X
Dear Barry,
I'll begin with a couple of questions:
1) Question: What did President Obama say to his critics and the public regarding his nomination of Tom Daschle for a cabinet post when it was exposed that Mr. Daschle owed roughly 28 thousand dollars in back taxes?
Answer: Although I personally did not vet Tom, and although he came highly recommended, it was a mistake on my part and I take full responsibility because "the buck stops here."
2) Question: What did David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox, early in this year's season, say about his poor performance (batting average less than .200) when he was removed from the starting lineup by the manager?
Answer: I don't know what my problem is but I needed to be removed .... and if they didn't bench me, I would have benched myself.What we have here are two crystal-clear examples of responsibility and accountability, qualities found only in honorable individuals.
Now let's examine some comments either made or reported by the school superintendent regarding our schools' failing FCAT scores and grades:
Read more ...
1) May 24, 2007 - Cline: "The leadership team at DCHS will be mining the data to find how student achievement can be significantly improved in the future."
Comment: At this time, only 19 percent of 10th graders passed the FCAT reading test, well below state averages. Two years later, only 20 percent of 10th graders passed the reading FCAT, an improvement of 1 percent. Mathematically speaking, at this rate of 1 percent improvement every 2 years, it will take 40 years to get to the bottom of this "mine," a clear indication that it is very deep!
2) June 30, 2007 - Cline: "After examining the data that we received over the last several weeks, this drop was predicted due to the new school grading standards that include science for the first time."
Comment: First, he simply finds excuses. Second, if new school grading standards were the reason for low performances, what is he going to say when FCAT II and AYP arrive shortly? I predict we will hear the echo of this same excuse!
3) May 28, 2009 - Reporters : "Eighty percent of DeSoto 10th graders fail FCAT reading test ... DeSoto County School Superintendent Adrian Cline chose to focus on the very few positive performances."
Comment: I was informed that Mr. Cline complained to the newspaper about this article. At this point it is quite appropriate to share some wise words from Thomas Jefferson (considered by many to be the father of higher education): "Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Truth is the first casualty of war."
4) May 28, 2009 - Cline: "At the high school, we are seeing an increase in the percentage of students who are passing the reading and math tests on the first attempt."
Comment: At first I want to ask "What high school are you referring to?" But on second thought, I must concede that Mr. Cline is at least partly correct. As noted above, only 19 percent of 10th graders passed the FCAT reading test 2 years ago and this year 20 percent of the same grade passed, technically an improvement of 1 percent in a 2-year period!
5) June 13, 2009 - Cline: "There is a reference in the newspaper that only 20 percent of 10th graders at DeSoto County High School passed the FCAT reading test - which is incorrect. The data analysis was certainly off point as far as the passing rate on FCAT."
Comment: After the May 28, 2009 newspaper article, Mr. Cline successfully put the "muzzle" back on the reporters and proceeded to tuck, torque, nip, and squeeze the data until it fit his desired theme. By attempting to split hairs, he came across much like Bill Clinton who famously stated "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is"!
6) June 26, 2009 - Cline: "Our biggest problem is the high school ... Once they (a group of high school volunteers) have had an opportunity to develop a plan then we will review it. I don't have the plan right now for you."
Comment: I have two things to say about this. Firstly, I whole heartily agree with the logical question posted on your blog site, June 28, 2009: "If these are the teachers who taught the kids who failed the test, why should anyone have a shred of confidence in their ability to figure out what the problem is?" However, I must say that it's always appreciated when the homeowner of the burning house assists the fire department in dousing the flames. Truthfully, I do not think it to be as much the teachers' fault as it is the regime's fault! Secondly, Mr. Cline's remark is a verbal replay of his statement on May 24, 2007 regarding "mining the data." What is really scary about this is that we're going to do the same experiment over again now, 2 years later, and expect different results. Isn't this one definition of insanity?
I'd like to now ask if you think Mr. Cline is in the same league as either President Obama or David Ortiz? Not hardly! For years he has never even suggested taking any responsibility for any bad news about our failing school system. Mr. Cline's incessant excuses are at best naive and at worst hypocritical. He should cease with the nonsensical, postured and ineffectual 'blah blah'.
In summary, and as noted previously, responsibility and accountability are qualities found only in honorable individuals.
Thank You,
Mickey the Dunce
Read more....
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
DeSoto County School Superintendent: Elect or Hire?
