SC State Board of Ed Stubbornly Approves Discredited Sham VAM

How many edublob members does it take to change a lightbulb? None, apparently. They would still be arguing over the merits of changing to wind turbines to power the light.

Despite the presence of level-headed Larry Kobrovsky and the prevalence of studies discrediting the practice, the State Board of Education, top-loaded with edublob members, voted to approve using VAM (value added measurement) for teacher evaluation. The practice treats students as though they are vehicles on a Ford assembly line. You know, one teacher adds the brake pads, another checks that the screws are tightened properly.

Here we have a situation where the assembly-line model of schooling has been discredited for decades, perhaps even a century! But schooling must now use the models provided by business.

VAM will not improve student outcomes. Where it has been used so far, the results have been erratic, to say the least. No study has shown that it has improved teaching, and year-to-year results for individual teachers have been ludicrous. Unmotivated teachers are not the problem. If someone proposed using VAM to evaluate parents instead, imagine the uproar and reasoning put forth as to why it would be unfair.

To top off its pig-headedness, the Board also voted to support Smarter Balanced testing. Let's hope the state legislature has more sense.

Balog's Odds on Improving Education Need Critical Thinking

Melanie Balog needs to opine on subjects she understands. Education is not one of them.

First, she startles readers with the idea that "nearly half of public students" in the United States live in poverty. She bases this misleading conclusion on a report that in 17 states, mostly southern, a majority qualify for free or reduced lunch. Apparently Balog has ignored that no one checks that those who apply for such lunches are in fact eligible! As with other well-meant programs with no checks and balances, such applications have soared.

Balog also doesn't seem to understand that school enrollments rise and fall periodically due to demographics. What a shocking thought, apparently, that more students are in southern schools than a decade ago! Somehow Balog buys into the idea that this growth means resources are spread too thinly. Doesn't she realize that those very school districts she worries about are spending more per child than they ever have before? How does that translate to "thinner resources"?

She also seems surprised to find that "'many families with school age children have not yet reached their maximum income potential,'" as quoted from Joan Lord of the Southern Regional Education Board, and so, young families must be "boosted."

Shock and awe? Balog must have come from an unusual environment where families with the youngest children were the highest earners. La-la land, perhaps.

In a report on achievements in southern states in the last decade Balog was able to find one bright spot for South Carolina: graduation rates rose faster than the national average. Now South Carolina is up to 66 percent graduating, or to put it another way, only one-third of students entering ninth grade drop out of high school. Should we brag about that?

Most of SC's "overage" is due to a drive for better record-keeping, not necessarily more graduates. If Balog had been paying attention, she'd know that.

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?

CCSD Feeds Millions to Edublob in New Teacher Evaluation Scheme

"Will Teacher Evals Tied to Scores Work?" queries the front page headline.

YES!

The Charleston County School District's aptly-named BRIDGE initiative will work--to funnel millions of dollars to waiting members of the edublob. You know, a bridge of tax dollars.

The Princeton-based Mathematica will receive $3 million to create an algorithm to treat each student as a product. Each year what the student learns will be dubbed, "value added." It's the assembly-line, factory model of education, teachers as workers on the assembly line whose worth is measured by how much value they add to each product, i.e., child.  Somehow Mathematica will magically adjust for "other factors, such as poverty, which could affect scores."

No wonder most teachers who are brave enough (or secure enough) to speak up are skeptical.

Let's see. Will the magic formula adjust for pot use? parent in jail? homelessness? parental neglect? How much personal information on each "product" will CCSD garner?

More importantly, will the formula produce reduced expectations for the progress of that child identified as poor? Surely someone else can see where this model logically heads: high expectations for the rich; low for the poor; high for whites; low for blacks and Hispanics. Is that really what Charleston County residents want?

Meanwhile, CCSD is licking its chops after receiving a $24 million five-year grant from the feds to provide incentives to teachers. Michael Ard, former Hunley Park Principal and BRIDGE project director, promises that "no teacher will lose money" when the district switches in three years to a new salary structure based on "quality and effectiveness." The district promises to reward with bonuses even after the grant runs out, but not lower any salaries for "low" performing teachers. The grant money for bonuses will run out after two years. Then what?

