W.C. Gentry reveals school boards shortcomings...

In an article detailing the fact our most struggling schools are manned by novice teachers, W.C. Gentry said, it's "startling and totally unacceptable" that there are so many novice teachers in low-performing schools. Whats startling is he had no idea. I would say this was one of the worse kept secrets around accept it wasn’t anything close to a secret. Our most experienced teachers don’t want to work at our most struggling schools and the reasons are legion.

Mr. Gentry is the chairman of the board and has been on the board for eighteen plus months, how didn’t he know? This also comes on the heels of last weeks Betty Burney debacle where she cherry picked stats to try and make some self serving point. She was then quickly and summarily debunked by state officials. Friends, she is the vice chair of our school board and has been there six plus years, how didn't she know?. These are two of the people we have chosen to lead us out of the mess we are in and at the same time are two of the reasons we find ourselves in that exact same mess.

I will give Mr. Gentry and Mrs. Burney the benefit of the doubt and say their desire to help children is sincere. The problem is they enter their offices not knowing anything about the public schools and the system they are representing. Neither were teachers in Duval and their prior relationships to our school system are tenuous at best. It would be like me joining a law firm because I watch a lot of Law and Order. Whether it is hubris or they think the school bard would be a nice stepping stone to other political office as many other board members have done, they have put themselves in the position to lead us and it’s a position they are ill prepared for. Is it any surprise that their best solution for our intervening schools not only violates the law but doesn’t deal with the real issues facing the schools.

The situation is made worse by the fact that they get the vast majority of their information from the administration at 1701 Prudential drive who has every reason to put a positive slant on things. That must be where they are getting their information from because we know they are not in the schools every day. Whenever they do go all it is, is a photo op.

This truly is a situation that is startling and totally unacceptable but it’s not for the reasons W.C. gentry would have you believe.

Chris Guerrieri

School Board Vice Chair compares apples to oranges

This is a problem the school district has. They cherry pick stats that support their points, they disregard stats when they don’t report what they want (this past years FCAT for example) and then they make stuff up, discipline problems are not way down, instead teachers ignoring bad behavior and enduring toxic learning environments is way up. The district does all this why Rome is burning down around them. -cpg

From the Florida Times Union

I am writing in response to Betty Burney's guest column in which she suggests that students at Raines, Ribault and Jackson high schools may be achieving better than tests are indicating.

The basis of Burney's argument is that the postsecondary reading readiness rates reported for these schools under the state's high school grading rule are substantially higher than the reading performance reported based on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

What Burney fails to report is that the two tests measure different groups of students:

- The FCAT reading performance is based on all students in these schools.

- The postsecondary reading readiness standard is based on a very small number of the students in these schools.

It is commendable that the small number of students in these schools who score at level 3 or above in FCAT reading and math and graduate on time perform comparably with their peers around the state in terms of postsecondary reading readiness rates.

However, it is a gross misrepresentation to suggest that the performance of this small number of students is indicative of the performance of these schools.

The unfortunate truth is that these schools are not adequately serving the vast majority of their students.

As a service to readers, an "apples to apples" comparison of the FCAT reading performance and the college readiness rate for the entire cohort of students who entered the ninth grade in fall 2007 is attached.

These three high schools - Jackson, Raines and Ribault - are included among a group of 12 public schools around the state that have been identified as critically low performing based on requirements of Florida statutes.

This represents 12 schools out of over 4,000 public schools in the state.

A student entering one of these three high schools between 1999 and 2006 had on average less than a 50 percent chance of graduating on time, if at all.

Misrepresenting the facts to defend the status quo is a disservice to the students, families and surrounding communities these schools serve.

T. Willard Fair is chairman of the Florida Board of Education

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/letters-readers/2011-02-16/story/guest-column-state-tests-high-schools-are-consistent-and#ixzz1EEZk3exj

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/letters-readers/2011-02-16/story/guest-column-state-tests-high-schools-are-consistent-and

Betty Burney's misinformation campaign

In an editorial last weekend Duval County School Board vice chair Betty Burney wrote about the scores of the post secondary reading readiness tests at the intervening schools and how they were as good as anyone’s around. This is what I learned today about the post secondary reading readiness test. First there isn’t one. Let that sink in for a moment.

After I collected myself, the teachers I asked told me they thought what she was talking about was actualy just a component of the college preparedness test or CPT. For the most part only juniors and seniors take it, though a few sophomores do too. It is encouraged but optional and at my school some students opt not to take it. A colleague at Ribault told me as far as she knows the test is not required for all their juniors and seniors to take (though she couldn’t be sure as she wasn’t quite sure what the test was).

To me the tests seem like one for students planning to go to college take, the most motivated and high achieving students of any school body. I have my concerns that it represents an entire student body which is what Mrs. Burney’s editorial seem to imply. I boils down to this, all the seniors who scored a three or better on the f-cat and took the test 78% may very well have passed the test, but that is not indicative of how the entire student body is doing. This at the very least also calls into question Mrs. Burney’s points and perhaps even her veracity.

A jaded individual might think she was cherry picking statistics that seemed to support the point she was trying to make which is reading is not the problem at the intervening schools that many make it out to be. Even if we were to give Mrs. Burney the benefit of the doubt and say she just looked at the stat and didn’t realize only the most motivated students took the college reading readiness test, again not the entire student body as the guest column seem to imply, then we have to ask the question, as a school board member, why didn’t she know?

This is a problem the school district has. They cherry pick stats that support their points, they disregard stats when they don’t report what they want (this past years FCAT for example) and then they make stuff up, discipline problems are not way down, instead teachers ignoring bad behavior and enduring toxic learning environments is way up. The district does all this why Rome is burning down around them.

