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Jim Swanson's avatar

Thank you so much for your detailed reporting. I am just sad watching this unfold. When we look at what is MOST important it should be the education of our children. When I see educational scores lagging of any population of kids, I would have hoped that instead of a new school, that creative, and potentially individualized attention could have been given to those that are struggling. The pandemic offered additional opportunities for educators to identify that some children might thrive with non-traditional learning milieus. Combining some of those teaching techniques with more traditional methods might have been a possibility to boost performance. Perhaps even reaching out directly to families to help them overcome any impediments that may originate in the home that would spill over in the learning environment. Instead we are left with a school that is less than ideal, supplanting limited vital green space and uprooting mature trees in an already very congested area. A school whose construction and continued maintenance is supported only by extraordinary pressure on operating expenses that can only be addressed by cuts to staff, unique and special learning programs, and services. This was a school that any sensible person would not have pursued, especially considering the declining enrollment and deteriorating infrastructure throughout the system. I also worry that this shiny new school would become a beacon with unintended consequences, including the acceleration of city-wide tax increases and gentrification, both of which impact the affordability of that section of the 5th Ward.

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Tom Hayden's avatar

Stay tuned - I'm working on a piece about equity, which will probably go out on a weekend. I firmly believe the best way to achieve equitable outcomes is the hardest solution:

1) The best teachers in front of the kids who need it most, which requires compensating those teachers accordingly and;

2) Track those kids like a hawk from preschool to 12th grade and;

3) Spend $$$$ resources on supports for those kids, especially reading and mental health;

Too often the solution to the achievement gap in this town is just one shot in the dark after another: more consultants! mental health apps! trendy curriculum! peace and restorative practices! shaming parents!

All of this is a way to avoid having to tackle the genuinely hard problem of recruiting, retaining and training the A+ best educators in the business.

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Eric's avatar

Hi Tom, you mentioned the reading curriculum in a previous post in a cultural context, but you might want to dive a bit into science of reading vs balanced literacy issue. This has a huge effect on equitable outcomes and test scores. I am not quite sure where the district stands on this issue. From what I can tell they are now using more phonics based curriculum but used balanced literacy in the past.

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Tom Hayden's avatar

I don't know anything about either one of those things. I will research.

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CB's avatar

Yes, they finally changed to a phonics-based curriculum this year and (at least for 2nd grade) it is far superior to the previous. Or maybe that's because my daughter's teacher is a reading specialist. She no longer gets to act in that capacity (man this district is crazy) but at least one class gained an amazing teacher.

When my older son was learning to read with the old curriculum I couldn't understand why he kept looking at the picture to try to figure out what a word was. When I found out that "check the picture" was literally one of three steps they learned in class for figuring out a tricky word, I was flabbergasted. Another step in the previous curriculum was something along the lines of "take a guess at what the word might be and see if it makes sense." Incredible. I can't remember the third step but I'm guessing it was equally unhelpful.

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Eric's avatar

That's a relief! These links will explain what happened and how we got here:

https://www.thefp.com/p/why-65-percent-of-fourth-graders

https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

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JE's avatar

Tom Hayden For D65 Board President! Your letter really nails what is wrong currently and what is needed to fix the gap and what forms of ‘equity’ would actually have major impact! The things you could could be described as ‘fundamentals’ I think, vs. what’s been done at D65, which would be more of following education trends and fads and performative solutions.

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Jim Swanson's avatar

Could not agree with you more! Thanks, I was thinking I was just wackadoodle!

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