Archives for the year of: 2013
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NY Parents Demand Responsive State Board

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2013 //
10

Parents in Néw York are organizing statewide to demand a state board of education that reflects the interests of parents and students. The board in Néw York is called the Board of Regents. It is appointed by the State Assembly, which is overwhelmingly Democratic. The speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, effectively decides who will be appointed to the Regents. The current board, led by Merryl Tisch, is solidly supportive of high-stakes testing, trst- based evaluation of teachers, and rapid implementation of the Common Core.

It would be enlightening if the members of the Board of Regents agreed to take the 8th grade math test and publish their scores. Wonder how many would pass? You can bet their enthusiasm would wane if they had to do unto others what they want done to themselves.

Here is the parents’ statement:

Parents Demand More Accountability in the Appointment of Members of the Board of Regents

Parents across New York State are demanding that members of the Board of Regents up for re-appointment this March, Regents Christine Cea, James Jackson, James Cotrell, and Wade Norwood, publicly clarify their positions on the current education reforms.

“Those members of the Board of Regents who do not support an agenda that includes an immediate moratorium on high stakes Common Core testing and the sharing of student data must be replaced with new members who will recognize their responsibility to protect our children and our schools,” said Eric Mihelbergel, a public school parent in Buffalo and a founding member of the NYS Allies for Public Education. Mihelbergel went on to say, “the people of New York have lost confidence in Commissioner John King, Chancellor Merryl Tisch and the current Board of Regents to call a halt to these destructive education policies.”

Lisa Rudley, a public school parent in Ossining and a founding member of NYS Allies for Public Education, said “As evidenced in the Albany Times Union, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2013, the Regents’ policy on allowing privately funded fellows with little to no public education experience to drive curriculum calls into question the integrity of the system. We need an educational plan in New York not a marketing plan.”

The process of electing Board of Regents members has long been an elusive process that has not been widely understood by the public. Persons wishing to apply for a position submit a resume to Assemblywomen Catherine Nolan, Chair of the Education Committee, and Deborah Glick, Chair of the Higher Education Committee, by January 31, 2014. In-person interviews are then conducted in Albany in February by Nolan and Glick.

Although all legislators vote in early March, the process is controlled by the Democratic Majority of the Assembly. Many Republican members abstain from the voting process altogether, because it is so strongly controlled by the Democratic Majority and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Legislators are typically given less than 24-hour’s notice of the vote, and up to now, a current Regent is almost automatically re-appointed until they resign or retire.

“As a parent of four school-aged children, I am shocked at how the majority of Regents members have not listened to the protests of their constituents — parents, educators and members of the communities whose interests they are supposed to serve, and have been silent while the Commissioner imposes one damaging policy after another. It is time for REAL change at the Board of Regents and at the NYS Education Department” said Tim Farley, a parent and a principal of the Ichabod Crane School in Kinderhook, New York.

NYS Allies for Public Education is proposing parents adopt an Action Plan to lobby their legislators to appoint four Board of Regents members who will support a call for a moratorium on high-stakes testing, data sharing, and the Common Core modules and curriculum. In alignment with this goal, the organization will be sending out a survey to the current Regents members whose terms are up, as well as other applicants for these positions, to seek and publicize their views on these critical issues.

Jeanette Deutermann, public school parent in Bellmore and Long Island Opt-Out Facebook founder, says, “Parents will no longer allow Board of Regents members to be re-elected when they are not doing their job for children. We will hold legislators accountable for their votes for or against individual Regents. New Regents must be elected that support a moratorium on current practices.”

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and a founding member of NYS Allies for Public Education said, “Many educators have pointed out the high costs and low quality of the Common Core modules adopted by the NYS Education Department. These critics include Carol Burris, an award-winning NY Principal who in the Washington Post, pointed out that NYSED paid more than $14 million for faulty math modules produced by a company called Common Core Inc. At the same time, this same company has received millions from the Gates Foundation, which also spent $100 million to fund inBloom Inc., a corporation that is collecting highly sensitive and personal student information without parental consent, and putting it on a data cloud, so that it can more easily be shared with for-profit vendors.”

