N&O Editorial Board: Common Core Not To Blame – Teachers, Parents and Students Are.

Posted on October 24, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

News & Observer editorial board is just about as clueless on Common Core at the Wake County School board.  Check out this pile of dung they call an op-ed.

Nothing is Common Core’s fault, ya’ll.

“When students don’t measure up, some Wake County school board members rightly note, that isn’t the fault of Common Core. It may be teachers, it may be parents who aren’t helping their students at home, it make be students wrestling with tougher courses than they’ve had in the lower grades.”

TommyLee ReallySo a set of fundamentally flawed and experimental line item standards are not to blame, but instead TEACHERS, PARENTS and STUDENTS are?

Wow, new low N&O… new low!

Or maybe not.

They continued to sink lower:

But the answer to problems isn’t doing away with standards. It’s helping students meet the standards, which is why the Wake school board long ago signaled its concerns with abandoning Common Core before it has had at least seven years to provide good measurements.

Instead of substituting lesser standards for Common Core, the state should be investing more in public schools to help students meet and exceed the expectations of the Common Core standards. Those who want to abandon Common Core are jumping from a ship that isn’t sinking.

Holy denial, Batman.

Show me your evidence to back anything said here, News and Observer Editorial Board.

Why seven years?
Is that because the “NC Large District Superintendent Consortium” wants that?

I obtained some of the communications for this consortium last year. These communications show that the NCLDSC has aligned with  pro-Common Core entities directing them on the topic and has been meeting unbeknownst to the majority of the voting public for some time now.  Also in the mix in those emails was Ann Clark, who now sits on the Common Core review committee. Convenient, right?

What “lesser standards”?  
Prove to your readers Common Core is superior without using the Gates paid Fordham study, which is a national joke.

The Public Responds: We sank your Battleship!
Hate to break that to ya, N&O Editorial Board, but the Common Core ships is indeed sinking.  Fast.

Support nationwide is crumbling not just with parents, but with teachers as well. In the latest PDK/Gallup poll this year, only 1 in 4 parents approve of Common Core. Only 40% of teachers expressed any support for the standards.

The single most major goal that Common Core supporters made was on being able to compare results from state to state.  They’ve completely failed to do that.

But hey, it’s not Common Core’s fault, right?

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core, Media Bias | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Late Buses Still Plague Two Months Into The School Year – #WCPSS

Posted on October 24, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

From the start of the 2015-16 school year, busing problems have plagued Wake County Schools.  Two months into the year, the issues with late buses and buses not running on their assigned schedules continues.

ABC11:

Two months into the school year, Kathy Bloom says problems with late and ‘no show’ buses are getting worse in her East Raleigh neighborhood.

“I bring a little camping chair with me to sit [at the bus stop] because it could be 15 minutes. It could be an hour and a half,” she said.

In the past two weeks, the Wake County mother was left scrambling to make other arrangements when her son’s bus didn’t arrive at the bus stop on two different occasions.

I feel her pain.  After talking to other parents, every single elementary school in our area has had similar issues.

The children bearing the brunt of these issues seems to be elementary students, who are last on the list to be picked up for their routes home.

The News and Observer uncovered that the Wake County Board of Education had cut some 80 buses from the line-up for this year. After hearing that the Wake Board ‘wasn’t getting emails’ about the problem, I sent my own email in detailing my child’s return bus route delays.

Bill Fletcher, Christine Kushner and Susan Evans all responded to my note asking for details on my child’s school and bus route.  Miraculously, the following week our school was assigned three new buses.

This has not resolved the issue with my own child’s return route tardiness, however.
In fact, there has not been a single instance of my child’s bus leaving the school at its scheduled time to bring the kids home. Another email might have to be written.

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION, Wake County School Board | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Cumberland County Upset Their Supplement Isn’t As Big As Wake County’s

Posted on October 24, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

Cumberland County Schools is upset that their teacher salary supplement isn’t as big as Wake County’s.

FayObserver:

It’s another challenge for less wealthy communities, like Cumberland and Hoke counties, that already pay significantly less than the districts in the Triangle area, the Charlotte area and other parts of the state that have higher incomes and strong tax bases. Wake County, in the Triangle, already paid its teachers an average of about $2,400 more per year than Cumberland County.

“Clearly, anytime anybody close to us is offering more, it does present a problem to us, and we do lose teachers to Wake County now,” said Cumberland County Schools Superintendent Frank Till Jr. “So it does create some issues for us.”