This is also the same district that pushes kids along without the skills they need to be successful, has crammed every child into a one size fits all curriculum, is run by an administration that is more interested in protecting their niche of power than doing what is right for the kids and either doesn’t have the ability or will to fix the problems our schools have. Which I readily admit would be hard. There will be a lot of pain as we attempt to extricate ourselves from the hole our schools are in. But wouldn’t it be worth it if in a few years we could point to our school system as a jewel of the city, not the thing that holds us back as many do now. Aren’t our kids worth it?

How are people supposed to get outraged and leap to action when they aren’t give all the facts, when their leaders say don’t worry about the big hole in the boat and all the water rushing in, everything is fine. Well friends for a lot of schools on the west side and north side of town, everything is not fine.

If I am wrong on any point please get back to me. Set me straight and I will shout it front from the rooftops until I can’t speak or somebody listens. Not enough people are listening now and part of the reason is they haven’t had the chance because they haven’t gotten the facts.

Buried in Paragraph 4

In the piece by Topher Sanders detailing W.C. Gentry apology to Education Commissioner Eric Smith for calling him untrustworthy and unreliable there were several interesting pieces.

First the school board plans to turn North Shore K-8 back into just an elementary school. Which to me seems like a good idea, 5 year olds and 14 not only have different issues and should probably have a little distance between them.

Next like a junk yard dog who refuses to give up an old bone, the school board announced they will continue with their plan to split the three high schools, into two each, smaller theme schools that share a common campus over the next three years, this at an additional cost of 1.4 million dollars.

Betty Burney opened her mouth in the piece and said something about, it being about the kids, as if that has ever been a real concern of hers. After all she has been on the board for six plus years now and the problems we had on her day one are still the problems we still have on her day 2000.

Then way down on paragraph four, something highly interesting was mentioned. To me it was if the first signs of intelligent life were discovered or the hammer and the nail were now finally in the same vicinity. The district said for the new schools, they will recruit students, train teachers, put in place new electives, hire specialized personnel and coordinators and improve the rigor of programming in each school's feeder schools. It was the last part; improve the rigor of programming in each school's feeder schools that caused an alarm to go off. Could it be the district is finally getting a semblance of what they should do? Though I still have reservations if they know what that means.

You see kids don’t show up at high school and suddenly lose the ability to read or do math at grade level. No they show up without the skills they need. They are pushed along until they get to high school and there is nowhere else to push them to. I do not blame their teachers for this by the way; their hands have been tied by an administration which cares more about stats than children.

This transformation will mean the district can no longer subtly cajole teachers into giving gentlemen’s c or passing kids without the skills they need to be successful. They will have to trust that their teachers are failing kids that deserve it instead of giving them arbitrary percentages they can’t exceed. They will also have to provide more after school opportunities and legitimate summer school opportunities for the kids who are trying but either don’t get it or need more help. Then for some, heck probably for quite a few it will mean they will have to repeat a grade or two and the district will have to be okay with that.

There will also have to be more discipline in the feeder schools. You can have all the rigor you want and the best teacher too but if kids are running wild then no effective learning can occur. This means teachers will have to be able to write referrals and administrators will have to be okay with that and give kids real and meaningful consequences for their behavior something the district has loathed to do up to this point.

If the district is serious about putting more rigor in the feeder schools and I really hope they are, they should know it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take a different way of thinking and doing things because for a long time the feeder schools have been pushing kids along without the skills they need, discipline and a work ethic.

There it was all the way down in paragraph four and at the end of it too. Almost like an afterthought what I, many teachers and people concerned with education think is the beginning of the solution to our education problems.

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher

Several Reasons Duval's plan for struggling schools rejected by state

The State rejected the school systems proposal to save it’s four intervene schools from closing or being taken over for several reasons. The most obvious being the school boards proposal violated the law. For some reason the school board thought they could go off the menu and propose whatever they wanted to. Which in case you missed it was slitting the four schools into two smaller schools each that would share the same campus and have a community board for oversight. That’s an A for chutzpah, but a F for rationality.

Maybe just maybe if the state were to say hey you know what. Lets ignore the law the least the school board could have done is to develop a practical idea that might have worked. Hey school board if the kids are already struggling with the regular curriculum what makes you think they are going to do well with specialized ones? Also just where were we going to come up with the extra 2.7 million dollars you said it was going to cost? Furthermore this doesn’t address the real issue which is kids arriving to high school without the ability to read or do math at grade level and without the skills they need to succeed.

I suspect the state would have found a way to acquiesce if they would have been given a viable option unfortunately the school board fumbled that ball (by a 7-0 vote by the way). The same ball they have been fumbling for a decade now.

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher

Ron Littlepage, lost again

In Ron Littlepage’s column about the state potentially withholding funds if some of our schools don’t improve, I can tell you right where he lost me. It’s when he wrote, “But we now have a strong School Board and a strong superintendent in place who are putting extra effort into improving these schools.” Mr. Littlepage exactly what school board and superintendent are you talking about?

This school board and superintendent, instead of following the law which I agree is draconian and instead of addressing the real problem, kids getting to high school unable to read and do math at grade level, without the skills they need to succeed, came up with some half baked plan to cut the schools in half creating two theme schools that would share the same campuses. And you are surprised the state said no thanks?

That proposal was not extra effort, instead it was crazy and a common definition of crazy is to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Well friends we have been waiting for over a decade for 1701 Prudential Drive to fix those schools. The superintendent by the way was there every day and several members of the school board have been there for years and not one of there quick fixes have worked. They reason is they stubbornly refuse to address the real issues those schools have and because of that nothing has changed.

Mr. Littlepage, I don’t want the schools closed or taken over, but we have real problems which need real solutions and if you, the school board and the superintendent aren’t going to part of that it’s time you got out of the way and let somebody else try. That in case you are still lost is all the state is saying.

