Gasp! Reporters Discover CCSD's Segregated Schools!

If you really want a quick run-down of de facto segregation in the Charleston County School District, I recommend the left-hand subject column of this blog. What you will discover is that, silly me, for my first five years back in Charleston after more than 40 living in various parts of the country, I actually thought CCSD's schools were integrated! It's a subject that our local paper has chosen not to explore--until now.

The Jonathan Green mural at Sanders-Clyde and the school's curriculum specializing in the history of slavery are a case in point. The mural greets children as they enter--but only black children, since no white faces appear. This message seems appropriate for a segregated school. Well, Sanders-Clyde does have one white student; evidently, CCSD administration never planned for any more. Meanwhile, fully 40 percent of its 720 students have transferred in from other schools. You can't insinuate, as Parker and Hawes do, that only white and not black parents request voluntary transfers based on race. They aren't making these choices based on the school's performance.

Learning of these statistics, what conclusion can you reach except that many black parents want a segregated school? If you know of some other reason, please comment. "Convenience" is the buzz-word for voluntary transfers, and CCSD does not provide transportation.

Let's not forget that federal government policies after World War II started the move from the peninsula to the suburbs as it granted returning veterans VA loans only on new construction. Talk about unintended consequences! But it's ridiculous to suggest that white movement off the peninsula in the seventies and eighties caused downtown schools to re-segregate: the population on the peninsula has remained (and increased) as majority white since the sixties.

It is remarkable to think that the only high school in this majority-white downtown has merely one white student; it's even more remarkable to realize that nearly 30 percent of Burke's students have transferred from other zones. Again, what gives? It's not the lure of its football team!

Parker and Hawes also try to make the case that Berkeley and Dorchester counties lack these fully segregated schools. They cite that Dorchester District 2 "doesn't have a single school lacking in diversity." Of course not: it has Dorchester District 4 to take that position!

Berkeley County is a different story. Traditionally a rural and black population, only in the past 30 years has it developed as a suburb--and new construction disperses whites from Ohio into the diverse mix. The Charleston peninsula has an entirely different, and much older, history.

P & C Continues Campaign to Cow Charleston County School Board

Just in case you mistakenly believe that the local paper routinely prints a representative sample of opinion from its readers, please be warned.

Thursday's editorial page does not represent a sample of what Charleston County taxpayers believe. The two letters concerning the Charleston County School District, one telling us how great Nancy McGinley was as superintendent and another supporting Bill Lewis's authoritarian solution to those democratically-elected board members he perceives deficient in understanding, are merely the latest salvos from the Chamber of Commerce.

Hey, editors, what qualifies the Chamber of Commerce to control Charleston County's schools?

Analysis of CCSD's Rating Shows How Statistics Can Lie

I haven't always agreed with Jon Butzon, but his analysis of the statistics being touted by the Charleston County School District should be read by all.

Job One: Find the right superintendent
BY JON BUTZON
Nov 19 2014 12:01
An old Navy friend of mine is fond of saying, "Experience is the best teacher. Considering what it costs, it ought to be." Now that there is a big "Help Wanted" sign out at 75 Calhoun Street, I thought it might be useful for the new school board to consider how our most recent experience could inform the search for the next superintendent.

Some great slogans have come out of CCSD. My personal favorites are "All Means All," "The Victory is in the Classroom," and the lesser known "A Tale of Two Districts."

Let's start with "All Means All." Even just a cursory review of student achievement data suggests it's really more like "All Means Some." Here are a few examples.


On the 2014 ACT (unlike school ratings, this is an actual measure of students' college readiness) the five lowest performing high schools in all of South Carolina are in Charleston County. The bottom five in our state!

They are Lincoln (the state's lowest at 12.7), Burke (13.1), North Charleston (13.4), St. Johns (14.0) and Garrett (14.1). The vast majority of students in these schools are economically disadvantaged and minority.

Let's be clear - these embarrassingly low ACT scores aren't the students' fault. They are the result of a systemic achievement gap that still defines CCSD, despite a ton of spending, new ideas and interventions. The ACT folks determine a 21 and above to be "college ready." Last year, the 1,099 white seniors who took the ACT earned an impressive 22.8, compared to the 692 black students whose average score was only 14.9, and the 127 Hispanic students who scored 18.7. Seniors at CCSD's suburban and competitive magnet schools far exceeded national averages. These are the same exact trends we were seeing 10 years ago.

