PRIME at Wando? Why Not at Burke?

Them that has gets! Isn't that the old song?  It rings true when comparing Wando High School, the largest in the state located in the affluent community of Mt. Pleasant, with Burke High/Middle School, a  2AA school located on the peninsula of Charleston that is de facto all black.

Sunday's edition pointed out that Wando "has been named a PRIME model school by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers’ Education  Foundation, one of 11 schools from across the country to be selected this year". According to the reporter, who sees no irony in the report, "PRIME model schools also have strong partnerships with local manufacturing businesses that offer students opportunities such as mentoring, tours, job shadowing and internships."

Isn't this what the Burke community has demanded for years? What about the so-called "high-tech high" that has morphed into low-tech Lowcountry Tech, not at Burke where the community wanted it but at Rivers to forestall the Charter School for Math and Science.

Taking her talking points straight from CCSD, no doubt, the reporter goes on to provide PR for Superintendent McGinley: 

"STEM education is growing in prominence in the Charleston County School District. The school district has been working with a high-profile group of partners, from federal labs to HBCUs to businesses, to make the district a national model for preparing students from kindergarten through college for STEM-related jobs.
"Wando High’s STEM programs have been nationally recognized in the past. The school has been part of Project Lead the Way for more than a decade, and that program offers hands-on, project-based, biomedical and pre-engineering courses. Project Lead the Way has named Wando High a model school twice.

Probably motivated students who live in Burke's neighborhood are taking the bus to Wando to take part in those programs. Superintendent McGinley has done everything possible to strip Burke of students. As usual, the reporter has no curiosity regarding how many non-Mount Pleasant residents are being bused to Wando. 

Sometimes it seems that McGinley's long-term goal is to strip Burke of students, close the school, sell its prime location to private developers, and leave District 20 with no high school. Couldn't be, could it?

Parent University? CCSD Needs Truth in Labeling

Today anyone who has a child enrolled in the Charleston County School District may attend what the district bills as "Parent University" at Stall High School. The purpose of the gathering ostensibly is to inform parents of  "Vision 2016" goals and of Common Core strategies. Oh, yes. Breakout groups will discuss other aspects of education.

Nowhere in the district's press release does it mention the granting of advanced degrees. Who dreamed up this misnomer that conveys status upon a parent-relations ploy? Our district has lifted this idea wholesale from others as close as Charlotte and as far away as Boston. Do these people believe that parents will assume attending such a "university" will assist them towards a degree? Can we deduce that other CCSD descriptors are equally inflated in importance?

Here's a definition of the word "university" for the special attention of the district's chief academic officer:

u·ni·ver·si·ty  (yn-vûrs-t) n. pl. u·ni·ver·si·ties 1. An institution for higher learning with teaching and research facilities constituting a graduate school and professional schools that award master's degrees and doctorates and an undergraduate division that awards bachelor's degrees. 2. The buildings and grounds of such an institution. 3. The body of students and faculty of such an institution. [Middle English universite, from Old French, from Medieval Latin niversits, from Latin, the whole, a corporate body, from niversus, whole; see universe.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Corpus Christi 2009

Common Core: What Were Sanford and Republicans Thinking?

How did we get into this mess?

In Friday's op-ed, Dillon Jones, policy analyst at the South Carolina Policy Council, a conservative think-tank in Columbia, makes the same points regarding Common Core that I enumerated in previous posts. His most salient point, and mine, is that federal money arrives with strings attached--and right now one of those strings is adoption of the Common Core. He correctly points out that the Charleston County School District has received Race-to-the-Top millions with that string attached.

Jones points out that in 1998 in the waning days of Governor Beasley's term, the state legislature handed policy-making power to the Education Oversight Committee and the State Board of Education. In South Carolina, education bureaucrats represent the last bastion of the Democrat Party, repository of liberalism and centralization of power. Until Mick Zais's election in 2010, the Democrats had a hammer-lock on the SC Superintendent of Education's job, so why did that ill-advised power transfer occur?

No qualms would have vibrated from Education Superintendent Jim Rex. However, then-Governor Mark Sanford had to sign off on these standards before the bureaucrats could adopt them. Of course, they did.

As it stands, South Carolina school districts are rushing willy-nilly ahead with implementation.

CCSD's McGinley Unprepared for Board's Challenges on Burke Recommendation

She's getting soft.

Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley has controlled the membership of its Board of Trustees for so long that neither she nor any of her henchmen can support their assertions when questioned by independent board members. Monday night's meeting is a prime example.

On the Executive Session agenda McGinley put a request to move Child Development programs to the Rhett Building at Burke High/Middle. [See previous column for my take on this proposal.] According to reports, McGinley was unprepared and disorganized when several board members peppered her with questions.

That was not the worst of it, however. The superintendent and her lackeys made several statements that have been shown to be outright lies and others that seemed to be wishful thinking. Board members are not amused.

For example, McGinley claimed that a waiting list exists at Garrett for the early childhood Career Technical Education (CTE) program, but when a board member checked, he found that no waiting list exists. Michael Miller also discovered that McGinley's claim that students want such a program at Burke was wishful thinking.

Showdowns also occurred between member Todd Garrett and Chief Finance Officer Michael Bobby regarding enrollment and vacancy figures in downtown schools. What Bobby didn't know was that Garrett was using the numbers from the seven-day count that Bobby himself supplied to the board earlier this month. Using an EXCEL spreadsheet with the numbers, Garrett reached conclusions that Bobby had tried to avoid.

In a move that long-time watchers of the McGinley administration find typical, Associate Superintendent for Secondary Schools Lou Martin implied to board members that a list of  CTE programs were already in place at Burke and Lowcountry Tech. They aren't. Currently, Burke offers a lackluster culinary arts CTE course. McGinley probably assumes it need not be rigorous for future hamburger flippers! In fact, the courses and "majors" enumerated by Martin are a wish list presented for the board's approval in 2010.

Hoisted by his own petard, Chief Operating Officer for Capital Programs Bill Lewis claimed that the unused Fraser building could not be used for Child Development programs because it has an elevated first floor. Maybe he meant there are steps going in? In any event, only three years ago Bobby pushed for a CD center at Fraser for the exclusive use of MUSC, C of C, and CCSD employees. Prior to that he had told Fraser parents that the school was unsafe. So which is it, Bill?

Well, McGinley was probably prescient in her request for Executive Session on this item. Imagine the uproar that would have occurred if members of the community had heard this discussion.

We hope someone watching CCSD has filed a lawsuit regarding the Open Meetings Act, which McGinley seems to scorn at will. Meanwhile, the Board did table the request for later action.

Gee, I wonder why.

CCSD's McGinley Tone Deaf on Burke's Heritage

Burke High/Middle School, under cover of Executive Session, when its community cannot hear or comment, will be turned into a training center for daycare workers under the guise of "tech" classes.

We can't make this idiotic stuff up! The Charleston County School Superintendent and her lackeys on the CCSD Board of Trustees are so out of touch with the history of education in the county that they think this is a good idea!

The Burke community has begged for years for high-tech classes to be offered at the facility. McGinley instead shuffles a few students over to the Rivers campus so that she can justify forbidding the Charter School for Math and Science from using most of Rivers building. Now she wants to renovate unused space in a pre-"earthquake-proof" building for a massive daycare center so that Burke students can be on the spot to train for low-wage careers as daycare workers. Can anyone say "maids"? Plenty of space for these Pre-K programs already exists in fully renovated buildings.

And she calls this "tech." This is what we get with a Broad graduate from Philadelphia.

How long will it take the community to stop listening to her NAACP lackeys (presumably supporting this development) and demand the superintendent's resignation?

And who's going to call her on the legality of discussing this policy in secret session?

Swails Fails to Understand College Financial Realities

If a student graduates from Wando High School with what Mt. Pleasant Mayor Billy Swails calls "decent" grades, that student should be able to enroll in a local four-year college or university that is public funded.

Why? He reports pressure from parents who want cheaper or less religious alternatives than Charleston Southern, which has open admissions, so their children can stay in Mt. Pleasant without starting their studies at Trident Tech.

In his well-meaning way Mayor Swails has fallen into the snare perpetrated by President Obama and others that every high school graduate should get a four-year degree. How many even now leave four-year institutions with no degree, no employable skills, and thousands of dollars of debt? What percentage of these debt-ridden college dropouts should never have attended a four-year school in the first place?

Schools such as the College of Charleston consider factors other than "decent" grades because they search for those who will successfully complete degrees. Swails posits that this means students who are the first in their family to attend college can't get in. He's wrong. That detail, coupled with good grades and SATs, virtually guarantees admission!

