessons were ready, not the whole-year curriculum. School started in September with teachers not having the yearlong curriculum ready for them to plan their lessons.
>Teachers also learned that the assessments would have to be graded on a Scantron-ready metric. Our school curricula were being dumbed down to make them computer-friendly for the new PARCC testing en route to all classrooms.
>Although supposedly every Montclair student would be subject to the new layer of assessments, Advanced Placement students were exempt, making these new Scantron tests directed at only certain students, in a district where fairness and equity matter.
>We also have no evidence that any accommodations were planned for students in special education taking the new tests.
September 2013: At the start of school, students throughout the district were given ‘surprise’ pre-assessment tests. Many were on material not yet taught. We have a copy of a memo telling teachers to make these assessments difficult so that teachers could demonstrate students’ improvement on the next round of tests and to NOT share the pre-assessments or how students performed on them with students or parents.
Based on these unannounced, unprepared, and unnecessary pre-assessments, students were pulled out of regular classes for math and English language arts support, often without any notification or explanation to parents. This disturbed parents, frustrated those children pulled out of classes, and in many cases altered the racial makeup of classes.
October 2013: On Friday, October 25, the district learned that at least 14 of the district’s 60 first-quarter assessments suddenly appeared on an unprotected website on the Internet. Teachers were supposed to administer these tests the following week.
Three things happened in the wake of the online publication of the assessments:
1. Suspicion about how the assessments got online landed immediately on people who were publicly critical of the assessments, the board and the superintendent.
2. As copies of the published assessments began circulating among parents, the cover was blown off the Superintendent’s and board’s claims that these assessments were creative and teacher-generated. Many were canned short-answer tests, a low standard for assessment. Some had been copied verbatim from model state exams and some were clearly developmentally inappropriate for their grades. So much for the high-quality, teacher-generated assessments promised to the public.
3. The true cost of the assessments became known: $490,000. A half-million dollars of our taxes wasted by the board to get us into this mess, with a huge legal bill to follow.
October 28 or 29: According to Baristanet, a local online news outlet, the District filed a police report about the unauthorized publication of the assessments around October 28. As we understand it, the police did not pursue this case because they judged that no crime had been committed.
November 1: The board held a hastily called meeting to vote to hire its own attorney for what it claimed would be an “independent” investigation into the online publication of the assessments.
The board attorney was quoted in news reports that he would “cast a wide net” and would be issuing subpoenas to “blogs and websites.” At that same meeting however, board Pres. Robin Kulwin told reporters that she believed the “leak” was internal.
Why, if the board president believed the leak was internal – that is, caused accidentally or deliberately by someone who works for the district – did the board authorize its attorney to cast a wide net with subpoenas directed at outside parties? This key contradiction has never been explained. Why a big dragnet for a local problem with no evidence of criminal behavior presented?
December 4: The ACLU of New Jersey sued the board to quash subpoenas that the ACLU said were defective and beyond the limited investigative authority of a local school board. The ACLU had previously approached the board asking it to withdraw the subpoena to its client. But unlike other school districts in New Jersey approached by the ACLU on similar matters, our board refused to stop hounding its critics.
December 5: A state judge acknowledged the merits of the ACLU’s claims by granting a temporary restraining order against the board to prevent it from issuing any more subpoenas or taking further action on the ones issued.
December 9: The Montclair Township Council voted to refuse a school board request to investigate a computer network server shared by the town and school district. The council resolution declared that the investigation “is contributing to divisiveness and strife among the people of Montclair,[and] is resulting in the diversion and expenditure of substantial funds.”
December 16 board meeting: We ask the board, how much money has been poured into this punitive and pointless investigation for which you have provided no evidence of criminal activity? Why are you targeting your critics?
We propose that evidence points to the following scenario:
• The assessments had been placed by the district placed on an unprotected site (as confirmed by the board’s own computer network coordinator).
• The assessments were found on GoBookee, a “spider” or scavenger site that retrieves documents from the Internet and then tries to sell them online. Considering this and other Montclair school documents are on this site, we think it likely that this is how the assessments got online.
• We believe no one “leaked” the assessments but that they were poorly secured on the web portals open to teachers. Given the rush and lack of care in this entire process of creating and mandating these new assessments, this is not surprising.
No crime was committed here, and we think the board knows it. The only offenses have been by the board by engaging in a witch hunt – an investigation of parents, educators and community members critical of the board. This investigation has violated freedom of speech rights, embarrassed this respected town, and most likely, as the ACLU asserts, broken laws.
