It looks like one of the first changes the new Democratic majority on the Wake County school board wants to make is restore use of the Blue Diamond assessments.
The just-released agenda for Tuesday's board meeting includes approving a contract renewal with Blue Diamond Information Solutions, LLC based on a pro-rated amount for the remainder of the school year. The former Republican majority voted in July to not pay $209,000 to renew the contract for the 2011-12 school year.
There's no discussion on student assignment in either the work session or regular meeting agendas.
Comments
This board will be a bigger failure
Fri, 12/16/2011 - 23:34 — FSandYOUthan the Head, Millberg, Gill board. They're off to following right in their footsteps and Hui can't even pin them down on one simple question, when they plan to address their campaign threats of tweaking the assignment plan. No surprise.
Looks like you're screwed Sam. But don't fret, you'll just be one of thousands.
student assignment - nervous
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 23:00 — sam123456I am getting nervous that the board has not announced when they will will modify the assignment plan. The Brassfield situation is a mess -- we need to know when it will be modified as that will play into my "choice" process. In addition to Brassfield there are other schools with issues. I am assuming that they can't change feeder patterns once "choice" starts as that will result in disruptions.
Keung -- could you ask the board when they will be planning to modify the assignment plan? Thank you!
Sam, have Brassfield parents
Mon, 12/19/2011 - 09:46 — jenmanSam, have Brassfield parents hooked up with Pleasant Union parents? We have friends who live right down the road from PUE but they are considering applying for other schools because they don't want to go to Wakefield middle/high. The watershed area is more complicated than it seems when you're looking at a map.
I think your assumption is way off
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 23:59 — FSandYOUThey are already showing signs of saying one thing, doing another and following in the footsteps of the Head/Millberg/Gill board. They apparently have every intention of letting parents pick their choices and then they will deal with changes after they see which schools will need to be capped as choice one schools fill up.
Disruptions and parents are not their concern. Business as usual with the wcpss when the loon lefties are in control.
Less than 31 days.
Keung, would you be able to assist?
Mon, 12/19/2011 - 12:10 — sam123456Keung, can you assist in getting an answer from the board...could you ask them if they will address changes prior to the choice period starts and secondly would they make changes after choice period? Thanks!
We have a winner!
Mon, 12/19/2011 - 15:57 — FSandYOUGood luck!
Blue Diamond
Fri, 12/16/2011 - 23:30 — nriemannIt is important to distinguish Blue Diamond, the software licensed by Blue Diamond Information Systems that dishes out assessments and grades them, from the assessment question bank owned by WCPSS that is served up by the Blue Diamond software.
I agree
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 07:43 — snordoneThe problem was the haste with which blue diamonds was canceled. We should not be using it anymore, but we should have phased it out rather than abruptly cancelling the contract. That would have given us a year to develop a strong formative assessment program that can give teachers feedback in real time. In order for the Common Core to work (i.e. all kids study the same rigorous curriculum but at different paces) we have to have a better formative assessment program that can literally be used daily. Doing a blue diamonds test every 6-9 weeks is not compatible with the new common core approach.
Do our new board members really understand these complicated issues? I worry that the new members are simply trying to undo everything that was done by the others, without really understanding the issues. Did the old board make a mistake with blue diamonds? Absolutely, they had a knee-jerk reaction to frustration over not getting timely, accurate information from Donna's staff and they pushed back with an ultimatum - cancel the contract. But were they wrong in wanting a more effective way for teachers to get information about student mastery of material? No.
Blue diamonds has been in place for so long because of cronyism - it was developed in house - and my guess is the Kevin put it back on the agenda because he is a crony. But it is widely known to be ineffective. My hope is that the democrats won't do that knee-jerk governing, that they will be smarter and wiser than those of the past.
Cost
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 13:51 — turnerk1I'm not defending blue diamond by any means but I wonder what the cost would be to change systems. Both moodle and blackboard have pretty serious reliability issues in my experience, though moodle is much better. New questions would have to be created and loaded on to the system and students would have to tke the tests via computer, which might be a challenge at some schools. I wonder if the cost issue would end up being a wash?
Anyway, I hope staff has done some research into alternatives.
Transition
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 14:53 — nriemannI don't think you'd have to create new questions. Assuming they like the ones they have, which aren't all that well correlated to EOG success, WCPSS owns the questions. Moving them from one database to another should be easy. BD's website says they build databases in Access and SQL, from which you can export without difficulty. Replicating the input and output functionality might be harder. You would have to know more than I know to cost that out. But as Bob already suggested, I haven't heard of BD doing anything that seems hard to set up. Also, the BD cost is a recurring cost, so it wouldn't be appropriate to say it costs more to convert unless we look at the long-term and can assess how long it would take to recover the investment (assuming it could be recovered).