At Francis Marion University students with below-average SAT scores may successfully achieve degrees, but about 60 percent of FMU freshmen fail to graduate. If the average SAT at FMU is 952, it's not too difficult to surmise that that low score predicts the failure of the majority to graduate! Then they are left  with their debts.

Trident Tech even now operates as an unofficial "bridge" program for the College of Charleston and every other four-year school in the state. TTC even has a satellite campus in Mt. Pleasant. Students who are motivated can cross the bridge to a four-year college. Not many do so because the majority do not have the motivation and academic skills to succeed, even if they did graduate from Wando.

Common Core: Facts and Misconceptions

My son never took the first half of U.S. History in high school. When he began ninth grade in Texas, he took the second half, along with those who had studied the first half in eighth grade. As it turned out, he had absorbed so much of his parents' knowledge that he knew more than his classmates. That works if you grow up in an education-rich household, but what about those many students who don't?

The not-unreasonable idea originally driving the push for a Common Core was to prevent such scenarios from occurring as students move from one school district to another, one city to another, and one state to another.

Common Core opponents decry this move by the federal government to impose a standard curriculum across America; proponents claim that the standards are not those of the federal government. Both sides are correct!

Where did the Common Core come from? Educrats, of course. To be more specific, according to the sponsors, a consortium of the National Governors Association and the Council of State School Officers (state education superintendents). I believe you will agree with me that few of any members of either organization actually wrote or worked on the standards. No, that work was delegated to committees--one to write the standards; one to validate the standards. Bottom line: five or six people actually wrote them, and practically no classroom teachers were involved in any of the process. Adoption of the Common Core also became a major goal of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Though the feds did not write the standards, the Obama administration has embraced them wholeheartedly, so much so that it has tied federal funds (such as Race to the Top recently gained by CCSD) to a state's adoption of the Common Core. Jim Rex, our previous state superintendent, signed on wholeheartedly' Mick Zais has been left holding the bag. South Carolina is in the middle of transitioning with a completion deadline in 2015. Texas remains a hold out.

Having skimmed an analysis of the differences between content (at the fourth-grade level) of the Common Core and South Carolina curricula, I reached the conclusion that content overlapped by about 90 percent. Others have reached similar conclusions.

The most controversial aspect of the new curriculum is its new emphasis on "real-world" reading selections from K-12. What does "real world" mean to you? Apparently to some teachers it means find "gritty" readings about "gangstas" and rap--in elementary school.  Common Core does not proscribe specific readings, just "real world." The idea differs wildly from the Common Knowledge Curriculum advocated by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., even as it sounds similar.

When Ronald Reagan first ran for President, he advocated abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. Too bad he didn't follow through. Now states and school districts cannot get enough of Other Peoples' Money (i.e., federal tax dollars) to the point that they will do jump through any hoop, advisable or not. The big winners are in the edublob: new teacher-training seminars, new teaching materials, new textbooks, and--oh, yes--new national tests on the Common Core that will be used to evaluate value added to each student by teachers.

In Shakespeare's The Tempest, the naive Miranda, upon seeing for the first time the villains who plotted her and her father's deaths, remarks, "Oh, brave new world, that has such people in it."

It's not the first time that an idea that looks good on the surface has unintended consequences, evil ones at that, lurking beneath.

CCSD's Value-Added Teacher Evaluation: Impossible to Test Reading Fairly

A late August post questioned Mathematica's development of a $3 million formula to assess each student's value-added component each year so that the Charleston County School District can pay teachers bonuses on that basis. Supposedly the algorithm will adjust for outside factors such as poverty. CCSD believes that its teachers need motivation and more money will provide it.