The township council has spoken, parents have spoken, educators have spoken. Enough.
The superintendent and board leadership should take responsibility for any security breach, apologize to the community and cease this destructive investigation.
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Epilogue: As 2014 begins, Montclair Cares About Schools continues its fight to expose and stop the damage to our good schools caused by this board’s and superintendent’s top-down, test-focused management and by its failure to tolerate public dialogue about our public schools. Our group endeavors to show alternatives. We hold public forums, workshops, living-room meetings for parents. We invite everyone interested in public education to visit our Facebook page.
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In addition to this joint statement, Ira Shor wrote the following letter to the editor of the Montclair Times to complain about the influence of the Broad Foundation in Montclair:
Dec. 29, 2013
Is Billionaire Eli Broad Running Our Schools?
Why is the District refusing to release items regarding the Superintendent’s relation to the Broad Foundation? On October 31, 2013, I filed a request under NJ’s Open Public Records Act(OPRA) for documents regarding Supt. MacCormack’s financial disclosure that she received “more than $2000” in 2013 from the Broad Foundation. We need to know how much “more than $2000” Broad is paying her and for what services. Contrary to OPRA law, Mr. Fleischer, her COO, provided no requested documents and did not explain why he refused. OPRA requires district officers to meet legal requests in 7 business days or explain in writing why not. Mr. Fleischer had 35 days but provided no Broad items and explained nothing.
What is the Superintendent hiding? Who does she work for–Montclair’s families or billionaire Eli Broad and his campaign to standardize public schools? She attended the unaccredited Broad Academy whose “grads” follow Broad’s playbook, imposing one-size-fits-all curricula, endless bubble-tests, and high-priced consultants and testing technology. We have a right to know if she answers to Broad or to us.
The Superintendent and our Board have recklessly disrupted our good schools and squandered taxes on ridiculous subpoenas, while refusing to spend yet another huge surplus on things our kids need: smaller classes, foreign language, aides in all classes, librarians in all schools, instrumental music, and after-school mentoring for at-risk kids. Listen to our over-tested kids reporting fear and stress; listen to our under-supported teachers at monthly Board meetings; then, you’ll agree we should roll back the Broad agenda and its assessment train wreck. The refusal of my OPRA request joins other illegal refusals from Mr. Fleischer and the Supt.’s office. Stop hiding from those you should be serving. Open your books and files.
Ira Shor
302 North Mountain Avenue
Montclair, NJ 07043
973-337-6783
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I know from your blog posts and the talk you gave at Dartmouth College a few months ago that you are a fierce supporter of locally elected boards. I think that the role of school boards is often overlooked and/or diminished by reporters and the public. As one who worked for over 100 different school boards during my 29 years as a public school superintendent (in New England superintendents serve multiple boards) I can attest to the fact that the caliber of the school boards determines the caliber of dialogue that takes place in the community about public education and the direction schools take. As I wrote in a comment earlier today, in many communities voters are indifferent to school board elections, which often results the seats going to members of the public who are only interested in keeping taxes low… and in too many cases these board members are attracted to the “business-can-do-it-better” ethos. The bottom line: if you want good schools, keep control in the hands of elected boards and recruit and vote for good board members. I’m not sure of the circumstances of the election of the “renegade board”, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the candidates ran unopposed. On the other hand if the Montclair voters DID have a choice, then the happenings in Montclair are the fruits of democracy… which sometimes elects candidates with agendas some of us oppose.
I’m not sure of your point, wgersen, but according to this report, the Montclair school board was appointed by the mayor, rather than elected.
The fact the board is appointed explains a lot… I did miss the fact that the board was appointed by the mayor, but that fact reinforces my bottom line message, which was: “if you want good schools, keep control in the hands of elected boards and recruit and vote for good board members.”
For the citizens of Montclair to regain control of the school district and the school board in Montclair more will be needed than simply electing a school board. MCAS has recently brought an intelligent discussion to education reform. However, it will not succeed in stopping Chris Cerf and Penny Elizabeth MacCormack from carrying out its agenda if it does not become more politically sophisticated and also address the real issues of a rogue board being led by the nose by a corporate reformer.
