State representative Gail Lavielle (R-143), a member of the General Assembly's Education Committee, advocates for slashing the number, cost and impact of mandates. She and Weston Schools’ Superintendent Colleen Palmer chaired a forum at Bedford Middle School in Westport on November 21st to gather public input on the topic.
While mandates came in for ample criticism, the session also became a riff against much of the new Common Core States Standards – until Elliott Landon, Westport's Superintendent of Schools, and the last of the evening's 18 speakers, re-centered it.
Ms. Lavielle opened, saying she sought to include mandate relief in a 2012 Education Reform bill that passed, but without relief. In 2013 she introduced what became PA13-108, a law requiring the creation of an eight member task force charged with reducing mandates. Two seats remain open, the task force will not meet until they are filled.
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Lavielle and Palmer, both task force members, heard speakers comment on the pure number, their costs, that many are redundant, outdated, even ill-conceived – sentiments shared by much of the audience of about 150. Ms. Palmer said many reduce efficiency and innovation and “strangle education.”
Most speakers represented high performing districts and opposed the “one size fits all” requirement that mandates be implemented across the state, a district's educational achievement notwithstanding.
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Our federal and state governments continue to heap on mandates, more often than not leaving local taxpayers to foot the bill. They range from the notorious No Child Left Behind and its even worse multiple choice tests (and the mindless “teach to the test” activities it has fostered), to essential but underfunded laws strengthening special education, and ones targeting bullying, requiring the identification of a district's talented and gifted students and providing for alternate education for expelled students.
And there are reports by the score – from the essential October 1st official enrollment to a requirement that districts report on benefits costs under Connecticut's Civil Union Legislation and its Pesticide Application Policy.
A Ridgefield Board of Education representative said they spend “an inordinate amount of time” completing “75 reports or surveys annually.” And Ms. Palmer noted that Weston's last budget book contained four pages just listing the mandates forced on that district. She added they "spent 2,500 hours for state reporting.” That is more than one and one-half Full Time Equivalent positions with a cost approaching $200,000.
The net is the number keeps grows as does the portion of the cost of each community's education budget driven by decisions made outside the community is growing – a concern in a state that cherishes home rule.
Speakers also recommended revisiting the new and barely implemented Common Core State Standards (CCSS), some to makes changes, others to delay its implementation, a few to kill it. One superintendent expressed concern about inadequate funding and unrealistic implementation time lines.
CCSS is the new approach to providing K-12 education. It specifies a national curriculum, sets common national standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics at each grade level, prescribes tests to assess learning and evaluates both student and teacher proficiency. Its objective is to raise the bar for education across the US and bring American student achievement up to par with those in countries more financially committed to education at all levels.
The desired outcome is that every student in a given grade in every school in every state will master the same skills in the same time and arrive at the same point at the end of every year. Is that a realistic expectation or a fool's errand?
But its negatives appeared to drown out its positives. It, too, was deemed a “a one size fits all” program – what's right for Mississippi is right for Connecticut, and what's right for Hartford is right for Wilton.
Staples Principal John Dodig enlivened the proceedings, calling himself confused by the complexity of the process. Just starting requires “quantifying every aspect of what a teacher does,” followed by wasting teachers' time inputting minute data elements arising from classroom activities so proficiency can be scored.
Another educator criticized CCSS as being driven by “uniformity and compliance,” by others as “unproven and untested,” even “counter productive,” that its “high stakes testing limits learning to things that are measurable,” and that the idea that all students can acquire the same skills at the same time is “ill conceived.”
Teachers talked to the massive amounts of curriculum and professional development time needed. Still others called the program a corporate intrusion into education, and a windfall for textbook publishers such as Pearson.
The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) has developed the assessment model that will evaluate students and teachers. Speakers termed it “intrusive in its data collection,” even “totally inappropriate.” Another noted the excess testing – one commented, sardonically, that we may wind up giving SATs to kindergarteners using computers on which they’ve not been trained.
The 90 minute session was brought to close by Superintendent Landon, who said, essentially, let’s not throw the baby out with bathwater. While CCSS is "largely problematic," he said educators – and students – must be held accountable, that there are failing students and failing schools, and that he is concerned because “even Westport has room to improve.” He reminded the audience that it is Asian countries - China, Korea, India - that are truly committed to education, and he is concerned that his grandchildren will compete in a world for which our schools have not fully prepared them.
The net is a message to Ms. Lavielle to go back to Hartford, shorten the list of mandates, remove the outdated and redundant ones, get rid of one size fits all, and provide full funding for those that remain.