Category: Education (Page 2 of 4)

I’m Not Buying Jason Glass’s Deeper Learning Snake Oil

May 24, 2020 / ijsadmin

Where are the studies showing Deeper Learning can be successfully implemented in large schools and large school districts?

Recently, I was sent the following link in response to one of my Tweets that included: “Until then we’re (Jeffco) left with just a nice sounding Deeper Learning which has no definition of success and no measure of success.”

I stand by my Tweet in relation to Jeffco schools. What are Jeffco’s clearly defined definitions of success and how will Jeffco measure if the shift to Deeper Learning is successful? We don’t know. In Jeffco, we do have several Academic Performance Indicators included in Jeffco Generations, but, unfortunately, instead of trending toward those goals, Jeffco is trending away from them. And, belatedly, the District is now claiming that they expected the recent implementation dips in both growth and performance.

But I want to talk about the AIR study in the link that was sent to me in an attempt to dispel my claim of no definition or measure of Deeper Learning’s success in Jeffco.

First, I make no claim that a Deeper Learning experience cannot improve some vague definition of Student Outcomes, I just want to know exactly what those outcomes will be and how long it will take to achieve them in our District. I haven’t seen that information.

My main concerns and doubts regarding Deeper Learning are:

While the AIR study looked at High Schools, what can be expected at Middle and Elementary Schools? Specifically, how will Deeper Learning impact the already atrocious measure that only 46% of Jeffco 3^rd graders meet state reading expectations? How can you have Deeper Learning if students can’t read?
Can Deeper Learning be implemented in larger schools than those included in the study?
Can Deeper Learning be effectively implemented across a District as large and diverse as Jeffco?
Finally, this study doesn’t exactly give me a great deal of confidence, given its limitation of using only small, cherry-picked High Schools.

First and foremost, this study’s claims are only based on schools with a “well-implemented approach to deeper learning”. The background information for this paper is contained here and clearly states “it was important to select schools that provided reasonably strong examples of the deeper learning concept” and “We sought schools that were implementing their approach to deeper learning schoolwide and at a high enough level for us to examine whether an explicit focus on deeper learning—when done well—can result in improved opportunities and outcomes across a broad spectrum of students and teachers.” (page 5).

The other thing I would like to highlight is that the average number of students in the High Schools that were part of the study was 386 with a range of 187-681. Those are small High Schools. I would think that it is significantly easier to change culture, curriculum and teaching practices in small school settings in comparison to larger school settings. In fact, the Deeper Learning network schools in the study were compared to much larger schools having an average of 1,340 students with a range of 434 – 2,529. The issue would be the same in Jeffco, where the smallest High School is larger than the largest High School in the study. This reason alone leaves doubt in my mind on whether Deeper Learning could even replicate the results of the AIR study in Jeffco. Is it even feasible, in large school or District environments, to obtain the number of internships the Deeper Learning schools in the study say are so valuable?

Even the OECD and Graduation claims presented here are mitigated by:

Looking beyond the average effect, we found significant variation across pairs of network and non-network schools in the effects of attending a network school, especially for mathematics and science. The estimated effect of attending a network school on PBTS reading, mathematics, and science scores was positive and significant in some pairs, and not significant in others.

And:

Although attending a network school did not affect overall college attendance rates, students who attended participating network high schools were more likely to enroll in four-year institutions than were students who attended non-network high schools.

So, unfortunately, I’m going to need more than the AIR paper to give me confidence that Deeper Learning is a game changer.

Finally, Deeper Learning is difficult to implement. The Deeper Learning networks that had participating schools in the study all had different approaches. The brutal review of the book that Jason Glass likes to hand out, “In Search of Deeper Learning” only raises more doubts.

On the surface, the AIR study presents a rosy picture. In actuality, the picture may not be as positive as presented. And, to try and implement Deeper Learning in larger schools across a large District without a well-planned and phased rollout? That’s a recipe for disaster. Jeffco has already seen that disaster in the making with last year’s academic results and this year’s MAP data trending in the same downward direction.

I’m not buying Glass’s Deeper Learning hype.

When Innovation and Boldness Are Needed, Jeffco gets a Restart Plan Filled with Neither from Jason Glass

May 17, 2020 / ijsadmin

This past Wednesday Jason Glass and his staff presented their ‘DRAFT’ Fall Restart plan to the Jeffco Board of Education.