In writing about his support for the Common Core, E.D. Hirsch, Jr., laments that no test can fairly judge the value added by a teacher in reading. In other words, value-added testing does not work, and teachers under the gun to produce will focus on test prep to the detriment of knowledge:

      The first thing I’d want to do if I were younger would be to launch an effective court challenge to value-added teacher evaluations on the basis of test scores in reading comprehension. The value-added approach to teacher evaluation in reading is unsound both technically and in its curriculum-narrowing effects. The connection between job ratings and tests in ELA has been a disaster for education.
      The scholarly proponents of the value-added approach have sent me a set of technical studies. My analysis of them showed what anyone immersed in reading research would have predicted: The value-added data are modestly stable for math, but are fuzzy and unreliable for reading. It cannot be otherwise, because of the underlying realities. Math tests are based on the school curriculum. What a teacher does in the math classroom affects student test scores. But reading comprehension tests are not based on the school curriculum. (How could they be if there’s no set curriculum?) Rather, they are based on the general knowledge that students have gained over their life span from all sources—most of them outside the school. That’s why reading tests in the early grades are so reliably and unfairly correlated with parental education and income.
      Since the results on reading comprehension tests are not chiefly based on what a teacher has done in a single school year, why would any sensible person try to judge teacher effectiveness by changes in reading comprehension scores in a single year? The whole project is unfair to teachers, ill-conceived, and educationally disastrous. [italics added] The teacher-rating scheme has usurped huge amounts of teaching time in anxious test-prep. Paradoxically, the evidence shows that test-prep ceases to be effective after about six lessons. So most of that test-prep time is wasted even as test prep. It’s time in which teachers could be calmly pursuing real education—teaching students fascinating subjects in literature, history, civics, science and the arts, the general knowledge that is the true foundation of improved reading comprehension. 

This piece originally appeared on the Huffington Post; a version also appeared on the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Common Core Watch.

Priority Schools in Charleston County: McGinley Blames Teachers

"Priority" schools, by definition of the state Board of Education are South Carolina's lowest-performing, high-poverty schools. Being named a Priority School is not a compliment; in fact, that sobriquet is reserved for the lowest performing five percent. Only 26 schools statewide are on the list, and five of them are in the Charleston County School District. Richland County has none; Greenville County has only two. Think about that for a moment.

Not too long ago, such schools would be taken over by the state, but state takeovers in the past, such as in Allendale-Fairfax. have not been terribly productive. Now such schools must offer parents the option of transferring to higher-performing schools or intensive free tutoring.

North Charleston's Lambs Elementary featured in a local story states that it is getting poorer every year, a claim based presumably on applications for free and reduced meals. Since this is its second year on the list, perhaps more non-poverty students than poor students have taken the transfer option. Lambs previously drew more students from the military base, but where are they living now? What percentage are bused in from other neighborhood districts? As usual, asking questions regarding details of its decline never occurs to the reporter.

Principal Jamalar Logan took over the school in the middle of last year, but the reporter doesn't ask why. Logan was originally made principal in November 2011 but then had been shifted elsewhere. Perhaps, as in so many of CCSD's poorly-performing schools, Lambs has been the victim of revolving door principals. Certainly Superintendent McGinley and her associate Jim Winbush weren't going to volunteer that information to Mick Zais, especially since both are part of the administration they claim responsible.

In her remarks McGinley seemed to blame lower scores on the higher percentage of Hispanic students; however, that would make sense if the lower scores were in the language arts area. Instead, math and science are the areas of concern. The reporter also forgot to ask if any teachers had left or not had their contracts renewed and if any new teachers were inexperienced.  In addition, since the school will be using a "new math curriculum," would it not be of interest to find out what it is, what has been dropped, and what are perceived as the weaknesses of the old curriculum? And if teachers weren't focused enough on teaching math, whose fault was that?

Despite the reporter's years of reporting on CCSD, she still has little curiosity beyond what the superintendent tells her.

CCSD's Using On-Line Charters to Improve Dropout Statistics

Remember when the Charleston County School District was caught transferring students slated for expulsion elsewhere to Burke High/Middle? Some of us have long memories. We can also remember the hoops Superintendent McGinley has gone through to make district statistics look good, such as claiming a lower percentage of failing schools after closing five of them.

So it should come as no surprise that CCSD's administration has found a new way to improve its stats: recommending to students who are failing mid-year or about to be expelled that they enroll in on-line charter schools. To be fair, CCSD is not the only district that has caught onto this ploy. If a student transfers midyear to an on-line school and then fails to graduate or fails even to take any classes, that student's failure or dropping out is charged to the on-line school!

What a marvelous way to improve graduation rates! We now know that CCSD followed this policy as early as 2011. Of course, this information was not aired by our local paper but emerged in a story from  Columbia's The State. A CCSD letter from an unnamed associate superintendent was cited by the state charter school district in evidence that dumping of students was a problem: the associate superintendent "writes to a parent to say that a division of that county's board of trustees would allow a student to withdraw from high school and enroll in an on-line school 'in lieu of expulsion.'"