Penny MacCormack created havoc in the education districts she worked in before going to Trenton to work for the NJDOE under Chris Cerf. She was there only 10 months before Cerf got her placed in Montclair, where he happens to live. In those 10 months she hurriedly finished a poorly written doctoral thesis (on testing) at a local Connecticut university and got her Broad Certification in those 10 months. She came to Montclair heralded by the school board as the savior of town’s education (Montclair did not have great public education, but it certainly did not need saving, and certainly not saving of this sort).
Penny MacCormack arrived without proof of appropriate certification and without proof of meeting the strict NJ requirements for state residency. The Montclair Board of Education (MBoE) has refused to challenge her for these legal requirements publicly and refused to respond to public demands that she indeed demonstrate the appropriate qualifications. But this was only the beginning of the MBoE ignoring and even breaking the law over the last short 13 months. Early in 2013 Penny MacCormack was forced to admit publicly that she had broken the law regarding the NJ requirement for school superintendents to annually evaluate school principals. (This proved to be MBoE Member Cummings undoing for forcing the public admission. It was an astonishing moment for all present.)
For a fuller report on the MBoE investigation following the “leaked” assessments (the second time in less than two years that MacCormack was involved in such a scandal; the first time was while she was in Trenton), see my blog titled The Reality of the Montclair Board of Education’s Investigation: Unlawful Government Behavior’s Impact on a Community
http://montclair.patch.com/groups/id-rather-be-at-63/p/the-reality-of-the-montclair-board-of-educations-investigation-unlawful-government-behaviors-impact-on-a-community
I was one of the people targeted by the MBoE’s investigation. The investigation, it turns out, was never about finding out what happened to the school district’s assessments (it took more than six weeks before their rogue lawyer, Mark Tabakin, even considered looking at the procedures on their own district website). The real investigation, as the MBoE resolution even stated, was into “other incidents of conduct contrary to the Board’s best interest.” Myself, another blogger, and two other commentators on BaristaKids.net were targeted for having questioned the procedures and legality of the MBoE’s practices and particularly this investigation. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stepped in to represent us and one blogger, the one initially targeted, caved in and agreed to cooperate with the MBoE’s investigation, despite a temporary court order in his favor and advice from myself that cooperating with those who break the law is wrong. You can read my blog on this here: http://montclair.patch.com/groups/id-rather-be-at-63/p/the-board-of-education-and-assessmentgate-the-undoing-of-free-speech-in-montclair-new-jersey
Two days ago (in the night, no less), just days after a Township Council memo made clear that the assessments were never “leaked” but simply put on the school districts’ website unprotected, the New Jersey Department of Education suddenly announced it was taking over the investigation. In addition, Georgette Gilmore, the administrator of BaristaKids.net, has banned two of the commentators, one at least for explicitly asking about the local news reporting of the MBoE’s investigation. In addition, MCAS has provided little support or cooperation to those who had their lives turned upside down by the by the trampling of civil and Constitutional rights by the MBoE and its lawyer. Indeed, there was no reaction or outcry in town even after the MBoE broke the direct order of a Superior Court Judge. Further, neither the local press, the New Jersey press, nor the national press has been willing to report on or even investigate the lawlessness of the town’s board of education.
The regaining of control of the Montclair School District will not happen through academic chit-chat. There are many ways to educate children, many tried and proven good ways. Certainly, for a whole host of reasons well known here, CCSS and PARCC are not among the good ways. Montclair needs to reject them, fundamentally, not partially. But Montclair also needs to end its racial approach to education (as this MCAS article starts off), end its bravado about its magnet schools of 40 years ago, and set new a daring course for public education that truly addresses children in the town and country today. MCAS is far from doing this and it is not being inclusive.
But before any of this can occur, the political reform of education in Montclair is needed. I have written on this here: http://montclair.patch.com/groups/id-rather-be-at-63/p/reforming-the-politics-of-the-montclair-school-district
The quality of education in the Montclair public schools over the last 15 months has sunk enormously. Textbooks are gone, innovation is gone and mostly morale among teachers and students is gone. The MBoE and the district’s “Central Services” have become completely dysfunctional. This is, of course, part of the Broad approach. It makes districts easy targets for corporate takeover. In Montclair, unfortunately, there is little real resistance and, what there is, lacks sophistication and political intelligence. The real disaster is that the gamesmanship is being played out at the cost of the children.
