This was a school year of some drama and struggle, in which our administration sometimes showed inexperience or lack of needed expertise and in which the available leadership wasn't always up to the challenge of the course set the year before.  Progress came with caveats, lack of progress went unexplained, and certain persistent issues remained unaddressed.

In no particular order, here are some of the more important events and issues of this school year:

Pennygate

As far as the world outside of Readington knows, the biggest story this school year in this district was "pennygate,"  which was the name given to the incident in February when a group of middle school students attempted to pay for their school lunches with pennies.  A classic tempest in a teapot, this story nonetheless took hold in the national press and spread like a virus.  The manner in which the incident unfolded said a lot more about the administration of the Readington school district than it did about the students who stood in line with their pockets full of change.

When a satellite uplink truck is parked outside of your building, the warning bells should be ringing in your head.  Such vehicles are far more often the harbinger of problems than of progress.  Despite sometimes frantic efforts by some school board members and other Readington stakeholders cautioning top administrators not to compound errors already made, the actions taken and not taken in the days after the penny incident were not helpful in containing the damage.  Once the story hit the AP wires, Readington schools became the laughing stock of  half the world as journalists writing "offbeat" stories, talk show hosts taking listener calls and bloggers writing their entries just poured out their derision on the school district.

There are many junctures where this story might have gone differently, beginning in the cafeteria itself.  Educators in other districts wondered why the adults in charge didn't just sit down with the kids and have a meaningful conversation while they rolled pennies together.  After that opportunity had passed and the stage was set for a free-for-all with administrators, students and parents, there were more chances for the top leadership to diffuse the situation.  Those chances were soon past, though, and things went from bad to worse as the lack of media savvy in the administration became evident. Scolding journalists or ignoring them are not usually an effective means of enlisting their support for your own message.

After the fallout of pennygate, even as hate emails continued to trickle in from all over the world to the inboxes of Readington administrators, there were calls for the district to use the incident for good and to explore with staff and students better means of communication and conflict resolution.  Unfortunately, the opportunity for top management to use pennygate as a catalyst for positive change in the middle school was squandered through inaction or lack of interest.   What was left was a band-aid called the "Do Something Club" that was intended to teach middle school students who participated in the club something about civil protest, social change and political  action.  It wasn't long before bored and disenchanted students privately renamed it the "Do Nothing Club." 

 

Math Curriculum

After fits and starts, the Everyday Math program, which has long been despised by many parents, was replaced this year.  The last nail in the coffin of Everyday Math was the report of the National Math Advisory panel, which came down hard on many of the components of Everyday Math.   Math Expressions, a new program published by Houghton Mifflin, was selected by the district's administration for use in the elementary schools up to grade five.  The school board approved the purchase, which totals around $130K. The process to choose the new textbooks was flawed in some ways.  It was limited to publishers with a national sales force who were willing to visit the district in person.  Teachers who were asked to evaluate the four contenders were given boxes of materials during hectic periods of the school year with little time to examine anything in depth, or asked to teach a single lesson from one program or another and to compare in ways that didn't necessarily make instructional sense.

The Math Expressions series is certainly not perfect, but it is a modest improvement over the Everyday Math program.  There is less fluff than in some other nationally sold textbooks and there is more focus on mastery instead of spiraling.  There are still some odd algorithms taught in the series which are not of the traditional variety, although not quite as far out in left field as was Everyday Math.  The new textbooks are seen by some as weak in the quality of problem-solving and other districts do supplement to reinforce fact recall and repetition. One minor training session for teachers was hastily arranged before the end of this school year, but the reality is that the district is behind the eight ball in this area and has not yet completed a thorough plan for the implementation of Math Expressions.  There are some teachers who are not excited about the switchover, and all the teachers will need time and support to learn the new program anyway.

One troubling aspect of the new math program selection was that the middle school essentially opted-out of the change, preferring to stick with their existing Connected Math textbook series.  That this decision was allowed to stand only reinforces the notion that the middle school is an entity unto itself, refusing to play ball with the entire Readington district team, which includes the other three schools.  Add to this decision the remaining confusion among parents and educators about how the math grouping and algebra programs are supposed to work in the middle school, and it is easy to see that more strife is likely in the coming school year.  As before, the middle school will not be instructionally or programmatically aligned with the lower grades, and there will not be a sense of continuity between Holland Brook school and the middle school. 