So, we need a superintendent who can accomplish more than great slogans. We need a superintendent who can not only close, but can eliminate the achievement gap.

Let's look at another popular saying: "The Victory is in the Classroom." Unfortunately, over the last six years, this victory has been defined by race and income. The black/white achievement gap on the PASS tests has widened over the last six years in English language arts in grades 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8, and in math in grades 4, 5, 6 and 7. The gap for low-income children as measured by comparing free lunch children with full-pay children has also widened in both English language arts and math in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. The widening gap means the district has lost ground for these, our most vulnerable children.

If the victory is in the classroom, we need a superintendent who can do more than just claim victory. We need a superintendent who will reject the status quo and truly win on behalf of every child.

Which leads us to "A Tale of Two Districts." White middle class and affluent students in Charleston County outperform their white peers across the state. The opposite is true for their black peers. On many measures, black students do better in other S.C. districts. Remember those ACT scores. "The Tale of Two Districts" - the same sad tale told 10 years ago, five years ago, and still today - means that in Charleston County we manage to teach white children better than white children in the rest of S.C., but for some reason we continue to teach black children worse. That sounds closer to the state of education we'd expect to see in 1860 than in 2014.

Over the last 10 years, Charleston County has changed significantly. People are flocking here from all around the country. While the white and comparatively affluent population in CCSD has grown, the black population has shrunk. Improvements hailed by CCSD - for example, the percentage of students attending "excellent" schools - reflect demographic trends and enrollment shifts as much as any improvement to the quality of education. Now there may be fewer buildings labeled "at risk" - easily accomplished by simply turning out the lights and locking the door - but just look at actual measures of learning, and the quality of education has not improved for our children.

Taking all of this into account, we need a superintendent who can do more than add chapters to Charleston's historical inequities and "A Tale of Two Districts." We need someone who can provide real solutions, make excellence a reality for every child, and close this shameful book altogether.

I may be in the minority, but my hat is off to the school board for making a difficult change. The story may be unpopular, but the truth is, progress hasn't been made. We may have new shiny buildings and catchy slogans, but we're failing the same students we have always failed.

To the school board: Take a hard look at the data yourself.

Make this not about watermelons, but about the enduring tragedy of youngsters like Ridge Smith and the thousands of Ridge Smiths remaining in our system. [Editor's note: Ridge Smith, featured in a 2009 Post and Courier series on low literacy rates in the district, was shot to death in North Charleston on Oct. 31.]

Make it about the continued erasing of whole generations of children from the economic map, and the irreducible fact that after ten years of bold promises and new visions, race and income still define the quality of education in CCSD.

I trust you'll see that CCSD needs a leader who will bring a new set of skills and a true sense of urgency and humility to this work. At the end of the day, the buck stops with you, and this is the most important task you will undertake.

Get it right!

Jon Butzon is the former executive director of the Charleston Education Network.

Editors' Campaign to Rehire CCSD's McGinley Falters on Moffly's Facts

Saturday's op-ed by outgoing Charleston County School Board member Elizabeth Moffly sums up the former superintendent's disdain for what communities want:

Building program at heart of district-board dispute
BY ELIZABETH MOFFLY
Nov 15 2014 12:01 am
I want to share with my community lessons learned as your representative over the past four years serving as a Charleston County School Board trustee. This position allowed me a greater perspective to understand how decisions were made.

The elected school board employs the superintendent. The superintendent is accountable to the board and responsible for day-to-day decisions and upholding policy.

One would think that the board's and the district's primary focus would be student achievement, instructional quality and graduation rates. With the passage of the one-cent sales tax referendum in 2010, however, we functioned more like a "Board of Construction" rather than a "Board of Education," overseeing a $500 million building program.

This action is where the problems began. Whole communities were divided and thousands of students displaced.

The first divide started when the district told the Sullivan's Island community, with only 268 students in its attendance zone, that it had to accept a 500-student school or nothing.

All the while the district was building smaller schools on the peninsula. James Simons Elementary had 110 students, but the district built a 400-student school. Memminger Elementary had only 70 students from its attendance zone, but its new building was designed for 400 as well.

