CCSD's McGinley Out of Touch with "Progress"

In her latest pep talk on the CCSD website, Superintendent Nancy McGinley makes the following statement: "We have never compromised on teacher support, student safety, achievement, and progress. That is why our students are doing better than ever—more with less."

Let's look at reader-reported events at Burke High School over the last year of McGinley.

"Last year three Burke eighth graders received high school credit for Spanish. Never mind that Burke didn't offer a year-long course in Spanish to the middle school students or have a certified teacher for the few sporadic weeks it attempted to claim a foreign language program in the middle school. When questioned on how these students could qualify for credit from a course that didn't exist, Mr. Cannon, the Dean of the Burke Middle School, said (proudly?) that these students 'worked hard' so they 'deserved' the credit. One of the student's parents called District 20 constituent board members to complain. Credit is one thing, but an educational foundation is something else. It appears that some Burke parents understand this truism better than many CCSD administrators." Or at least Mr. Cannon.

That must be an example of "never compromising on achievement." Are these freshmen now pretending to take Spanish 2?

"Recent internal reports reveal that more than half of the eleventh graders at Burke read at the fourth grade level or below. Weren't many of these eleventh graders just finishing the fifth grade when McKinley came on board as the chief academic officer?" Have their skills improved at all since then? Doesn't sound like it.

How did they get to be eleventh graders without those reading skills? This must be an example of "progress."

"Shockingly, when a Burke student was under consideration for disciplinary action, administration discovered that the student had an IEP [Individualized Educational Plan] that had been ignored. The student's offense was so serious that the administration's failure to follow its own procedures became a secondary consideration. The student was asked to read one of the documents in the student's own file: to the horror of the hearing official, it was quickly obvious that the student, a tenth grader, couldn't read at all. When a disgusted District 20 representative confronted Mr. Benton [Burke's principal] about the situation, he reportedly shrugged his shoulders and said there are at least a half dozen other Burke High School students in the same situation." And so we just shrug our shoulders?

Must be "never compromising on teacher support" and "achievement" kicking in again.

"Saying students had to begin studying for the PACT and couldn't afford to give up any more valuable time to a tutoring program, Benton also dismissed the Circular Congregational Church tutoring group last year after only a few weeks on the job. One volunteer in the middle-school program complained that in just six weeks they got one seventh grader, who had originally tested as reading below the third-grade level, to read on grade level." Don't let results cloud your judgment!

What's one seventh grader when we're focused on "never compromising"?

Did you ever hear a story about a school district that lost a lawsuit brought by a student who graduated without being able to read? Maybe Benton thinks it's kind to non-readers to allow them to graduate without the skills needed for jobs. Maybe he's given up. Maybe he wants graduation rates to look good.

None of that explains why a tutoring group would be turned away when the need clearly exists.