Superintendent McGinley has already primed the public relations machine by using another edublob organization, Battelle for Kids of Ohio, for public relations at the low cost of $1.3 million. Battelle will also be useful to blame if implementation of the new salary scheme becomes rocky.

Everyone (well, almost everyone) agrees that good teachers are underpaid and bad ones should be fired. No one will lose a job under this proposal, and in spite of Mathematica's formulas, no one will know under this system which teachers are really superb.

No one seems to be considering the elephant in the room: good teachers don't need incentives. They are already highly motivated, bonuses or not. Who does need incentives, then?

a) parents to then encourage their

b) students to learn.

If any teacher had the magic formula that motivates students, he or she would have retired on his or her millions long ago, and we wouldn't be having such problems in our schools.

Meanwhile, this taxpayer can easily think of many more effective ways for our government to spend $24 million.

Deja Vu on CCSD's Failing Schools

Burke. North Charleston HS. Stall HS. Sanders-Clyde. Burns.

"No Berkeley or Dorchester County schools were in this group," according to today's newspaper. Really? Don't you wonder why CCSD has the honor of five schools located on the peninsula and in North Charleston that have achieved the notoriety of the Palmetto Priority List? (Why, the list doesn't even include all of the failing schools that district administration has shuttered instead of improving over the last few years!)

Despite her training at and assistance from the Broad Institute, Superintendent McGinley has now proved she doesn't have the qualities and wisdom to "fix" the problem. Who else remembers the glory days when Sanders-Clyde made great strides in its test scores? Why, McGinley was so impressed that she made its principal head of two schools simultaneously. She supposedly had no clue regarding the scandal that finally came out of the closet--organized changing of answers on the tests. And the principal was allowed to escape to a district in North Carolina. Isn't it lucky?

What McGinley has managed to accomplish is new and/or expensively remodeled buildings that should be showplaces for learning. The building program has also been a boon to construction firms. Not to teachers.  Not to students. If a state-of-the-art building could fix these schools' problems, we would not be talking about them now.

Addressing Sexting & Cyberbullying In Schools

Anyone who teaches in a school knows that cyberbullying is the new rumor mill, especially in middle and high schools. Combined with pictures, it can crush those both in and out of the "popular" crowd. Just as with cheating, students refuse to tell those in authority or ask for help. This attitude needs to change. Such treatment on an ongoing basis can, and has, pushed the vulnerable over the edge to suicide.

Do preteens and teens know that such messages fall under "Internet Crimes Against Children"? Only if they hear it from school presentations or parents. Google and Facebook aren't going to tell them.

However, as an article in last week's P&C reported, all students know such agression goes on in our community, and most have been touched by it in one way or another.

The problem of "sexting" becomes even more serious. It is appalling to suggest, as one recent article in the P&C did, that "they're going to do it, so let's show them how to do it safely." What planet does the author live on? There is no "safely" with pictures that can live forever and attract the attention of adult predators.

Ask yourself why a preteen boy would text a girl to send nude pictures of herself and why she wouldn't tell her parents about the request. Every parent or guardian should be vigilant in monitoring media use by his or her child. It's not a joke any more.

And don't think it doesn't happen here every day.

CCSD's Grad Rates Are Your Fault!

Are you feeling guilty yet?


Yet again you have failed the Charleston County community by not raising high school graduation rates. Yes, we are all being blamed by Superintendent McGinley's mouthpiece in the P&C today. As Diette Courrege so coyly puts it, "Everyone shares a piece of the blame."

Really? If everyone is responsible, then no one is held accountable. Parents and students and schools are let off the hook. Is that really what the reporter desires? Maybe she should stop the communal guilt trip.

Parents are responsible. Unfortunately, many parents are so caught up in themselves and their own problems that little parenting gets done. That's where the school comes in. Some schools manage better than others in similar circumstances.

That's where McGinley (and her mouthpiece) should be focusing her efforts--finding out what those schools are doing right and copying it, not moaning over how "it takes a village."

