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Monday, February 23, 2015

What is Duval County and the New Teacher Project hiding and why?

The school results of a survey the district did came to my e-mail last Friday night. In the news world they call that dumping because who watches the news or checks their e-mail on a Friday night.

The results were specific to my school but I know every school did one. Wanting to see how things were at some other schools I reached out to the New Teacher Project, a group founded by Michelle Rhee and whose main doctrine is you can fire teachers to success and asked if I could see the surveys from other schools, telling them I was thinking about transferring and wanted to get an idea about cultures at them.

They very politely told me to go jump in a lake. Here is their response.

Dear Chris,
 
Thank you for reaching out about Insight. We share schools’ Insight reports with the teachers and school leaders who work there to support their efforts to improve as a team. If you’d like to learn about the instructional culture of schools where you’re interested in transferring, perhaps you could ask the schools’ principals to share this with you before you apply or as part of your interview process. It might also be helpful to ask about how the schools are using the data to make improvements to their instructional cultures. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have further questions or need assistance with accessing the report for your school; I’d be happy to help with that if you need it.  
 
Best,
Alex
 
Alexandra McPherson
The Insight Team

To which I replied.

 I am sad to say that was no help at all. I don't understand why there isn't a site I could go to and look at any school I chose to do so. I now feel like you are hiding something which is beyond me. So I will reach out to all my friends across the district and ask for their surveys and then when I get them I think I will start a blog called what is the TNTP hiding and put them all out there. I should have 30 or so by the end of the week.

Seriously its silly, I or parents or anybody who just had a passing interest couldn't just look at them. I mean the surveys were paid for with tax payer dollars weren't they? Shouldn't we all be able to have a look? The TNTP and district obviously think otherwise which makes me wonder, just what are they hiding.

3 comments:

  1. Will be interesting to see if you get a response to your reply!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tax payer funded therefore it must be an open document.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What about transparency? Shouldn't parents be able to see the surveys so they can make an "educated choice?"

    ReplyDelete