Wake County school board member Keith Sutton took some heat Thursday night on his position on the math placement policy from a person who's normally one of his supporters.
During the District 4 candidate forum, Bridgette Burge of the YWCA of the Greater Triangle criticized Sutton for wanting to use a higher that 70 percent EVAAS probability of success for placing students in Algebra I in eighth-grade. This came after Cash Michaels of The Carolinian asked Sutton "to give clarity" on why board majority was being "political" in trying to pass the new math policy and saying teachers systemwide excluded qualified minority students.
"You know I love you both," Burge said to Sutton and Michaels. "I'm on a different side around this on placement. We're gong to bicker about 5 percent here and there when kids of color and low-income kids have been pushed out and not given the chance to go into the high-achieving classes just because they're kids of color and because they're low-income kids?
We're going to bicker about 5 percent here and here when so many of these kids are scoring threes and fours on their end-of-grade test? It should be policy that they're put into those courses and they're given the chance and they're challenged to do their best.
If the parents feel like the kids are freaking out and can't do it, the parents can say, 'Alright, he's going to go back to regular Algebra.' But because that's such a gateway, it's such as huge gateway to all kinds of honors classes.
What I think is happening is because Mr. John Tedesco supports it and some really smart women (on the ED task force) who support him support it, people distrust it and it's become a partisan issue. And that's a damn shame because who gets hurt is those kids who've already been hurt, pushed behind, left behind, not challenged because they got brown skin and black skin or because they're just learning English. That's a damn shame.
So we need to think outside the box. Five percent, my goodness. Give these kids a chance. Write it into policy that these kids get a chance to show how smart they are. And if they can't, they'll decide and their parents will decide if they need to go into a different course that's not as rigorous."
Burge, who has attended several of the ED task force meetings where the Algebra I issue has been discussed, received an ovation from the crowd.
Burge's words caught Sutton off guard. Sutton drew laughs when after a pause he said, 'um." Burge quickly tossed back from the crowd "you know I love you, right?"
"Yeah, Bridgette, I know you love me," Sutton said to more laughter from the crowd. "I think Cash knows you love him too, I guess. I think your anger or passion and I'll say your profanity is probably misplaced.
I said at the beginning of that vote last week that I support the policy. I think all nine members of the board support the policy. I don't think it's bickering over five percent. I see it as, and I think the same way you do, is to make sure we give as many kids the chance and the opportunity to be able to succeed.
I'm not against the policy and it's intent. But I think that 5 percent does make a huge difference, number one in terms of, let's get as many students across the line as we can and if we move it up another five percent and it helps another two or three percent of students, which in a system of 143,000 students, two percent is a lot of students, three percent is a lot of students. So let's get as many students that we can across the line, and not only those students, but again let's not set these others up to fail. Because if we simply just put them in the class, that's no guarantee that they're going to be successful."
"There's never a guarantee, right?" Burge said from the audience.
"There's no guarantees so we are talking ...." Sutton said as he was interrupted again by Burge, who said they're not talking about failing students but those who were doing great in math.
"We are talking with Mr. Tedesco," Sutton continued. "With some of the women that you spoke of to try to see if we can come to some sort or compromise. I think you were at that meeting last week so you may have heard me ask the board chair if there's a way we can do that and get all nine members to support that,. Then what's wrong with moving it up two or three percent so we can have a consensus of the board and not be divided on this issue?
Let me say on the record I support the intent of the policy but again I want to make sure we have as many kids succeed and that the support is there for those kids who need it."
Comments
Setting kids up - we can know it by its phrases
Fri, 09/16/2011 - 15:53 — LongtimeLurkerThis story makes me feel so happy. These guys needed to have their eyes opened wide. They do respect Bridgette and I think they will listen to her - I hope she woke them up (although I don't like Keith Sutton saying her anger was misplaced - she's exactly on target). Sounds like the crowd responded. Thanks for reporting it Keung.
I think what is hard for people who have been outside this issue to even conceptualize is how tightly/uniformly this system was locked and to what degree the tools being trotted out here (in this "red-herring" debate over thresholds and the REAL issue of reintroducing teacher judgement ) are identical to the tools that kept it locked before.
The same code words "set up to fail" "the teacher's know best" and "take a slower pace" were trotted out every single time there was any discussion of letting "those kids" through the gateway. It was a uniform system of practice guarding all the gates with a uniform result - the appearence of looking benevolent, even to the extent of getting representatives of those groups most damaged to confusedly help with securing the system against access (that's nothing new, eh?). All the while this system of practice was uniformly excluding huge swaths of the population from equal opportunity.
Things always looked beneficial, fair, and deniable to all observers and notably, to participants. That is the exact definition of a naturalized system of practice - the participants can't easily see it either. Things looked fine unless, as both John Tedesco and those "really smart women" at the ED Task Force found out all too well, unless you got too close to breaking and entering the ramparts of the largely closed class system. Then things got nasty real fast.
And, like all closed class systems, once you expose the practices and show how they function, no one really has a stomach for it. It had to be deniable. So in that sense this war is largely won already. There are just some hold-out sectors still thinking this is partisan. This is the kind of heat all four Democrats voting against this need to get in the coming days.
If we need to move the bar to 75% then do it. Just keep in mind that 5% is in the largest part of the numbers curve, where the numbers (and the stakes in terms of social change that comes from educating people) get high. If we can extend opportunity in that part of the curve (no matter what it costs us) the results will be astronomical.
But no one should mistake what this resistence called "setting kids up for failure" is, and has been, about. Its about efforts to keep some parts of the old system of practice functioning. The devil has been whispering on Keith Sutton's shoulder and he foolishly has listened and repeated the mantra - we know it by its phrases.
Kudos to Bridgette Burge for providing leadership. Maybe we can see the end of the tunnel from here, and Keith and Cash and a hundred others can start to see how completely they've been played. Blind ideology and political party alliegence is a pale substitute for opportunity and fairness.
Keith, how many kids do you
Fri, 09/16/2011 - 13:12 — DrActualFactualKeith, how many kids do you want to let fall thru the cracks on this? What's an acceptable number/% to keep out of good colleges/or college in general? If you keep out 300 kids and compromise on that number it would be (ratio-wise) like asking 1/2 of any senior class to not go to college. That's too many to hold back especially when many are qualified. Kudos to Burge--she gets it.