Lowcountry Media Ignore Burwell and Waring

Is it true that Lowcountry audiences don't want to hear and don't care about missing women?

If you live in one of those all-news-all-the-time households (and I do), you have more than a sampling every day of what interests the news media and what doesn't. No, I should say that what the media cover reflects what the media believe their audiences want to hear.

Did we really want to see wall-to-wall coverage of Michael Jackson's accomplishments and pecadillos for a week and more? Was the passage of cap-and-trade ignored simply because it was too esoteric for our poor little pea brains to comprehend? Apparently the media thought so. Frankly, most of the time media act like lemmings. You need only switch from channel to channel during the nightly news to prove that.

Over a month ago, local media briefly noticed two local women: Teista Burwell and Katherine Waring. The first had been missing for almost two years, and the P & C picked up the story that she was finally put on a national missing persons data base. The second made the front page of the P & C only five days after she disappeared. Nothing since.

No doubt the P & C and local TV stations will say in their defense that they dropped the stories because no developments have occurred. Really? Well, then, why bombard us with repetitions of other stories without developments ad nauseum? Has anyone on the planet not heard of Governor Sanford's trip to Argentina?

I struggle to understand why media and police put such low priority on missing females age 18 and over. Every one of them is someone's daughter. Really, how much time would it take to provide updates on these cases to keep them in the public eye? Maybe Charleston should have its own version of America's Most Wanted.

Too many times the idea that adults have the right to disappear if they wish is used as an excuse to avoid the work of finding them. Too many times they're not found alive.

Ketner Closes Closet Door; P & C Cooperates

I've said it before: I hate hypocrites. Today's on-line "staff reports" on Linda Ketner's most recent anti-Henry Brown television ad just riled me again. [See ADWATCH: Ketner Ad Focuses on Brown's 2004 Fire.] In case you haven't seen Ketner's ad or heard of it, the P & C is happy to post it for your enjoyment.

Democrat Linda Ketner is running in the heavily Republican First Congressional District against incumbent Republican Henry Brown. She won the Democratic Primary because, seeing its chance to run a candidate who could finance her own campaign, the local Democratic party with the full approval of the Charleston NAACP ensured that no other attractive Democratic candidate ran against her. Since then, Ketner's campaign has bombarded local voters daily with God-Dad-and-apple-pie commercials. They make you wonder why she didn't run in the Republican primary!

It is a fact not disputed that, since arriving locally "about 20 years ago" as Ketner says, she has made a concerted and highly visible effort to finance the gay rights agenda. Nor is it disputed that Ketner herself is a divorced and out-of-the-closet lesbian in a relationship with a local interior designer /real estate broker with whom she purchased a $3 million property West of the Ashley last year.

So why do her campaign commericals show her sitting with Dad, the Food Lion founder? Shouldn't she be proudly stating her social agenda on her campaign website and providing us with a picture of her and her partner?

The answer to those questions is quite clear: she's a hypocrite. She wants to amass kudos for being out of the closet but still get the votes of the poor, socially conservative schmucks who can't figure out what she really stands for.

She's not going to tell them; Henry Brown is too much of a gentleman to do so; and Brown's defeat suits the agenda of the editors of the P & C.

Go ahead. Check out my facts. While you're at it, try the P & C website to see if the paper has ever mentioned any of them. Oh, yes, one tiny phrase--"and her partner"--when Ketner announced that she was going to run.

Newsless, indeed.

CCSD Teacher-of-the-Year Story Surprise

Don't you just love stories with punchlines? There I was, reading a story about this year's selection of CCSD's Teacher of the Year, thinking that nothing very startling would appear. Was I ever wrong! [See Teacher of Year 'Never Gives Up,' Principal Says.]

First of all, let me hasten to say that Gwendolyn Benton undoubtedly deserves her award. Judging from her many accomplishments and willingness to work in a new and undoubtedly difficult environment (Morningside Middle School), the award is much deserved. I suspect, however, that Benton has more common sense about such awards than the district that made this one.

