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Lip Service or Progress? In September of 2004 readingtonparents.org began hammering away, sometimes brutally and sometimes with subtlety, at some of the issues preventing the genuine success of our school district. Problems that were previously left unspoken are now known, but what progress are we making? Are those charged with leading our district attempting to quantify our roadblocks and map a path toward a higher road, or are they merely paying lip service to those who would grumble, while continuing to pursue the same dead-end policies? Some of our school leaders and their political cronies would have you believe that the point of readingtonparents.org and those connected with it is merely to “bring-down” our district. Yet, are we to ignore the poisons that course through our collective veins? Will we avoid getting sicker if we stick our collective head in the sand? Let’s take an opportunity to review where we are today. Jump directly to this issue: In March our children, like those in other districts across New Jersey, will be taking the state-sponsored standardized tests. This will be round two for our kids in Readington, who took the district-sponsored tests at the beginning of the year. A short test-prep booklet for NJ ASK, published by the state, went home to parents recently. Apparently the state encourages parents and teachers to practice test-taking strategies. After all, it is more important to score well in life than to do well in life. Many of the points made on this website on this issue have been disseminated to our community, and, judging from feedback to readingtonparents.org, they have been generally well received. There has been no defense whatsoever from school leaders concerning the merit of the extra district bubble-testing, save one: that our teachers cannot be trusted to use their professional judgment to evaluate children. In fact, as recently as the February 22nd board meeting this defense was reiterated by RMS Principal Ruberto in her inimitable pit-bull style. She claimed to be a poor teacher in the first ten years of her career, stating that she had been “flying by the seat of her pants”. The bubble-test programs we have in place now, she asserts, make for objective assessments and therefore avoid the poor teacher judgments of the past. Aside from that lone defense of testing merit, which has been thoroughly debunked here in the past, our school leaders have only attempted to show that the criticisms of bubble-testing are not widespread. Our Superintendent, for example, stated at the February 22nd board meeting that “only five people showed up” at the last meeting scheduled with Bonnie Williams of CTB/McGraw Hill and that those people were quite satisfied with the answers to their questions. Such transparent efforts to imply that the issue is somehow resolved only serve to further alienate the school leaders from district stakeholders and from reality. Must stakeholders show up at meetings with pitchforks and flaming effigies in order to illustrate continuing dissatisfaction? The bottom line on bubble-testing is this. Virtually all of the criticisms have gone unanswered on merit; virtually nothing has been done to offer individual parents and their children the choice not to participate in non state-mandated testing; and there has been no public action by our Superintendent or our school board to truly address concerns. Short of changes in personnel by election or contractual means, it would appear that our school leaders will steamroll over concerned parents and teachers while continuing to implement their vision for a No-Child-Left-Untested future. The state bubble tests will continue, and likely so will the extra Readington sponsored bubble tests. The area of district communications with stakeholders is one where some progress has been made, though it is largely on the surface. In January the school board members agreed to abide by the idea of allowing individual contact information for these elected officials who previously had unlisted phone numbers. Some “you-may-kiss-my-ring” members of the board seem to think of this step as a remarkably bighearted gesture. So far as we know, the sky has not fallen as a result. In the meantime, some board members and school leaders genuinely see the need for better communications and they have invited outside vendors to give proposals. Unfortunately, these proposals have focused on narrow aspects of communication, such as “public relations” efforts and school budget support. When the editor of this site offered to give some free and unbiased guidance on the wider marketing issues, the offer was accepted by the Superintendent. Behind the scenes, though, certain board members took a remarkably childish stance and insisted on censoring portions of the presentation and restricting the time and the timing of the presentation. An effort to reach across the table was rebuffed and many of the points made in the presentation were given a negative public demonstration. The bottom line: although minor progress has been made, the same structural issues exist. Change in this area is hampered to some extent by the degree that certain school leaders feel empowered by their own antics. This “let them eat cake” attitude is at the base of our district’s lack of movement on identifying, researching and addressing the concerns of stakeholders as obvious as parents, teachers and residents, as well as the less obvious such as realtors, businesspeople, and our high school district. Putting lipstick on the pig doesn’t change the smell of the pigpen. Perhaps no other issue is as veiled and as insidious as the lack of regard for our teachers. By verbal inference and by the blare of actions that speaker louder than words, we know that our teachers are not trusted, they are not considered professional, and they are not invited to the head table when policy is being discussed. Sound like a wild overstatement? Consider these following points.
There is more. Much more. The bottom line: take a single Readington teacher out for a drink sometime and have a little chat. Bring a notebook. Leave behind the words “respect”, “professional” and “esteem”. You won’t need them. As noted on this site last year, unless the board notifies the Superintendent in writing before May 15, 2005 that there will be no reappointment, or unless there is a renegotiation, the contract will be automatically renewed for four years until July 1, 2010. There has not been a peep from the board privately, publicly, or probably even in their dreams on this matter. No matter what one thinks of our current superintendent’s performance, is it a good idea to set a precedent like this? Is it ever a good idea for elected board members to set in motion a contract with an automatic renewal, thereby forcing future members either to take dramatic political action or to acquiesce to the desire of the original board? Is it wise to set up what is in essence an eight year contract with automatic pay increases over those years? The bottom line is this. To fix this circumstance, the board should not let the contract continue as is. Anything less is an evasion of responsibility. Even if the board determines that another four years is desirable, the original contract should be renegotiated. Unfortunately, the smart money is on the status quo. Self Evaluation and Board Policies It was with great indignation a few months ago that board members corrected the perception that they do not engage in the formal self-evaluation suggested by the NJ School Boards Association. They do just such an evaluation, we are told, but it is not available for the public to see. Oh. The long-overdue update of district policies is also underway, we are to assume. The public face of that process is a board member who reads off the policy number at a board meeting and listens for any objection from other members. Also available at the board meetings are selected excerpts from the proposed policy manual. No, the policy updates are not available in their entirety. No, a copy in electronic format is not yet available. No, there doesn’t seem to be much aspiration for providing a means to allow input by the public. They’ll take care of it. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. Shouldn’t you be eating cake, anyway? The bottom line: the more things change, the more they stay the same. With school board elections this year, we have an opportunity to dictate real change. |