 

Middle School Culture

While we're on the subject, the culture at the middle school continued to be a matter for discussion and debate this year.  At school board meetings parents stood up to complain about student on student violence, most often occurring at the middle school level.  After relaying painful stories of student fights and bullying in locker rooms, bathrooms, hallways and buses, they would leave with promises of action.  A couple of meetings later, the parents would be back, wondering  what happened to those promises of action and sharing more stories of violence.  Members of the administration and sometimes other staff were there to categorically deny that there is a violence problem at the middle school, but that didn't always sway school board members gauging the frustrated looks in the eyes of the parents there to testify to the opposite view.

At the same time, many parents were watching with disapproval the classroom behavior and tone of some middle school teachers who "manage" their classroom with sarcasm, humiliation or unnecessarily stern admonition.  Not a new problem, this form of teacher on student bullying left a bad taste in the mouths of parents and students alike.  Contributing to this ill-will between home and middle school is the perception by parents that they are really not welcome partners in the education of their children from sixth grade on up.  After all, the literal words "we'll take it from here" have been spoken at back to school night.  Parent-teacher conferences at the middle school are a wham-bam, thank you ma'am kind of affair under ten minutes in length, with little but grades and scores to share.  Emails sent to teachers by parents with offers of classroom assistance or advice are too often politely rebuffed or simply ignored.

Student experiences can be of poor quality, too.  Even if a student manages to avoid student violence or some of the more egregious behavior of some teachers, the culture of negativity pervades the walls of the middle school.  The joy of learning isn't a conversation-starter with most Readington middle school students. Yet, ninth and tenth grade students from Readington who are now attending Hunterdon Central Regional High School are often excited about their school work and the possibilities of learning that open up to them there.  They relate the sea-change in attitude they felt when entering the high school from the middle school.  These aren't bad students in the middle school, but students who find themselves in a poorly designed and needlessly harsh environment where they must sign their name in six places to take a bathroom break, kow-tow to arbitrary classroom management tactics, share a "homework room" with students in detention, and endure the strike of more sticks than they can shake a carrot at.

Despite years of complaints, hand-wringing and occasional attempts at reform, the middle school is still a problem.  The experienced parents of former students say the problem is embedded in the concrete blocks and mortar of the building itself.  When it was suggested this year that something like Rachel's Challenge might be a means to shock the middle school culture into a different mode of thinking, it was revealed that the guidance department has already expressed an interest in the program.  Yet, that idea was not specifically funded in the budget for next year. Another suggestion to implement a peer-tutoring program that might encourage positive interaction between students was also a non-starter.

 

Classroom Technology

The push to link every minute of classroom time with some form of technology was relentless this year.  While few would argue for a return to chalk and slates, many stakeholders, including both parents and teachers, worried that the technology drive was too much too fast.  Another concern frequently voiced is that the cost of some of the technology outweighs the benefits.  During at least three public meetings it was advertised with great fanfare how teachers could manipulate images of pennies on their high tech smartboard projection screens so that young students could learn about money and counting.  Wags in the audience each time wondered why the students couldn't just be handed actual pennies to manipulate with their hands.

Some devices, like the Elmo three dimensional projectors, did prove popular and genuinely useful for teachers.  Other gadgets, like the smartboards, notepad computers, projectors, and classroom voice amplification, were helpful to some teachers and burdens for others.    The administration has been fond of expressing how excited teachers are to participate in the piloting of new technologies, but there is a difference between excitement and usefulness.  Similarly, children get excited about ice cream, but meat and veggies are needed for growing bodies. Whatever the case, when VIP visitors toured classrooms, all available gadgets were on display.

Older Readington students were the first this year to get their own email accounts with the school's domain.  Students could even log in from home to check their email.  However, students and parents soon realized how silly this effort would be.  There was no time during classes to send emails and computer time was limited anyway.  Email could not be sent from home at all.  The intended use of these student email accounts was never explained.  Unfortunately, the configuration of these Microsoft Exchange based student user accounts was so poorly implemented that with a few mouse clicks students could (and probably still can) locate the private email addresses of  certain school board members or peruse policy and procedure documents intended only for the eyes of staff.  Luckily the documents were mostly older, dating back two or three administrations, and more an embarrassment than a threat.  The point of the whole exercise seemed to be more about being able to lay claim to having student email accounts than about actually having a purpose for these district resources. 

Teachers feeling the pressure to infuse lessons with technology assigned the requisite creation of Powerpoint shows whenever possible and sent kids home to search for images, dictionaries, citation machines, and many other things via the internet.   The students already knew how to use Powerpoint, but as a result of these ill-defined homework assignments many honed their skills at locating hardcore porn, using copyrighted material without regard to ownership, plagiarizing language for reports, harnessing the power of "cut and paste" to create instant presentations,  and relying on free internet resources to spell, cite, define, and suggest alternate words for them.  A few parents were stunned when all the internet protection they had provided in their own homes was rendered pointless by other students sharing tips on porn sites and other goodies they had found in less protective environments.