So, the narrative we’ve heard from various sources is that North Carolina doesn’t pay it’s teacher enough. The untold part of that narrative is that the teacher supplemental pay is set by the individual districts.

Ok, so the teachers in Cumberland have a smaller supplement. The county sets that, so why not raise it? They have no problem paying their Superintendent generously, after all.

At last check when WRAL produced a list of Superintendent contracts back in 2013, Superintendent Frank Till has a state salary of $138,996 and a local salary of $98,824. This makes for a grand total in compensation of $237,820.  This made him the 4th highest paid Superintendent in the state back in 2013.

In 2014-15, Cumberland had 3,339 teachers with an average supplement of $3,569.  They ranked 21st in the state at that time.

In the same time period, Wake county had 9, 798 teachers making an average supplement of $5,994. Wake county’s supplement was the third highest in the state, behind Chapel Hill/Carrboro and Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

Chapel Hill/Carrboro was in the number one spot with a supplement of $ 6,892  and which had 1,159 teachers. Charlotte-Mecklenburg was in second place with 10,073 teachers and a supplement of $6,632.

Wake and Charlotte-Mecklenburg are the two largest districts in the state. Perhaps they are too large? Maybe it’s time to again have the discussion about breaking them up, however the powers that be will likely never let that happen.

Typically, what happens in Wake County Schools tends to trickle down into the rest of the districts across the state. Arguably, what we’re seeing here is the Wake County Board manipulating the teacher pay narrative by increasing their supplement. They can then say, ‘see, the state wouldn’t do it so we did’. Meanwhile, other districts with fewer resources like Cumberland can then become media fodder for a revival of attacks on the General Assembly.

Remember, step pay has been reinstated and entry level salaries boosted. That narrative being laid down by Wake County does not lend itself to answering the question: Where do you expect the funds to come from for state-wide legislative increases?

Related Reading: Wake Teacher Pay Proposal Offers No Real Solutions

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION | Tagged , | Comments Off on Cumberland County Upset Their Supplement Isn’t As Big As Wake County’s

What They’re Saying About Education In NC – WE 10/23/15 – #NCED

Posted on October 23, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

NCED IconThese are some of the education stories from around the state of North Carolina.

The list is long this week.

Common Core Commission Update:
October NC Common Core Commission Meeting Highlights – #ASRC

This Week’s Hot Take: Wake County Board of Ed attacks Parents on Common Core
More: Wake County Board of Ed Clueless on Common Core
Related: Wake Board of Ed gives Superintendent a raise; refuses to make goals list public

#1 –  VIDEO: Dr. Atkinson Questioned on Common Core, Grant Money – #StuffAtkinsonSays

#2 – NC community college remediation rate is 42%
Yet our state’s high school graduation rate is 83.9%? Common Core math?

#3 – Test scores paint a bleak picture of Project LIFT and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools reform efforts
Key quote:

Three years into the five-year Project LIFT, which is working with more than $50 million in private donations to boost achievement in the West Charlotte High School zone, only one of the nine schools had more than half its students testing at grade level last year.

#4 – McCrory Appoints New Education Adviser.. who no one has heard of

#5 – Fight at Apex High Caught on Video

#6 – The Washington Post is deeply concerned about Education in NC… or something

Ms. Strauss,
It would be nice for you to have included that when the Democrats controlled the General assembly, the step-pay increases for teachers were frozen by former Gov. Beverly Perdue. Those step-increases have now been restored. The General Assembly also increased entry level pay. 

I’ve looked at the top 5 reasons for leaving for the last 17 years of Turnover reports. Not once in 17 years has pay been a top five reason.
North Carolina’s turnover report includes 28 line items. Of those 28 items, staying in NC to teach at another school was  triple that leaving the state and the largest group with 3,082.  Those leaving the state was 1,028…out of around 96,000 teachers.
By the way, over the last 3 years, the total number of teachers in NC has grown as well.

The next largest group on the list was teachers who retired with full benefits. That total was 1,755.

Yes, the number leaving to teach out of state has risen the last few years, but the number of teachers from out of state coming to NC has exceeded the number leaving.  In other words, we are importing more than we are exporting.
For example in 2013-14, 734 left the state,  1,985 out of state teachers applied for NC licences to come teach in the state. That’s a net gain of 1,251.

#7 – Updated DPI chart shows larger per student increase than first thought

#8 – Cumberland Cty: Wake teacher supplements hurt other districts
File this under: No one is ever happy. For crying out loud… districts set their own supplement rate.

#9 – What failed Jeb Bush Ed reforms will Horn bring back to fob off on NC this time?
Is this trip to Denver on the taxpayer dime?

