Dr. Wardynski appreciates a plainly spoken phrase, so here’s one for him. This is hypocrisy, plain and simple hypocrisy.
“I’m not sure that makes me feel any better.” David Blair.
I know exactly how you feel, Mr. Blair, and thank you for asking a good question on Thursday night. (Yes, I actually have something positive to say about a member of our school board. It can happen.)
It seems that there have been some bad, and perhaps in some cases even criminal, decisions made in the past concerning the business practices of Huntsville City Schools for the past ten years. There may have been both sins of commission and omission. You can read a summary of three reports offered by consultants hired by the superintendent to review business practices before he came to town to save us in the Times. In addition to that, I would recommend that you take a look at the presentations that were offered to the board. You can find those here.
So after an extensive, lengthy and costly discussion about the business practices of the system from the past ten years, the board moved out of the work session and into voting on some of the current superintendent’s recommendations.
Dr. Wardynski loves to question the past. Throughout his hour and fifteen minute presentation on how terrible things were in the system ten years ago, Dr. Wardynski asked many questions of his consultants: Most of which were designed to show alternately how terrible the leadership of the system used to be as opposed to how wonderful the leadership of the system is today.
Even though his consultant, Byron Headrick of Lean Frog, explicitly stated numerous times that the system must have a “Strong Executive Leadership Team,” Dr. Wardynski wasn’t satisfied with that. So he asked Mr. Headrick (who gets paid to find inefficiencies) to say one more time that the only thing that the system currently has gotten right is, wait for it, a “strong executive leadership team” willing to address these changes.
[For some reason, the final conclusion slide is not included with the presentations found on the HCS website. I'm sure that's just an oversight of our strong executive leadership team. Here's a quick snapshot of that slide if you're interested.]
However, once we move out of the past and into the present, Dr. Wardynski is decidedly less interested in questions about his decision making processes.
Once the Work Session of the board meeting was finally over, the board quickly moved from the past to the present. Under the agenda action items, the board was asked to approve the minutes of previous meetings and then to approve, upon the superintendent’s recommendation, the current “Consent Agenda” which included Gifts to Schools, Temporary Agreements, and Bid Tabs.
Here is a transcript of the board discussion during that portion of the meeting.
McCaulley: “The superintendent recommends the approval of the consent agenda consisting of gifts to schools, temporary agreements and bid tabs. Before we vote on bid tabs, let me. Um, board members, delete the directive, the parking signs. The superintendent said that was a little premature. So delete that, item, right there. We’re not going to get those.
Birney: Delete 1270?
McCaulley: Delete 1270.
McCaulley: Motion?
Blair: Motion to approve the consent agenda.
Robinson: Second.
Blair: Okay, I’ve got a question.
McCaulley: Discussion.
Blair: So after hearing all of this [the discussion concerning business practices], so how do I get comfortable with um, building materials, telephone replacement, and school communications center. How do I get comfortable with that?
Wardynski: Well we’re reviewing all of these, and we can always come back to the board as we did before with cell phones. But we have to keep the district running while we get things straightened out. And so these processes we’re recommending continuing, and if we need to stop we will.
McCaulley: Any more discussion?
Blair: I’m not certain that makes me feel any better.
Robinson: [Speaking over Blair and redirecting the Superintendent] So I was going to say, thirty days from now do we know that this, that we’re actually going to be what we said. I’m assuming there’s going to be more oversight, maybe some monitoring. These might be your test cases here as you develop your processes.
Wardynski: That’s right.
Blair: Okay
McCaulley: All in favor say Aye.
While Blair cannot be heard voting in favor, his mouth does move during the Aye vote. No one opposed the recommendation.
So thanks to David Blair, we have a clear understanding of the limits of Dr. Wardynski’s interest in transparency, addressing inefficiencies, and providing strong executive leadership. All of that ends prior to July 5, 2011, the day that Wardynski was hired.
For questions about his recommendations all he really has to offer is Just Trust Me.
We’re supposed to just trust him that he isn’t going to be inefficient. We’re supposed to just trust him that he isn’t going to use the system for personal gain. We’re supposed to just trust him.
Doing so would be easier if his comments in the past had proven to be more trustworthy.
Doing so would be easier if he did not seem to be constantly redirecting system funds to Broad Foundation funded organizations.
Doing so would be easier if he would simply answer questions once in a while.
In short, once again, Dr. Wardynski is engaged in a witch hunt with internal reviews that only review the past.