Someone who spent 35 years of teaching in another state (and at the high school level) who then comes to CCSD to teach for two is not the most likely recipient of this honor. In fact, teachers with as much experience and education as Benton frequently are not hired in CCSD because they must receive higher salaries based on that experience. That's why I continued reading the article after the first few paragraphs.

I learned that "during her last few years in North Carolina schools, Benton worked as a coach for teachers, but she decided when she moved here that she wanted to be back in the classroom." No mention of why she left North Carolina. Should the reader assume she retired with an irrestible yearning to live in Charleston County?

Then I read the Morningside Middle School's principal's remarks:

"Goodwine said she could tell during Benton's interview that Benton would be a good fit for Morningside, and her prediction has come true. Benton has a good heart and a good spirit, and she'll pick the most difficult students in her class to work with and help, Goodwine said."

Was there ever any doubt that Benton would be hired? Are we being asked to believe that Goodwine didn't know that Benton was the wife of the new principal at Burke High School?

This was the article's punch-line: "'If she was not my wife, I'd love for her to teach in my school,' said Charles Benton, principal of Burke High School. 'I'm real excited for her.'"

2001 Cold Case Blown Open by Victim's Mother

Parrish Reeves's mother KNEW he wasn't simply "missing" in 2001. After all, his dog remained in the house in Cordesville; blood was spattered around, and a comforter had disappeared. Not so the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office, which treated the case as a missing person without further investigation.


According to today's P & C, "The case dried up until late 2006, when [his mother] presented the Sheriff's Office with new information regarding his disappearance." We don't know where she got it, but obviously the case lay dormant until that point.


Now it turns out that the authorities needn't have looked far--in fact, Reeves's stepchildren, ages 18 and 21 at the time of the murder, have been charged, along with two others; items belonging to the victim in a Monck's Corner pawnshop database [for how long, we ask?] were traced to his stepdaughter.


If Reeves's mother had given up, this cold case would still be unsolved, and the body still undiscovered.


Six years of wondering and trying to get the right people to pay attention. No thanks to the Sheriff's Office except for following through when the answers became obvious. Not encouraging.

First Anniversary!

1878--Pancho Villa is born; 1967--the Six-Day War begins; 1989--Solidarity defeats the Communists in Poland; and 2006--the Newsless Courier appears!

On June 5th, in an amazingly simple move guided by my computer-savvy son (although I soon realized I could have done it alone), I began to comment on line about the "South's Oldest Daily Newspaper." Clearly, a certain amount of arrogance might have driven me to such an extreme, but actually, it was annoyance.


The P & C's coverage of various items had been driving me crazy ever since I moved back to the Charleston area from Texas. The Caller-Times had been such a horrible excuse for a newspaper that I looked forward to better journalism. Well, the P & C probably is slightly better, but either it improved in retrospect, or it has declined in quality since I last read it on a regular basis. So, that first posting, prompted by an article like many others to come, presented my questions (and opinions) concerning the ParaPro and TAs in CCSD.

People write because there is something that they find important enough to write about. Over the last year my postings have ranged from CCSD to traffic to NCAA high school diploma mills to illegal aliens to global warming to Anglicans, but my focus and commenters keep me coming back to education.

What has pleased me the most is finding a community of like-minded people. I would hope that the Newsless Courier can continue to function for its community as (in no particular order) lessons in history, bulletin board, listening post, call to action, place to blow off steam, and force for positive change. What has happened so far reminds me in a small way of the Russian Revolution--of 1989, not 1914. Opponents of the Soviet regime found each other and successfully coordinated their information and actions through access to fax machines!

Let's do it with the Web!

What Has Changed since 1997, Joe?

The Sunday Post and Courier's Faith and Values section included an interview with Mayors Summey, Riley, and Hallman called "Poverty Forum." Most of their answers appear to be what the reader might expect of such forums--many platitudes sprinkled with a few good ideas. What caught my eye, however, was Joe Riley's answer to the following question:

"Education is universally cited as the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. What more can local government do to support the goals of our public schools?"