For the citizens of Montclair to regain control of the school district and the school board in more will be needed than simply electing a school board. MCAS has recently brought an intelligent discussion to education reform. However, MCAS will not succeed in stopping Chris Cerf and Penny Elizabeth MacCormack from carrying out their agenda if it does not become more politically sophisticated and also address the real issues of a rogue board being led by the nose by a corporate reformer.
Penny MacCormack created havoc in the education districts she worked in before going to Trenton to work for the NJDOE under Chris Cerf. She was there only 10 months before Cerf got her placed in Montclair, where he happens to live. In those 10 months she hurriedly finished a poorly written doctoral thesis (on testing) at a local Connecticut university and got her Broad Certification. She came to Montclair heralded by the school board as the savior of town’s education (Montclair did not have great public education, but it certainly did not need saving, and certainly not saving of this sort).
Penny MacCormack arrived without proof of appropriate certification and without proof of meeting the strict NJ requirements for state residency. The Montclair Board of Education (MBoE) has refused to challenge her on these legal requirements publicly and refused to respond to public demands that she indeed demonstrate the appropriate qualifications. But this was only the beginning of the MBoE ignoring and even breaking the law over the last short 15 months. Early in 2013 Penny MacCormack was forced to admit publicly that she had broken the law regarding the NJ requirement for school superintendents to annually evaluate school principals. (This proved to be MBoE Member Cummings undoing for the leading questions that led to the public admission. It was an astonishing moment for all present.)
For a fuller report on the MBoE investigation following the “leaked” assessments (the second time in less than two years that MacCormack was involved in such a scandal; the first time was while she was in Trenton), see my blog titled The Reality of the Montclair Board of Education’s Investigation: Unlawful Government Behavior’s Impact on a Community
http://montclair.patch.com/groups/id-rather-be-at-63/p/the-reality-of-the-montclair-board-of-educations-investigation-unlawful-government-behaviors-impact-on-a-community
I was one of the people targeted by the MBoE’s investigation. The investigation, it turns out, was never about finding out what happened to the school district’s assessments (it took more than six weeks before their rogue lawyer, Mark Tabakin, even considered looking at the procedures on their own district website). The real investigation, as the MBoE resolution even stated, was into “other incidents of conduct contrary to the Board’s best interest.” Myself, another blogger, and two other commentators on BaristaKids.net were targeted for having questioned the procedures and legality of the MBoE’s practices and particularly this investigation. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stepped in to represent us and one blogger, the one initially targeted, caved in and agreed to cooperate with the MBoE’s investigation, despite a temporary court order in his favor and advice from myself that cooperating with those who break the law is wrong. You can read my blog on this here: http://montclair.patch.com/groups/id-rather-be-at-63/p/the-board-of-education-and-assessmentgate-the-undoing-of-free-speech-in-montclair-new-jersey
Two days ago (in the night, no less), just days after a Township Council memo made clear that the assessments were never “leaked” but simply put on the school districts’ website unprotected, the New Jersey Department of Education suddenly announced it was taking over the investigation. In addition, Georgette Gilmore, the administrator of BaristaKids.net, has banned two of the commentators, one at least for explicitly asking about the local news reporting of the MBoE’s investigation. In addition, MCAS has provided little support or cooperation to those who had their lives turned upside down by the by the trampling of civil and Constitutional rights by the MBoE and its lawyer. Indeed, there was no reaction or outcry in town even after the MBoE broke the direct order of a Superior Court Judge. Further, neither the local press, the New Jersey press, nor the national press has been willing to report on or even investigate the lawlessness of the town’s board of education.
The regaining of control of the Montclair School District will not happen through academic chit-chat. There are many ways to educate children, many tried and proven good ways. Certainly, for a whole host of reasons well known here, CCSS and PARCC are not among the good ways. Montclair needs to reject them, fundamentally, not partially. But Montclair also needs to end its racial approach to education (as this MCAS article starts off), end its bravado about its magnet schools of 40 years ago, and set new a daring course for public education that truly addresses children in the town and country today. MCAS is far from doing this and it is not being inclusive.
But before any of this can occur, the political reform of education in Montclair is needed. I have written on this here: http://montclair.patch.com/groups/id-rather-be-at-63/p/reforming-the-politics-of-the-montclair-school-district
The quality of education in the Montclair public schools over the last 15 months has sunk enormously. Textbooks are gone, innovation is gone and mostly morale among teachers and students is gone. The MBoE and the district’s “Central Services” have become completely dysfunctional. This is, of course, part of the Broad approach. It makes districts easy targets for corporate takeover. In Montclair, unfortunately, there is little real resistance and, what there is, lacks sophistication and political intelligence. The real disaster is that the gamesmanship is being played out at the cost of the children.
