12 Jan 2006 - 15:39

Ed's statement

I mentioned yesterday that the president of the PTSA had emailed Ed asking him whether he wanted to make a statement about the budget.

Here's his reply:

Catherine and I will be there tonight, but my proposal is the following: we should recommend that there be no increases in the "real" school budget — no increases, that is, beyond the costs of inflation and of the various contractual agreements or legal requirements over which we have limited control: staff benefits, special education, debt service, and the like. If we want to add new items to the school budget or spend more on existing items, we should look critically at the rationale for those items, asking ourselves whether the evidence clearly shows that the proposed new spending will have the desired effect. If the answer is "yes," we should then recommend offsetting cuts in other areas of the budget. We should also ask the District to evaluate all programs, curricula, and educational initiatives after an appropriate period of time. Any program whose evaluations fail to show clear-cut gains for our kids should be dropped. In most cases, programs that can't be readily evaluated should not be adopted in the first place.

I wasn't there when he made his statement, but from where I sit he did it brilliantly.

At that point in the meeting (maybe 25 minutes in?) no one had mentioned TRAILBLAZERS.

After Ed gave his statement, parents asked him what programs he would want the school to evaluate for effectiveness.

Ed said, D.A.R.E. & No Put-Downs (the character education program brought into the Main Street School last year thanks to parent fundraising. No Put-downs cost the teachers & kids 20 minutes of lost instructional time each and every morning for 5 months (maybe more).

Did it work?

Was there less bullying?

How much bullying was there in the first place?

We don't know!

Now the community is paying for the program; the Irvington Education Foundation picked up the tab for the first year only.

So Ed said he'd evaluate D.A.R.E. & No Put-Downs.

Then he said, 'And the district should evaluate TRAILBLAZERS. We have an expensive and controversial math curriculum supported by an inadequate research base. The program needs to be evaluated for effectiveness.'

He is good.

Both the Superintendent and the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum were present.



Irvington PTSA Forum
PTSA Forum Tonight
Ed's statement to the PTSA Forum
report: PTSA Forum
fact sheet for forum: Singapore Math & teaching to mastery & TIMSS gap

Back to main page.

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All hail Ed. He really is good.

-- CarolynJohnston - 13 Jan 2006

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Thank you!

He really is. It took him about 5 seconds to write this.

I made him put in this line:

We should also ask the District to evaluate all programs, curricula, and educational initiatives after an appropriate period of time.

Actually, I wanted something stronger, from Engelmann, about having a specific date for dropping a program that has not worked.

Of course, Engelmann calls it 'Pulling the plug.'

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jan 2006

WebLogForm
Title:	Ed's statement
TopicType:	WebLog
SubjectArea:	IrvingtonMath, IrvingtonSchools, MathWars, SchoolFunding
LogDate:	200601121031