Though seven of the nine original inBloom states have pulled out, Commissioner King says he is determined to go ahead with this data-mining project, and is sharing the personal information for the entire state’s public school students with inBloom, despite the protests of parents, school board members, and Superintendents, as well as a lawsuit filed in court two weeks ago. The Gates Foundation is also helping to pay for the salaries of the Regents fellows who have been placed in charge of implementing the Common Core and this data-sharing project.

“This evident conflict of interest calls into serious question who is controlling education policies in this state, and whether private funders have been allowed undue influence over our children,” says Bianca Tanis, a public school parent in New Paltz and steering member of Re-Thinking Testing Mid-Hudson Region.

New York State Allies for Public Education represents forty-five grassroots parent groups from every corner of the Empire State. The organizations are proud to stand with the parents, community members and fellow educators in NYSAPE to call for a change in direction and policy beginning with new leadership at the New York State Education Department.

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“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Margaret Mead

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

Expert: Why VAM Should NOT Be Used to Grade Teachers

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2013 //
43

Edward H. Haertel is one of the nation’s premier psychometricians. He is Jacks Family Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University. I had the pleasure of serving with him on the National Assessment Governing Board, after I joined the board in 1997. He is wise, thoughtful, and deliberate. He understands the appropriate use and misuse of standardized testing.

He was invited by the Educational Testing Service to deliver the 14th William H. Angoff Memorial Lecture, which was presented at ETS in March 21, 2013 and at the National Press Club on March 22, 2013.

This lecture should be read by every educator and policymaker in the United States. Haertel explains the research on value-added models (VAM), which attempt to measure teacher quality by the rise or fall of student test scores, and shows why VAM should not be used to grade and rank teachers.

Haertel begins by pointing out that social scientists generally agree that “teacher differences account for about 10% of the variance in student test score gains in a single year.” Out-of-school factors account for about 60% of the variance; many other influences are unexplained variables.

Small though 10% may be, it is the only part of the influence that policymakers think they can directly affect, so many states have enacted policies to give bonuses or to administer sanctions based on student test scores. In Colorado, for example, policymakers have decided that the rise or fall of test scores counts for 50% of the teacher’s evaluation, which will determine tenure, pay, and retention or firing.

Haertel proceeds to demolish various myths associated with VAM, for example, the myth that the achievement gap would close completely if every child had a “top quintile” teacher or if every low-performing student had a top quintile teacher. He notes that “there is no way to assign all of the top-performing teachers to work with minority students or to replace the current teaching force with all top performers. The thought experiment cannot be translated into an actual policy.”

He notes other confounding variables: students are not randomly assigned to classrooms. Some teachers get classes who are easier or harder to teach. Changing the test will change the ratings of the teachers. The advocates of VAM routinely ignore the importance of peer effects, the peer culture of a school in which students “reinforce or discourage one another’s academic efforts.”

He adds: “In the real world of schooling, students are sorted by background and achievement through patterns of residential segregation, and they may also be grouped or tracked within schools. Ignoring this fact is likely to result in penalizing teachers of low-performing students and favoring teachers of high-performing students, just because the teachers of low-performing students cannot go as fast…Simply put, the net result of these peer effects is that VAM will not simply reward or penalize teachers according to how well or poorly they teach. They will also reward or penalize teachers according to which students they teach and which schools they teach in.”

After a careful review of the current state of research, Haertel reaches this conclusion:

“Teacher VAM scores should emphatically not be included as a substantial factor with a fixed weight in consequential teacher personnel decisions. The information they provide is simply not good enough to use in that way. It is not just that the information is noisy. Much more serious is the fact that the scores may be systematically biased for some teachers and against others, and major potential sources of bias stem from the way our school system is organized. No statistical manipulation can assure fair comparisons of teachers working in very different schools, with very different students, under very different conditions. One cannot do a good enough job of isolating the signal of teacher effects from the massive influences of students’ individual aptitudes, prior educational histories, out-of-school experiences, peer influences, and differential summer learning loss, nor can one adequately adjust away the varying academic climates of different schools. Even if acceptably small bias from all these factors could be assured, the resulting scores would still be highly unreliable and overly sensitive to the particular achievement test employed. Some of these concerns may be addressed, by using teacher scores averaged across several years of data, for example. But the interpretive argument is a chain of reasoning, and every proposition in the chain must be supported. Fixing one problem or another is not enough to make the case.”