Caught red-handed, district spokesman Jason Sakran insisted that this was an "isolated incident" and that the district "has an intervention program" for such students.

How about some statistics from the district, then, Jason. What percentage of failing students transferred to on-line schools in the last two years? What percentage of students faced with expulsion chose to enroll in on-line schools instead of participating in the intervention program? The district is required to keep track of its students, so those figures should be readily available.

What educator in his or her right mind believes that students who cannot pass or behave in a typical school setting will be successful in an on-line charter school where no one is watching?

Don't hold your breath on getting these statistics from Jason, either.

Schools Confusion on Daniel Island

Daniel Islanders are mad at the Berkeley County School District--and they're not going to take it any more. Therefore, more than 400 met Thursday night at the Bishop England auditorium to contemplate switching the community to Charleston County.

No doubt other aspects of life in Berkeley County annoy the residents, but what really stirred the hornet's nest was the belief that, if they voted for a tax increase for its schools, another school would be built on Daniel Island. Then the Berkeley School Board said, well, maybe it will be in Cainhoy. Residents see this as bait-and-switch, and they may be correct.

Yet leaving Berkeley for Charleston County is not the same as leaving the Berkeley County School District for the Charleston County School District! No one seems to focus on the parameters involved: will CCSD agree to build another school on Daniel Island? Will CCSD purchase the Daniel Island School from Berkeley County? Where will the money come from?

Where will students from Daniel Island go to high school? the already-overcrowded Wando or the nearer, and nearly empty, North Charleston High School? If a middle school is not built on Daniel Island, where will middle schoolers go? Moultrie (overcrowded), Cario (overcrowded) or Northwoods?

Perhaps the rising talk and indignation will be used to force the Berkeley County School District to put the new school on the island, the best possible outcome for those parents who want their children to walk or bike to school.

Busing, and as much of it as possible, is the preferred mode of transportation in CCSD.

Puzzle of CCSD's Transfers and Redistricting Mt. Pleasant Attendance Zones

Everyone knows that Mt. Pleasant's elementary and middle schools are overcrowded. At a meeting to discuss redrawing of attendance lines, one parent asked why the Charleston County School District didn't plan in advance for these students as the housing was developed. 

Heavens! She must come from a place where school boards actually plan for the future. I thought tales of such places were apocryphal!

More mysteriously, two parents say that they have already transferred their children out of their attendance zones: one from Whitesides and Laing to Mt. Pleasant Academy and Moultrie; the other from Park West schools to Jennie Moore and Laing. These aren't magnet or even semi-magnet schools, so why the transfers? How many other parents in Mt. Pleasant have behaved similarly?

The whole transfer business in CCSD opens a can of worms. For example, why do the majority of students attending Memminger not live in its attendance area? Parents wanted in to a failing school? Why do so many students attending Burke High/Middle live outside of its attendance zone? It's a failing school also. 

CCSD Board Members Must Justify Racist Voting on Lowcountry Leadership Charter School

Michael Miller, Craig Ascue, and Chris Collins need to justify their votes against the sixty-day lease of the vacant Schroder Middle School building to the Lowcountry Leadership Charter School (LLCS). Evidently each cares more about inventing racial problems than supporting the district in providing the most effective use of Other People's Money.

Any sensible person would applaud the requirements put on LLCS for use of the building as improving the finances of the Charleston County School District. Without the $128,000 in rent and additional building repairs assumed by LLCS, this asset would sit vacant and deteriorating for those two months. CCSD certainly has no plans for it! In addition, the lease cannot be renewed, and school starting time will differ from the adjacent C.C. Blaney Elementary School. So what's the problem?

First of all, none of the three opposed board members lives anywhere near Hollywood, SC, where the schools are located, so whatever ideas they have are coming second-hand. The citizens who are most affected by problems in that part of the district who showed up for the School Board meeting were overwhelmingly in favor of the charter school. The accusations that charter schools are a stalking horse for taking us back to sixties segregation are a joke with no basis in fact, although that has never stopped the NAACP from opposing them. You need only look at the racist rhetoric from the NAACP regarding the Charter School for Math and Science downtown (the most integrated school in the district) to realize the idiocy of these ideas.