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher

The DCSB becomes unhinged

I found it ironic that I was reading; Members of the Duval County School Board expressed growing frustration Thursday with the state's laws and the education commissioner, with some questioning his trustworthiness. Especially since much of the city is also incredibly frustrated with the school board and we not only question their trustworthiness but their competence too.

They were talking about the prospect of the state both closing four of our schools and the fact the commissioner wasn’t willing to just accept the latest half baked plan the school board came up with to fix them, which in case you missed it is to turn them into two theme schools that shared the same campus.

I neither think they should nor want the state to force those schools to close or be taken over but if you are rational I think you can probably see their point. This date of no return wasn’t issued a week ago, on the contrary it has been on the books for years. Furthermore the solution the school board is proposing, is both not one of the options given but worse than that is the fact it is no real solution at all. How do we expect the kids to do well at two theme schools when they aren’t doing well or well enough in the states eyes at the schools as they are now? The school board is not addressing the problem which is how do kids get to high school without the ability to read or do math at an appropriate level and without the skills they need to be successful, instead they are just trying to buy time until their shipment of magic dust arrives. That also might be the number one reason the state closes the schools, the school board is not rationale. A reasonable person after reading the quotes by them in the paper might think a few of them have become unhinged.

Gentry said. “..the law regarding struggling schools was designed to kill neighborhood schools by putting them on a "death spiral" of options that ends in their closure.” Well sir what do you call the fact that only about ten percent of the sophomores at the three high schools can read at grade level, is that the equivalent of a head ache or a sprain to you? And when you wrote about bussing, well sir, that quite frankly was way over the top."We will again be busing predominately black kids out of their neighborhoods and spreading them all through the school system." Well in case you missed it Mr. Gentry over three thousand kids that could already be attending those schools have chosen to go elsewhere. They in effect are already bussing themselves out of those neighborhoods and spreading themselves all through the school system.

Then Paula Wright, who I had great hope for when elected, said "It's been terribly frustrating because you're working with a program that's researched-based and ready to work, but working against a system that is determined not to let them work." Um excuse me but your statement has more holes in it than a colander. If it is so proven to work why haven’t we done it before and no program will work if the kids don’t have the basic skills it takes to be successful. She then said she has faith in the community. I myself have hope for the community but it is hard to have faith in the community that for a decade now has allowed a massive exodus from these schools and is willing to buy whatever the school board is selling (how well has that worked for the last 30 years by the way).

Next Betty Burney said "I understand when things are political, and I think the commissioner is trying to satisfy a political front, and I'm trying to deal with things on the education front, and the two just don't mix." Whoa, an education front, she wrote, well I remind everybody she has been working on this education front for six plus years now and we currently find the school system on the abyss of losing four schools. If she were a teacher she would be on an action plan and things would not be looking good for her. As for this being about politics, I have no illusions that the state is a friend of ours but I have firsthand knowledge that the school boards solutions to the problem for all of Mrs. Burney’s term in office has been the equivalent of throwing paint against a wall and hoping some of it sticks.

Then there was Tommy Hazouri a lifelong politician who will probably run for dog catcher once he has been term limited out of the school board. He said about the commissioner, “His responses were vague, if responses at all, with no answers,” ironically that’s pretty much what we can say about the solutions that he and the board are proposing, it’s no answer.

The only one of the group that had anything of any substance to say was Becki Couch. She said, "My frustration lies more with the focus from the state level [being only on] what the law says, and that's not really what's best for kids," She was right there, the law is not what is in the best interest of children. However what is best for the kids can't be found in the school boards, two school solution. The kids need structure, they need discipline, they need additional legitimate opportunities to learn the material and they don’t need to be pushed along without the basic skills they need. Mrs. Couch also said”… the state is not connected to reality.” She is right again but unfortunately, as I hope I have pointed out above, the state isn’t the only one who has come unhinged.

Friends we have real problems and we need real solutions. If the school board is not going to be part of this process they should get out of the way. Our city and its children can’t take much more.

The Cognitive Dissonance of the DCSB

Reading about the school board meeting where some applauded the decision to split our four most struggling schools into two smaller theme schools each, I couldn’t help but think those in the room were suffering from an extreme case of cognitive dissonance. In case you are wondering cognitive dissonance is a psychological term describing the tension that results from having two conflicting thoughts or engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs. In simple terms, it means you ignore information that conflicts with what you already believe, in an effort to reinforce your beliefs. Sounds crazy right? Well that’s what the school board meeting was.

On one hand we had the school board and I will give them the benefit of the doubt that none are meeting in back rooms with the likes of Jeb Bush, Rick Scott, Gary Chartrand, Eli Broad and a few others discussing how they can destroy public education. No where I think several are filled with hubris, a few are using the position of school board member as a stepping stone up or down in a political career and most are out of their depth, I believe they took the job because helping kids was at least semi-important to them. There they were gathered to help kids but at the same time agreeing to support perhaps the wildest, left field idea to come out of 1701 Prudential Drive in quite some time that has almost no chance of helping kids.

Think about it, if the schools were split into two theme schools occupying the same campus (even if they had one principal overseeing both) they would still need two different administrations, bands, sports teams (The Raines Vikings and the Raines Scandinavians anyone) a doubling up on practically everything but the janitorial staff (are the two schools going to eat together too). Is Eric Smith who I disagree with quite frequently, not a dumb fellow, supposed to go okay with that. Does the school board think he is going to pat them on the back and sat, that’s some real changes you are proposing? To me it sounds like how they have divided my school up into four houses each with its own set of administrators and its own way of doing things or what some of the staff at my school like to call unmitigated disaster 2011. We’re still one school, just now we are headed in four different directions

Even worse however is the fact that if the students at these schools aren’t being successful with the regular academic program, then how are they going to be successful specialized in specialized programs (magic wands, fairy dust and unicorn horns perhaps)? Friends, the problem is not the academic program at the schools, the problem is the kids are not prepared for it.