To put it mildly, the ‘Plan’ was, as expected, a disaster. In fact, it wasn’t a plan. It was more like a few general and high-level concepts. And, as previously pointed out, there was no discussion in the ‘Plan’ regarding the myriad education related issues.

There was no discussion of educational best practices, standards for teachers or standards for students. It didn’t discuss how the District will know if ALL teachers are doing their jobs and doing them effectively. It didn’t discuss how the District will identify, motivate and train poorly performing teachers, before kids are negatively impacted. It didn’t discuss how or when the District will know if students are learning at the same rate as they did in the pure classroom model. It didn’t discuss how low performance/growth will be corrected. It didn’t discuss the projected impacts on achievement. It didn’t discuss how the District will know if students are even attending class, particularly since the currently used ‘engagement’ standard is worthless.

It was only after Susan Miller asked several education related questions that we heard some of what Glass and the District were thinking. We heard that testing would be conducted early in the semester, we heard about the possible use of Flipped Classrooms, we heard that the District may consider teaching fewer subjects simultaneously but for longer times in a Block model and we heard that the District is considering identifying teachers who are good at Remote Learning for teaching students who will not physically come into the school.

All of that sounds good, from a high-level.

But Glass and Jeffco don’t have a lot of time. They need to use resources effectively. Glass always talks about innovation, it’s time he shows some of that innovation! Just as importantly, Glass and the District need to maximize their resources, including time.

Jeffco infamously prides itself on local control. However, in this pandemic period, it’s time for the District to consolidate resources and exercise central control over teachers and curriculum.

To put it mildly, the upcoming semester will be a nightmare for teachers. Teachers will either be teaching remotely or teaching using a hybrid model. Again, on the surface, that sounds good, but in practice how does that work out for students? What are students doing on the days they are remote but the teachers are devoting their attention to the students in the physical classroom? Personally, I don’t see that working well, unless everyone is willing to concede that the amount of material covered during the course of a semester will be significantly decreased. Another possibility would be team teaching. That could work out nicely for the A/B model, but in the A/B/C or A/B/C/D models the remote teacher would likely become the primary teacher.

The Flipped Classroom offers some possibilities, but when do teachers have time to create those needed videos while also doing the in-classroom teaching? Shoot the video during the in-classroom day is a possibility, but an awful amount of equipment will be needed District wide for this.

I just don’t see this working well and I suspect teachers will tell Glass and District staff this is going to be unworkable.

However, another possibility exists. Why can’t the District choose some of the best teachers and pay them, over the summer, to create the Flipped Classroom curriculum and record lessons? This is incredibly efficient and relieves a tremendous amount of stress on teachers. Instead of potentially 100s of teachers individually performing the exact same task, at varying degrees of competency, the District now has a uniform standard for what is taught. This material can now be delivered to every student on the same day so that students will be learning at the same pace. There’s a lot to like about this model.

To take this a step further, Kris Schuh has said that Jeffco has been meeting with other Front Range school Districts. Why not share some of the Flipped Classroom curriculum development with them? Again, this would maximize the use of resources and reduce individual Districts’ costs. There are some drawbacks to this approach, but it is something to consider.

In addition, there are consulting firms with experience in curriculum development. One example would be the curriculum developed for EngageNY.

In any case, time is of the essence. Chaos, low quality and low standards will ensue in the fall if the current incarnation of Remote Learning, morphed into Hybrid Learning, is allowed to continue.

Another area ripe for Innovation in the Hybrid Learning Model proposed by Glass is the sharing of teachers across schools. Right-sizing classroom sizes may be difficult due to some students preferring the Remote Learning model over the Hybrid model. This will most likely result in significant resource allocation issues for individual principals, especially at smaller schools. Why not share teachers? In essence a remote teacher could teach students from more than one school. To avoid total confusion schools could pair up with a single other school so there would be some consistency for the students in who they interact with. This could even be framed as an exchange program.

There has not been a more appropriate time for Innovation. Does Glass have what it takes to walk the walk? Or, let’s hope the teachers are more innovative than Glass has been with the worthless Restart Plan he presented to the Board on Wednesday.

Jeffco’s 2020-2021 Remote Learning Plan is Non-Existent

May 13, 2020 / ijsadmin

Today, Jeffco staff will present their 2020-2021 Restart Plan to the Board of Education.

It is an unmitigated disaster.

It looks like it was developed with about one hour’s worth of thought.

