2006-2007 Year In Review

(Released to the web June 10, 2007)

The 2006-2007 school year in Readington may be remembered as more heat than light.  It was a year in which a new superintendent and a largely new administration was hired with great hope and fanfare, a year in which a strategic plan was developed and newly approved board policies were reevaluated again, a year in which our school board turned and twisted into knots like a digestive system after a bad meal, a year in which grandiose plans were brought down to earth by a wary electorate, and a year in which students ultimately felt very little change in their school environment.

In a June 27, 2006 school board meeting a consultant hired by the district shared survey results, saying that Readington is a district at crossroads, requiring stability and horizontal and vertical articulation.  She noted the low point in survey results was that students themselves believe that the bar should be higher and that they are not being challenged.  Have we made strides this year toward changing that student perception?

In the previous meeting that same June, the school board heard a plan detailed by an outgoing administrator to mark a shift in district philosophy.  Differentiation of instruction within heterogeneous classrooms was to be stressed, especially in light of the dissolution of the "small first" program and an overly populated intervention program. Common planning time would allow teachers to examine student work together, instructional coaches would help struggling teachers with new tactics and strategies, and differentiation would be embedded in all programs.  Indeed, one of the criteria for the choice of a new superintendent was a commitment to differentiated teaching.  When Jorden Schiff, who would eventually be hired as the new superintendent, was speaking to members of the public as one of two remaining candidates he relayed the story of how forty teachers in his district of Howell were trained in differentiation techniques over one summer.

Once the new administration settled in it became apparent that there were  differing ideas about the meaning of differentiation.  As early as September the word "grouping" was coming up now and again in discussions about assessment and learning environment.  A few months later it was revealed that the new administration intended to create specific homogeneous groupings of students based on test scores.  Defending against a cry of "tracking!" by concerned parents and some board members, the administration began to be more careful about descriptive language, but, nonetheless, did not change the thrust of a program that was 180 degrees from what was being advertised months earlier.  In February, 2007, when a survey was sent out to parents pushing the grouping idea in a way many found to be disingenuous, the cat was out of the bag.  Even so, the school board which had previously pushed for heterogeneous and differentiated classrooms now seemed unable or unwilling to support that position.  The so called "clustering strategy" was gaining traction by default, even though it is widely discredited by education experts and even though neighboring school districts are removing the last vestiges of the practice and seeing test scores rise as a result.

As details of the grouping program continued to leak out, it became more difficult to reconcile statements made by our new superintendent before he was hired with what is being proposed now.  For the 2007-2008 school year, students will be grouped in various grades and subjects according to test scores on NJ-ASK tests and NWEA tests.  The NWEA program is a new addition to the testing juggernaut in Readington.  Still unanswered is the question of how a student sent off to a low group during parts of a day because of a test score will somehow catch up with peers assigned to a high group the same year.  Also unknown is how parents will react when they come to realize that only a very small percentage of students will qualify for advanced placement in a particular subject.  In this system in which only some students are worthy of engaging in "challenging" or "advanced" learning, will the lip service about parents or teachers being able to nominate students for advanced placement lead to competitive fights for limited slots?  When the district does a show and tell during public meetings it is the gifted and talented programs that are highlighted--will parents of students not as fortunate to be a part of these programs come to the conclusion that they are being shafted?  Will this grouping program turn around the perception of students themselves that the bar must be raised?

Speaking of student perceptions, this was a year in which quality of life issues came to the fore.  The reduction of recess time to 15 minutes weighed heavily in the minds of students and parents.  Another clumsy survey was taken to defend the reduced time, and this defense of the practice seemed flimsy in light of national campaigns to save recess.  It is probably not an exaggeration to say that recess would have been gone altogether for 2007-2008 if not for the outcry from parents.  Meanwhile, the issue of homework was raised due both to quantity and quality.  An existing board policy was unknown within the district until parents began to push for answers.  That policy has since been "articulated" and the quantity of homework has become more uniform.  The quality of the homework remains a problem, though.

The strategic planning process over this past winter was advertised as a means to bring together members of the community to help plan the next five years of district progress.  Participants generally reported a productive series of meetings, although participation was not as diverse as hoped by some.  Afterwards, though, there was grumbling that the process was being used by the administration as an excuse to justify their own agenda.  Overly broad mandates coming out of the planning allowed the administration to claim just about anything they wanted, said some.  A mandate for greater use of technology, for example, was translated by the administration as a need for specific and very expensive gadgets currently in vogue in schools.  The Smart Boards became a symbol for an administration overreaching and helped to bring down the school budget for another year.  Critics said that rather than seeking and pioneering technology that could truly affect student learning, the administration was looking for status symbols and bragging rights.  The strategic planning process got a lot of airplay initially, but that rhetoric has been toned down as the school year closes.

