Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Boosting Early Reading is Good, But What is the Real Cost?
When the concern came up that early elementary kids struggling with reading don't get help anymore due to budget cuts, the solution is mandatory help. this is great, but will it come with more money? This looks like another unfunded mandate which will take resources away from other important services.
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/11/west_michigan_lawmaker_respond.html
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/11/west_michigan_lawmaker_respond.html
MLive article on EAA Expansion. Vote in Michigan Senate Soon! Look for an alert on this soon!
In other legislative issues, the Michigan Senate is looking to vote to on the House Bill that will expand the EAA. The EGRPS PTO Legislative Committee feels that the EAA diverts too many resources away from traditional public schools and their overseeing, publicly elected school boards. The EAA has not shown it is the entity to save students from poor schools. We advocate increased support and resources to schools to provide the services needed for Michigan's public school students. Lucy
http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2013/12/eaa_expansion_likely_to_happen.html#incart_river
Legislative Update From Michigan Parents for Schools
Friends,
I hope you all had a warm and joyful Thanksgiving holiday, and that the school year has been going smoothly for your families.
Things have been a little quieter this fall on the education front in Lansing, but we wanted to contact you about a couple of proposed measures that we think are simply counter-productive.
Things are rather fluid right now, so we're not asking you to write your lawmakers just yet. But stay alert, because we might need to take quick action if these bills move to a vote in anything like their current form.
Getting all children to read is easy, right?
We at MIPFS absolutely believe, as I am sure you do, that we should do all we can to ensure children are able to read - and to understand and evaluate what they read. Steps to catch children who are having trouble should start early. This kind of effort takes smart people and resources for quality programs.
The bill now in the House Education committee, HB 5111, doesn't address any of these things. It's based on the idea that getting any child to read "proficiently," no matter what struggles they face, is a simple and clear task. Schools and teachers who don't accomplish this feat are simply "not doing their jobs." The answer? Punish kids - and make their parents angry.
They've softened the bill a bit since it was first introduced, but the basic thrust is still the same. Instead of helping schools serve challenged students, instead of providing the resources schools need to run quality reading programs, the bill proposes simply to hold students back. Does this make any sense to you? It certainly doesn't to us.
Why bother helping schools when you can just label them?
Ok, if you're like me, when the Michigan Dept. of Education announced their new color coding system, you went to look up your local school. Was it confusing? Sure - but not because of the colors. Sometimes it was just hard to figure out where your school did well and where it might need improvement.
Now we have HB 5112, which proposes to scrap that whole (brand new) system and replace it with a simplistic rating that gives every school and district a letter grade from A to F. Not only that, but this "grade" would be based almost entirely on standardized test scores and would grade schools "on a curve," ensuring that some will always "fail."
We're not shopping for toaster-ovens here. Trying to tote up all a school's characteristics into one color or letter is a bad idea to begin with, and basing it all entirely on one or two days' worth of bubble tests makes it even worse. As parents, there are lots of things we want to know about our local schools - everything from academic achievement to access to the arts and music, from hallway safety to classroom technology, from bus routes to teacher expertise.
If they want to require schools to post information, fine. Just make it the kinds of key information that parents and other citizens really care about, and stop trying to turn it into a single rating. We're not looking at small appliances. We want to know where our schools shine, and where they need help to become better for our children and our communities. We're not shopping - we are looking to support and improve OUR schools.
Your voice is important on these issues. You can help remind our lawmakers that we want to help our schools, not just beat them down.Please keep your eyes peeled for an urgent call to action!
Steve Norton
Executive Director, MIPFS
I hope you all had a warm and joyful Thanksgiving holiday, and that the school year has been going smoothly for your families.
Things have been a little quieter this fall on the education front in Lansing, but we wanted to contact you about a couple of proposed measures that we think are simply counter-productive.
- One bill would require that children who don't test as "proficient" in reading in third grade be held back until they do.
- The other would institute a simplistic "A-F" school rating system based totally on standardized test scores.
