District 6 Feb. 16 Shael Suransky - the DOE operating concepts pertaining to Teaching, Learning, & Accountability: Teacher-activist Julie Cavanagh will respond

NOTE: Just heard from Julie - she is real sick and can't make it. Suransky also postponed. Even to be rescheduled in April.

Josh Karan a parent leader in District 6 (Washington Hts) has established a program to engage parents in the educational debate.


Tomorrow's session will have Shael Suransky and GEM/CAPE's Julie Cavanagh presenting.

Deputy Chancellor Shael Suransky will present the DOE operating concepts pertaining to Teaching, Learning, & Accountability, to which teacher-activist Julie Cavanagh will be responding. 

Next - March 7:

DOE Charter School Division Chief Recy Dunn will present the DOE view on the value of Charter schools, to which Mona David will respond.

Josh described the program with the hope it will be emulated in other districts:

The purpose of the program is to provide a roadmap for parents --- to enable them to see a way from here to there, after first defining what the here and there mean for them:  Examining what kind of education parents want for their children, and exploring what currently is being provided.  Presently many parents struggle to do any of this -- understand the current system, articulate what they believe the system should provide, and assert what their role should be in the crafting of a different system, operating under different structures, provision of resources, and values.

This is intended to be a pilot program in my District.  Hopefully it will continue, so that after a few years, in time for the 2015 next round of School Governance legislative consideration, there will be 150 to 200 trained and motivated parents in District 6 who will provide leadership to mobilize our community for a different direction for educational policy. 

Kudos to Josh for his proactive efforts. I can't make the event but it should interesting to see how Julie, a special ed classroom teacher in a school invaded by a charter interacts with the 2nd in command of the school system. If you go (sorry, I don't have the location) send a report.

I put up the entire program at Norms Notes:  District 6 Parent Advocacy Training Program

If Shael Was a Real Teacher He Must Have Been Invaded by Data Munching Body Snatchers

Mr. Polakow-Suransky acknowledges that the tests are imperfect, but says they are a necessary measurement tool. “To put it very simply,” he said, “how do you know that the kids are learning?”  

Tell me that a real teacher would say "How do you know that the kids are learning?" without standardized tests. Every single teacher I know has given tests that tell them if kids are learning. Or they know from how they respond in class. This is such an anti-teacher statement. Note how Shael makes it seem that the choice is between standardized tests and not tests - totally negating what most teachers have always used in class.

Shael didn't escape

Now the contradictions in today's NY Times profile on Shael Polakow-Suransky (I've got a bias against hypehated names, especially long ones) who will be 2nd in command to Cathie Back are very revealing. He went to a progressive high school and studied with progressive educator Ted Sizer at Brown University (how interesting that I meet so many Brown grads counter to Shael who are active resisters to the ed deformers). Then he worked for Eric Nadelstern who once was a real reformer people tell me.

A Tweed insider told me the two of them always talked a good game but once inside the walls of Tweed they shifted to the party data line - the judgement: ambition and self-interest.

Now Shael will offer a menu of more tests:

He has been working with officials from New York and other states to create a new kind of testing that would include essays, classroom projects and multiple-choice exams, and that would be administered in stages, perhaps at four times during the year. 

Afterburn
See the web of corruption tying the Merryl Tisch family to the testing industry at Perdido St. School - comments section.