But despite these blaring, four alarm holes the school board went ahead and voted and seven love I might add, for it. Not one said um, hmm, you know I don’t think we are addressing the real problem here. Not one!

Then there were the community leaders like Mia Jones, Audrey Moran and the NAACP who have either played lips service to the problems facing those schools or embraced one quick fix after another for years. They must have seen the same holes in the plan too. They aren’t very well disguised and they must have known that without addressing the root of the problem the problem will continue (when you have a hole in your roof you don’t try and fix it by giving your car an oil change) but they supported the plan as well.

Their cognitive dissonance came in the form of them drooling at the opportunity to sit on a community board that will have over site of the schools, as if anything they have done up to this point has made a meaningful change, regardless if it helped kids, the reason they were there or not. Furthermore I would not be surprised if some back room deals, you support this and your spot on the board is assured, haven’t already been done, after all this is Jacksonville isn’t it?

Then there was the superintendant whose office came up with the plan. He cannot want to be the guy who was in charge when the state came-a-calling and took the keys to the schools. It’s a good thing he has such a huge paycheck to cushion the blow. He has to know if kids can’t read or do math at grade level, if they don’t have the skills they need to be successful, which includes both a work ethic and discipline, splitting the schools apart has no chance of working. Despite all that and with a straight face I might add went off the menu of choices and suggested the farce outlined above.

Here are these three groups all supposedly interested in the welfare are of children ignoring what’s best for children and that my friends, is text book cognitive dissonance.

I hope Eric Smith doesn’t have a case of cognitive dissonance. That instead he has clarity of purpose and doesn’t give the school system a reprieve with this pie in the sky idea. Not that he hasn’t already tried his best by rewriting the way the state grades schools and giving the district a two year grace period before the tough measures kick in. I can imagine it now; he must have slapped his forehead when he saw that the schools didn’t make enough gains this year and screamed, what do I have to do!

You also have to know the state doesn’t want to take over the schools. They have had their drone roaming the hallways for years attempting to justify their positions and the word walls, data notebooks and complicated lesson plans haven’t made much of a difference. In fact where we say the schools are in danger of being taken over by the state that really isn’t one of the options. Instead it’s either close them or pay somebody else to take them over.

I hate to say it but if these schools don’t improve I hope they are closed (and there is a little cognitive dissonance on my part because I believe the states ranking system to be laughable). It’s painfully obvious that our leaders don’t know what they are doing and the citizens who continue to elect the same group of names over and over don’t too. Let’s stop pretending like we do. Let’s end our collective cognitive dissonance.

Will somebody please ask the DCSB the right question?

The Times Union asked the Duval County school board, do they get it? The answer to everybody by now should be a painfully obvious no? Its 2011 friends and the problems we are experiencing as a district with reading, intervening schools and so many other things did not magically appear over night; they have been here for decades. Though to solve these problems perhaps the district only needs to answer one question.

The question the Times Union and the city should be asking is how did all these children get to high school without the ability to read and in many cases do math at the appropriate level? Want to figure out why so many kids are doing poorly, well figure out how and why so many kids were passed onto high school without the skills they need to be successful. Answer this question and we might be able to figure out what to next. I can tell you what the answer will not be and that is they suddenly forgot everything they learned.

Friends as long as we continue to shrug our shoulders or turn a blind eye to why this is happening, as long as we don’t figure out why kids show up to high school unprepared and change it, we will continue to find ourselves in the same failing position, regardless of whatever fly by night fix, and make no mistake, splitting the failing schools into two theme schools each is as fly by night as you can get, the school board comes up with.

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher

Failing schools, an assist from the African American Community

In Jacksonville four predominantly African American schools, Ribault, Raines, and Jackson high schools and NorthShore middle stand on the edge of disaster. Year after year they haven’t shown enough growth and are now in danger of being closed or taken over and neither option should be acceptable to the citizens of Jacksonville. The reasons we find ourselves at this point are many as are the culprits, those parties who must share responsibility and at the forefront of them I believe is the African American community itself.

Every time somebody like Betty Burney, Tony Hill, or Corine Brown, and organizations like the NAACP questioned why so many African American children failed, or were suspended and implied the reason was based on race (not behavior or performance) and called for more African American teachers and administrators to be put in predominantly African American schools (as “role models”) it was like they were shoveling dirt on the children that went to the above schools and to a lesser degree the entire Duval County Public School system.

Why are those three high schools struggling so? Well sadly it’s partly because so many of the students that those schools serve were passed along without the skills they need to be successful and once the kids got to them, there was nowhere else for them to go to, well no where but the street that is.

About 8-10 years ago Duval County with a wink and a nod told its teachers not to fail kids anymore and a big reason for that was they were getting blow back from the African American community because some felt that too many of their kids were being unfairly held back. They must have thought, bussing hadn’t worked, and magnet schools hadn’t worked what else could it be but race and that the district was conspiring to keep black kids in substandard environments. They then began to point out but then later complain that a seemingly disproportionate amount of black kids were being failed.

Now to appease the black community the district didn’t come out and directly say to teachers, you can’t fail kids. No instead they said things like if you fail to many kids then your evaluations, potential bonuses and even your jobs could be in jeopardy, because if you fail to many students you must not be very good teacher. Then at the same time they started to implement so many hoops that had to be in place to fail a child that many teachers just passed them along. It’s not just African American kids either; we now pass just about anybody, regardless of effort.

Furthermore who doesn’t remember all the reports about how if a kid fails before the sixth grade he or she is more likely to drop out, well you know what happens to a kid who should have failed the sixth grade and didn’t, well he or she ends up in high school hopelessly behind and the city ends up in a place where it might lose four of it’s schools.

