Amara,
That was good. Unfortunately, I was out of the room for the 1st minute
of your testimony and I can't open the data. I'm looking forward to
seeing the data so I can understand what you found about those numbers.
I think your approach of going to the data was the right one. From
looking at the testimony from other schools too, it's clear that
something is going on with these planned closings and turnarounds! It
looks just like what has happened in Chicago.
The testimony about Shepard was compelling, as were others. These seem
to be arbitrary plans at best. They don't know which schools have
neighborhood support and stable productive staffs. First, they claim to
use the severely flawed testing data, but they don't seem to be using
that in a systematic way to guide their closing plans. The only thing
the Shepard community got specifically was that they didn't like the age
of their building. So what is really determining these turnaround plans?
The video I posted a few weeks ago about the occupation of a Chicago
elementary school revealed the same arbitrary nature of closings there.
It seemed like closings and turnarounds were based on neighborhoods, and
had nothing to do with performance or turnaround at the school.
The occupied school had suffered several years of yearly staff and
curriculum changes. But the latest principle had great community
support and the school was making important progress in all areas, when
they got the news about being closed. When pressed, their appointed
school board knew nothing about the school. It seemed like the hand
picked board had assumed the years of disruption sabotaged the school,
so they didn't bother to check!
The hiring points for a new superintendent, provided by the retired
teacher working with the Occupy Philly education group, were vastly
better than the ones from that civic engagement process. I noticed that
the ones from the Penn Praxis meetings were obvious general principles
which didn't really produce guidelines. By doing that, they were giving
the green light to hiring any hedge fund manager as superintendent
willing to spit back some platitudes. I hope people demand the addition
of those hiring principles, and I hope I can find the list somewhere.
It's also clear that the allocation of resources, and the lack of a
responsive administration to specific needs continues to be arbitrary
across the city.
Good luck,
Glenn
On 3/15/2012 4:51 PM, Amara Rockar wrote:
I will be testifying before the School Reform Commission tonight
(March 15th) on the Great Schools Compact and its goal of replacing
50,000 "low-performing seats" with 50,000 "high-performing seats."
The following are links to my testimony and the data backing it
(Google documents):
https://sites.google.com/site/westphillyschools/50000-to-great-schools-testimony
https://sites.google.com/site/westphillyschools/50000-to-great-schools-data
The School Reform Commission meetings are broadcast live on PSTV
Channel 52 and Verizon FiOS Channel 20 and streamed live online at
http://www.phila.k12.pa.us/stream/ On Twitter, the hashtag to follow
is #phillyeducation
The meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. with the public testimony starting
usually after 1-1.5 hours of district presentations. Please consider
tuning in tonight. Thanks!
Amara
215-760-7757 <tel:215-760-7757>
West Philly Coalition for Neighborhood Schools
<https://sites.google.com/site/westphillyschools/>
--
I foster with City Kitties: Rocco and Red
<http://citykitties.org/adopt/adoption-listings/?page=pet&id=4152313&PHPSESSID=c74b70a505f65d618c559709dff12a21>
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