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Brief comments were posted while Sorum and Company presented their spill on ways to improve district achievement. Of course they do not have the details and I am sure most of you don't have them either. So you will get to watch a video that will explain his wants and needs on information that can be done informally by you. If they would get themselves to the classroom and truly evaluate the culture of the campus they would see how some campuses don't advance because of the leadership. Not only is it about teacher capacity Board Members, it's also about the support you receive and the trust that you are a college graduate and know what you are doing. Year after year we get prescribed curriculum, mandated assessments at the time that they want them not necessarily based on the needs of the students.
Moss had a few things right, year after year we hear the same presentations of new initiatives.. just play the videos each time and you hear how wonderful things are with what centrally they created. The only input teachers get is working for them to create tests and the curriculum, you don't hear we went to the campuses, spoke to the teachers and asked what they see as good ways of assessing or knowing where students are. There is no sense of urgency.. hence the final realization by Sorum and Company that only working with those students who are close to passing the test won't work. Well duh!!!!! For years we have expressed it to you at meetings and you have not listened.
10 questions on a test based on how many weeks or is it based on one to two TEKS taught? Remember that some TEKS take 10 days or sometimes a full week depending on what you teach? So have all tests been created for each content from Elementary to High School? Will that include AP courses? So once the tests are given, teachers will grade them or you will scan them onto the portal? At what part of the week will they be given and since you said PLCs will be used to look over it, what if my classroom is not like the other classrooms? Will I be allowed to intervene for my students or what I am told to intervene on and with?
Thank you Dr. Sutherland for standing up! Once again we are let down by Board Members who just bless Sorum and move on. A few things said by Paz about concerns at the campus level. What they don't understand about Baldrige is that if you have no buy in it won't work. You are more worried about having something to present but yet you dress it up and it looks the same. We think in this case if you have nothing to say then just keep quiet and don't look dumb. Most of you Members have not substance or background to ask questions, some of you just showing up does not show anything. As Ramos says that he doesn't understand much.. so that tells you that we have the blind leading the blind.
We too would like to know specifics on schools and how they are performing and not lumped up. We know special choice schools will do well but yet East Side continues to lag behind and yet nothing said other than do the same thing for everyone. SCAs may work for some schools but with schools who are not performing is more of a drag and not a specified plan for the needs of the campus. Not once did we hear parents involved so again we do what we want to kids and move them on. How sad that the people seated around have less education knowledge than most teachers who teach their hearts out. Just wait teachers they will be demanding things because they have to prove that it works, so get ready for added work, longer hours, more meetings on top of meetings and stress.
As Sutherland said, we hope we are wrong but we have been let down so much that hope is dismal. We thought our new board would help us and listen more to us but disappointed yet again.
Let's speak up!!!
Let's see.......
Blueprints and data points are meaningless if we cannot see where students went wrong. We know we have to teach the entire TEKS but sometimes it helps to see where we may need to improve. By not releasing questions or allowing viewing then we don't know how aligned they are to the curriculum. We have always said the CBAs are written poorly. The ones who have doctorate degrees should know that unless test writers are fully trained and calibrated, many are going by their own experiences or what they believe is a high level questions. If you have not calibrated the questions or field tested them prior to full implementation then they mean nothing. As we said, all these degrees and the basics of statistics are missed. Yet they get the big raises.
Back when Sorum was a principal his school, oh wait! He was NEVER a campus leader of any sort. Yet FWISD continues to blindly follow his curriculum! Even made Board Policy requiring teachers and administration to use it. Yet it doesn't work. But he still got a huge raise?? When MJ was Supt he bashed Dansby and told principals he was a bully, until Dansby became Supt and gave him a raise. Wake up teachers and parents in FWISD!
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