It should be noted that there are a handful of vocal people who support everything the MBoE does, legal or illegal. Slowly, however, the vast majority of people on the street and in the shops are tired of the wastefulness of ill-spent money, the dysfunctional of the district’s leadership, and the increasingly poorer and poorer classroom learning experiences. The children do know when their schools are failing them.
This is beyond frightening. Happily Montclair has a cadre of sophisticated parents to oppose this Broad takeover of their children’s education. It seems to me that the opportunity to rectify this situation comes when the mayor is up for re-election.
When Dr Williams was brought to Buffalo as Superintendent, after a similar shady employment search, his considerable income was supplemented by a local business leader who paid for his $2000 a month apartment and leased car. Williams did not live in Buffalo, nor did his wife or children. He commuted back and forth to the Baltimore area. This was before CCSS, but Williams did have an agenda – to break the BTF (our teachers union, specifically Phil Rumore). When he first arrived he implemented many harmful policies, but this one policy you might find interesting – he refused to speak to teachers. If they had a question they needed to go through their principals or supervisors. He kept this policy in place for one or two years (I can’t remember which, but I do remember my surprise when, after giving us the shaft, one September he finally decided to welcome the teachers back to school and encourage us to have a successful year – a real turnaround.) Eventually, after a disastrous five years, he was bought out (with the support of the same person who brought him in).
Now, after a year and a half, our community business leaders (the ones with money) want to buy the current superintendent out because she won’t play ball with them. The school board is divided 5 to 4. Whether she stays or not will be determined by the next school board election. It should be an interesting race.
Good luck to Montclair, I know from experience that they have a difficult road to travel.
What a freaking mess…
Yet, the Montclair scenario – or something approximate to it –– has played out in school districts across the nation, under superintendents who were Broad-trained, and under others who were just, well, clueless.
[For but one example, see:
http://www.readthehook.com/100248/no-school-administrator-left-behind
The superintendent cited was named to the state council of higher education by Virginia’s current scandal-plagued governor, who brought Jeb Bush’s A-F school grading system to that state, and who’s been a big supporter of charters and virtual schools run by K-12, Inc.]
Thanks to Ira Shor for bringing more attention and scrutiny to the Montclair affair.
A program where 98 to 99% of the schools fail! That sounds reasonable. Now we will truly be competitive throughout the world. Everyone will be labeled idiots.
“Everyone will be labeled idiots.”
At least then we will have a level playing field (snark alert).
“The council resolution declared that the investigation “is contributing to divisiveness and strife among the people of Montclair,[and] is resulting in the diversion and expenditure of substantial funds.”
Ed reform in a nutshell, which perhaps people in Montclair don’t know but are soon to find out.
I can’t help but notice that everywhere these folks touch down, public schools seems to lose funding. How much of the political end of ed reform is driven by a low tax or no tax ideology? I know there’s denial that this is political but obviously this is partly a very sophisticated and well-funded political campaign. Is this ultimately about disinvesting in public education?
Bottom line, and I’ll ask it again because it seems to me to be the central issue for public school parents.
How has ed reform improved or benefitted EXISTING public schools?
Why would a public school parent back “division and strife and the diversion and expenditure of substantial funds”?
How do children who attend public schools benefit from this? Why would I hire and ed reformer to run my PUBLIC schools? I know why I would hire one if my goal is to set up a charter system. What about public schools?
This is interesting. It’s a piece about some of the money backing ed reform. It’s funny, because it’s centered around Montclair (that’s where the reformers actually live):
http://bobbraunsledger.com/the-pink-hula-hoop-part-1-is-this-the-future-of-public-schools/
A simple question from me – If parents are so united against the School Board, superintendent and policies, and the teachers and support staff, including maintenance and custodial and others are similarly arrayed against the Board and it’s policies and the teacher’s union is also against [I assume], then how is it possible that the Board’s approach can prevail, even temporarily? I don’t mean to be unsophisticated about this, and I am not asking this question casually as a “straw man” but as a very concerned individual working against the same things in my community where we lack the support,, connections, resources, etc., of Montclair – if they can’t prevail, what next? Please help explain why this kind of regressive initiative is going on, even if only somewhat successfully, in Montclair.