The island remains divided on the issue.

While Sullivan's Island was getting more than it needed, we knew North Mount Pleasant was bursting at the seams with over 2,200 students in its K-5 elementary schools. I thought the $27 million should be spent to address a more pressing issue of overcrowding. Sullivan's Island Elementary enrollment was secured in the old Whitesides campus, with plenty of room for enrollment expansion. A front-beach school, elevated 10 feet on stilts and the size of the Yorktown, just didn't seem like a smart decision when real overcrowding in north Mount Pleasant was being ignored.

Then there was the second East Cooper high school debacle. Wando had grown past capacity with over 3,600 students in a building designed for only 3,100 students. The town and the citizens had expected another stand-alone high school since 2005. The district hired a consultant and held a community engagement where three district options were presented and voted on by the community.

Option A, a middle college aka center for advanced studies (a longtime vision of the superintendent), received 25 percent. Option B, a ninth grade academy, received 24 percent. Option C, a second East Cooper high school, received 49 percent, the highest score.

The district decided this community would get the center for advanced studies, overriding the community's will. Wando is now the largest (and only) high school in the state's fourth largest city.

The most recent fiasco, Lowcountry Tech (LCT), has created more community division. The district hired a consultant in 2007 to a hold a community engagement at Burke High School. Approximately 300 citizens from downtown participated.

There were five options. The overall majority voted for the new Charleston Charter School for Math and Science (CCSMS) to occupy the entire Rivers facility.

Incidentally, in 2010 with the first sales tax referendum, voters countywide approved LCT (now called Lowcountry Tech Academy) to be constructed on the Burke High School campus. The superintendent then wrote a column for The Post and Courier in 2012 telling the public the community voted for her vision in 2007, with LTA and CCSMS sharing the Rivers campus.

The board has since directed the district to allow Charleston Math and Science to have complete occupancy of the Rivers campus so 260 children can move out of existing trailers. Lowcountry Tech would be expanded and moved to Burke where there is plenty of room. That campus was built for 1,700 students, yet it now has fewer than 400.

The district has continued to push back on this decision leaving perpetual discontent in the community. District 20's board is in complete support of the county board's decision. The administration needs to complete the directive and not subvert it.

The public recently questioned the board's integrity for holding an 11th-hour special called board vote last August to add Lincoln to the 2014 referendum. That was necessary to honor the board's original commitment to this rural community.

The board voted 5-2 on Feb. 24, 2014, to identify funding for a new Lincoln facility. The district failed to include this school on the referendum despite the board's directive.

The board was exposed to public humiliation for seemingly having acted rashly on Lincoln's behalf. Other communities were told that if the board included this project, the referendum would fail and their special projects would be lost. That was completely unfounded and disregarded the county board's explicit promise to this community.

At the superintendent's request, the district simply closed several failing schools. This policy allowed her to claim to have reduced the number of low-performing schools.

Students have been shuffled, but the achievement gap for low-performing students has grown. By closing or renaming failing schools, the district fostered an illusion that failing schools were fixed.

In reality, that posture only reset the scorecard with a clean, new start, a free pass for three years. These schools and children have not made appropriate progress.

These are just a few of the issues that the Charleston County School Board dealt with over the last four years.

I know there have been lingering questions, but I hope I have answered a few of them here.

Elizabeth Moffly is a former member of the Charleston County School Board.

Reading at Fourth-Grade Level? CCSD Welcomes You to High School

If you set the goal low enough, almost everyone can achieve it.

However, the Charleston County School District struggles to meet its own criterion that all incoming ninth graders will read at the fourth grade level. Despite focusing on literacy for the past few years, nearly 13 percent of the district's students read at or below the fourth-grade level. That would be bad enough if those students were spread evenly among CCSD's high schools. An additional problem is that they are clustered, often up to 40 percent of an entering class, in CCSD's lowest-performing schools. a

Below is an example of a fourth-grade reading worksheet. Remember that this is the goal for these students.

http://www.k5learning.com/sites/all/files/reading-comprehension-worksheet-grade-4-Washington.pdf

We don't know what percentage reads below the fourth-grade level. Here is third-grade level. Can you imagine this student reading a high school textbook?

http://www.k5learning.com/sites/all/files/reading-comprehension-worksheet-grade-3-rover.pdf

It's way past time to get serious about reading. If students reading on this low a level pass their freshman classes, what does that suggest about the difficulty of what they are learning? What percentage of these students will actually graduate?

