MORE ON THE BOARD OF REGENTS MEETING...

I said I'd post more specifics on the BoR meeting I attended last Monday.  But I haven't had the brain energy to sift through my notes as I'd intended.

I'll just re-iterate these important highlights:

• The Board has clearly heard there are trust issues in our State, between the public and the SED.
• They clearly seem concerned about re-gaining trust.
• Their path to regaining trust is unclear, however.

I have great faith in Dr. Betty Rosa to lead forward into sanity, if that's possible.
I have faith that she'll be successful bringing actual research findings to the table when making critical policy decisions.
I also have faith that there were will be some positive movement on teacher evaluation plans, helping struggling schools, and something to do with testing.

But I am also equally clear that she cannot do it alone.
She needs teachers and parents to stand behind her and continue to question and to hold the entire SED - Regents, Commissioners, office staff, and the Governor - accountable for re-righting the ship, and steering us towards logical, child-centered decision-making.

We need to keep pressing for the things that will make us trust them again (sane, appropriate and logical standards, tests, and teacher evaluations.)  We need to speak out against the things that make us question their trust-ability (missing test pages, unlimited time to take tests, pressuring young children to decide for themselves how long to test for, continued inappropriate questions, too-long tests, questionable standards, and onerous, stressful, unproductive teacher evaluation systems that require districts such as mine to add three more administrators just to keep up with evaluations and paperwork, etc.)

If you live in New York State, your voice is needed.  

Join with me here or send your own comments and questions.

But please, participate.