The ‘Plan’ only addresses student learning from an extremely high level, principally the reduction of class sizes by splitting classes into smaller cohorts who will attend in-person classes one day a week.

With only 1 remaining Board of Education meeting prior to school restarting in the fall, this broad outline does not provide nearly enough detail for the Board of Education to perform their primary function of governance.

The plan does not address how facilities will be sanitized. It does not address how buses will be sanitized. It does not address meals. It does not address school entrance procedures. It does not address what scenarios would require the closing of a school. It does not address costs. It does not address how schools would function and interactions kept to a minimum. It does not address the continuation of Grab and Go meals. There are so many things to consider. And, while I’m not suggesting that the District have answers to all of the questions right now, they should be talking with the Board about what the issues are, what they are considering, potential costs and when they will have those answers. No detail whatsoever.

But the most egregious part of the restart plan is the complete lack of any mention of education. Absolutely none!

Students will still be participating in Remote Learning for 80% of the time. I would think that very few people think that the same quality of instruction is happening now as happened when students were in physical classrooms. Yet, we now see that Remote Learning will be happening for an extended period of time. Therefore, Remote Learning MUST be just as good as in-classroom learning. But there is no discussion of best practices, standards for teachers or standards for students. How will the District know if ALL teachers are doing their jobs and doing them effectively? How will the District identify, motivate and train poorly performing teachers, before kids are negatively impacted? How/when will the District know if students are learning at the same rate as they did in the pure classroom model? How will low performance/growth be changed to correct this? What are the projected impacts on achievement? When will assessments be administered?

So many questions regarding the most important consideration of all and it is not even addressed.

Now is the time to put the necessary changes in motion, not in August.

Glass and his band of merry subordinates just don’t get it.

What a disaster.

The Road to Recovery or Deflection of Accountability?

May 12, 2020 / ijsadmin

Yesterday, the Superintendent of Jeffco Schools, Jason Glass, released a blog post titled: ‘Road to Recovery – How Lawmakers Can Ease the Crisis for Schools’.

As with most things related to Glass:

1. The post is political in nature. There is literally nothing in the post about educating Jeffco’s kids. Specifically, Glass does not talk about what Jeffco Schools are or will be doing to mitigate the effects of the, in most cases, lower quality of remote learning education.

2. Glass makes a big effort to shift responsibility and accountability to the state and away from himself and change the way in which he is measured and evaluated.

I particularly find his plea to ‘Stabilize enrollment counts and projections’ to be interesting, especially in light of the fact that Jeffco’s CFO was already publicly stating that the District was projecting a loss of 350 students and $3M in revenue.

Because of this, it is to Jeffco’s advantage to ‘hold-harmless’ school Districts for student losses as Jeffco’s losses are likely to be proportionally more than other Districts. What Glass doesn’t take into consideration is the possibility that one District could gain students from a neighboring District, but still have an overall loss. Will funding still be the same as last year? Here’s an example: In both Denver and Jeffco 10% of students who attended in 2019-2020 do not return to physical government schools in August for Covid-19 related reasons. Yet, an additional 100 students from Jeffco transfer into Denver schools. Is Glass saying that Jeffco should be held harmless and receive the same state money for those 100 students? And what about Denver, will they receive no money for those proportionally more students? Or, will the state, already in a budget crisis, be paying twice for some students?

Additionally, if the state does ‘hold-harmless’ student count, will Glass do the same with individual schools within Jeffco? Will principals receive the same SBB as last year if their enrollments decline? Will Glass be willing to pay twice for students who choice change schools?

Does Glass really think that there will be ANY Districts in Colorado that see an overall enrollment increase? How many District’s will permanently lose students to homeschooling when parents realize that their kids might get a better education at home than they have gotten in the government schools? It’s nice to say that Districts with growing enrollment will gain additional funding, but it’s not quite as simplistic, or equitable, as Glass makes it seem.

It is nice to see Glass admit that state funding for student losses is mitigated by the state funding formula.

School enrollment rises and falls each year across the state and money sent to districts adjusts accordingly (with provisions to soften the loss of funding for districts with declining enrollment).

His CFO, Kathleen Askelson doesn’t seem to get that concept as she has repeatedly told the Board of Education that a loss of 350 students will result in a $3M loss ($8,571/per student) of revenue to the District (there are other problems with her loss claim too, as outlined here). Shouldn’t the BoE be able to trust the District’s CFO? Does Jeffco need a new one? That’s a big swing of money, when Districts are checking sofa cushions, to make misrepresentations like that.