What the district did not do in the area of classroom technology this year was teach students how to evaluate information they find on the net for truth, relevance, timeliness or legality.  The district did not make it a priority to define for students the significance of cheating on work through electronic means now so widely and easily available to them.  The district also made no comprehensive effort to harness the power of open-source software like LOGO or Sketchup or Open Office to teach our students how to better their work and their expertise in legitimate ways.  They did not use in a systematic way the free blogging sites to encourage higher quality writing among students.  Of course, there were individual teachers who made heroic efforts on their own to incorporate some of these ideas into their own lessons.   Maybe your child was lucky enough to be in that classroom or maybe not. 

 

District Technology

Technology initiatives for the whole district caused some consternation this year too.  A new software package for scheduling substitute teachers called Aesop was implemented and it soon proved unpopular with some teachers and their subs. Classroom teachers often develop relationships with substitute teachers and get to know which subs best fit with their classroom.  A classroom teacher understandably wants to exhibit what measure of control he or she can so that there is the highest level of continuity and least amount of shock to the system when he or she must be absent. The Aesop software proved inflexible in allowing teachers to choose substitutes based on their professional judgment and that led to some teachers and substitutes gaming the system by pre-alerting each other to an absence so as to ensure the best person really gets the assignment. Superintendent Jorden Schiff said that they "are very happy with the system administratively" in spite of continued complaints by teachers.

The district website continued to be an embarrassment and to offer quite a contrast to the tag line at the top of the home page: "dedicated to the pursuit of excellence."  The district spends over $20K annually with vendor Schoolwires on this abomination, and explains in the now dated FAQ section of the website that the district spent extra for features like online surveys, blogs, podcasting, and advanced site searches.  Presumably the dead links, confusing menu structure, redundant and empty pages, outdated documents, missing information, garish graphics, and oversized fonts come as part of the standard package.  One favorite [which was removed shortly after publication of this article] was the page titled "information" which was blank, and which had a helpful link to a calendar, which was also blank!

Teachers were given training and marching orders to create their own individual classroom section on the district website, but most found the process to be ponderous and useless.  Some posted homework assignments from time to time, but the majority left the original pages they had created just as they were. Some teachers put up links to blogging websites outside of the district, rather than attempt to use the Schoolwires version. Similarly, the online surveys implemented by the district used an outside website instead of the Schoolwires version supposedly already paid for by the district.  The Listserv email system relied upon by many parents for information is fortunately run by our friends at Hunterdon Central, rather than Readington. 

In another example of questionable technology spending, the administration proposed to replace the existing phone system with a new hosted, IP based service sold by Embarq.  The first year cost, though difficult to discern given the lack of clarity in public documents, appeared to be in the range of $230K even after an E-rate rebate.  The IT department in charge of this initiative has admitted having no experience in the area of IP based phone service, yet has rebuffed advice from those who do.  Over a period of months a small cadre of stakeholders came to the conclusion that there was really nothing wrong with the existing phone system, other than the need for a support contract which would be a fraction of the cost of a new system.   One of those stakeholders went so far as to locate a suitable vendor to provide an estimate and an evaluation of the current infrastructure.  However, that vendor candidly excused itself from consideration by the district after witnessing the hostility from the IT department against their involvement and the idea of supporting the current system instead of purchasing the expensive Embarq service.  This issue has not been resolved as of this writing.

The internet and wide-area network bandwidth for the district was increased exponentially this year, and the cost followed.  The reasoning was sometimes explained as being related to the need for streaming video in multiple classrooms simultaneously or sometimes due to speed issues being experienced on administrative computers.  The arguments for increasing the district's bandwidth to levels usually seen only on corporate or university campuses with thousands of users were never really explored in public, despite efforts by stakeholders to engage in that dialog.  The school board funded the expensive upgrades without serious challenge to the vague arguments put forth by the district's IT department.

 

Assessment

Just as a previous administration assured Readington stakeholders that the CTB McGraw Hill TerraNova testing program would revolutionize learning and teaching in our district, the current administration considers the NWEA testing program manna from educational heaven.  Apparently testing was the answer all along, but we just had the wrong test.

NWEA testing, in a nutshell, works like this.  Kids take a test of forty-some-odd computer generated questions two or three times a year.   From these questions, which are said to be automatically tailored to the ability of each student, a cornucopia of data and graphs are generated.  For example, teachers are given a binder of highly specific recommendations to which they can refer and locate the deficiencies of  Johnny and Sally based on the test answers.  Given the number of questions on the computerized test, there is likely no more than two questions in each area of knowledge or skill being tested.  Yet, these two questions are meant to be the complete basis of evaluating each student's mastery of an area and for guiding teachers in their classroom.  The programmers and psychometricians who designed the test believe that they can infer skill and mastery in an area of learning from two questions by comparing data from all the students taking this test nationally.