Charter schools, whether approved by the state or by the district, are public schools open to all students. In this case, of the 400 students expected at LLCS, 67 percent are "low income" and 25 percent are minority. That ratio means that the school is more evenly divided both economically and racially than virtually any other school in CCSD, including Blaney. Is that what bothers our three board members?

Chris Collins, of all people, should have supported the lease, given his own history of leasing from the district. How ironic.

P & C's Editing Fails Smell Test

What would we do for laughs around here if we had a local newspaper that used copy editors? Watch old Jackie Gleason shows?

In a story about moving a new processing facility for recycling to Palmetto Commerce Parkway in North Charleston, environmental engineer Robert Lawing is quoted by David Slade as telling city planning commissioners, "the county's current recycling site operates during daytime hours, and rarely produces unpleasant owners."

Would a new one produce more "unpleasant owners" in North Charleston? Time will tell.

Common Core: Child of the Edublob

Back in 2010, when Jim Rex was Superintendent of Education in South Carolina, the state adopted the Common Core Curriculum pushed as the answer to all things wrong with education in the United States. Now the state is in its second transitional year as it moves to the "new" standards.

If you peruse the shift from previous state guidelines in the "language arts," for example, you will discover that 80 percent (at least) are simply restated and reworded versions of the old. New additions are not an improvement, nor are they more rigorous. In the high school grades classic literature is downplayed in favor of "relevant" materials. The program is a fraud, perpetrated, as with most educational reform, by those farthest removed from the classroom.

Now teachers will spend hours learning that (made-up example) previous standard E4.16 should now be marked into lesson plans as ELA5.23a.  No doubt that work will contribute mightily to students' learning.

States (including SC) adopted the standards in the hopes that they would get more funding from the federal government, including Race to the Top funding, but the entity that really rakes in the money is the edublob. Imagine the financial opportunities for generating new teaching materials, new workbooks, new tests, new workshops, and other general accoutrement for administrative, teacher, and student readiness!

Don't you wonder how much your local school district has already spent on this exercise in wheel-spinning?

Death of Parody in Little Rock School District

We've come a long way since 1957. Then the Little Rock school district became known for Governor Faubus's use of the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the integration of Central High School. Those were serious times. Not any more.

This fall newly-chosen Superintendent Dexter Suggs set a new dress code for district teachers which was so reviled that he has postponed its implementation until next year--to give everyone time to get used to it. Among the usual strictures one was roundly opposed by organized labor: teachers must wear underwear at all times and females must wear bras.

How could anyone parody that?

Coming to a School Near You: Two Free Meals Per Day for Those Who Can Pay

Back in 2010 with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Since then the aspect of requiring healthy school lunches has gotten all of the media's attention. Little noticed until it kicks in fully in 2014 is the "Community Eligibility Option," already operating in several cities including Boston and Atlanta. Predictably, Superintendent McGinley plans to head for the government trough as soon as she is able.

No longer will those parents seeking free or reduced breakfast and lunch need to fill out a request. No child will experience the "stigma" of being on free or reduced meals. If the community qualifies according to the law's guidelines, everybody, both rich and poor, will have free meals.

Isn't that nice? All you need do is send your child to a school in a community that meets the 40 % "poor" guidelines. Probably McGinley will designate the entire county eligible (well, it is a community). Then students who live in I'On can get free meals.

Boston claims it is saving money by not asking for applications since it no longer needs to employ couriers to pick them up and armored vehicles to pick up lunch money. I'm not making this up.

After all, it's just Other People's Money. No doubt you have often said to yourself, "Why should the rich and middle-class pay for their lunches when the poor don't!"

Note to Daniel Island: Be Careful About Joining CCSD

Residents of Daniel Island are mad as hell, and they're not going to take it any more! At least that attitude emanates from the latest discussions over whether the "island community" should vote to become part of Charleston County.

First, new residents discover they're not in Charleston County, even though they're in the City of Charleston. So confusing! Even the local newspaper often forgets that they're in Berkeley County. That means that their students must find a surreptitious avenue into Charleston County's Academic Magnet High School, ride nine miles to Hanahan High School, or pay tuition to attend Bishop England High School, situated on the island where they can ride their bikes to school.

