Greetings Senator Farrow
and the Education committee,
My name is Todd Alan
Price, Director of Policy Studies at the National College of Education in National
Louis University. As an Associate Professor in Educational Foundations and
Inquiry I’ve had the opportunity to conduct some modest research in Chicago
public schools and I was one of the research assistants on the original
Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). I’m a parent in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
If we are students of
history and policy, and I remain one of both I imagine, we should know that the
punitive measures of No Child Left
Behind set in stone an untenable political position that we as a nation could
focus on greater “accountability” but ignore chronic underfunding, growing inequality
and nagging poverty, as if there were not enough testing already. It is as if,
as Congressman Fatah from Philadelphia was to say, that we tests kids in
swimming but while some students have an Olympic sized pool, other kids have a
pool with no water.
Since No Child Left
Behind has largely failed, we as a nation, Wisconsin school officials, seem to
be “Racing to the Top” or what I
characterize as “running for the money”.
I graduated from Tremper
High School. My
children attend two great Kenosha neighborhood public schools, Grewenow Elementary
and Roosevelt Elementary respectively. Roosevelt has an accelerated program
that my oldest attends and my youngest is plugging along, making his parents
proud, on a field trip today. My wife is now teaching as a substitute teacher
and supporting the mission of the school district.
Which is to say
my family and our Kenosha families have effective teachers, dedicated
principals, caring support staff, and a school district that is focused on
moving the curriculum forward, moving best practices forward, and improving
student outcomes together. I know this as an educator who attends the
teacher-parent meetings and support the community engagement events. As
Reverend William Barber a great advocate for our public schools among other
things says Forward Together.
Kenosha is moving forward, a great school district,
and latest reports are that high school graduation rates are climbing. Yet poverty
remains a nagging problem, and there remain struggles. The Kenosha School
District voluntarily submitted to an audit a few years past. Two key findings from
the audit:
Formative
and summative data are not available to evaluate all courses taught, and data
use for key functions such as planning, curriculum management, professional
development, program evaluation, budgeting and facility management is not in
place to improve the design and delivery of services that impact student
achievement.
Evaluation
processes have not been established to guide the district in adopting,
implementing, and analyzing instructional programs for cost benefits or for
their effectiveness in meeting the system’s desired outcomes for student
achievement.
Now talking with a school board candidate, he bemoaned
that the budget is tight and largely fixed, and it is very hard to put in place
what this audit called. Which is to say audits are fine, yet AUDITING solutions
require resources. As do children.
WE as a state
should support promising initiatives such as co-teaching, universal design for
learning, and we could be supporting school districts to improve their practice
by examining new promising pedagogies, including flipped classrooms and blended
learning. We could be investing in teaching as a career ladder, using teacher
leader programs. Instead we are placing public schools under increasing
audit measures.
S.B. 1 doesn't
help move these measures forward much, nor help these schools much, it just
seems to once again place more “accountability” on top of all of the other
accountability mechanisms that teachers and principals and school board members
are already laboring under.
If this
committee, if this state government wanted to help children in Wisconsin’s schools,
you could start by really supporting our neighborhood, public schools. There
are so many ways, proven, to do this. Beyond
SB 1 auditing, more funding really should be made available for professional development, to support teacher leaders, to grow universal design for learning, environments,
and to create less completion, not more of it, through co-teaching, through flipped
classrooms (why keep the information secret) and to acknowledge the value
of blended learning. All of these
measures work, they can move children incredibly forward, as my one time
student Diana would say. This bill doesn’t seem to do that, but presents nonetheless, an
interesting opportunity to discuss policy, as well as to review history.
Sincerely,
Todd Alan Price
National Louis University