After attempting to describe how family life has changed in the last 30-50 years (mothers working, violence, drugs, divorce), Riley makes the following assertion:

"There is a very important role for local government as a supporter of public education. As opposed to 10 years ago [italics mine], I am regularly communicating with [G-J, McGinley, Lewis, and/or CCSD principals]."

Not much has changed in the last 10 years in the areas you cited, Joe, so what has motivated your change in behavior? You now say that city government has its role to play in improving education. When did you discover this novel idea? I ask because, well, haven't you been mayor since 1975--that's 32 years? And how have the schools on the peninsula fared during that time?

According to the rather grandly named Riley Institute for Urban Affairs and Policy Studies at the College of Charleston,

"Mayor Riley has led a city government with an impressive record of innovation in public safety, housing, arts and culture, children's issues, the creation of park and other public spaces, and economic revitalization and development. The City of Charleston is recognized as one of the most livable and progressive cities in the United States."

Um. Except for its downtown schools? Aren't they a "children's issue"? Can the Institute (and Riley, presumably) claim Charleston as "livable and progressive" if its downtown schools are failing? Frankly, from my point of view, the "urban affair" of overriding importance should be successful urban schools. Try to imagine what a difference such a phenomenon would make in livability for urban residents.

Could it be that accountability for schools has come to the forefront? That schools that have always been failing are now labeled as failing for all to see?

More at issue are Riley's further comments about Fraser Elementary and the "circle" of community drawn around it. Are the entities he named--McNeil Law firm, Piggly Wiggly, Pratt-Thomas Gumb & Co., the School of Law--as part of the circle making a difference at Fraser? Different than, say, 10 years ago? If so, what is it? Is it hype or reality?

The South: Who Is Related to Whom?

The old saying goes, at least about Southern politics (and South Carolina is certainly no exception!), that you really don't know what's going on unless you know "who is related to whom," that is, what are the strong family connections that help to explain the successful political careers of individuals. Take Paul Thurmond, for example. If his last name wasn't Thurmond, would he have been taken seriously as a candidate, much less have been elected, to the Charleston County Council? Or, should I digress on the Ravenel family's grip on many aspects of South Carolina politics, now including even the CCSD?

Even those voters who did not grow up in the South (and their numbers are becoming legion in the state) can recognize these aspects of the "old boy" network, especially the famous last names, but myriad not-so-visible connections remain that are not well-known to transplants unaccustomed to thinking about family connections or even to those Southerners who do not travel in political circles. Think of them as spiders' webs.

Don't misunderstand me. These connections that grease the wheels of politics are not bad because they exist. I'm sure such webs have always existed and always will. In the days when everyone knew everyone else, such connections were a factor in everyone's vote. Today such is not the case.

So when I saw the Newsless Courier's "Know Your State Lawmakers" section this Sunday, I thought, "Good. Finally some factual information." S.C. Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell is profiled along with a brief bio and several questions posed by Yvonne Wenger. My favorite is "What are your political ambitions?" Now, that is a fair question. The problem is that the reporter treats Harrell's more obvious political connections that got him where he is today as though he had none.

What could they be???

Certainly being "Junior" hasn't hurt him anymore than it has hurt Strom Thurmond, Jr., a more famous name. To whit, the Robert Harrell Bridge at I-526 and US17 west of the Ashley named for Harrell, Sr., "Whereas, he has been especially active in transportation matters and [. . .] was instrumental in the development of I-526 known as the Mark Clark Expressway and twice served as a South Carolina Highway Commissioner from the First Congressional District." He is also one of the controversial second-term appointees to SCDOT, whom the courts recently struck down.

Family--just can't do without it.

UPDATE: Sunday, January 28th--the latest profile is of conservative Republican Jim Merrill of Daniel Island. Now, Merrill is from Florida according to his bio, but his wife's maiden name is Gaillard. Now, what are the chances that she is related to the former mayor? Nothing wrong with that; however, it makes my point.

"dixie burger grill" Arrives

Check out my "little brother" at the dixie burger grill for some thoughts on The DaVinci Code and today's Presbyterian Church USA.