The same situation applies to discipline as teachers were given the same veiled threats about evaluations, performance pay and their jobs. Because of this, now wandering the halls of our schools are more than a few kids who think they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. These kids have never received a true consequence for their behavior and because of this they routinely prevent teachers from teaching and steal education time from the kids that want to be there.

I am not saying we don’t have thugs of all races in many of our schools, sadly we do. I am saying when one race or one group just looks at the numbers not the individual situation it belittles and tears down the whole education process. Kids should pass or fail or be punished based on their individual merits not to satisfy some groups opinion of how many is to many.

Joe and Judy public might not like to hear it but when we started looking at kids as demographics rather than children is when we started setting education back. We shouldn’t care if a kids is white, black, red, blue or green, if they act up they should get consequences for their behavior, if they don’t do the work or don’t do it well enough they should fail. Now a decade later we barely fail or discipline anybody.

Then when it comes to teachers and administrators, what should we be worried about, race, or about getting our most capable leaders and teachers in our schools regardless of which side of town the schools are in? We might live in pockets according to race but isn’t that one of the biggest problems both our city and society is facing. I don’t get how further limiting groups exposures to one another is going to help the problem; on the contrary it seems like it would exacerbate it. This year at my school an African American administrator told a group of teachers it was a cultural thing when explaining away an outrageous and suggestive dance number that a group of African American students did at a pep rally and another African American administrator told a white teacher she was the wrong color to calm a black student down. Regardless of race I hope you are outraged by these two stories. Imagine managing the floor of a manufacturing plant but not being able to direct workers who were of a different race or being forced to allow a group to behave in an inappropriate fashion?

We should be making every effort to come together instead of deciding it’s okay to further split farther apart and I remind you it should be, right is right, respect is respect and wrong is wrong regardless of race. Isn’t that the type of school you want to send your children to? To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr. arguably the greatest American of the last century, do you want your kid treated a certain way because of the color of their skin or because the content of their character? Well if you answered the way he would have then that should include areas such as behavior and academic performance too.

Ability not race should determine who works at a school and unless people are going to start walling themselves off into certain parts of the city where the only people they ever interact with are people of their own race, then young people regardless of color are going to have to learn to operate in civilized society with all the colors. Children should follow my directions because I am a teacher not because I am a teacher of the same color and administrators regardless of color should insist that they do so, not give them an out or excuse for their bad behavior. Furthermore you know who I want teaching my children and leading my schools? The best person available, that’s who! I don’t want somebody there because their race is the same as mine and I question the motives of anybody that would.

A parent may ask, why is my kid failing, and I guarantee the answer will never be, because your child is black, nor will that be the answer for, why is my child suspended, either. It will always be because they didn’t pass or they were misbehaving and we should be okay with that and if we would have been okay with that for the last decade then now we might not find ourselves in danger of losing some of our schools.

There are many culprits to the dilemma we find ourselves in and I use the word culprit deliberately because so many children have had their futures stolen and the city has had its potential eroded too. The school board and the administration for knuckling under to the squeaky wheel; parents regardless of race and teachers for allowing their children’s schools to be transformed into unruly places where learning and passing are two vastly different things. Then there are the members of the white community who thought to themselves, they are black schools and it doesn’t matter, after all the dads are in jail, the mothers are on crack and the kids can’t learn, even though nothing could be farther from the truth and because when one child is left behind all our children and our society suffer. These people should also be careful about what they ignore or take for granted because while the city was slumbering, Lee, Forrest and Ed White became predominantly African American schools as well. Then right there with all of them, with all of us, are the leaders of the black community who demanded something be done when in their opinion to many kids failed or were suspended and they made race not ability the factor they believed most important for working with children of color. When these leaders ask, who is responsible and why we find ourselves where we are at, all they have to do is look in a mirror.

Education should not be about race and politics and that's all it has
become and because of that the two most impotant lessons a kid can
learn, that working hard is important and there will be consequences
for behavior are no longer being taught.

School Board rearanges deck chairs on Titanic... again

It’s hard not to be jaded. It’s hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel. It’s hard not to think of our school board as a hapless bunch feeling around in the dark and this was made all the more apparent with their recent announcement of their plan to split our four schools in danger of closing into eight smaller schools that will occupy the same campuses. They say the cost for this rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic during these trying financial times is merely 2.7 million more dollars.

The district was given three options of what to do if the three high schools and one middle school didn’t improve. Fire the principals and staff, turn them over to private management companies to run or close them. Admittedly none of these options are very satisfactory. The school board however went off the menu and has proposed splitting the schools into two specialty schools each that would occupy the same campuses. My fist question is, if the kids are struggling with the regular education how are they supposed to miraculously be successful with the specialized curriculums?

Here is a possible solution they might not have thought of, how about stop promoting kids to high schools when they don’t have the skills to be successful in them? Barring that our only conceivable back up plan with even a chance of working should include fairy dust or a magic wand.

Sadly what everybody seems to be dancing around and what nobody wants to admit is the fact we have already failed most of the kids at these high schools. They are done; there is not much we can do for them. At worse they will have a life long menial existence and at best their development has been set back years. We have promoted them along without the skills they need and without a work ethic or any discipline. I don’t like it but that’s how it is. They are following thousands upon thousands of other kids we have sent out into society ill prepared for college or the work force. That’s where we currently find ourselves. It however doesn’t have to stay like that.

What we can do is say enough is enough, we’re not going to fail any kids any longer and the biggest way we can do that is by failing some of them. I know that sounds counter intuitive and it will hurt the sacred cow that graduation rates have become but we can’t continue to pass kids and hope they somehow catch up. A decade of doing so should have proven to us by now that it’s not going to work. Graduating kids on time shouldn’t be the number one goal of Duval County’s Public Schools. Graduating children prepared to be productive and civil citizens should be and we should be okay if that takes some regardless of color a little while longer to get there.