Please read this important paper. It is the most important analysis I have read of why value-added models do not work. Since Race to the Top has promoted the use of VAM, Haertel’s analysis demonstrates  why Race to the Top is demoralizing teachers across the nation, why it is destabilizing schools, and why it will ultimately not only fail to achieve its goals but will do enormous damage to teachers, students, the teaching profession, and American education.

Please send this paper to your Governor, your mayor, your state commissioner of education, your local superintendent, the members of your local board of education, and anyone else who influences education policy.

 

 

Categories Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Randi On PISA: Time to End Failed Policies of NCLB & RTTT

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2013 //
114

AFT President Weingarten on PISA 2012 International Results

AFT’s Weingarten: “The crucial question we face now is whether we have the political will to move away from the failed policies and embrace what works in high-performing countries so that we can reclaim the promise of public education.”

WASHINGTON—Statement by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 results:

“Today’s PISA results drive home what has become abundantly clear: While the intentions may have been good, a decade of top-down, test-based schooling created by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top—focused on hyper-testing students, sanctioning teachers and closing schools—has failed to improve the quality of American public education. Sadly, our nation has ignored the lessons from the high-performing nations. These countries deeply respect public education, work to ensure that teachers are well-prepared and well-supported, and provide students not just with standards but with tools to meet them—such as ensuring a robust curriculum, addressing equity issues so children with the most needs get the most resources, and increasing parental involvement. None of the top-tier countries, nor any of those that have made great leaps in student performance, like Poland and Germany, has a fixation on testing like the United States does.

“The crucial question we face now is whether we have the political will to move away from the failed policies and embrace what works in high-performing countries so that we can reclaim the promise of public education.”

After the 2009 PISA report, Weingarten visited the top-performing nations of Japan, China, Singapore, Finland, Canada and Brazil to talk with teachers, principals, students and government officials about what makes their systems work for students, teachers and parents. Many of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s recommendations informed the AFT’s Quality Education Agenda and its Reclaiming the Promise of Public Education principles.

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Categories International, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

A Tennessee Teacher Writes a Letter to President Obama

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2013 //
28

It is hard to believe that President Obama understands the damage that his education policies are doing to children, teachers, principals, and schools. Ultimately, the massive demoralization that his policies cause will hurt our society.

This teacher in Tennessee wrote a letter to President Obama. Would you write the same letter? What would you say to him if you thought he was listening? If you had his full attention for 15 minutes?

Categories Tennessee

Yong Zhao on Finland’s “Decline” on PISA and East Asian “Success”

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2013 //
27

Yong Zhao is a brilliant, articulate scholar who was educated in China but is now a professor at the University of Oregon. He has written two books that I highly recommend: “Catching Up or Leading the Way” and “World-Class Learners.”

In this post, he reveals some inside information about PISA: Finland has slipped out of the top tier. He says this is not because the quality of education declined in Finland, but because so many test-centric Asian nations (and cities) participated.

He writes:

“While the Finns are right to be concerned about their education, it would be a huge mistake to believe that their education has gotten worse. Finland’s slip in the PISA ranking has little to do with what Finland has or has not done. It has been pushed down by others. In other words, Finland’s education quality as measured by the PISA may have not changed at all and remains strong, but the introduction of other education systems that are even better at taking tests has made Finland appear worse than it really is.”

And he adds:

“While the East Asian systems may enjoy being at the top of international tests, they are not happy at all with the outcomes of their education. They have recognized the damages of their education for a long time and have taken actions to reform their systems. Recently, the Chinese government again issued orders to lesson student academic burden by reducing standardized tests and written homework in primary schools. The Singaporeans have been working reforming its curriculum and examination systems. The Koreans are working on implementing a “free semester” for the secondary students. Eastern Asian parents are willing and working hard to spend their life’s savings finding spots outside these “best” education systems. Thus international schools, schools that follow the less successful Western education model, have been in high demand and continue to grow in East Asia. Tens of thousands of Chinese and Korean parents send their children to study in Australia, the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. It is no exaggeration to say that that the majority of the parents in China would send their children to an American school instead of keeping them in the “best performing” Chinese system, if they had the choice.”