I agree with you. My recommendation is for the teacher’s union to find some candidates of their own to run during the next school board election tooting a “Back to Normal” campaign.
Ellen, the board is appointed by the mayor!
Well there’s the problem.
The mayor in Buffalo can encourage candidates to run, but they have to be elected. There was a fight a while back to have some appointed members, but luckily it didn’t happen. However, Carl Paladino (who ran for Governor) is popular in Buffalo, and he was elected a school board member. He is very vocal (including leading the charge to get rid of our new superintendent). Montclair, Buffalo, plus so many other cities, have a lot of fronts to battle.
Jacman’s right – but there’s more to the story. I’ll have a post soon (if Christie doesn’t shut down another bridge…).
Given the story in today’s NYT on Christie’s interference in bridge traffic into NYC (see:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/nyregion/christie-aide-tied-to-bridge-lane-closings.html?hp), perhaps the placement of Peny MacCormack as Superintendent in Montclair is payback for not supporting Christie as governor?
Ira Shor is one of those rare, heroic educators who actually walks the walk he talks. He is also a leading proponent of critical pedagogy. Now, in a better world, the term “critical pedagogy” would not be needed because it’s really redundant (as is the term “critical thinking” when used, as it is in EduSpeak, to mean, simply, “thinking”). However, in a world in which the oligarchy runs the state and the state runs the schools, the “critical” part has to be added to “critical pedagogy” to distinguish real pedagogy from indoctrination. (Have a look at Lies My History Teacher Told Me and at Diane Raavitch’s wonderful The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students learn.)
One of the reasons why tenure and academic freedom are important in K-12 schools as well as in colleges is that teachers need to be protected from arbitrary, politically motivated evaluation and firing–from the principal or superintendent who would fire a teacher just because he or she doesn’t like that person’s politics–doesn’t like, for example, the journalism teacher who encourages students to stand up for freedom of the press in the student newspaper or the government teacher who encourages students to lobby for a student position on the School Board.
“It rushed ahead even though the new quarterly assessments and related curricula changes mandated by Superintendent MacCormack would come in the same year as a complex and burdensome new teacher evaluation system imposed by the State.”
“Complex and burdensome” are terms that do not explain the half of the new evaluation system in NJ. Demeaning, demoralizing, and ridiculous need to be included. Every teacher–and I mean EVERY one–I work with is disillusioned, exhausted, and unhappy this year. We have a great district with parental support that is unlike any other place I’ve worked, yet the state somehow feels it’s necessary to change everything this year.
Montclair is living in a reform nightmare…it’s only a matter of time before this nightmare becomes every district’s reality. Time to sue this board and its superintendent for harrassment and fraud.
Why do successful districts have to endure reform? Remember the old adage: If it ain’t broke, why fix it? None of this makes sense. (It’s like when the elementary school with high scores and kids reading above grade level had to do the same remedial reading program as those in schools with low scores and non readers). Once again, one size does not fit all. Actually, this size fits no one.
Montclair is a town without neighborhood control of its schools. We’ve seen it happen in states (like NC, where property value is so cheap that the state runs the schools). We’ve seen it happen in inner cities (where tax revenues are so slim that the state takes over the school system). We’ve seen it happen in big cities like NYC, where magnets have undercut neighborhood schools for decades, making it relatively easy for Bloomberg to override local concerns.
Montclair is the perfect storm. Their 35-y.o. 100% magnet school system was developed to integrate the schools. It accomplished that goal and has been the pride of the town, but this was bought at the cost of diminishing neighborhood identity/ voting clout.
For 50 yrs it has delegated the choice of its school board members to the mayor. This was reconfirmed by vote most recently in 2009; a nj.com article of the day noted, ” Appointed board supporters say it preserves the diversity of board members and precludes special-interest candidates from getting elected. Proponents of an elected board say it would have ensured that board members are responsive to the concerns of residents and parents and made budgets more transparent.”
All of that seems to be about diversity. Yet the structure of its governance allowed this: “…Gov. Chris Christie’s education commissioner, Chris Cerf, is a Broad graduate and he recruited [Broad Academy graduate] MacCormack for his state cabinet. She left in less than a year when she was hired—without the usual public vetting—by the appointed Montclair Board of Education [in autumn 2012]…” and the rest is already history per the posted article, leaving Montclair parents outraged yet impotent.