Time to fish or cut bait. Either put all students reading at fourth-grade level or below in the same classes in the same school and keep them there until each reads at least on the sixth-grade level or distribute them evenly over the district's high schools so that students reading at grade level or above need not face a class with a majority of poor readers.

Teachers, Not Their Unions, Finding Common Core Standards Contemptible

Diane Ravitch reports: A poll commissioned by "Education Next," a conservative journal, finds that the public supports the idea of common standards but the support drops sharply when asked about Common Core. See the Edweek account here The biggest declines from 2013 to 2014 were among teachers and Republicans. Support among Democrats remained steady at about 63-64%. The proportion of Republicans supporting Common Core dropped from 57% to 43%. Certain prominent Republicans continue to promote Common Core, including Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Other Republican governors. The biggest decline in support was among teachers. Support dropped from 76% to 46%. This sharp decline is notable not only for its size but for two other reasons: first, both national teachers' unions have endorsed Common Core and reiterated their support for Common Core at their national conventions just weeks ago. Second, of the various groups questioned, teachers are the most knowledgable about the Common Core since almost every state is training teachers to Implement the new standards. Peter Greene explains the decline of support among teachers with this phrase: "Familiarity breeds contempt." He says, "I'm hoping leadership in both unions takes a good hard look at this result. Again-- a group that is committed to promoting CCSS, that has a vested interest is being able to say that people and teachers love the Core, has determined that teachers do not love the Core much at all. Please pay attention, union leaders." The editors of "Education Next" are known for their hostility to teachers' unions and teacher tenure and their advocacy for school choice, including charters and vouchers.

Why SC's High School Exit Exam Was Dropped

Last April after 30 years of requiring students to pass an exit exam to receive a high school diploma, the South Carolina state legislature, with the blessing of the education establishment in the state, dropped the requirement and even told those who had not received their diplomas in the last seven years to apply for them. What caused this change of heart?

We could surmise that the edublob feared falling scores due to implementation of Common Core.

We could conclude that, despite a continual dumbing down of the exit exam (HSAP), students were still failing at too high a rate for the comfort of the edublob.

Whatever it was, let's not forget the original purpose of that exam: students were receiving diplomas without the reading and computing skills needed to thrive in college or at work. Dropping the test will not change that  deplorable outcome one iota. If the items on the HSAP didn't correctly identify those who were deficient, then why did South Carolina pay out the millions it contracted to the edublob to create and then refine the test?

We are assured that WorkKeys and the ACT or SAT will fill the void left behind. While the purposes of those tests are valuable to students, will they truly reflect how well a particular school or school system has educated the student? Probably not.

What happened to accountability, folks?

State Superintendent Campaigns Dither on SC Test Scores

First, lame-duck State Superintendent Mick Zais didn't allow districts time to get their stories straight on why South Carolina students' test scores plummeted in most subjects this year. Looks like he didn't give Molly Spearman, Republican nominee for his replacement, or her Democrat opponent a chance to prepare talking points either, for neither campaign "could be reached for comment" for the lengthy and confusing article on test results prepared by the associated press reporter.

Ever hear of a major campaign that can't be reached? Right.

If the standards by which students are tested are changed every year, who cares what the results show? It's apples to oranges every time, just as the educrats like it. They are the ones who support Common Core with all of its drawbacks. If more students test as exemplary, while most scores fall, the results suggest that the test measures more native intelligence than learned subject matter.

Our major candidates for state superintendent are hiding from the press because both of them support the implementation of Common Core, and they sense the majority of voters do not.

Chicken!

Montessori Key to Integrating CCSD's Murray-Lasaine?

The percentage of black students at Murray-Lasaine has dropped from 80 to 68 since Montessori was introduced into this James Island elementary school. That result is exactly what the Charleston County School District hoped for. Not so the surrounding community of black parents who have sent their children to a traditional, mostly black school for decades. The NAACP, usually so vocal on such matters, remains silent on this one.