X
I'm just the new kid in town, so I hope all my readers will take this for the naive question it is, at the same time remembering the adage about there being no dumb questions.
The district's elected school superintendent oversees a public education system in which the sole high school is, year after year, graded either D or C (most recently, the lower of these two stellar grades). My dumb question: So why do voters keep re-electing the guy? Is he the only warm, willing body in town? If so, why don't outraged voters, parents, and real estate agents (people buy homes in "good" districts) put out a job-search notice? Where is the political will to find someone with experience and credentials to take on the failing school(s) and the decrepit district? I know, I know, that's more than one dumb question.
Read more...
OK, so it's too late for the current crop of young adults that we've sent to seek their fortunes in this world, unable to read at the 10th grade level. OK, so it will take an act of the state legislature to revise how we choose our school superintendent. But 24 other Florida counties have done it. It surely wouldn't be too hard to retype somebody's paperwork, cross out their name and write in DeSoto's. I can even suggest a plain-English version: "DeSoto County citizens want to stop electing a good-ol'-boy who goes to church with us, and instead, we want to seek out and hire qualified professionals capable of carrying out the most important task a county has to undertake."
We'll do more on this topic, so keep checking back. Meanwhile --->
One more dumb question: The news is School Superintendent Adrian Cline promises that 28 volunteer teachers will brainstorm over the summer how to tackle the problem of the high school's low achievement tests. Here is the dumb question: If these are the teachers who taught the kids who failed the test, why should anyone have a shred of confidence in their ability to figure out what the problem is? I'm sure they did their best last year. It wasn't good enough. If my soccer team loses games, I don't make the kids figure out what to do differently. I recruit a coach/leader who knows the game inside and out, and who can, well, coach.
Read more....
I'm just the new kid in town, so I hope all my readers will take this for the naive question it is, at the same time remembering the adage about there being no dumb questions.
The district's elected school superintendent oversees a public education system in which the sole high school is, year after year, graded either D or C (most recently, the lower of these two stellar grades). My dumb question: So why do voters keep re-electing the guy? Is he the only warm, willing body in town? If so, why don't outraged voters, parents, and real estate agents (people buy homes in "good" districts) put out a job-search notice? Where is the political will to find someone with experience and credentials to take on the failing school(s) and the decrepit district? I know, I know, that's more than one dumb question.
Read more...
OK, so it's too late for the current crop of young adults that we've sent to seek their fortunes in this world, unable to read at the 10th grade level. OK, so it will take an act of the state legislature to revise how we choose our school superintendent. But 24 other Florida counties have done it. It surely wouldn't be too hard to retype somebody's paperwork, cross out their name and write in DeSoto's. I can even suggest a plain-English version: "DeSoto County citizens want to stop electing a good-ol'-boy who goes to church with us, and instead, we want to seek out and hire qualified professionals capable of carrying out the most important task a county has to undertake."
We'll do more on this topic, so keep checking back. Meanwhile --->
One more dumb question: The news is School Superintendent Adrian Cline promises that 28 volunteer teachers will brainstorm over the summer how to tackle the problem of the high school's low achievement tests. Here is the dumb question: If these are the teachers who taught the kids who failed the test, why should anyone have a shred of confidence in their ability to figure out what the problem is? I'm sure they did their best last year. It wasn't good enough. If my soccer team loses games, I don't make the kids figure out what to do differently. I recruit a coach/leader who knows the game inside and out, and who can, well, coach.
Read more....
Saturday, June 27, 2009
DeSoto County Schools: Did You Know?
X
According to data the district has provided to the state, 8.2 percent of the high school classes last year (2007-2008) were taught by "out of field" teachers. At the districts "alternative schools," that percentage soars to 50 percent and over 67 percent of classes being taught by unqualified teachers. "Out of field" means the teacher is not certified in the subject matter. He/she may lack enough college-level credit to teach the subject.
Read more ...
I'm making a note to ask our school board members exactly who these folks are and what classes are involved. Here's the source for my concern: Florida School Indicators Report.