Then all the specialty programs like the school board is recommending implementing in the world will not make a difference if schools are places where kids can’t and don’t want to learn. The first thing we must do is take back our hallways and classrooms. Discipline has not improved, teachers tolerance to bad behavior has. Teachers have become masters at ignoring inappropriate behavior that steals education time because they know nothing will be done, well nothing but them having their classroom management questioned and their bonuses, evaluations and potentially their jobs put in jeopardy. Teachers often receive harsher consequences for writing kids up than the kids themselves do.

We must improve our learning environments, we don’t have to be harsh, strict and fair will suffice but if we want to have any chance of having a solution that doesn’t involve fairy dust or a magic wand then bringing discipline and meaningful consequences to our schools and classrooms is where we have to start. If this means we lose a few that won’t conform along the way, well that’s unfortunate but we’ll have addition through subtraction. We will save the ones we can, which I think is a better plan than keeping the ones that pull everybody around them down with them.

After that then we need to make our schools enjoyable. Kids who find school a chore are not going to excel, we need to make multiple and realistic curriculums that fit more of their needs and to do so we have to realize we don’t have the kids we wish we had, we have the kids we do and plan accordingly. Some might not like to hear it but that means that a fair amount of our kids aren’t going to go to college right after graduating high school either because of aptitude or desire. That however should be okay. Remember the goal of our public schools should be to prepare our children to be productive and civil citizens with whatever they choose to do, whether that is college or something else.

Kids in the lower grades need to play and be exposed to the arts, and then kids in the upper grades need to play a role in what their education consists of. Kids that want to drive trucks shouldn’t have to take algebra II. Kids that want to be artists or musicians should have those opportunities and kids that are more interested in earning a decent wage upon graduation rather than going to college should have the opportunity to learn a trade or a skill.

You want children to do well in school? Well make it both a place where learning can occur and a place where they want to be.

My next question is, what doesn’t the school board get?

The school board has been floundering around for a decade now, trying this and trying that to no avail. How many more chances are we going to give them? When are we going to say enough is enough? It’s hard not to be jaded. It’s hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel. It’s hard not to think of our school board as a hapless bunch feeling around in the dark. Split the schools up they say, it’s only 2.7 million more dollars they cry, lets ignore the real problems, a lack of discipline and kids hating school, for a little bit longer they ask.

We have a choice, we can continue on the same path or we can say enough is enough.

W.C. Gentry Shows School Boards True Colors

School Board chair W.C. Genty showed the Duval County Public Schools school board’s true colors today and that’s they are just a rubber stamp for the administration. He did so when he said, “the consensus of the board was to push forward with whatever plan they decide on…” Not this plan or that plan, but whatever plan.

They is the administration. What he is talking about is what to do with our four continuously failing schools, his answer again was, “Push forward with whatever they decide.” In case you didn’t know it the options of what they could do are both varied and numerous but that obviously doesn’t matter. “Push forward with whatever they decide.” These are his words.

Until recently the school board has been made up of casual observers filled with hubris and politicians on the way up or way down (W.C. Gentry himself didn’t run for school board until after a failed state senate bid) and their lack of leadership and rubber stamping whatever the administration puts forth as the gospel is one of the biggest reasons we find ourselves in the education hole we are in. In case Mr. Gentry might not know it but it is not only his and the boards responsibility to understand the problems facing our education system but to also represent the cities children, parents, stakeholders and even it's teachers too. Not just the high priced, low result crew that has taken over the palace on the banks of the St. Johns river and whatever they say.

It’s ridiculous that they would rubber stamp whatever proposal the administration put forth without any investigation or thought and him saying that is what they are going to do, makes me think they don't understand the problem and made no effort to do so. As you send your children to school tomorrow, remember his words, "Push forward with whatever they decide to do." and as you do so maybe you will wonder like me, why do we even have a school board.

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher

School Boards soon to be packing heat?

As scary as I am sure that was, might this be an overreaction? -cpg

From Tampa Bay.coms gradebook

by Jeff Solocheck

Florida school board members would be allowed to carry concealed weapons at their meetings if state Rep. Jimmy Patronis has his way.

County commissioners and other elected officials, too.

He has his reasons. Patronis, a Panama City Republican, represents Bay County, where a gunman commandeered a School Board meeting in December, shooting at board members and the superintendent before killing himself.

"Out of respect of what happened at our Bay District Schools meeting last month, I think it's worthy to bring up the subject," Patronis said to the Northwest Florida Daily News.

Already, district leaders around the state are talking about adding security to their meetings. We haven't heard any talk about wanting to bring their own guns to the party, although some have said they wouldn't mind having armed guards in the house. This idea has come up before. We'll just have to watch the Legislature to see how far it gets this year.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/content/packing-heat-florida-school-board-meetings

Who uses statistics

There is an old saying that I think is somewhat appropriate when discussing education and that’s only liars and politicians use statistics. Friends that’s the set up.

I recently read an editorial in the Times Union describing how over the next decade the nation will desperately need more individuals with college degrees and we were projected to fall about three million short. They sited several impressive statistics from several impressive organizations and implied America’s economic future was at stake. I was sold, just like that.

Just like I was sold when years ago the school board gave a talk about how children who fail the sixth grade rarely finish school and like I was sold when the same school board explained why they needed to tweak ninth grade promotion requirements. It seems if a kid fails sixth grade their percentage of reaching high school is greatly diminished and if they failed ninth grade their chances of finishing high school also drop greatly. That’s why it only takes five credits to pass ninth grade. The powers-that-be reasoned students would be able to make up the missing credits over the next three years.

On the surface I found none of the aims and statistics unreasonable, after all we want kids to pass, we don’t want kids to drop out and we want kids to go to college and I also believe we should do almost anything we can to make sure those things happen. Nope none of it is unreasonable at all, when taken in a vacuum that is.