Things are rather fluid right now, so we're not asking you to write your lawmakers just yet. But stay alert, because we might need to take quick action if these bills move to a vote in anything like their current form.
Getting all children to read is easy, right?
We at MIPFS absolutely believe, as I am sure you do, that we should do all we can to ensure children are able to read - and to understand and evaluate what they read. Steps to catch children who are having trouble should start early. This kind of effort takes smart people and resources for quality programs.
The bill now in the House Education committee, HB 5111, doesn't address any of these things. It's based on the idea that getting any child to read "proficiently," no matter what struggles they face, is a simple and clear task. Schools and teachers who don't accomplish this feat are simply "not doing their jobs." The answer? Punish kids - and make their parents angry.
They've softened the bill a bit since it was first introduced, but the basic thrust is still the same. Instead of helping schools serve challenged students, instead of providing the resources schools need to run quality reading programs, the bill proposes simply to hold students back. Does this make any sense to you? It certainly doesn't to us.
Why bother helping schools when you can just label them?
Ok, if you're like me, when the Michigan Dept. of Education announced their new color coding system, you went to look up your local school. Was it confusing? Sure - but not because of the colors. Sometimes it was just hard to figure out where your school did well and where it might need improvement.
Now we have HB 5112, which proposes to scrap that whole (brand new) system and replace it with a simplistic rating that gives every school and district a letter grade from A to F. Not only that, but this "grade" would be based almost entirely on standardized test scores and would grade schools "on a curve," ensuring that some will always "fail."
We're not shopping for toaster-ovens here. Trying to tote up all a school's characteristics into one color or letter is a bad idea to begin with, and basing it all entirely on one or two days' worth of bubble tests makes it even worse. As parents, there are lots of things we want to know about our local schools - everything from academic achievement to access to the arts and music, from hallway safety to classroom technology, from bus routes to teacher expertise.
If they want to require schools to post information, fine. Just make it the kinds of key information that parents and other citizens really care about, and stop trying to turn it into a single rating. We're not looking at small appliances. We want to know where our schools shine, and where they need help to become better for our children and our communities. We're not shopping - we are looking to support and improve OUR schools.
Your voice is important on these issues. You can help remind our lawmakers that we want to help our schools, not just beat them down.Please keep your eyes peeled for an urgent call to action!
Steve Norton
Executive Director, MIPFS
Are You Having Trouble Deciding What You Think About Third Grade Retention?
Here is a link Steve Norton shared in an alert from Michigan Parents for Schools
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
minutes from the 11/4 meeting, amended
1. Common Core: EGRPS
PTO Legislative Committee supports the EGRPS district administration and school
board in their advocacy that the assessment, which matches the curriculum, be
passed swiftly by the Michigan Legislature.
2. School Aid Fund Tax Cuts: The EGRPS PTO Legislative Committee
advocates that the revenue be replaced for all School Aid Fund taxes that are
cut. We do not wish to burden parents
and community members with each and every bill that is introduced. Maintain the School Aid Fund revenue and fund
K-12 Schools.
3.
Third Grade Assessment Bills: EGRPS PTO Legislative Committee
supports full funding of K-12 schools so that districts (including districts with high levels of poverty and special
education children) can afford to offer reading support and reading
recovery programs for early elementary students.
4.
Open Carry: EGRPS PTO Legislative Committee
supports our Administrators and School Board in collaborating with the East
Grand Rapids City officials and public safety officials in devising a plan to
lessen the public in our schools on voting days. Alternative locations can be found which
would allow the right to open carry without the danger of children being
exposed to arms. We also support our District
in pursuing a change of status so that schools will be exempt from open carry
laws.
5. Letter Grades:We used
to have letter grades assessing our schools. Then we moved to a color
coding system last year.
Now the legislature wants to reinstate the use of letter grades. The grades themselves, whether colors or letters, seem to favor those schools with fewer categories to grade, resulting in excellent schools faring worse than those that offer a mediocre education with fewer services.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)