Once you are on the page, scroll down to the report you want, load the report and scroll down to Desoto (click on the "school data" link for an Excell report on every school in the state). Here's the DeSoto data extracted:
Other data at the site: Our local high school graduation rate was 71 percent that year. Just 21 students took the SAT exam that year and their mean score was 1450 (the mean scores across the state ranged from a high of 1936 to a low of 1109). And, 136 students took the ACT exam, with a mean score of 17.4 (the mean scores across the state ranged from a high of 26.5 to a low of 12.9). At the Web site you can look up absentee rates, dropout rates, rates of employment, college, etc. Archives go back to the 1996-1997 school year.
Read more....
According to data the district has provided to the state, 8.2 percent of the high school classes last year (2007-2008) were taught by "out of field" teachers. At the districts "alternative schools," that percentage soars to 50 percent and over 67 percent of classes being taught by unqualified teachers. "Out of field" means the teacher is not certified in the subject matter. He/she may lack enough college-level credit to teach the subject.
Read more ...
I'm making a note to ask our school board members exactly who these folks are and what classes are involved. Here's the source for my concern: Florida School Indicators Report.
Once you are on the page, scroll down to the report you want, load the report and scroll down to Desoto (click on the "school data" link for an Excell report on every school in the state). Here's the DeSoto data extracted:
Other data at the site: Our local high school graduation rate was 71 percent that year. Just 21 students took the SAT exam that year and their mean score was 1450 (the mean scores across the state ranged from a high of 1936 to a low of 1109). And, 136 students took the ACT exam, with a mean score of 17.4 (the mean scores across the state ranged from a high of 26.5 to a low of 12.9). At the Web site you can look up absentee rates, dropout rates, rates of employment, college, etc. Archives go back to the 1996-1997 school year.
Read more....
Friday, June 26, 2009
Florida DOE Report Card: DeSoto High School
Click on the image for larger, readable version. The Florida Department of Education "Report Card" explains how DeSoto High School achieved a D for its effort in the 2008-2009 school year.
To be fair, elementary and middle schools earned a smattering of A's, B's, and C's. Their achievement was sufficient to weight the state's calculation for the district's overall grade to B. But that begs the question, what in the world is happening at the high school? I hope some readers can enlighten us. **
**
Read more ...
Why do I care? A commentator, who asked not to be posted, inquires. Here's the answer: I have twin step children who have just moved to the area and will enroll in the 9th grade in August. I am not equipped to home school.
Click on the blue link to follow some
great science resources for educators, complied by Florida Citizens for Science.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
DeSoto County School District
This is a reposting from another blog about local journalism, and it seems like a good place to open my own blog. My site is for readers in DeSoto County, Fla., to "tell what you did in school today." There is little or no access to what's really going on in our local district, and the official Web site is little help. It doesn't even post where to contact school board members! Everything goes through Superintendent Adrian Cline, who -- in the opinion of some -- conducts the board like a choirmaster.
Read more ...
Muzzle the Press
The DeSoto County (Fla.) School Board on Tuesday voted to expand its dual-enrollment agreement with the local community college to include 9th and 10th graders. This move -- affecting children who attend a high school that has been "graded" by the state as a D school, has not been reported to the community.
"Well, I'm not a editor, and I don't set these things up," Sun-Herald Reporter John Lawhorne said when Old Word Wolf telephoned him two days after the meeting to ask why the local paper had not yet run the news -- but found room to publish reports from two other districts on today's "Our Town" front. Lawhorne attended the meeting with tape recorder and notebook and appeared to at least one member of the audience to be alert during most of the proceedings.
The dual-enrollment item came to the 5-member school board's attention during the agenda item Superientendent's Report. There was no wording on the published agenda that would alert the public to a deal that could send 14- and 15-year-olds into a college classroom.
Also not reported -- because John Lawhorne seems to have been muzzled by the school superintendent -- is the citizen who addressed the school board that evening.
A college instructor took the podium to accuse the school district of not adquately teaching Sunshine State Standards at its D-rated high school."I see students come into my college courses from DeSoto High School who are woefully underprepared," said Marilyn Tarnowski, an adjunct faculty member in English and Humanities at South Florida Community College. Tarnowski told the school board that she regularly teaches DeSoto High grads who are unable to locate major features on a globe, read well enough to decipher even short passages from Shakespeare or such standard American classics as Thoreau or Hawthorne.
She went on to describe the lack of "critical reading and critical thinking" know-how, despite the fact that these skills are a core part of the state-mandated skill set that describes teaching standards for every grade level in the public schools."I talked to nearly every board member about the high school's FCAT reading scores before coming here tonight, and every one had a range of reasons for the poor results. The finger-pointing ranged from blaming the test itself to blaming our demographics and even blaming the students. Not one school board member suggested the problem might be rooted in the classroom and what goes on -- or doesn't go on -- there," Tarnowski said.