Though that’s the thing with statistics, they can give you percentages or odds but your son or daughter, niece or nephew or neighbor is not a number on a spreadsheet they are an individual and should be treated as such. When we don’t fail kids, push them along or put many in situations they have no business being in then they pay they price not the statistics. Furthermore when the above statistics play a role in developing our policy and philosophy as a district we can easily see the problems that they create, and that my friends, is the rub.

If we pass sixth graders without the skills they need to be successful we have just sent their problems down the line and we can do so all the way to high school where even there it only takes five credits to pass the ninth grade. However once they get to tenth grade there’s nowhere else for them to get moved to, then friends it’s sink or swim and many aren’t swimming. I would be very interested to know what grade sees the most kids drop out. I would bet it would be right around tenth grade where promotion requirements loose much of their flexibility. But hey we got them there right?

Then not every child is going to college and our push to make every child do so is littered with failure. Our graduation and drop out rates are high. Seventy percent of our graduates have to take remedial classes and the rates of kids passing advanced placement tests has been steadily declining. What good is having all these rigorous classes like algebra II and chemistry if we don’t have the rigor.

Friends you have to realize that just passing kids along and then them not being prepared are directly related to each other. We can have the great hopes and dreams but don’t our children deserve realistic ones. Then you have to realize we have to make a change before more of our kids become nothing but statistics.

We can’t govern how we do things based on statistics generated in far off think tanks by people who have never worked with our kids. We need to get in with the kids ourselves and find their strengths and weaknesses and deal with them individually. If it’s fail them in sixth grade that should be all right as well as long as they use the extra time to get the skills they need to be successful. If that’s go to college great, if it’s not that’s great too. Regardless our aim should be to prepare them to be good and productive citizens.

Teachers can’t be forced to worry about how their students will do in a global economy if they can’t keep the students awake in their classes. We can’t demand that every student is prepared for college but at the same time be okay that more than a few don’t make any effort in school.

We need to worry about the students we have in front of us not the students we wish we had. We need to do what we can do and not be so fixated on what we wish we could do. We can look at the statistics and odds but we need to know that sometimes people beat the odds too.

If we don’t we’re going to have other statistics to worry about such as a spiraling economy that never recovers, a higher crime rate and more and more children neither prepared for college or the workforce who just drain society of what few resources it has.

If we don’t make any changes what do you think the odds of that are?

That my friends is the tragedy.

Drop Outs

Kids’ dropping out of school is a huge problem and not just for the dropouts themselves and it was rightfully identified as such in a recent Times Union editorial. Dropping out not only handicaps the future of the children that do so but also likewise damages society. However the following isn’t about those kids it’s about the significant amount of students who somehow mange to pass the “minimum standards” and graduate ill prepared for college, the workforce or life.

Florida State College at Jacksonville reports that seventy percent of recent graduates have to take remedial courses. Business owners also report having a hard time finding qualified workers from the pool of recent graduates. If local dropouts are costing Jacksonville millions of dollars how much money are they costing us? In a way school is even more tragic for them. They stayed all the way through and then aren’t ready for anything.

One of the biggest reasons kids drop out is the counties insistence on a one size fits all curriculum that has every child on a “go to college track.” Do you know what the difference in classes between a kid with 130 IQ, who loves school and wants to be a doctor and a kid with an IQ of 90, who hates school who wants to drive trucks, is? The answer is there is none, both children are expected to take and pass the same classes to graduate.

We have serious problems with our education system in Jacksonville, problems that are not going to get better unless the powers-that-be entertain the thought that different children have different desires, needs and abilities. Dropouts sad to say are only a small part of the real problems we have here.

Chris Guerrieri

The Times Unions love affair with the superintendent continues: part one

The Times Unions love affair with the superintendent continues. In a recent editorial they wrote: Just like a good school needs a great leader as principal, a school district should have a consistent vision and a dynamic leader to carry it out. Now, with a strategic plan in place, and meaningful evaluations of Superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals, Duval has a productive relationship between board and superintendent. Let’s hope that becomes the standard for the future.

I’ll be honest I have a problem the strategic plan and it’s not just because it reduces children to numbers and data points on a graph and not because the implementation of it is done with such a narrow minded focus that there are often unintended consequences (the erosion of discipline for example) but because who it managed by. Duval counties strategic plan is the equivalent of me allowing my students to write their test and then grade it as well. There is no neutral party monitoring it to see if it is effective only people who have manifest need to see the numbers improve.

As for the principals evaluations by the school board if you are a reasonable person and read them, then you to probably have questions. Businesses report not wanting to move here because of our school system, seventy percent of our graduate have to take remedial classes once they enter college, potential employers say they can’t find good candidates from the pool of recent graduates and teacher morale is shot and despite all this the superintendent garnered near perfect evaluations from the school board. Say you do like him and think we are headed in the right direction doesn’t above deserve some kind of needs improvement mark? This is made all the more exacerbating by the fact he helped pick the numbers in the strategic plan and then was in charge of gathering the numbers.

If you think the district is headed in the right direction, you are probably a member of the school board, the superintendent and his inner circle or an editor for the Times Union; you are sadly misinformed, because we’re not.

We have serious problems and we need a superintendent who is willing to tackle them and a newspaper that is willing to report them. Until that happens the citizens of Jacksonville and it’s children are being done a huge disservice.

Like a broke clock sometimes gets it right so to did school board member W.C. Gentry

Like a broke clock sometimes gets it right so to did school board member W.C. Gentry. In case you missed it he wrote about how it is truly hard to quantify if a teacher is doing a good job in an editorial to the Times Union, Demagoguery no answer to problems of education. The truth is there are so many factors, many out of the teacher’s hands that come into play while teaching. Furthermore I can attest to the seeming randomness of teacher’s evaluation. Where I believe I do a pretty good job, in the last five years I have been high performing once, needs improvement once and satisfactory three times. Where I have had momentary ups and downs, I think overall my performance has been pretty consistent. Good with the kids, bad with the paperwork.