Testing – to put it bluntly – Glass doesn’t like it. He has stated it several times in the past. And, there’s no reason why he should. Since he has been Superintendent in Jeffco schools’ academic growth and achievement scores are down. He just doesn’t want to be measured and made accountable for the pathetic Jeffco Generations Academic Performance Indicator goals he is nowhere close to achieving.

What better opportunity than a pandemic crisis to change the conversation and implement measurement systems that aren’t comparative and have the distinct possibility of not measuring anything:

While … the challenges presented by COVID-19 are disruptive, they also present opportunities for meaningful change and innovation. On assessments and accountability, the legislature should direct school districts to develop locally-designed accountability systems …

When you’re failing at your primary job of educating kids, why not just change the measurement system so that people can’t really see how badly you’re doing.

I’m sorry, but I’m not buying that and neither should Polis, the legislature or parents. We can’t let the fox guard the hen house.

There’s no doubt that Covid-19 is going to have a big impact on K-12 education for an extended period of time and Glass has made some valid points. It will not be an easy time. Systems, processes and people will need to change and adapt. Leaders will need to emerge. However, I would have preferred that Glass talk about how he intends to stop and reverse the Covid-19 slide with curriculum, standardized/best practice teaching methodologies and evaluation of teachers’ instruction practices than just one more politically slanted, shifting responsibility and avoiding accountability blog post.

What to do with Jeffco’s $50M 5B Bond Windfall?

March 20, 2020 / ijsadmin

When Jeffco went to the financial market to sell bonds for its Capital Improvement Program, interest rates were low. Due to the way the bond was structured, this allowed Jeffco to obtain $50M in unexpected funding, or bond premium, for essentially the same costs.

But what to do with that extra $50M?

In its 5B bond campaign Jeffco leadership stated (falsely) that the District had $1.3 billion in deferred maintenance needs. So why not use that $50M to address some of those needs that the $546M of 5B money couldn’t?
Replace several of the schools that were slated for replacement in the 2016 failed Bond proposal such as Kyffin, Green Gables, Fletcher Miller or Parr.
Ensure there is equity. Once 5B projects are completed there will still be several schools that have obvious FCI values much higher than other schools. For example, Vivian will have a FCI of over 44% while Stober, Colorow, Muhlholm and Lumberg will all have FCIs above 22%, well above the average FCI for District schools. Why not use some of the bond premium to actually provide the equity that Jeffco is always so quick to talk about?
Reduce the amount of Capital Transfer from the General Fund that will be needed each year. The Capital Improvement Program is predicated on receiving $23M per year from the General Fund. It looks like there is already a shortfall this year of $2.1M. So, as a minimum, use the $50M bond premium to reduce the pressure on the General Fund. Spread out over the remaining 5 years of the Capital Improvement Project that would mean a reduction of $10M from the General Fund each year.

This $50M is an OPPORTUNITY to use taxpayers’ money to over deliver and make some additional enhancements to Jeffco.

To do anything less will be fiscal mismanagement, demonstrating that Jeffco is not capable of adequately managing the money taxpayers trusted it with. It will also make it more difficult to get Bonds passed in the future.

Do not use this $50M as added contingency for a program that already has $86M or 15% contingency built into it!

Jason Glass and Civil Discourse

February 14, 2020 / ijsadmin

Jason Glass’s recent blog post on Civility and Civil Discourse and his actions clearly demonstrate that he doesn’t like criticism – AT ALL!

First, he shuts down his Jeffco Generations Facebook group which provided a forum for discussion about all things Jeffco schools related. Then he publishes a blog which stated his “rules of engagement” on civic issues.

Yet, once again, his actions speak louder than the words he writes.

It’s nice of him to talk about civil discourse, except when he doesn’t follow his own “rules of engagement”. With a history of blocking Twitter accounts, suppressing Public Comment at Board of Education meetings and not publishing letters to the Board of Education, all of which are Protected Speech under the 1^st Amendment, he has shown that he isn’t interested in civil discourse at all.

In addition, on numerous occasions, Glass CHOSE to not engage in IMPORTANT conversations on his now shutdown Jeffco Generations Facebook group. Glass decided that he just didn’t want to be involved in civil discourse on topics such as Jeffco schools reading proficiency, 5B Bond questions and District 1^st Amendment violations. And when the questions and discussions got too uncomfortable, he just shut it down.