Second, speaking of riding bikes to school, the icing on the cake appeared last spring when, to relieve overcrowding at the Daniel Island School (K-8), the Berkeley County School District announced that it will build a new middle school. In Cainhoy. DI residents must have choked on their morning latte. "No biking to Cainhoy," they shouted. "It's not part of our island dream." Residents want a second school on Daniel Island.

These people need to become acquainted with CCSD Superintendent Nancy McGinley, who's never seen a neighborhood school she didn't want to destroy. Students will be bused in from all points of the compass. Further, though Berkeley County is well advanced in planning and financing a new school to relieve DI crowding, Charleston County would need to add the school to its next go-round of financing, postponing construction for at least five years more. If the idea is to bike to school, forgetaboutit!

Residents also need to review their geography: Daniel Island sits between the "north zone" (North Charleston) with its vacancies in many of its failing schools and the"east zone" (Mt. Pleasant) with its highly overcrowded (think Cario) successful schools. Where will the overflow from Daniel Island go?

From the Daniel Island School (as a reference point) to Hanahan High School measures about 9 miles.
From that point to overcrowded Wando High School is about 12 miles.

From Daniel Island to vacancies-a-plenty North Charleston High School is only 8 miles. Think.

HSAP: High School Exit Exam Reveals Major Flaws in System

The heartfelt letter to the editor from the Rev. J.T. Williams of the Lighthouse Baptist Church in Summerville emphasizes the cruelties imposed on graduating seniors by their failure to pass the HSAP, or exit exam. How, he asks, could a student pass all of his classes, meeting all diploma requirements, and then be denied a diploma for not passing the HSAP?

Well, that's a good question. To put it another way, how could a student fail the HSAP when he or she has passed all required subjects to receive a diploma? Note that HSAP guidelines make adjustments for limited English proficiency, students with IEP's (individualized education programs), and disabilities. See http://ed.sc.gov/agency/programs-services/43/

Why have an exit exam at all? These tests appeared decades ago as an antidote to students' graduating from high school unable to read own their diplomas (at worst) or unfit for even the simplest of jobs requiring literacy and basic math skills. NCLB now requires testing as part of the law that enables the public to assess how well a school is educating its students.

The student who opens his diploma folder to find it empty should not be shocked. Students have multiple opportunities to pass parts of the exam for years prior to, and even after, graduation.

Some could argue that the topics covered by the HSAP go far beyond the original purpose of the test; however, nothing is tested that is not in the required curriculum for high school. Show me the teacher who has not been under duress to make sure that at least 80 percent of her students pass the course. What teacher has not pushed that persevering but unprepared (for the level) student over the line to 70?

The Reverend Williams wants to see South Carolina drop its requirement of an exit exam, as in a bill passed by the state representatives last spring that will be taken up by the state senate in January.

Some have suggested that students take the ACT instead, with non-college bound students taking the ACT-WorkKeys. See  http://www.act.org/products/workforce-act-workkeys/ for a description. The former might annoy the college-bound with its higher levels of mathematics, but the latter testing seems to answer the original problem of employability. Certainly this switch would make the ACT organization happy!

If the exit test is not replaced by other measures, such as passing end-of-course tests, at failing schools standards will fall again.

Unlike CCSD, Non-Broad Louisville Superintendent Thinks Outside the Box

One of the first actions that newly appointed Jefferson County (KY) Schools Superintendent Donna Hargens took was to downsize her administrative cabinet from 23 to 6. Sure doesn't sound like a Broad-Institute graduate's action, does it?

Nancy McGinley, are you paying attention? 

Hargens recently was quoted as saying, "We all know we've got to do things differently if we're going to get different results." The remark was in support of a radical solution to raise the academic success of students from "troubled neighborhoods": public boarding schools.

Lest you assume that Hargens heads some rinky-dink system, know that she oversees 155 schools in the county that encompasses Louisville. Hargens proposes to explore the possibility of creating two 150-student residential middle schools, segregated by sex, that will take "disadvantaged" students out of the climate that breeds failure. She's not blaming their lack of success on non-motivated teachers AKA the Charleston County School District.

While sequestering during middle school addresses only part of the culture of the street, that period is crucial for those, especially boys, who are on the cusp of alienation from academics. Hargens sees the prototype in a private residential school for boys, the West End School, now operating in Louisville. See http://www.westendschool.org/.

Public boarding school for the poor will be expensive, and maybe Jefferson County will be unable to find a solution that produces one. On the other hand, throwing $24 million of Other People's Money at an imagined problem won't produce McGinley's hoped-for results either.

