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 6th
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 2nd
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.