If Glass truly wants to shut down criticism and critics he needs to do just a few simple things:

Deliver on his promises. Setting Academic Performance Indicators in Jeffco Generations and not trending toward those goals is not inspiring and justifiably leaves him open to criticism and critique. Meeting the stated objectives leaves critics nothing to criticize.
Be fully transparent. Tell the whole story – All of the time. Don’t just tell part of the story as happened with 5B. Don’t allow staff to tell the Board of Ed that poor performances during Spring 2019 testing were expected. Fully own up to the short comings. Until that happens any and all criticism is justified.
Finally, show some respect to the people with whom he disagrees. Condescendingly and disrespectfully calling people “trolls” clearly demonstrates he truly doesn’t want civil discourse if it exposes his short comings.

Yes, actions do speak louder than words.

Glass has spoken loud and clear. If he doesn’t agree with you he will shut you down by any means available. He has shown time and time again that he has no qualms about publicly shaming and labeling his critics and that he will shut down any available avenues for that criticism, even if that means violating individuals’ 1^st Amendment rights.

Civil Discourse in Jeffco? Only if Jason Glass agrees with you.

Glass’s Yearly Evaluation – A Pat on the Back Instead of a Kick in the Ass!

November 29, 2019 / ijsadmin

With falling academic achievement and atrocious growth rates substantially below state averages, it was interesting, and troubling, to read the Board’s recent yearly evaluation of Jason Glass.

Most troubling was the Board’s evaluation on what I consider to be the most important metric of the evaluation: Standard 5 Instruction. The narrative of this standard states: ‘Your rating on this standard reflects the disappointing drop in the district’s growth data on CMAS.’ Glass was given an Overall Rating on this standard as ‘Professional’.

For the Board to state that the drop is ‘disappointing’ is nothing but an understatement. When overall District growth rates for both ELA and Math are 3% points below state averages and barely above the growth rates for Adams 14, a District essentially taken over by the state, I would think words such as unacceptable, atrocious, horrific, pathetic and kid damaging would be more appropriate. Is the Board serious about the most important responsibility of the Superintendent? Let’s call a spade a spade here – Jason Glass is failing in his primary responsibility – ensuring kids get an excellent education in Jeffco schools. Yet, the Board gave Glass an overall rating of ‘Professional’. What does that mean? At first glance, ‘Professional’ means to me that someone is doing their job in an acceptable manner. – not great, but not bad. How, when achievement and growth are so bad, can someone be evaluated as ‘Professional’? If I was evaluating someone and they delivered results this bad, you can bet that the BEST rating they would have earned would have been ‘Needs Improvement’, but unfortunately, that’s not the case in Jeffco, with this Board, led by Ron Mitchell.

The Ethics Standard review is also questionable, particularly the rating of ‘Exceptional’ – ‘Your commitment to high ethical standards continues to be a strength of your performance … This trust is built upon your honesty, integrity, and values.’ Was there integrity and honesty in the way that Charters were cheated out of 5B (and probably 5A) monies? Absolutely not! What about the fact that over $10M in 5B funding projects was not accounted for in the highly touted FlipBook? Were projects, like Trailblazer stadium renovation, being intentionally hidden? And what about Kris Schuh’s we ‘anticipated an implementation dip’ excuse he gave to the Board in an attempt to explain falling achievement and growth scores in September? Glass didn’t challenge or attempt to correct this obviously false statement. Or, Tom McDermott, telling the Board that 2019 PARCC data is ‘similar’ to 2018 data when that data actually shows a decline or the misleading statement that Jeffco’s results are higher than the state averages when they should be higher based on different FRL populations . Or even Matt Flores telling the Board that SAT scores have been stable, when they’ve actually been falling. Deception and deceit are rampant in Jeffco and Glass gets an evaluation rating of ‘Exceptional’? The Board has been duped. They really need to open their eyes and understand what is really going on with Glass and District staff.

It’s also interesting to look at the Recommendations the Board gave to Glass. You would think that Recommendation Number 1, the top recommendation, would be related to raising achievement and growth. No, not in Jeffco. Recommendation Number 1 is: ‘Continue to improve the negotiation process with JCEA’. Are you kidding me? That’s the Number 1 recommendation, not something related to educating kids? Is this because JCEA was able to out negotiate Glass and get an additional 1% raise that the Board hadn’t budgeted for? Or is this because of all of the letters the Board got, from teachers, about the negotiations? In the end, this only shows where the current Board’s priorities are – Adults over Kids, Teachers over Students. Shameful.