Editorial on Teacher Merit Pay Misses Bigger Picture

Monday's lead editorial praising CCSD's foray into merit pay for teachers glosses over several conceptual weaknesses in the plan. By far the most egregious flaw is the writer's assumption that poorly motivated teachers cause the nation's public education ills.

If only it were that simple!

The U.S. Department of Education, with its grants to school districts, is perpetrating a fraud. It will squander almost $24 million of Other Peoples' Money on overpaid and unproven statistical methods of determining the "progress" of classes and motivating teachers.

Mathematica's $3 million program will adjust for "factors such as poverty."

Does anyone else wonder what the unspecified "factors" are? Low IQ? Single-parent household? Will we be told? Why should we be expecting less progress from a child classified as "poor"? In a district such as Charleston County's will "poor" become a thinly-veiled euphemism for "black"? Didn't we back away from this kind of racist thinking decades ago?

The writer's comments that, "Opponents insist that other attempts to pay teachers based on merit have proven unsuccessful. But those arguments don't hold up," is followed by a series of non sequiturs: no discussion of what actually has happened, merely responses to objections about too much reliance on testing, stifling of creativity, time management, and the above-mentioned statistical formula. Those are not arguments about what has happened previously.

Particularly annoying is the editorial comment that "people in any profession have to learn to set priorities and manage time," implying that most teachers haven't.

The other flaws in CCSD's program involve tenured teachers who might be found substandard. They will not lose their jobs nor any of their pay. Does that make any sense if you buy into the idea that merit pay will work?

Teachers' salaries should be higher; salary schedules are too flat; public education is in deep trouble. We can all agree on these facts. What we cannot agree about is that the solution is to motivate unmotivated teachers.

"It's the parents, stupid!" should be the slogan. What does the editorial board suggest be done about that?

Broken Promises for CCSD's Renaissance Elementary Schools

"Despite original intent, first-year teachers are big part of Renaissance project at 4 Charleston County Schools"--so reads the headline on Monday's paper. Maybe CCSD Superintendent McGinley hoped residents would be too busy watching football games to read the paper. Maybe she believes affected parents don't read the paper.

So, what happened?

McGinley "expected" no first-year teachers would be hired, but 44 percent are just that! How could she be so out of touch? Burns, North Charleston, Sanders-Clyde, and Memminger--the elementary schools at most risk for state takeover--have become part of yet another experiment costing over $1 million. McGinley's promise convinced the School Board that she was serious.

What the reporter's statistics do not reveal is how many of the 15 teachers in the group who did not get a contract renewal were first-year teachers. Half? All? If so, how many of these 23 new ones will last more than a year? (We can discount the two-year Teach-for-America contingent.)

"Schools where the majority of students are low-income often have higher teacher turnover rates, and they struggle to attract and retain the most effective teachers."

This truism describes exactly what happened in the hiring process. You have to wonder what McGinley was thinking when she promised the opposite.

The reporter manages to help the superintendent put the best face on the facts. Now the enthusiasm and extra training of first-year teachers will make up for their lack of experience. If that were the case, why would the superintendent have promised experienced teachers in the first place?

Don't get me wrong. Enthusiasm and idealism can go a long way with children; however, nothing beats the experience of an effective teacher.

In a final irony, two of these "low-income" schools, "where more than 95 percent. . .live in poverty" are not located in low-income neighborhoods! They are de facto resegregated schools, one in a high-income area of the peninsula (barely above Broad!) and one in a middle-class neighborhood of North Charleston.

CCSD's previous policies created this mess. Can it be trusted to fix it?

Latest Outrage from McGinley-Fraser Nexus Comes to Light in CCSD

When the Charleston County School Board is merely a rubber stamp for its most highly paid employee, Superintendent McGinley, why should it know when the district applies for a grant, even one that comes with strings attached that will require the school district to implement certain procedures?

Basically, that is the position of the superintendent and former Board chair Chris Fraser. Even though Fraser was no longer chair of the Board, he signed off on the district's pursuit of the Race to the Top grant, one that the rest of its members knew nothing about.  No doubt he believed, as the Chamber of Commerce's voice on the Board, that their opinions didn't count.

Hubris and lack of transparency in CCSD.

Yawn. What else is new?