I also know nothing about the reliability of Moodle and Blackboard other than the fact that they are in much wider use than BD. Are you talking about reliability issues with the internet connectivity of the systems, or with the input and output they produce? If the former, it seems like that would be comparing apples and oranges. You should be able to put data into Moodle and Blackboard via bubblesheet readers, which produce flat file outputs like text files. The fact that no one does it probably reflects the fact that the technique is outmoded for most purposes.
Reliability
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 20:04 — turnerk1Having used both Moodle and Blackboard as a teacher (not at wcpss) I find them both fairly cumbersome, though I do like Moodle better. But in both systems, it can be difficult to upload work, stuff just disappears sometimes, the grade book function on Moodle is very hard to use, sometimes quizzes won't work properly. Connectivity can be an issue, but usually it seems to be an issue with the site itself, though again I've had better luck with Moodle. I've never tried to do anything related to bubblesheets on either program.
Well..
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 14:18 — Bob_SconceIt's a good point. However, there are plenty of low-cost packages for dealing with bubble-sheets.
Here's something to think about: it's clear that Blue Diamond (the company) is not investing any effort into updating the program. If that continues to be true, then it will need to be replaced at some point.
It sounds like the district is just accepting all the terms in Blue Diamond's license. That's a problem with not having your own in-house lawyer who's familiar with your operations. That person should revise the license to require Blue Diamond to update the software and provide for either money back or termination rights if Blue Diamond failed to do so. (Unfortunately, that isn't an area where Tharrington Smith has expertise.)
Revise the license
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 21:11 — Solon77It does not appear the agreement is a license but a subscription in which case you get what you get. The ability of a lawyer to negotiate something depends on how important wcpss is to BD. If a less expensive alternative was so readily available, would it not have surfaced by now ?
so...
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 21:22 — Bob_SconceFirst of all, subscriptions require an underlying license of some type. Second, the value is the amount of the contract-- for Blue Diamond, it's something like 10% of their revenue; that's significant. As to alternatives, there are plenty of them. Recall that there are something like 17k school districts; Blue Diamond has about 12 of them. What do the rest of the districts do?
Fully Agree.
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 11:39 — Bob_SconceRecall, though, how the contract arrised at the previous board -- it came to them on the consent agenda, without much prior warning. It's not the board's job to come up with alternatives -- that's staff's responsibility.
Hopefully, this board will ask some specific questions to staff: What alternatives have you investigated since we turned down this contract before? Why do you believe that this tool is the most appropriate? Do you have plans to transition from this tool?
I suspect this is what happened here: A number of years ago, somebody at WCPSS identified a need for a tool that does what Blue Diamond does, and somebody with connections to WCPSS started a company to create that tool. The district adopted the tool and has renewed it periodically since. However, the Blue Diamond company has not kept the tool current, instead relying on the cost of switching to a new system to retain their rather small current customer base.
Frankly, this is a good opportunity for an enterprising 23-year old software engineer: given today's technology, the software is straightforward and not very complex, plus the format of the district's blue diamond dataset is available via open-records requests. Given 9 months, somebody with the right skills could produce a better product and probably undercut Blue Diamond on price, stealing most of their existing customers.
IF...
Fri, 12/16/2011 - 18:56 — ClearThinker...Sconcy doesn't like, it must be good! Onward with the contract!
Argh....
Fri, 12/16/2011 - 17:14 — Bob_SconceThis thing is a piece of junk. There are so many better alternatives out there. Don't believe me about the junk status -- look at the quality of their website: http://www.bldiamond.com/ . the website for the assessments isn't much better -- http://www.buildatest.com/Index.cfm. Is this really worth paying $100,000 for?
Has staff really been sitting on its duff this entire time without considering them? If not, then why aren't they presenting alternatives to the board?
Keung -- I'd love to know how this got onto the agenda. Was it actually the staff or did somebody on the board push for it?
For sure....
Fri, 12/16/2011 - 21:28 — youthinksoOne thing is apparent, educators were left without alternative assessment. Quoted from July 12th board meeting, "Chairman Ron Margiotta says he thinks they will be able to find a much cheaper option at around $20,000". You got that right, $0 is cheaper. Just another reason why Ron was sent to the house!
That's funny, teachers at my
Fri, 12/16/2011 - 22:10 — jeffrey1That's funny, teachers at my school are using an alternative assessment.
I don't know. Right now I'm
Fri, 12/16/2011 - 17:16 — KeungHui (author)I don't know. Right now I'm working on the print version of the Realtor story but I can check on it later.
...
Fri, 12/16/2011 - 19:36 — SideburnsWasn't there some connection between the owner of Blue Diamond and an employee of WCPSS?
I think Tata should manage this issue.
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 13:15 — raleighlauraThe board should ask him to look into the best product for the best price and go with his reccomendation. If he is comfortable with his staff's assessment, he will take it to the board, and if not, he seems like the type who will dig until he is comfortable.