The reality is that black parents want control of "their" school. CCSD wants integration. After all, the attendance zone for Murray-Lasaine is now 83 percent white. White parents want Montessori so that their children can work at their own speed. Black parents want the community of a traditionally black classroom.

So why is CCSD so adamant in jettisoning the traditional classroom from Murray-Lasaine? Because it fears segregation within the school will replace segregation without. 

Superintendent McGinley and her cohort of "experts" are confident they know what's best for black students on James Island. They really don't care what present black parents think because they answer to no one except a school board loaded with a majority of McGinley sycophants.

Common Crore Basic Reading Standards Meant for Top Students Only

Even those who helped write the standards for Common Core are upset. Read on.

CCSS Writer Blasts CC Basic Reading Standards by dianeravitch Dr. Louisa Moats was part of the team that wrote the foundational reading standards for the Common Core. In "Psychology Today," she strongly criticized the standards. Among other things, she said: "I never imagined when we were drafting standards in 2010 that major financial support would be funneled immediately into the development of standards-related tests. How naïve I was. The CCSS represent lofty aspirational goals for students aiming for four year, highly selective colleges. Realistically, at least half, if not the majority, of students are not going to meet those standards as written, although the students deserve to be well prepared for career and work through meaningful and rigorous education. "Our lofty standards are appropriate for the most academically able, but what are we going to do for the huge numbers of kids that are going to “fail” the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) test? We need to create a wide range of educational choices and pathways to high school graduation, employment, and citizenship. The Europeans got this right a long time ago. "If I could take all the money going to the testing companies and reinvest it, I’d focus on the teaching profession – recruitment, pay, work conditions, rigorous and on-going training. Many of our teachers are not qualified or prepared to teach the standards we have written. It doesn’t make sense to ask kids to achieve standards that their teachers have not achieved! "

Newspaper Lacks Vital Statistic on CCSD Teacher Survey

It's encouraging to hear that teachers at only four schools in the Charleston County School District fear retaliation from their principals for disagreeing or bringing up problems. According to reporter Amanda Kerr, over 70 percent of teachers surveyed saw a positive school climate.

Kerr reported that over 1,000 teachers responded to the anonymous survey. She forgot to ask how many teachers the district employs.

Did even half of Charleston County's teachers respond?

Do you suppose the percent participating can make a difference in the results? I do.

How Tall Did This Year's Teaching Make Your Child?

According to an Education Week article cited by Diane Ravitch,

"Perhaps most provocative of all are the preliminary results of a study that uses value-added modeling to assess teacher effects on a trait they could not plausibly change, namely, their students’ heights. The results of that study, led by Marianne P. Bitler, an economics professor at the University of California, Irvine, have been presented at multiple academic conferences this year.

The authors found that teachers’ one-year “effects” on student height were nearly as large as their effects upon reading and math. The researchers did not find any correlation between the “value” that teachers “added” to height and the value they added to reading and math. In addition, unlike the reading and math results, which demonstrated some consistency from one year to the next, the height outcomes were not stable over time. The authors suggested that the different properties of the two models offered “some comfort.” Nevertheless, they advised caution." 

So, let's get this right: teachers' effects on students' height were nearly as large as their effect on reading and math.

Love that VAM, Superintendent McGinley?

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.

CCSD's Garrett Has Clear-Eyed View of Segregated Schools, Vague Solutions

One of the newer members of the Charleston County School Board, Todd Garrett, opined in Saturday's edition that the district has not fulfilled the promise of desegregation nearly 60 years after Brown versus Board of Education. While no one in his or her right mind could dispute Garrett's figures, other board members and district administration have tried to gloss over the details for decades. 

For sure, the disparities among schools are the result of decisions and policies of the CCSD School Board ever since its inception when Charleston schools were consolidated. The effects of decades cannot be overcome overnight. 

Most people probably assume that segregated schools in the district (15 by Garrett's count) result from homogeneous neighborhood school populations. Not in Charleston County! These schools by and large are in thoroughly integrated neighborhoods. Where homes sell for half a million dollars and up, some neighborhood schools are nearly 90 percent free and reduced lunch. We're not talking just about race here; economic background is the villain. The middle class of all ethnic backgrounds has deserted these schools for those that are succeeding. The poor would do so if they knew how.