I may have left out the most important detail: Montclair pays the 8th highest residential taxes in the state (ave 16.5k). Fertile ground for privatization.
I hope this gives pause to those progressives who favor centralization of power in order to ordain benign goals such as equal access to all. Once you have centralized power, you are at the mercy of whoever buys their way to the top.
When you allow “governance” to replace elected government officials who are accountable to the people, you get tyranny.This is exactly why I am always bringing up the subject of Agenda 21 (which nobody wants to address seriously on this site although it has everything to do with CC and education “reform”.) The Common Core is a world wide phenomenon, being spread far and wide by Bill Gates and Sir Michael Barber, head of Pearson, for the purpose of “inventory and control” of people. The United Nations wants to inventory and control every resource in the world, from energy sources, clean water, animals, fertile land, trees, air and “human capital”–that’s you.
Wake up and fight this thing from a broader perspective than unfair high-stakes idiotic bubble testing. Is it so difficult to imagine that an elite group of people, David Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Al Gore, etc. want to crush creativity, dumb down the population and use all of the resources for themselves while relegating the rest of us to servitude and possible starvation? Bill Gates owns 500,000 shares of Monsanto. Monsanto is buying up all of the seed companies in the whole world to establish a monopoly of the food supply. Bill knows exactly how effective monopolies can be. Monsanto is the biggest producer of poison on the earth. It’s Glyphosate herbicide is linked to birth defects, cancer and sterilization. There are 78 study abstracts on Glyphosate indicating it contributes to Lymphoma: Non-Hodgkin, DNA damage, and Hormonal Disorders in Children. Actions speak louder than any words ever could. This isn’t just about rich people gaining too much influence over education and trying to privatize it. This is an evil plot to take over the world and “eliminate” most of the people in it.
More on the perfect storm: I have just learned, depressingly, through research, that my state NJ has, simply by virtue of collecting from rich school districts to help poor districts for some decades, further centralized the power of the state in ed matters. Gov Corzine in 2009 cemented this by signing the CORE act, which transformed the role of county superintendents of education from mere disseminators of state educational policies into powerful Executive County Superintendent of Schools…
so I guess we’re screwed
Not sure how our board members, most of whom were or are active volunteers in our school, are being portrayed by people like Ira Shor as pro corp reform. I am not sure what role the public should have in selecting a superintendent. With Dr MacCormack’s predecessor, when the board had narrowed down their field to 2 candidates, they held a community meeting where written questions could be asked of the two candidates. No public votes took place in selecting that superintendent. There was no public meeting of the final candidates this time – that doesnt mean the process was suspect or controlled by Commissioner Cerf. An elected board here might mean one with no racial diversity or possibly overly represented by teachers- not sure those are an improvement over our current system. The Board also represents all the taxpayers (with some of the highest taxes in the country) and while Ira Shor has stated many times at our board of ed meetings he’s happy to have his taxes increase, the 70% of residents who do not have children in the schools and even many of us who do who have seen our taxes rise dramatically over the years we have lived here, appreciate the board’s effort to maintain quality schools while being sensitive to taxpayers. Dr MacCormack has made improvements to the budget documents that have made the process much more transparent. Finally, the Board members have been among the most ardent opponents of the charter application that has hung over our district for the last 5 years- hardly a record of privatization and totally inaccurate.
Hello Diane,
I have revised my comment slightly to remove some errors and added a last paragraph. It has been sitting there for quite a few hours now “awaiting moderation” while other comments are posted. I am not sure I understand why.
If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact me.
In any event, please post only the second comment when you get to it.
Much appreciated,
idratherbeat63
________________________________
Speaking of subpoenas and emails, all eyes are on New Jersey’s dysfunctional and punitive governor’s office today:
“Later text messages mocked concerns that school buses filled with students were stuck in gridlock: “They are the children of Buono voters,” Mr. Wildstein wrote, referring to Mr. Christie’s opponent Barbara Buono.”
I think the people of New Jersey will wake up to a very different political landscape tomorrow morning. This is probably the right time to move forward, and eject the Broadie appointees of the Christie administration from public school districts.
Yay!
The reformers continue trying to fix things that are not broken. It’s a shame about NJ. It’s my home state and where I was educated in public schools and universities from K through graduate school. Solutions in search of problems is the reformy way.