They can't do that
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 16:10 — FSandYOUThe Evans/Martin board already knows all they need to know about anything and everything. Tata is irrelevant to them.
They will easily be worse than the Head/Millberg/Gill board. They came in with marching orders from those who control them and off we go.
Backwards again.
Confused again
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 20:55 — Solon77You must be reliving the past two years where the RM/JT board knew everything. Where is the $20k Blue Diamond replacement ? Let's ask Ron.
Isn't there some connection...
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 08:53 — bpuli9999between JT's employer and a possible vendor of WCPSS?
No...
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 11:19 — Bob_SconceNot that I recall.
Sideburns's question is relevant -- it goes to why the district is so intent on *this* particular tool.
This is why...
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 17:16 — bpuli9999I said what I said.
Alex Avila is on NC CER's board (on their website educatenc.org). He is the CFO of Measurement Inc. a large company that has many school systems as its customers. Don't know if WCPSS is a customer or not. Until it is proven (and I think it is JT's responsibility to do so in an open manner) that there does not exist any link between Measurement Inc. and WCPSS, the appearance of a conflict of interest is not a huge leap of faith.
Maybe Keung can do some investigation here and clear that up.
Keung can't even pin them down on something as simple
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 13:46 — FSandYOUas when they plan to schedule a freaking working session to do what they said they would do with the assignment plan, tweak it, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
Guess how many days now bpoo,
less than 31!
Measurement Inc.
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 00:26 — nriemannMeasurement, Inc. is or was a SES vendor for WCPSS. It presented at an EDSP Task Force meeting. I think its November 2010 contract approval was for $200K. I don't know if it has been awarded other contracts.
I recall that John spoke highly of the company at the EDSP Task Force meeting, but I don't know that John has voted on anything having to do with its business since his nonprofit thing was set up.
?
Sat, 12/17/2011 - 17:27 — Bob_SconceThe conflict would only come up if Tedesco were asked to vote on a contract with Measurement Inc. The fact that there's a pre-existing relationship between the district and the company is irrelevant.
And somehow you know...
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 12:21 — bpuli9999that there no discussions between Measurement Inc. and JT? And that no staff were contacted by JT prior to the contract extension the other poster mentioned? I am not saying it happened but there is enough substance to create the perception if impropriety. And if JT is as open as he claims he is - why has has not talked about this?
OTOH, one can justify/rationalize anything.
Silly
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 12:56 — Bob_SconceThe standard for a board member's conflict interest is whether the board member had an interest in a transaction on which he voted. The prime examples are things like voting to hire your spouse.
If this is a conflict of interest, then Kevin Hill also has a conflict -- he works in the ed school at NC State which places student teachers in WCPSS, and he recommends students. How would you feel if you were a staff member and you got a letter from a school board rep recommending that a certain person be hired? For that matter, what about his personal relationships with WCPSS staff -- shouldn't he abstain from voting to promote his friends to new positions?
Note: I'm not asserting that Hill actually has a problem. I'm just pointing out that if you reduce the standard to where you appear to be heading, you're going to catch a pretty broad set of behaviors that you really don't want to prohibit. Luckily, the law is pretty clear on this -- see GS 14-234.
You assert that there is a "perception of impropriety." What, exactly, is the impropriety that you perceive here?
That a vendor...
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 13:30 — bpuli9999pays a BOE member (either directly or indirectly). Who is funding NCCER? How much did Measurement Inc. donate to NCCER? How do we know other WCPSS vendors are not funding NCCER?
You truly do not see a problem here?
No...
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 15:35 — Bob_SconceSo, first of all, all we see is that the company's CFO is on the board on the non-profit. No indication that they paid money. But, even if they did, I don't see a problem. See the law I pointed you to. If there wa an allegation of some sort of quid pro quo, then you would be right. Are you making that allegation? If so, then please describe the mechanics: the CFO donates to the non-profit and John does WHAT in return?
WCPSS is big enough that we shouldn't be surprised if there are various business connections between board members, the district and various people who have business connections with the district. That's all perfectly kosher as long as there's no improper benefit from the arrnangement.
so
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 13:44 — AngelaWthat the "vendor" of Blue Diamond was a WCPSS employee, you truly do not see a problem here?
No....
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 17:48 — bpuli9999show the quid pro quo, as Bob says.
Actually...
Sun, 12/18/2011 - 18:13 — Bob_SconceI don't see any ethical issues with that either. Nothing wrong with using a vendor who you know and have a good working relationship with. The question is really more of whether staff is doing a reasonable job of considering alternatives before asking the board to approve a contract. It seems clear that this did NOT happen when the previous board rejected it -- it was on the consent agenda as a "our old contract is about to expire, so we need this now" sort of a thing.