Tony Tata to ask school board to adopt Algebra I placement policy

I fear that General Tata's decision based on Tedesco's push (apparently) may have some adverse consequences. First it disrespects the professional judgment of educators and gives priority to statistical projections far removed from the day-to-day realities in classrooms that teachers may be aware of. Tedesco and Tata's move is somewhat disrespectful as it implies, or even declares, teachers are incapable of making professional decisions as they are inherently "racist" and/or have "low expectations".

I suspect that it may be highly inappropriate to push/force/place some students to take advanced math courses prematurely because of what a far removed statistical software program projects should happen. Yes, institutional racism and bias may exist in many facets of our daily lives, but forcing excess rigor on some students because of what computer software projects ironically may actually increase inequality, ie. set some, or more, students up for failure. Tata refers to some recent data but discounts a variety or variables and assumes certain correlations that may or may not exist. I would think a longitudinal study beyond one year (I'm alluding to Tata's point that more students took Algebra 1 last year with overall performance flatlining, but not declining) is needed before our GOP led school board decides to block teacher judgment in favor of what a computer software program projects.

We should recall that in recent years high school graduation has been on the increase in North Carolina. I fear that Tata and Tedesco's moves to remove teachers from determining student placement in favor of computer software projections may increase the WCPSS high school dropout rate in the long term. Some students rushed prematurely into advanced math courses may be demoralised and drop out as a result. Isn't that something we should be very concerned about too? I hope I'm wrong on this one! I would think there are other options available to increase student placement in advanced math courses that do not handcuff our teachers' professional judgment. For example, couldn't Tata and the board instead provide more rigorous training/professional development on the issue for teachers and their principals?

Paula, "Independent, Fair & Speaking Up for MY Kids."

This is all water under the bridge now, but I think that the N&O should be called out for their lack of accurate and adequate reporting. Keung kept the issue of math placement issue in the blogs and did cover it this morning in an article, but the News section and the Editors did their best to suppress it for 2 long years. A year ago I talked to Jim Nesbitt about this issue on the phone and he called it a "category B" issue - i.e. it was not important enough to talk about in the paper. A week ago we wrote an oped about the most recent report and sent it to Steve Ford. We wanted to get it out to the public that the sheer number of minority, low income and students with disabilities who were denied access to the college track was staggering. We wanted people to show up at the meeting next Thursday and demand that we stop our racist practices. Steve was rude, dismissive and basically spit in my face. So I wrote a single author oped and submitted it on Wednesday: "the damage done by media bias." It won't get published either. So here it is:

As a liberal democrat I have never given much credence to the concept of media bias – until now.  The debate over diversity in our public school system has been covered ad nauseam by the News and Observer, from the private lives of our Board of Ed members to every single assignment model put on the table. However, on one issue the N&O has been deathly silent; the issue of Math Placement. Equitable placement of ALL qualified students into upper level math was the primary reason for the formation of The Economically Disadvantaged Student Performance Task Force (EDSPTF) and has been addressed at multiple meetings in the last two years. Math placement is critical for students because 8^th grade Algebra I is the gateway to the college-track curriculum in Wake. Last Thursday the EDSPTF obtained a report from WCPSS that publicly documented the extent to which thousands of academically eligible minority students, low income students and students with disabilities (SWD) were denied access to the college track in 2010. Despite the magnitude of this publicly disclosed information the N&O remained silent. Not a single article was written.  I am only left to believe that it is because of media bias. The N&O has been an ardent supporter of the diversity policy and this report laid us bare. A system that is nationally recognized for its fairness to low income families has quietly been denying academically qualified minority and low-income students access to the upper level math classes that would put them on the college track. Given this lack of reporting I am left to ask one question: how quickly could we change our policies and how many children could be placed on the college track if the N&O would simply report the truth rather than hold tight to their ideology?

Currently, is the teacher's opinion the final deciding factor on whether or not a student gets placed? Will teachers be able to recommend placement or non-placement, and let the parents make the final decision based on scores, teacher recommendation, what they know about their child (study habits, stress level, home life, etc.)? That's how repeating a grade is handled - or at least it used to be that way back in the dark ages when I taught school!