Dear Five Sisters and South End neighbors,

This is my last report from the National School Board Association Annual Conference.

Sunday afternoon session: “Making the Arts an Essential Part of a Child’s Education:” The big tip here was to bring together our “culture community” and school district in comprehensive K-12 partnerships. The speaker developed ‘blueprints’ for several branches of the arts, planning out opportunities at each grade level for public school students to be involved with and exposed to local performers, artists, etc. As she put it, the culture community has an interest in helping raise the next generation of theatergoers, music audiences, etc.  I know we do a great job getting our students to the Flynn, but I do think there are other partnerships we could enhance. An added benefit: bringing board members of arts organizations with money to donate into the public education orbit . . .

Monday morning: Alfie Kohn spoke to a standing-room only crowd about the evils of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The standing-room only part is important here because this conference of 8,000 school board members was as pluralistic a group as you could possibly find in this country. The one thing everyone could agree on, whether from inner-city Detroit, a Native American reservation in New Mexico, or suburban Greenwich, CT, was that NCLB’s unfunded mandates are destroying public schools from coast to coast.  Alfie Kohn’s take on the endgame here was that this is a “coup” designed to end public education, and we are basically all “accomplices” (on a Satanic level) if we cooperate.  As for NCLB’s goal of having every student in the U.S. proficient on standardized tests by 2013, Alfie says that “no un-medicated person believes that is possible.” If we don’t reach that ridiculous goal, all of our students can take their public money to private schools (not regulated by the same mandates, wouldn’t you know).  Alfie reports that the dire financial consequences of not meeting “adequate yearly progress” have led teachers to cheat to make test scores look better, to hold students back, to classify them as special ed., etc. Even worse, he believes that we should be most worried about the schools where test scores DO rise because they invariably have turned themselves into large “test prep” centers and abandoned art, recess, history and other subjects not tested under NCLB. I am a believer! (and glad he survived his tirade; he mentioned that his cardiologist wasn’t thrilled about his prospects if he continued sharing his thoughts on NCLB with others). Among the many things I agreed with here were the importance of lots of things the tests can’t test: deeper thinking, i.e. making connections between seemingly unrelated information, asking questions, and puzzling through unknowns. As a college professor, I know that these skills are more important to me than abilities on multiple-choice and fill-in-the-circle tests. I also agree that the expectation that every third-grader (for example, including refugees here for one year) be in exactly the same place on the same day intellectually is ridiculous. This treats kids like “widgets on an assembly line” who can be condemned as failures at the age of 8. When we pit schools against each other for better scores, we are concerned with “victory, not education.” NCLB is up for reauthorization in 2007, so midterm elections will be important . . .

Monday afternoon: Listened to a Superintendent from Brockton, MA on their ‘gifted and talented’ programs. This guy will not be happy until Brockton is regularly producing Van Cliburn gold medalists, Westinghouse Science winners and MacArthur geniuses. To that end, Brockton has free-standing programs for high-achieving students who test in at 3rd, 6th, and 9th grades. I really don’t think Burlington is game for this kind of approach any century soon, but he did have a lot of good things to say about International Baccalaureate and regular college courses instead of A.P.s at the high school level.  I would like to see us build on our offerings for students who are “high-fliers” at all levels, but this talk didn't give me many ideas about how to do that here.

Well, if you are still reading, you must be an education junkie. Welcome to my club. Feel free, as always, to air your views on the district web log (www.bsdvt.org go to “task force information”) or to send me a note.  

Amy Werbel
Ward 5 School Commissioner
awerbel@bsdvt.org