#10 – State change increases number of low-performing schools
Looks like Wake County takes another hit:

“Changes made by North Carolina state legislators in defining low-performing schools have doubled the number of Wake County schools receiving that designation this year.”

NOT A HOME SCHOOL UPDATES 
(Courtesy of Carolina Plott Hound)

Posted in Academic Standards Review Commission, Common Core, EDUCATION, NC Ed Updates, Wake County School Board | Tagged | 1 Comment

October NC Common Core Commission Meeting Highlights – #ASRC

Posted on October 23, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

Dont mend it end itOn Monday, October 19th, the NC Common Core Commission (or ASRC) had their monthly meeting.

I’d like to thank Kim Fink of Coastal Carolina Taxpayers Association for taking some minutes during the meeting. Those minutes can be viewed in my  ASRC Repository.

I live tweeted the first half of the meeting. View my Storify article to see the timeline.

Highlights:

At the invitation of the Commission, parents were afforded the opportunity to tell the ASRC how Common Core has impacted their child. Over half the speakers were parents or grandparents and they were the only ones who actually stayed on the topic at hand.

One speaker, however one was not a parent of a school-aged child but, instead, a Common Core supporter.  Mr. Ned McMillan, who spoke first, proceeded to unleash just about every debunked Pro-Common Core talking point we’ve seen supporters use for the last five years.

McMillan also made the fantastical claim that, “Changing the standards will make teachers leave the profession.”  Oh brother. Gee, no teacher I know of left just because we changed standards in the past. In other words, his comments were about what you’d expect from a “head clown“.

The Grandparent who spoke was Elizabeth Berg. The parents who spoke were Jen Schrand, Tiffany Birkner and myself. Via the Coastal Carolina Taxpayer minutes, a summary of those remarks begins on page 8.  Perhaps the Wake County School Board, in particular Jim Martin, should read them seeing as how they are utterly clueless on Common Core and what was said at the ASRC meeting.

An initial draft of the ASRC’s recommendations for both ELA and Math was presented. There were 8 ELA and 11 math draft recommendations.

Of note in the draft ELA recommendations was recognition that the Common Core as it stands is not age/developmentally appropriate, “ELA standards need to be revised or rewritten to be developmentally appropriate for the students“.

Of note in the Math recommendations had several items of note, with quite a few centering on the Common Core’s inability to provide a decent math experience for high schoolers:

“A return to the sequence of studying Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II is strongly recommended.”

“High school math standards in their current form appear to be not only repetitive but also give no clear set of standards or curriculum for each of the three courses.”

Overall, the consensus has been that the integrated math under Common core is not only confusing but insufficient for students wishing to advance to a four year school.

For the K-8, the recommendation is to totally chuck Common Core.

“For K-8 Math, it is recommended that the Minnesota standards be adopted. These standards meet the benchmarks of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel whose findings were released in 2008; Common Core does not meet these benchmarks, nor does any other state’s standards. NMAP was specifically created to study how mathematics instruction in the U.S. could be made world competitive again.”

As a parent witnessing the ridiculous Common Core math in action, I couldn’t agree more. Supporters say the math is supposed to give little kids who are between 6 and 9 years old a ‘deeper understanding’ of math. That’s a pile of crap.

What it’s doing is training them to jump through hoops using multiple strategies they have to use, regardless if it works for them or not. Why? Because that’s what’s on the test and that is how they are being determined to be ‘College and Career Ready’ or not.

Various NC media was on hand and they produced the following related articles:

October Meeting Materials

Useful Links

Related Reading

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Academic Standards Review Commission, Common Core | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Wake County Board Clueless In General On Common Core [VIDEO] – #wcpss

Posted on October 23, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

Government here to help common coreIn case you missed it, earlier this week in a work session, the Wake County School Board showed just how clueless they are about the status of Common Core in the state.

The News and Observer reported on commentary from that meeting wherein board members defended a set of line item standards and attacked parents who stood up to advocate for their child.

To make matters worse, Board Member Jim Martin expanded on the board’s general cluelessness by disparagingly misrepresenting comments made by a Wake county parent to the Common Core Commission the day before.

Now we have video of Martin’s remarks.

Not only does the board as a whole seem to not know what is going on with the Common Core Commission that has been meeting for over a year, Martin makes a truly sad, apples-to-wrenches type comparison by comparing Common Core and going from one class in college to another.

There is no other word to describe this video other than CLUELESS.

Watch:

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core, EDUCATION, Wake County School Board | Tagged , , | 6 Comments