Recommendations 2 and 3 had nothing to do with education either – essentially more collaboration and dealing with the impending budget crisis.

Recommendation number 4 was also interesting: ‘Identify additional ways to measure student success.’ This is essentially telling Glass that if you can’t meet the state defined measures of academic success – which he can’t – then go out and make up your own criteria. Change the narrative from something you and the District are failing at to something new that you can say you’re succeeding at. How about one of Glass’s famous surveys with leading questions administered unscientifically using Survey Monkey? Yep, that should do it – something that only the Kool-Aid drinking true believers have access to and will complete, excluding those people in the District who may not have access to computers or for those people for whom English is a Second Language and who are currently being hurt the most by District’s failures.

It’s a shame. The Board’s review of Glass seems like a pat on the back when it really should have been a kick in the ass as kids continue to be failed by Jeffco schools.

Jason Glass Never Ceases to Spin, Deceive and Deflect from His Responsibility

November 16, 2019 / ijsadmin

I found Glass’s latest Advance Jeffco blog post (https://advancejeffco.blog/2019/11/08/breaking-down-the-2019-election/) regarding the election to be a carefully crafted spin on the election and his side-stepping of accountability for the state of education in Jeffco Schools and almost an implied threat to the new Board members..

On the most important topic of the district’s instructional philosophy Glass stated: “our board going forward will need to wrestle with the choice between following through on building an educational experience emphasizing real-life experiences or an approach focused on standardized test scores.“

This is just flat-out wrong and an attempt by Glass to distance himself from any accountability whatsoever.

Why can’t the District provide an educational experience emphasizing real-life experiences and ALSO ensure that kids have mastered the fundamental educational skills they will need to succeed in the world? This is NOT an Either-Or choice as Glass would like people to believe.

Let’s look at this from another perspective. Schools exist to educate students. Fundamentally, schools need to teach students to be able to read and do math (among many other things). As parents and taxpayers, how do we know if schools are doing their jobs? There has to be some form of measurement. To me, it is pretty simple, if kids are being taught what the state has determined they should be taught, then their test scores will reflect that. People can complain about tests and evaluations all they want, but isn’t that what real-life is about? Aren’t tests one of the real-life experiences that Glass is talking about? Aren’t sports competitions merely an evaluation? Aren’t corporations’ quarterly and yearly earning results really a measurement of how a corporation is doing? Don’t many people have some measurable objectives at their place of work? Is there a better way to understand the academic growth and achievement of our kids and a way to hold schools, and Superintendents, accountable than through the use of standardized tests? Can’t schools practice those tests and use those practice tests as a learning experience? I always found that I learned a lot when my test results were reviewed. And, even as Glass talks about this he himself put numerous Academic Indicators of Success, based on standardized tests, into the Jeffco Generations document he likes to talk about. Are those goals suddenly meaningless now that the indicators are trending in the wrong direction and he’s looking bad?

Glass is getting paid good money to ensure our kids get an excellent education. On a high, conceptual level it sounds great that real-life experiences should be part of the education process and that kids need more skills than just reading and math. HOWEVER, don’t kids first need those fundamentals as a foundation for Glass’s Deeper Learning? When only 50% of Jeffo’s students are reading at grade level and even fewer are at math grade level, I think that the emphasis, first and foremost, in Jeffco should be on those fundamental skills. In addition, have Glass and Jeffco defined what “real-life” experiences every student should have before graduating? Is there a measure or check-list of those? How will we as parents and taxpayers know if this effort is successful? There have to be definitions and measures of success, otherwise, it is just a bunch of meaningless words that are written on a fancy looking Powerpoint presentation.

Regarding the closure of neighborhood schools, I would like to know how many of these are K-5 schools that were put at risk of closing due to the moving of 6^th graders to Middle School? Did the Board consider this when they made that decision? Making the K-5, 6-8 model decision should have come with the implied long-term support for the small(er) K-5 schools that the Board created.

The next part of Glass’s narrative was off-putting and disturbing to me, particularly his use of the terms “factions” and “divisive partisan politics”. Is it “divisive partisan politics” when people have different philosophies on improving education? Can’t, and shouldn’t there be, real discussions on philosophies of education and how to improve our schools? It might be one thing if the measurable results in the District were great, but the truth is, they aren’t. That means that there NEEDS to be open and full-ranging discussions, particularly since the path Glass is now taking the District is unproven and has so far yielded negative results. That’s not being ‘divisive’, that’s doing what’s best for our kids!