Not to worry – the original story is, of course, Mr. Shore’s interpretation of events in Montclair. Everyone is entitled to their opinion – but THE MAJORITY of people in Montclair see things differently. We are very disturbed that Montclair’s Achievement GAP has persisted despite previous administrations’ efforts. In Montclair, if you have enough money for tutors and enrichment or if you have the time and the ‘inside scoop’ to make sure your child gets into the ‘good teacher’s’ class your child will do well. Our current administration is focusing on ‘the other’ classrooms – wanting to make sure that all students are being afford the same instruction and the same opportunities. The majority of the people in Montclair are encouraged by the changes and anxious to see and evaluate the results.
What Deborah Villarreal-Hadley does not mention is how the conditions that lead to an “achievement gap” in education have worsened over the last 15 months in Montclair. The very first thing Superintendent MacCormack did was to take resources away from teaching and create a cadre of data crunching administrators under her in Central Services. She installed six high paid administrative positions that had nothing to to with teaching or learning even before drafting her strategic plan. The Montclair Board of Education has never questioned a single aspect of this new more than a million dollar a year investment.
Her time (and the town money) have been spent since then “developing” (copy and paste), including the hiring of expensive outside private firms and consultants, patentedly useless assessments. These assessments were created (downloaded) even before education goals were considered. The time needed for teachers to adjust to her rigorous testing agenda was never considered, and the resources were not provided. Such is the case now that for all of this school year, and with a view toward the coming school years, there are no textbooks for many core subjects in many of the district schools. And Superintendent MacCormack has expressed an open “I don’t even care” attitude about teaching resources.
In addition, Superintendent MacCormack has increased the advantages of tracking students and separating those who are high achievers from those who achieve less quickly. The testing is part of this separation process. Further, she has in no way addressed underlying social needs, such as a better integration between home and school or nutrition.
The achievement gap is not simply a black and white rich vs. poor issue in Montclair, as Deborah Villarreal-Hadley suggests following the rhetoric of Superintendent MacCormack. It never is. It is rather a question of developing an education strategy that puts the child at the center and not the system.
Recently Montclair residents woke up to find that the rating of the school district had dropped to the 97th school district qua achievement in New Jersey. It will certainly drop next year below 100. The question is how far it will drop. And the ratings are correct. Students on both sides of the mythical “achievement gap” are finding themselves this year left out in the cold on education.
Deborah Willarreal-Hadley also provides a perfect example of the rhetoric of those in Montclair with their head in the sand: “The majority of the people in Montclair are encouraged by the changes and anxious to see and evaluate the results.” The vast and overwhelming majority of people in Montclair simply have no idea what is happening to the schools, and of those who do know, they have little to no inkling of what actually is taking place. The local Montclair press is so cuddled up to, and dependent on, the quips, the quotes, and the lies of the town’s administration, that there is no serious or honest reporting of the facts. By far, the vast majority of those who do care about education in Montclair are well aligned with the leading critical voices. Still, qua numbers it is hardly significant.
It is this indifference, along with a huge pretense that comes from living in Montclair, that is the real threat to education in the school district. People who do know and care about their children’s education are taking their children out of the public schools and putting them in private schools or simply considering to move to one of the neighboring towns where taxes are less and the schools far better. Deborah Willarreal-Hadley should be praised at least for being one of the few townies willing to look outside her comfort zone.
That is what happens when a school board is appointed rather than elected – a rubber stamp towards failed school policies. At least with elections, there is a chance that questions will be asked before new programs are implemented. And those “special interest groups” are the parents and other tax payers who should be allowed a say in public education. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than what you have now.
If there are standards, they should be for basic resources for schools, such as textbooks and curriculum development with teacher input. I suppose the administrators think that every teacher has a magic eight ball – but what if the message is “answer hazy, try back later” when later is too late. Obviously, the possibility for success is dismal when there is a lack of support and resources. Hiring a teacher to be a miracle worker, then tying their hands behind their backs and having them hop on one foot, will not lead to better schools. Sorry.
As a Charlotte-Mecklenburg School teacher, this sounds familiar to me. Peter Gorman did the typical Broad thing and created division and closed schools. I must say that our community reacted and created Project L.I.F.T. Diane, you should look into that program, it’s a community based program. Oh and take a moment to see what happened with our new Superintendent versus a new charter school. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/01/05/4588201/cms-charter-board-race-to-teach.html#.UtC0NrRDSLA
Excellent forum today by MCAS. There are certainly many better options to the absurd testing currently being forced on Montclair’s public schools.