Categories Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Testing

Alan Singer: New York’s Secret Education Policymakers

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2013 //
27

In this article at Huffington Post, Alan Singer has investigated the secret, privately funded apparatus that designs education policy in New York State.

The group is known as the Regents Research Fellows, but they are not subject to any public oversight.

They are appointed by the state commissioner, funded by big foundations, and seem to have more authority than the duly appointed Board of Regents.

It is an unusual arrangement, to say the least, in that the Fellows operate outside the legal framework of state law.

Who are they?

“The initial group of Regents Research fellows included, Matthew Gross, executive director of the fund, who previously recruited business leaders to partner with schools. Gross was originally a Teach for America recruit. Other fellows were Kristen Huff, a former College Board research director who developed their advanced placement and SAT testing programs; Amy McIntosh, formerly CEO of Zagat Survey and a senior vice president at a company that provides business information, previously developed teacher and principal effectiveness strategies for the New York City Department of Education; Julia Rafal, fellow for teacher and principal effectiveness was a TFA graduate and consultant for charter schools; and Kate Gerson. Gerson is promoted as a former New York City teacher and school principal who brings legitimate educational credentials and experience to the table. The reality however is that Gerson only worked for two years at a transfer school for over-aged-under-credited students before leaving for an organization called New Leaders for Schools.

“Later fellows have included Peter Swerdzewski, a psychometrics specialist from the College Board; Joshua Marland, another a psychometrics specialist; Jason Schweid, also recruited from the College Board; Joshua Skolnick, an attorney, assumed Gross’s management and fund raising responsibilities when Gross resigned; TFA graduates Ha My Vu and Joyce Macek; Beth Wurtmann, a television reporter; Jennifer Sattem; Doug Jaffe, a lawyer; Anu Malipatil, a TFA graduate and charter school advocate who also works for the Two Sigma Investment company; and Wendy Perdomo, a New York City DOE bureaucrat with no apparent teaching experience.”

Government in a democratic society should be transparent and accountable. This group is neither.

Categories Common Core, New York, Teacher Evaluations

Jersey Jazzman: “‘Twas the Night Before PISA Day!”

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2013 //
7

Please read Jersey Jazzman’s hilarious spoof on “The Night Before Christmas.”

He anticipates not the joy of Christmas and Santa, but the much-anticipated release of PISA scores, when Arne Duncan gets to tell the nation once again how terrible American education is and how we are losing the global competition and why we are still a nation at risk.

He will conveniently overlook the fact that he is Secretary of Education and has now been in charge for nearly five years. No accountability for him!

He will surround himself with Beltway insiders who agree that our schools are dreadful despite 11 years of No Child Left Behind and nearly five years of Race to the Top.

How many more years must we wait until we declare these programs failures?

This is how JJ’s poem begins:

“‘Twas the night before PISA Day, when all through the foundations
The wonks were all dreaming about Bill Gates’s donations;

The rankings were crafted for each nation with care,
In hopes that more grants would come from billionaires;

The children were tested and stressed at their desks;
While visions of bubble sheets made them feel quite grotesque;

Suburban moms in their ‘kerchiefs, and dads in their caps,
Hoped on test day their children’s brains wouldn’t collapse,

When out at the DOE there arose such a clatter,
I looked up from Klein’s tablet to see what was the matter.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), Humor, International, Testing

Los Angeles: Teachers, Administrators Divided About $1 Billion for iPads

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2013 //
12

Teachers and administrators in Los Angeles responded to an anonymous survey about the district’s commitment to spend $1 billion to give iPads to all students and staff.

36% of teachers were enthusiastic, compared to 90% of administrators.

Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times contrasts their reactions:

“It would seem Robert J. Moreau, a computer animation teacher who struggled for grants to set up a lab, would be among the first to applaud the $1-billion iPad program in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

But he’s not.

“It’s outrageous, appalling, that we are buying these toys when we don’t have adequate personnel to clean, to supervise,” said the Roosevelt High School instructor. “Classrooms are overcrowded, and my room has not been swept or mopped in years except by me and the students…. It would be great if the basics were met. I can’t get past that.”