So, the real challenges before the Board members are how they do what is best for our kids and community. How do we as parents and taxpayers measure if Glass and the Board are successful (the number of positive social media posts don’t count)? How much longer do we continue to fool ourselves, or be fooled, into thinking that Jeffco schools are great when there are so many kids who are being failed? Shouldn’t proven and science based approaches be used in our schools instead of nice “sounding” philosophies that haven’t been proven anywhere else? In the tech field, people would call the path that Glass is leading us to be on the bleeding edge – usually not a good place to be.

Glass also expounded on Jeffco 1A with the same type of over-simplification he decried about people in categorizing the Board candidates. Glass wrote that 1A “would have allowed the county to keep (and not refund) $16.1 million in revenues collected over the formulaic cap set in TABOR.” However, that was only for the first year, as in the 2^nd year that amount could have been $32M. That was only part of the deception of 1A, and it looks like Glass fell for that.

Glass continued his attempted deception of Jeffco readers with his comment regarding CC when he wrote: “As such, Jeffco Public Schools will begin making budget forecasts for next year and into the future without these incremental funds.”

Again, a misleading over-simplification. CC funds would have been variable. The amount, and even if there would be any available at all, would change yearly. You can’t really budget for that funding into the future if you don’t know if it will even be there.

It might be nice if every now and then Glass wrote about the real education issues in Jeffco instead of his continued pandering to the white, activist soccer moms whose kids can read. But, if he did that he would have to admit to his failure to make improvements and get more than 50% of Jeffco students reading above grade expectations. It’s obviously easier, and more financially rewarding, for him to talk politics than improve education.

It’s time to focus on students in Jeffco – Vote Miller & Applegate

October 18, 2019 / ijsadmin

Chalkbeat has recently reported on the fund raising gaps in the Jeffco School Board races.

When I see contributions such as these I always wonder why they were made. Obviously the teachers’ unions see some benefit for the nearly $50,000 they’ve donated so far to Chavez-Lee and Schooley.

For the past 4 years, the Board has been controlled by 5 members who have accepted large amounts of Teacher Union money during their campaigns. The Board made it clear that teacher salaries are a priority and teachers subsequently have seen increases totaling 20%. To finance those increases we have seen department level cuts, a tax increase and a school closing.

However, over the past 2 years student achievement and growth are substantially down. 54% of 3^rd graders don’t meet state literacy expectations. 65% of 6^th graders don’t meet state math expectations. Overall District academic growth is below the state average. That’s atrocious! Kids are suffering – falling behind and never catching up.

So, while the current Board members have accepted union contributions and focused on raising teacher pay, they seem to have forgotten the real reason the school District exists – to educate students and prepare them for a productive life. Students don’t need more of the same.

It’s time to get some independent thinkers and voices on the school Board. The Board needs members who will make it their priority to focus on students and raising student achievement and growth, something that has been grossly lacking over the past 4 years. Miller and Applegate will bring that much needed diversity of thought and opinion into the Board room.

Students, not funding, should be the priority in Jeffco. Vote Susan Miller!

October 17, 2019 / ijsadmin

Recently Chalkbeat published the answers to nine questions they asked Jeffco Board candidates Susan Miller and Joan Chavez-Lee.

The bottom line is that Chavez-Lee is focused on state funding, while Miller is focused on students.

Chavez-Lee says that the biggest issue facing Jeffco schools is the ‘amount of money it receives from the state of Colorado’. Miller, on the other hand, says that Jeffco ‘needs to do a better job of preparing our children for the challenges they will face after graduation’ and highlights the large numbers of students who are not meeting state literacy, math and science standards.

The fact that 54% of Jeffco 3^rd graders do not meet state literacy standards and are doomed to higher probabilities of not graduating from high school, being incarcerated and lower earnings is the biggest issue facing Jeffco’s students and Jeffco. Coupled with declining overall achievement and growth scores, we need to acknowledge that Jeffco has significant issues.

It’s imperative that we have someone like Susan Miller on the Board. While we can acknowledge that more funding would be better, we need someone who more importantly recognizes the magnitude and severity of the education problem we have. We need someone like Susan Miller who will put students, not state funding, first.