Resolved:

[Chris_Wendt]

W-S Patch posed the following question to readers today:

"Several school boards have passed resolutions asking state education officials to re-think their reliance on testing..... Should Wantagh follow suit? "

My comment, in response to W-S Patch, bears repeating, here:

"No. Such resolutions are not lawful: school districts (and their Boards of Education) are creatures of the state; Board Trustees are sworn officials of the state. Their job—as Trustees—includes implementing State Education Law, Regents policy, and the Commissioner's Regulations and Decisions.

The proper way for individual board members to vent their personal frustration over issues like the Common Core and High Stakes testing would be through discussion (individually or collectively) with their state legislators and the governor. But this should not be in any form of an official BoE "resolution" which would tend to commit the District in a way that exceeds BoE authority, and which would not truly represent the community.

As far as challenging the state education department and the Regents, that would be insubordinate and ineffective, and doing so can lead to negative financial and other repercussions from the State against the interests of the district, especially in regards to seeking state approvals for special requests, waivers, projects, and any kind of discretionary awarding of state funding.

The proper channel for taking exception with State Ed, the Commissioner, or the Regents, is for the Superintendent (NOT the BoE) to discuss the issue(s) with the Nassau BOCES District Superintendent, Tom Rogers. Part of Rogers job description is to serve as the local personal representative of the Commissioner of Education to component school districts, and the appropriate channel runs between the Superintendent of BOCES and the superintendents of the school districts.

The Common Core and Testing are controversial and divisive issues. Various factions have no right to hijack or to attempt to hijack the Board of Education to take up their cause (their side of the cause) in these issues. Neither Common Core nor State Testing are up for a vote by local school boards to decide about, and therefore, BoE members should not be voting on such issues which exceed their authority"

Read the article HERE (link). Please feel free to respond in either or both places.

Regards,

Chris Wendt

[Chris_Wendt]

However, it is worth considering and calling to mind these sobering facts:

• In the spring of 2013, NY school districts assessed the Math and ELA proficiency of 197,000 8th Graders...
  
  
• 66.5% of them, 130,877 were assessed as being below grade level in ELA...
  
  
• 72.9% of them, 144,086 were assessed as being below grade level in Math...
  
  
• Some of those failed one assessment or the other...
  
  
• Some of them failed both assessments.
  
  
• These were 8th Grade students, most of whom had 8-9 years of schooling behind them when they sat for these assessments...
  
  
• The vast majority of these students are now in 9th Grade, having started high school from behind their grade level...
  
  
• ...because a sizable majority of the State's Ninth Graders left 8th Grade performing BELOW GRADE LEVEL IN MATH & ELA!
  
  
• So, if most of the students in 9th Grade came in below 8th Grade level, then there must be something wrong with the state's grade level standards.
  
  
• I mean, almost all teachers were evaluated as OKAY in their APPR appraisals, so, it isn't the teachers' effectiveness that caused this student performance rupture.
  
  
• Or, are the APPR appraisals as suspect as the assessments?
  
  
• In 2012 (the latest year for which this statistic has been published) the NY State 4-Year Cohort High School Graduation Rate was an anemic 77%...
  
  
• ...translating to 50,000 students not graduating with their classmates after 4 years of high school across NY State.
  50,000 is more than 2-1/2 times the entire population of Wantagh (18,871).

I ask myself, and I am asking you...

...will making school harder (more rigorous) for all students improve ANY of the above results?

What do you think? Why?

Chris Wendt

All of the above numbers are from the NYSED website except the 2010 Population of Wantagh CDP, which is a census number that closely approximates the Wantagh SD, but is slightly larger because the Wantagh CDP includes three small parts of Wantagh which are in the Levittown or Seaford School Districts.

[Chris_Wendt]

There has been some discussion offline about this comment I had made (above):

" Neither Common Core nor State Testing are up for a vote by local school boards to decide about, and therefore, BoE members should not be voting on such issues which exceed their authority...."

When the State Legislature, or the Regents or Commissioner of Education passes laws or enacts regulations, they do not send those to the state's 700 school boards and ask, "What do you guys think about this?" with options to vote yes or no, or to comply or not comply. Instead, its "Here a new regulation, effective this date, be sure you are in compliance on that date."

This activity often requires a reading of existing District Policy by the school board or their law firm, and those readings sometimes lead to the school board revising old policies or adopting new policies which comport with new or revised regulations or laws. Whenever policies are changed or new policies adopted, the underlying regulations or laws are cited in the policy revisions. Adopting those new or revised policies is then voted upon by the Board Trustees.

But those votes only impact the local implementation and interpretation of the State policy and regulations. Local policy revision votes by the BoE are intended to bring or keep the district in compliance, not to determine whether the Board will accede to the state policy, and certainly NOT to provide an opportunity for the BoE to reject or disobey any policy or regulation.

Regards,

Chris Wendt