Revere Middle School Principal Fern Somoza, meanwhile, praised the effort to provide every administrator, teacher and student in the nation’s second-largest school district with the Apple tablets.

“The good-old days are today,” Somoza said.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ipads-survey-20131202,0,2314290.story#ixzz2mI1RvQyf

Categories Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

Yes, There Are Some Grown-Ups in Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2013 //
7

I just can’t figure out how it makes sense for Los Angeles to spend $1 billion on iPads when it has so many other pressing needs. I can’t figure out how the district expects to buy another generation of iPads in 3-4 years. I can’t understand how the district justifies taking this money from a school construction bond fund approved by the voters for repairs and construction, not iPads. How is this sustainable? Set aside the fact that the district is paying more than retail and that the lease on the Pearson content expires in three years: Is this purchase responsible stewardship of district funds?

Happily, the bond oversight committee seems to be asking similar questions. In this post, we learn that the committee asked for answers to these questions:

“TO BE CLEAR: The oversight committee did not say “No way/No how.” We simply ask for more justification and detailed cost estimates and a delivery timeline.
● We also request a through program review and evaluation of Phase 1 and then Phase 2: What are the educational goals? Are we meeting them?
● We requested a review of all the Pearson software content no later than March 1. Show me the content.
● We want to see a plan for maintenance, replacement and continuation of the Common Core Technology Program when the Apple/Pearson contract expires in 2016.
● We want to see the legal questions definitively answered (They are still working on that Parent Responsibility Form…and what about taking them home?) …as well as the strategy for bond finance of short term assets.
● We want to see the impact of the iPads project on the facilities build and repair program: What won’t be doing if we buy all these iPads?”

Categories Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

A Member of the Denver School Board Says Goodbye

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2013 //
0

Jeannie Kaplan’s term as a member of the Denver Public School board ended, and she retired from the board. During the time she was on the board, she fought for the students and the public schools, and she fought against the data-driven, testing-obsessed mindset of the corporate reformers who dominate the board. In the last election, a heavily funded slate of corporate reformers expanded their majority to 6-1. In her farewell remarks, Jeannie reminded them that they now have total control of the system (as they have for the past nine years, but with three dissenters on the board, not just one). She now expects them to prove what they can do, given the absence of any meaningful opposition. Implicit in her remarks is the lingering question of whether any of these corporate reformers ever think about the purpose of education, about the meaning of an education where students are encouraged to think and ask questions, not just to check off the right bubble.

She is as dedicated and selfless a person in public life as I have ever met.

I will never forget the trip to Denver in 2010, when I went to talk about my book. I did not know Jeannie at the time, but she reached out to me because she realized we were allies. She organized about eight or ten sponsors of my talk–civil rights groups and the Dallas Classroom Teachers Association– and arranged for the event to take place on the campus of the University of Colorado. But someone who was not happy about my appearance discovered that one of the eight or ten groups was a “527,” which meant that it was collecting money for a political campaign. The story was leaked to the Denver Post, which reported the story and followed up with an editorial saying that the university could lose its tax-exempt status if I were allowed to speak on campus with the support of a 527. The event was moved to a church, where several hundred people showed up. At the conclusion of my talk, I invited the members of the notorious 527 to stand up: four parents stood up. They had collected $1,800 for the next school board election. Of course, they were swamped by a fund for corporate reformers that spent $100,000 or more on its slate.

For her courageous and often lonely support for public education and for the true values of a humane education for all children, Jeannie Kaplan joins our honor roll as a hero of American education.

Here are Jeannie’s farewell remarks:

We remind our students to follow their dreams, no matter what. I am here today to tell you I am one lucky lady to have been allowed to see my dream come true by serving on the Denver Public Schools Board. Thank you to my constituents for this incredible opportunity.