As an occasional critic of the school board I think it would be disingenuous of me to ignore it when they or a member get it right. Don’t worry though, since this is rare I am not hurting my hand writing these type pieces but I thought it was important I mention that I agree with and appreciate W.C. Gentry’s stance on this issue.

Now Mr. Gentry how about getting it right about discipline, curriculum, how we treat many of our disabled children and about a dozen other things that are holding back our school district too. The list is long sir; it’s time you and the rest of the board got working.

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher

More of the same, School Board excludes the public

The following was in the November 9th issue of the Times Union:
The Duval County School Board is holding a special meeting at 10 a.m. today in Room 613 of the School Administration Building at 1701 Prudential Drive. The board will hold a public hearing before it votes on updates to its official policies.

The board will consider incorporating into its policies the process used to create, review and amend the district strategic plan, update the responsibilities and authority of the board, update the policy that governs professional development for non-instructional personnel, and update the policy to require all comprehensive high schools have an acceleration program.

I hope everybody sees the problems with this. First the school board announces the meeting to the public on the day of the meeting. Then they have the meeting at a time that practically ensures nobody can or will come. This my friends is not how government is supposed to work and I have to say it severely diminishes my optimism for this new board that for the first time in a long time actually has members who have worked in local classrooms.

If we want things to improve for our schools and our children, the school board is undoubtedly going to have to include the public, not think of creative ways that exclude them. They must change their ways and stop paying lip service to the citizens of Jacksonville.

I am reminded of a quote from one of our national treasures, Mark Twain, who was hopefully being studied somewhere as the new school board decided to leave out the public during their very first meeting. “First God created idiots; that was for practice, then he created the school board.”
I will hope for better but sadly after seeing how the school board has been run for the last decade and one meeting, I will prepare myself for more of the same. "

Let down by the Teachers Union… again

Let me start by saying I am a dues paying member of the union. I believe in the union and few things frustrate me more than when people blame teachers unions for problems in education. Unions are not here to protect bad teachers, just to make sure all teachers get due process, nor are they here to stifle education reform, thinking instead we should be at least be doing the basics before we attempt extraordinary measures. So with all this being said why am I feeling so let down?

Well it started when Duval Teachers United filed a grievance against PEN (the professional educator’s network) a local thinly veiled attempt at Union Busting. Despite PEN’s protests to the contrary it is obvious to anybody who applies any level of critical thinking that their goal is to weaken the union. Where I don’t think that DTU’s grievance is unreasonable it made me wonder, is protecting themselves from excursions into their territory first and foremost on the Union’s agenda? Is that what they are concerned with while there are so many other more pressing problems?

What about the stifling policies and procedures that are literally choking the life out of local education? What about the wave of blame the teachers and shake things up administrators that the superintendant has tasked to turning struggling schools around. If teachers talked to or treated their students the same way some principals treated their staffs they would quickly be out of a job and the community would be in an uproar. What about the crushed teacher morale, what about all the kids put in no win situations, what about insisting the district take the code of conduct seriously.

Then what about the thousands of grievances against the school district, because on the mountains of paperwork, more than teachers can possibly do in a day and all the extra tasks teachers are forced to do for free at home while their children are in extended day or wait for dinner, that’s thousands of grievances they could file each and every day. We have all these serious issues and the battle the union chooses to wage is against some Podunk teacher organization that nobody would have heard of or thought twice about if the DTU would have ignored it. That’s where DTU has chosen to draw its line.

One of the biggest problems local public education has is its leaders are far more interested in protecting their niches, their little kingdoms than doing what’s right for both teachers and children. The district is crumbling around us and the superintendant paints a rosy picture at every opportunity. He has created or endorsed policies that push kids along without the skills they need to be successful and gutted discipline. He has instructed his administrators to put yokes on the backs of teachers and work them like farm animals and to get rid as many as they can. Then teachers overwhelmed, marginalized and blamed for the ills of education can’t turn to the union for help because it is far more interested in beating back a push from a little know organization than standing up to and demanding the district does what is right. These are the two entities minding the store of local public education and as things currently stand we shouldn’t be proud of either.

I believe in the Union, I am a dues paying member but I feel disheartened and let down. The district has put me and so many of my children in almost impossible no win situations or are working us until we drop, a common lament with many of the district’s teachers and the union instead of sticking up for me and so many of my teacher brothers and sister has sadly decided it has other fish to fry.

Lame Duck School Board votes on

The school board met this past Monday night and voted 7-0 to approve four new charter schools, to extend the superintendants contract another 2 years and to approve new changes to the strategic plan. It’s not unusual for the school board to approve measures 7-0. They have been more of a rubber stamp for the district rather than an independent board concerned with the cities children, parents, teachers and stake holders. What was different however was its lame duck status. You see three members; Nancy Bronner, Brenda Priestly-Jackson and Vicki Drake will not be on the school board any longer come Wednesday. This however did not stop them from abstaining or passing on voting on measures that will affect the district for years to come.

These three ladies have been on the school board for the last eight years. Arguably the worse eight years for Jacksonville’s public education since generations of blatant racism ended in the sixties. Now there have been problems in the intervening forty years but nothing compared to the about face the district took from a school system filled with promise heading in a positive direction to one filled with have and have not schools, crushed teacher morale, and a student body pushed along without discipline and the skills they need to be successful. This and the lame duck decisions they made Monday night will be their legacy.

The citizens of Jacksonville must now sit back and hope the three newest members of the school board will discard the rubber stamps that had been standard issue to new school board members and decide to represent the whole city not just the superintendent and administrators at 1701 Prudential Drive.