Garrett's analysis is cogent; however, his plea that the community trust CCSD board members to fix its problems is premature. The Board needs more members such as Garrett who are willing to speak the truth and criticize blanket proposals from the McGinley administration. 

When the CCSD Board of Trustees stops rubber-stamping administration and acts as the boss, and not the underlings, perhaps desegregation will go forward.

Burke High/Middle's Numbers Don't Add Up

Sunday's article on lack of integration in the Charleston County School District muddled the overall picture in several ways, not the least of which was its discussion of Burke High/Middle School. First of all, Burke has a long, proud history as an all black school which most natives of Charleston have been unwilling to change--just ask the NAACP. When the all-white High School of Charleston was closed, it was almost, if not certainly, inevitable that Burke would remain for all intents and purposes segregated. Of course, other principals' recommending difficult students into Burke that went on during the last 20 years (and may still be!) didn't help matters. 

What really bears analysis, however, are the puzzling numbers cited in the article. For example, the reporter states that 13,245 students ages 15 to 19 live downtown. Where? Is "downtown" the same as the zoning to attend Burke? What is the source of this number? If it comes from the Census Bureau that also means it includes 18- and 19-year-olds enrolled in the College of Charleston as well as other high-school graduates.

Even if we cut the number in half, and claim that 6600 students are zoned for Burke, if 466 students is 45 percent of public school students zoned to attend, then the number still makes no sense. 

What the reporter inarticulately tried to state is that only 45 percent of students who are zoned for Burke and are enrolled in the Charleston County School District actually attend Burke. What the school board since its inception has accomplished through its own policies is for 55 percent of students from downtown to be bused elsewhere in the district. Now, the other statistic of which the reporter makes no mention is how many students are bused into Burke from other parts of the district. And don't tell me there aren't any.

In fact, wouldn't those numbers be interesting for all the schools in the district, but especially CCSD's high schools? Don't hold your breath.

Charleston County School District Ignores Community Ideas on West Ashley Middle Schools

Superintendent McGinley of CCSD has tried and tried again to rally West Ashley's support for merging its two unpopular middle schools but to no avail. Last night the School Board signed off on her idea: the two middle schools will indeed merge into one next year, and $3.4 million will be spent to improve its building. Oh, yes, and it will become a magnet.

Magnet here; magnet there: pretty soon every school in the district will be a so-called magnet!

McGinley has two goals, neither of which helps students. By closing a failing middle school, she will make her district statistics look better without improving anything, and by proposing an expenditure in the millions in the West Ashley sector of the district, she hopes to buy votes for an extension of the one-cent sales tax.

It's all for the students, you know.

CCSD's $9 Million iPad Fizzle

It's just other people's money.

No doubt iPads are fun to use and entertaining for students. Yet the Charleston County School District cannot claim that having an iPad for every student in three of its schools made a dent on improving test scores. Superintendent McGinley is still scratching her head trying to put the best face on mediocre results.

Board member Chris Fraser fecklessly stated that the technology needs more than a year to work, even though Haut Gap Middle has had one for every student for three years. Pay attention, Chris.

Technology is not the answer; it's just that simple. No doubt people raved about the first blackboard raised in a classroom and the first overhead projector. Computers were going to do it, too. We can all wonder when the next technological marvel will come down the pike and how many millions more it will cost.

However, one observer does have a point about iPad use:

"Before spending another penny, one education advocate said the district needs to look at why this investment hasn't translated into better test scores. Jon Butzon, former leader of the Charleston Education Network, said he thought a lack of staff training and technology support were to blame.
"It didn't produce the results, and we need to know why," he said.

Although the school board will decide what happens next, the mostly glowing report likely won't result in more schools getting iPads immediately.

[Lainie] Berry said giving an entire school iPads isn't the best way to ensure that they are used effectively. Before that, teachers need to be trained, model classrooms need to be established, and the school needs to build some capacity to use them, she said.
"We're highly aware that schools are clamoring for the iPads and want to do this," Berry said. "It's a fine line to walk. We want to get the technology out there, but we've got to move slowly and we can't rush into this. We have to do this right and now just let everyone move forward as fast as they want."

Was this $9 million well spent?

CCSD's McGinley Attempts to Straddle BRIDGE She Created

Slick. That's the apposite adjective for Charleston County School District's Superintendent McGinley. No wonder she's in the running for CCSD's longest-serving top administrator.