I would not have been able to do so without the help of my family and friends, and so to you all I say thank you. To my late parents, both of whom were public school teachers among other things, both of whom were born abroad and came to this country without speaking a word of English – I thank you for showing me how important public education is and how it truly can be the great equalizer and for giving me my value system. To my unbelievably loving and tolerant husband, Steve, who thinks a home cooked meal is Little India’s HOME delivery, and who has supported and encouraged me to fight for what I believed in, thank you for mostly understanding my pre-occupation with trying to save my little part of the world. To my totally amazing children, Leslie and Michael, thank you for encouraging me to be a public servant and for being such great examples of how a DPS public education can help mold a person into caring, intelligent, concerned citizens. And if you got tired of my seemingly never-ending attention to DPS matters, my guess is you will often wish those days were back as I turn that attention to you!! And to my many friends – old and new – I could never have survived the challenges and disappointments without you. Nor would the victories have been as sweet without you.

This has not been an easy stint for me. But I can look back on these eight years and be very proud of many things. (And I do not want you to think I did any of these things alone, because as we all know, it does take a village.)

Here are a few of the good things we were able to accomplish together by listening to communities, by being a representative for the people who elected me and by being a trustworthy fiduciary with regard to taxpayers’ money.

Getting the PCOPs from a risky variable rate deal to 100% fixed rate – with two 7-0 votes. Tom and I still disagree about “savings” but as I told him when we voted for all fixed, I plan on being here to see who was correct – the year will be 2038 and I will be a spry 92 years old.

Seeing KCAA go from a dream to a successful arts integrated K-10, soon to be full k-12

Watching Place Bridge Academy grow from an idea at a meeting at Temple Emanual to a full blown newcomer school of 1050 students with its concomitant refugee services.

Re opening Stephen Knight with the community’s help as the first ECE center

Supporting GALS through the new schools process and then helping to find them a permanent home at Del Pueblo

Ensuring the open classroom designs will be addressed through bond money. I am still holding out hope for an addition or a new school for Bromwell

Placing a DSST at Byers because the Wash Park neighborhood wanted this school there.

And just last night on another 7-0 vote the Mayfair Park neighborhood had its boundaries changed to Lowry Elementary School, something I have worked on with Mayfair Park for about 6 years. And DPS has listened as many neighborhoods have asked for a holistic approach to the overcrowding in District 3, thus cancelling an addition at Lowry till further discussions take place.

But I must be honest. What I view as any board member’s number 1 job – that of educating our children – has been an enormous disappointment for me. Those of you who follow DPS at all know I do not like the direction the district is going. I do not believe we are providing the kind of education I would have liked as a student, nor did my children receive from DPS a few short years ago. By being so test focused and data driven, I worry we are not instilling a love of learning. I do not believe public education is primarily about effective teaching, and I cringe at the atmosphere of blame and fear that is permeating many of our schools. Teachers are important but more important is life itself. And , I do not like the privatization we are witnessing in Denver Public Schools represented by co-locations, choice, charters which I believe is leading to churn, chaos and community concerns.

The election is over – the 9 year old reform seems to have won. There can be no excuses, to use reformers’ catch phrase, for such snail paced progress. It has always puzzled me how the mighty minority has been responsible for slowing reform, because the last time I looked 3 out of 7 can never stop much of anything. This is now a 6-1 board. Four years added to the 9 already passed equates to a whole generation of students being “educated” under reform. The Denver community should expect graduation rates of 90% and above with little need for remediation; we should expect the achievement gap to be eliminated or at worst be reduced to single digits; we should expect proficiencies in the 80’s as well. For all students in all subjects. Anything else will be failure.

What do I hope for as I leave?

  • I hope I am wrong about the direction the district is going.
  • I hope our children become lifelong learners.
  • I hope we produce well-educated students, not just test takers
  • I hope DPS establishes equity across the city.
  • I hope these next four years allow for taking what’s working and accelerate it and I hope the district can identify and toss out things that are clearly not working.
  • I hope the district has heard the many communities across this district who have been begging for real community engagement BEFORE decisions are made.
  • I hope we truly learn how to celebrate our second language learners.
  • I hope we stop demonizing the education profession.
  • I hope we restore public education to its rightful place as the cornerstone of our democracy.

As I leave, I want to say good luck to the new board and the DPS staff and I want to say thank you again to all who have helped make my dream come true. This has been an incredible journey.

Categories Education Reform
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