State standardized test scores released last month indicated that 80 percent of DeSoto High's 10th graders were reading below grade level and 41 percent could not compute using 10-grade math.
Reporter Lawhorne acknowledged that when he tries to track down stories that might construed as critical of the school district, the elected members of the school board nearly always defer to Superintendent Adrian Cline -- an elected official who by state law is answerable to the school board, not it to him.
Lawhorne defended the lack of a local school board story as a space consideration and for reasons known only to editors, Charlotte County and North Port school board stories were deemed of more interest to DeSoto readers. "That's where the readership is," Lawhorne said.
Read more....
Read more ...
Muzzle the Press
The DeSoto County (Fla.) School Board on Tuesday voted to expand its dual-enrollment agreement with the local community college to include 9th and 10th graders. This move -- affecting children who attend a high school that has been "graded" by the state as a D school, has not been reported to the community.
"Well, I'm not a editor, and I don't set these things up," Sun-Herald Reporter John Lawhorne said when Old Word Wolf telephoned him two days after the meeting to ask why the local paper had not yet run the news -- but found room to publish reports from two other districts on today's "Our Town" front. Lawhorne attended the meeting with tape recorder and notebook and appeared to at least one member of the audience to be alert during most of the proceedings.
The dual-enrollment item came to the 5-member school board's attention during the agenda item Superientendent's Report. There was no wording on the published agenda that would alert the public to a deal that could send 14- and 15-year-olds into a college classroom.
Also not reported -- because John Lawhorne seems to have been muzzled by the school superintendent -- is the citizen who addressed the school board that evening.
A college instructor took the podium to accuse the school district of not adquately teaching Sunshine State Standards at its D-rated high school."I see students come into my college courses from DeSoto High School who are woefully underprepared," said Marilyn Tarnowski, an adjunct faculty member in English and Humanities at South Florida Community College. Tarnowski told the school board that she regularly teaches DeSoto High grads who are unable to locate major features on a globe, read well enough to decipher even short passages from Shakespeare or such standard American classics as Thoreau or Hawthorne.
She went on to describe the lack of "critical reading and critical thinking" know-how, despite the fact that these skills are a core part of the state-mandated skill set that describes teaching standards for every grade level in the public schools."I talked to nearly every board member about the high school's FCAT reading scores before coming here tonight, and every one had a range of reasons for the poor results. The finger-pointing ranged from blaming the test itself to blaming our demographics and even blaming the students. Not one school board member suggested the problem might be rooted in the classroom and what goes on -- or doesn't go on -- there," Tarnowski said.
State standardized test scores released last month indicated that 80 percent of DeSoto High's 10th graders were reading below grade level and 41 percent could not compute using 10-grade math.
Reporter Lawhorne acknowledged that when he tries to track down stories that might construed as critical of the school district, the elected members of the school board nearly always defer to Superintendent Adrian Cline -- an elected official who by state law is answerable to the school board, not it to him.
Lawhorne defended the lack of a local school board story as a space consideration and for reasons known only to editors, Charlotte County and North Port school board stories were deemed of more interest to DeSoto readers. "That's where the readership is," Lawhorne said.
Read more....
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Off the Agenda
X
From the Orlando Sentinal newspaper:
Science profs recommend doing away with 11th grade Science FCAT: use rigorous end-of-course exams.
And one more thing:
Are you worried about how to teach evolution in an "intelligent design" enclave? Check out the Open Book Project on teaching evolution. This is a great resource, and you can read it for free, on-line, page by page and chapter by chapter. You don't even have to "register."
Thank you for stopping by my new blog. Click "Links to this Post" at any entry on the main page and leave a comment! Read more....
From the Orlando Sentinal newspaper:
Science profs recommend doing away with 11th grade Science FCAT: use rigorous end-of-course exams.
And one more thing:
Are you worried about how to teach evolution in an "intelligent design" enclave? Check out the Open Book Project on teaching evolution. This is a great resource, and you can read it for free, on-line, page by page and chapter by chapter. You don't even have to "register."
Thank you for stopping by my new blog. Click "Links to this Post" at any entry on the main page and leave a comment! Read more....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