In the real world two questions may not be enough to make a valid decision about a student and, anyway, Readington students might actually be different from students in Illinois or Oregon.  So, even as some Readington students had suffered a sleepless night or missed breakfast or had a bad hair day, they sat down before a computer anyway and took the test.  The graphs that went home to parents after the first test showed a flat, meaningless line accompanied by important sounding language.  Puzzled, parents were nonetheless assured that subsequent data would be more meaningful.  When the second test was taken and the graph sent home, many parents were startled to see the flat line now in a decline!  What happened?  Did the students lose their mastery and knowledge in a few months time?  Shouldn't the line be heading up?  Maybe the students just got bored of taking yet another test and paid little attention.

Make no mistake about it, Readington students are playing on a team.  This Team Readington is competing against other "I factor" districts and the administration is being judged and judging itself based on test scores like the state-mandated NJ-ASK.  This isn't about your child maximizing his or her own learning, this is about charts comparing the scores and other data of  school districts demographically comparable to Readington.  When your child enters high school unable to put a few paragraphs together without cutting and pasting from the internet, you can take solace in the fact that Team Readington is winning even if your child was benched.

The NWEA testing program has absorbed extensive district resources, including the cost of the licensing, an expensive computer and network infrastructure, "turn-key training" which pays some teachers to train colleagues and takes away from other potential staff development initiatives, student time away from learning during the testing for both the test takers themselves and others who can't use library or computer resources during the test periods, and countless hours spent by administrators and teachers trying to make heads or tails of the data.  The most insidious part of this program is that young or inexperienced teachers are no longer honing their own professional skills in student assessment because they are being asked to rely on the NWEA magic eight ball instead. 

Publicly, administration figures will claim that tests are just one piece of the puzzle, and that other things like student portfolios, teacher evaluation, subject quizzes and tests, and parental input are also part of the assessment equation.  In truth, the last semblance of a real student portfolio has not existed in Readington for nearly a decade.  What is termed a portfolio today isn't even a shadow of the real thing and the vast majority of educators in the district have never seen an authentic portfolio in real life.  Further, it is folly to suggest that teacher evaluations and parental input hold much weight when specific test score cutoffs are handed to principals and teachers for determining student placements in the various groupings.

 

Budget

For the first time in many years the school budget was passed by voters this Spring.  That might have been a positive development if the process had not been tainted by certain district marketing tactics.  Taking advantage of voter confusion over a school budget (fiscal) year versus the calendar year on which taxes are figured, the administration and school board marketed a four percent budget increase as having no tax impact.  That is technically true for this calendar year, but the next calendar year will be a different story.  Plus, the administration set up a parallel vote for kids at the adult polling places, complete with prizes and awards, so that the children would drag their parents into the polls.  The tactic worked, but it was a shameless exploitation of the students.  It remains to be seen if the same effort will go into "kids vote" program during non school related elections.

Meanwhile, the current budget year ended with a surplus of over a million dollars!  That is no small feat given the administration's penchant for spending.  The administration worked feverishly with the school board on  "pre-purchasing" items for next year.  This euphemism means that the district goes on a mad dash to spend the leftover money before the June 30 close of the fiscal year on items that might (or might not) have been purchased the following year.  Remaining money after the pre-purchases went back into the capital spending account.

The four percent increase for the 2008-2009 budget year, keep in mind, is calculated in a way that includes the extra million bucks that wasn't initially spent in 2007-2008.

A special referendum for capital improvement projects also passed this year, setting the stage for a new middle school roof and repaved parking lot, plus new HVAC units, to be installed starting this summer.  A district tie-in to township sewer facilities which would make an old septic system unnecessary has been faced with delays but is still viable. Money for that project was already set aside but may become insufficient.

 

Those were the biggest stories of this school year, although there were other, equally important things to think about.  The grouping strategy in certain core subjects remains an issue for many.  Other concerns about social studies, civics, and science getting short shrift, not to mention the lack of time for recess and physical education, remain too.  The question of leadership on a district level, as well as in areas of instruction and curriculum is frequently raised.  Where is this district headed?  Will a chart of comparable districts with Readington offering the best test scores be enough to placate parents and other stakeholders?  Are we making linear progress, or is it circular?  Maybe these sorts of questions will be answered in 2008-2009.  Or, maybe not.