Allegations regarding the district's BRIDGE program are flying fast and furious. Teachers are outraged. Well-known education experts such as Ravitch are taking pot shots on the national stage. Time to call a meeting.

According to McGinley's latest insights, "there might be another way" to assess good work by students. There might be an "adjustment period." There might be uncertainty over results from a new statewide test. McGinley needs a "better confidence level" than what she has now.

These statements follow upon the heels of a surprise pay raise for a top administrator who attended the Broad Institute just to learn how to implement the BRIDGE. After implementing a pilot program in CCSD to reassure teachers that the following year their objections would have been dealt with. Of supreme confidence that BRIDGE was the way to go. After all, McGinley in her quest for Race to the Top funds has guaranteed the feds that the district would use such a program. She never hinted that she had any idea of the mounting evidence that value-added scores were bogus. After all, CCSD's paying Mathematica more than a million for its take on the formula. That's OPM.

Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst is the only local group vocally supporting BRIDGE. So you're not going to be surprised to find that Eli Broad gave that group half a million dollars in start up funds.

Your edublob at work. Now CCSD begs the feds to postpone what it asked for in the first place.

Charleston County Superintendent's Fail-Safe Evaluation

You have to hand it to Superintendent Nancy McGinley: she wrote the rules for her own evaluation and then cowed the Charleston County School District Board of Trustees into signing them! Or perhaps her hand-picked Board members weren't too savvy with numbers.

The result? Despite what future elected Board members might think of her, unless the district suddenly implodes, she's safe for yet another contract renewal and another bonus. She's soon to become the longest-tenured superintendent in CCSD's history. Crafty!

The Board of Trustees has the responsibility to oversee the Superintendent's performance. Soon will come another empty evaluation process. What about evaluating the Superintendent on these burgeoning factors: increased busing, increased defacto segregation, and increased homeschooling?

At this point in her seven-year tenure, she can show us how many failing schools she has closed to improve her statistics and how many new and expensive school buildings she has facilitated. Where's the academic progress?

Shock & Awe in CCSD: Close Burke; Put in 2nd Mt. Pleasant HS

It's brilliant! Whoever came up with this outside-of-the-box idea should be running the Charleston County School District instead of Nancy McGinley!

Over the last 40 or so years, Burke High/Middle School has become a buzzword for failure. In hindsight, the die was cast when the powers-that-be determined under consolidation that the white High School of Charleston would close, and the black Burke High would take both black and white students, a tactic destroying any loyalty that white parents as graduates of the former would have for the new school district. Burke not only became the lone high school on the peninsula; it retained its name and loyal following. Probably this agreement was worked out between the fed's attorney, Gregg Meyers(later an influential member of the CCSD School Board), and the NAACP.

Superintendent McGinley's box of tricks that she learned at the Broad Institute have failed her and failed her. No one has confidence that Burke can become an integrated school under the present circumstances. By petitioning the constituent board for transfers, droves of parents have made the choice to send their children to high schools that have the advanced and career programs that all students deserve. As a result, about half of eligible students living on the peninsula attend Burke. It's easy to accuse these parents of racism, but the cause is one of district mismanagement after a stupid initial decision.

No one has confidence that Burke can even retain its recent standing as "average," a rating based largely on better record keeping and last-minute cramming. Other signs point towards the inevitable downward slide. The current principal, Maurice Cannon, does not sound as though he is a solution but actually part of the problem. His perception that Burke's students do not pay attention in class nor do their work because they don't like some of their teachers is asinine. The school clearly lacks good leadership; we all know who controls that variable: Superintendent McGinley.

When you have Arthur Lawrence, a Burke graduate and long-time community supporter of Burke, calling for the shut-down of the school, you know the situation has reached a nadir. Lawrence wants to close Burke and all its programs and take the overflow from Mt. Pleasant's overcrowded Wando High School into the building as a new Mt. Pleasant High School while the district builds the new facility for Mt. Pleasant. Why, look! That means that "Burke" will have an integrated student body and the programs that are impossible to sustain under the present structure.

Now, the NAACP won't like this because Dot Scott doesn't want an integrated high school; she clearly wants a de facto black high school on the peninsula. Of course, she lives in West Ashley.