After a year of new leadership the morale of the teaching staff is still mixed.  The move to "right-size," to use the term of the superintendent,  meant that two respected and tenured middle school teachers were "RIFed" (Reduction In Force) by year's end.  A protest by parents and some students will apparently result in one of those teachers being offered a one year non-tenured position, but that did little to appease middle school staff members who feel threatened.  Legal actions with other staff members continue, although some of the cases have been settled.  A nurse who was perennially pushing the limits of propriety and professional conduct, not to mention common sense, was finally forced out.  Yet, the settlement includes a hefty salary into the 2007-2008 school year.  Only the school board can answer why this employee is worthy of such a gift.  Overall, the teaching staff seems to be anxiously watching and waiting.  The brain drain of a few years ago is over, but it would be an overstatement to say that morale is on an upswing.

As the 2006-2007 school year wore on, the school board seemed more and more disconnected from the kids in the classrooms and from each other.  Instead of concentrating on the significant philosophical shift going on in the district, they piddled about with cell phone policy, with arguments about posting policies on the school website, with solar panels and tech spending, with in-fighting over filling empty board seats, committee assignments, and board leadership, and with other meaningless tripe alternating between the self-congratulatory and the petulant lashing out at critics.  When even the Readington township mayor noted with public comments made during the budget process that the school board was split along two factions, it became apparent even to casual observers that the school board is more obsessed with itself than attentive to the way in which students will be affected by the policies and practices of the new order.

With the 2006-2007 year coming to an end we can pretty well judge the pattern of the new administration and the probable meaning for the 2007-2008 school year.  Clearly the administration does not need to answer to the school board for broad policy or philosophic questions.  The board is mired in the mud of personal politics and is far too distracted to provide leadership.  Whatever statements have been made, the fact is that our new administration is putting in place a grouping system designed to reward a small percentage of students who score well on standardized tests with a superior experience and to place lower scoring children in an environment which is quite different.  Teacher and parent nominations to put students in particular groups are said to be valid, but that doesn't negate the fact that specific test score numbers are being recommended as cut-offs for certain groupings.  It doesn't negate the fact that an entirely new testing system (NWEA) is being put in place to supplement an already onerous state testing battery.  And, the "exit" criteria from a particular grouping isn't backed by any procedural mechanism.  On top of this, virtually all reform efforts are concentrated on the testable subjects like math and language arts, rather than on other long neglected subjects like social studies, civics, science, or the arts.

In other districts planning for staff development means bringing in expert speakers who can shed light on student behavior or who can provide more effective teaching strategies. In other districts, presenting programs like Schools Attuned brings teaching staff members together in a common, well-articulated goal of improving the things which directly affect students.  In Readington, by contrast, the major staff development being put in place is something called "turn-key" trainers, who are staff members who will train other staff members on how to use the new NWEA testing system.  That says volumes about priorities.

What we can also predict from the experience of the past year is that the successes used for purposes of public relations will come from the gifted and talented groupings.  The students put on public display are those who participate in specialized enrichment programs, not the ones who spend their days in "regular" or "intervention"  programs.  Rather than making the success of all students and the education of the whole child a priority, this PR strategy promotes an unhealthy competition to seek gifted status and even a kind of student caste system, cemented by the previously discussed grouping strategy.

Miracles are said to be possible, and it seems as though nothing less would change the circular direction of our school board for the next year.  Until the leadership fight is resolved and the board can turn its attention toward meaningful questions, the connection between the electorate and the school district will remain broken.  As it stands now the administration answers only to its own whims or to occasional loud protests from parents and residents about things like technology spending or RIFed teachers.

A year ago students said themselves that they were not being challenged in school.  Since then we have replaced almost all of the administration and gone through a strategic planning process.  Are we challenging our students now?  Are we poised to redefine the student experience for next year, or have we simply rehashed the same sort of scripted learning that was behind the results of the student survey?  Will 2007-2008 be the year in which Readington students are identified as distinct individuals and nurtured as whole children, or will it be the year in which a grouping system encourages self-fulfilling outcomes and collapses into a desperate competition for the best student placement?