School board members are miffed at the fallout from their decision not to do a study on the diversity policy.
During Tuesday's committee of the whole meeting, board members argued that they weren't against a study, per se. Board member Beverley Clark said the problem was that the question was framed in a way that was unanswerable.
Board members Horace Tart and Ron Margiotta had wanted staff to see if students who were reassigned from North Garner Middle School to West Lake Middle School for diversity reasons are now doing better academically.
Board member Lori Millberg said there's no way to know how the students would have done if they had stayed at North Garner.
Clark said there are other ways that the results of the diversity policy can be answered. For instance, she said you can look at school-level performance and teacher retention data.
(BTW, Wake is touting a new state report that found that the district's 2007-08 teacher turnover rate of 11.67 percent is lower thatn the state average of 13.85 percent.)
Eleanor Goettee said Education Week will publish a study soon which notes the problems found in high-poverty schools.
Those kinds of studies likely won't appease critics who'd point out that it still isn't looking at the impact on individual students.
For instance, Margiotta told Clark he just can't "focus on the big picture" because he needs to see if individual students are being harmed.
Supt. Del Burns suggested that board members propose questions to see if staff can answer them.
(Barring any additional posts today, this is it for the next week while I'm on vacation. I wish you all a Merry Christmas.)
Comments
Where are you getting these
Sun, 12/21/2008 - 10:18 — Eric_BWhere are you getting these teacher turnover numbers from?
At the last board meeting when these numbers were presented, staff mentioned that a different methodology was used this year where any teacher leaving their current classroom position was counted as turnover.
For example, teachers transferring between schools or getting promoted out of a classroom position would both count toward the turnover number. I'm not sure about switching positions within a school.
numbers
Mon, 12/22/2008 - 22:39 — Forget_not_the_...data from the NCDPI
Thank you so much for
Sat, 12/20/2008 - 19:45 — ncdad1Thank you so much for getting the rest of the data. It is so hard sometimes to find all these metric on the WCPSS site.
A couple of observation:
1) The rate is higher than I would have though in general for all schools. Averaging near 30% turnover says teacher rotate thorugh every three years.
2) You can see the difference high needs school have on turnover which is a factor of 2X over lower needs schools. I am guessing it must wear on the principles to be constantly hiring and training new teachers and the parents not knowing who their childs teacher will be.
3) I thought Joe said he moved to get out of Baucom which has an amazingly low turnover rate. There must be something good going on there which hopefully can be transferred to others.
4) I think I looked these up right and it appears that the low turn over school are all YR!
Considering the system wide F&R rate is about 28%
Fri, 12/19/2008 - 23:29 — Falchow relavent is information from single-digit F&R schools? Even if single-digit F&R schools have low turnover, it is not like they can have a system of single digit F&R schools, so will have to find ways to retain teachers in double-digit F&R schools.
Well, which is it? For
Fri, 12/19/2008 - 11:49 — joeciullaWell, which is it? For years we have been told that the singular objective of F&R balancing was to improve F&R scores. Now, when the "big secret" is out and everyone knows that the busing has done nothing to improve F&R achievement, we are supposed to believe that the real objective all along was teacher retention? They are making this stuff up on the fly.
There are other models which have successfully been employed elsewhere in the US which have succeeded in improving teacher retention and F&R academic achievement.
One only needs to look at the teacher turnover and attrition caused by MYR to know that keeping teachers at schools is not a priority for WCPSS.
Ms. Clark may be trying to change the color of the Kool-Aid, but it is still Kool-Aid.
Interesting
Fri, 12/19/2008 - 16:28 — SDR256I agree with you Joe. And so, if we had to name the reason, what would it be? They've suggested with this current action that busing is not for improvement of challenged student scores, seating capacities show that its not for growth, doing it for teacher retention seems like a real reach. So all the education based, reasonable reasons are nullified.
Why are they busing all these children? why why why? The only thing I can come up with that makes any sense is that someone is making a ton of money from it. Do one of these people own bus company? Does WCPSS get bonuses from showing good performing schools? (motivation for the Enron-like accounting of spreading the problems to hide them. Seems to be going around lately.)
The more schools they get to
Fri, 12/19/2008 - 18:39 — joeciullaThe more schools they get to 40%, the more federal funding they get.
valid but not viable
Sat, 12/20/2008 - 17:43 — Forget_not_the_...You know if the busing that WCPSS conducts across the county resulted in more schools becoming 40%+ F&R schools thus eligible for more federal funding, I be a bit more prone to buy into the whole diversity busing thing...
However the numbers of students being bussed has not impacted the F&R percentages at any school enough to change the F&R percentages enough to give them Title 1 status.
Conversely....
Fri, 12/19/2008 - 19:31 — fiestamomAnd conversely, if they spread out the kids who originally made up the 60% (and more) failure schools, they don't have any accountability for those students. Instead of helping individual students, they bus them all around, and make them a statistic.
A statistic is a lot easier to ignore than an inferior school.
I thought the budget
Fri, 12/19/2008 - 19:28 — ncdad1I thought the budget had
$5000 State
$3000 County
$500 Federal
per student funding.
$500 does not seem worth it.
Numbers
Sun, 12/21/2008 - 01:53 — SDR256Not my forte - but seems to me it breaks down very simply.
1,999,023,731 dollars is the Budget
divided by 134,000 students
=
14,000 per Wake County student.
I think you are doubling
Sun, 12/21/2008 - 10:43 — ncdad1I think you are doubling the cost by adding in the capital costs. Say you make and spend $100k a year and this year you spend $100k to renovate your house from savings or a loan. Your home budget shows you spent $100k which is your operating cost not $100k+$100k which includes your capital cost.
Still for the non-accountant, I think it is another way to look at the costs. Once the growth stops here, much of the capital costs will reduce. The fact that WCPSS has to pay so much in capital cost to continually build schools is telling. I think the new Heritage High cost $50M to build alone which is quite an investment and does not happen overnight nor as fast as developers can put in subdivisions.
Tell that to the school
Fri, 12/19/2008 - 20:18 — joeciullaTell that to the school board.
SDR
Fri, 12/19/2008 - 16:52 — ObserverNYThe only thing I can come up with that makes any sense is that someone is making a ton of money from it.
Yup. IBO. How many millions has your district sent to Geneva again?
Lost
Sun, 12/21/2008 - 01:39 — SDR256Well, again ObserverNY, you've lost me with this IB tangent. I think there are 2 or 3 schools which are IB in Wake - maybe. So, its possible that they are 'wasting' ....'some' on this program which you think is experimental. Maybe you're right. But its clear to me WCPSS is MOST of our tax dollars (80% of our property tax goes to schools) on this false assumption that they are solving both growth and failing student problems but playing an intense, high speed, infinite number shell game with students, scores and buses........ready, set....SHUFFLE! Now, where is it, where is it - that 'node', that 'seat' you were looking for......OH WAIT! I moved it. ... February is when you will know for sure. ......for six months until we (ready, set GO)... where is it? where is it? 2 or 3 schools from the number of schools in Wake county which is 150? - hardly seems like an iceberg.
This just shows how isolated
Fri, 12/19/2008 - 11:04 — joeciullaThis just shows how isolated the School Board is from the real world of parents dealing with the school system. They treat F&R students and nodes like statistics and rounding errors, and are "miffed" that some might want to know whether ANY student gains are realized.
Let them eat cake !!
MIFFED???
Fri, 12/19/2008 - 10:22 — g88ky07Now they know how WE feel!!!