Please understand that I too believe that the school system must be efficient. He’s absolutely correct that inefficiencies, particularly ones like the E-Rate Review, are inexcusable. The people responsible for this must be held accountable. However, we must review more than just the past. Our board members (four of whom were on the board when all of the inefficiencies were taking place) must hold our superintendent accountable for his current actions and recommendations.
Even though Mr. Blair (the only member who wasn’t on the board during the years reviewed by Dr. Wardynski) asked a good question, he went right ahead and voted for the recommendation despite his statement that the answer of just trust me didn’t make him feel better.
This is blind faith.
Blind faith got us into this mess; it will not get us out.
I feel your pain, Mr. Blair. Dr. Wardynski’s answers (when he actually offers one) rarely leave me feeling better either.
The difference is I wouldn’t go ahead and vote for the recommendation anyway.
One efficiency that might need to be made is not wasting teachers’ time by making them read TFA propaganda.
On Thursday, February 2, 2012, Dr. Wardynski, in his monologue, had this to say about my comments when I mentioned in passing that teachers weren’t simply teaching to the test:
Uh, those who claim that testing, we teach to the test, that testing is not a valuable resource simply do not know what they are talking about. There is no way to test, to take, to teach to the STAR test. It’s a computive, computer-adaptive test in which every child will face a different question. And the questions aren’t the kind you can teach to. If you don’t know algebra, you can’t teach to answering an algebra question. If you don’t know how to factor an equation, you can’t teach to answering a question like that. If you can’t read, we can’t teach you what the paragraph said, cause you haven’t seen the paragraph. And so we’re after the business of literacy and numeracy. Uh, we’re taking a very strategic approach to raising the proficiency of our children, and our excellent teachers are responding.
Wow, where to begin.
It’s important to note that I didn’t claim in my statement that the district was teaching to the test. What I actually said was:
It’s [a love for education] what motivates Mrs. Dodson to take on extra work of evaluating additional assignments like poetry writing projects to encourage advanced students to continue to grow beyond merely the requirements of the test.
Perhaps he was reacting to others’ comments that claim that when testing is the single method of evaluation offered for both students and teachers, then our classrooms set education aside in deference to teaching to the test. While I didn’t say this on Thursday night, it is a problem that I recognize. If the score on the test is the only metric by which we evaluate student and teacher performance, then the test takes the highest priority in the classroom.
It becomes more important than critical thought.
It becomes more important than critical analysis of ideas.
It becomes more important than guided social development.
It becomes more important than intellectual curiosity.
In short, teaching to the test leaves a whole world of education in the dark. You can read more about what standardized tests do and do not cover in The Myths of Standardized Tests: Why They Don’t Tell You What You Think They Do.
But with his decades of experience in education, Dr. Wardynski wants you to know that “those who claim we teach to the test, that testing is not a valuable resource simply do not know what they are talking about.”
That’s right. Dr. Wardynski thinks I don’t know what I’m talking about. Thank you sir, that’s high praise coming from you.
So let’s look at his argument to see if Dr. Wardynski is right or not.
The Straw Man Fallacy
It’s always useful, when you enter into a debate with someone, to have an opponent who says something that’s easy to rip apart. Sadly, sometimes we enter into debates with people who aren’t stupid. When this happens, one common method of attack is to set up a straw man that’s easy to knock down. This is a useful technique as typically if you can show that your opponent is wrong on one point, then those listening to the debate will assume that your opponent is wrong on all points. But when your opponent doesn’t give you an easy target, well then you can just create your own.
This is the straw man fallacy. Claim that your opponent has claimed something that is false, even when he or she hasn’t.
Despite Dr. Wardynski’s claims, no reasonable person is claiming that “testing is not a valuable resource.” Every educator knows that testing does have value. But every educator also knows that no matter how fantastic the test is, the test is but one of many methods needed to evaluate education. You’re claiming that your opponents are speaking in absolutes when it is in fact you who are elevating the test to the level of absolute in student performance, in teacher performance, and in school performance.
I am not claiming that the test has no value. I am simply claiming that the test does not have absolute value.
Knowing What You’re Talking About
Dr. Wardynski then goes own to offer an impassioned defense of how it would be impossible to teach to the STAR test. He says:
There is no way to test, to take, to teach to the STAR test. It’s a computive, computer-adaptive test in which every child will face a different question. And the questions aren’t the kind you can teach to. If you don’t know algebra, you can’t teach to answering an algebra question. If you don’t know how to factor an equation, you can’t teach to answering a question like that. If you can’t read, we can’t teach you what the paragraph said, cause you haven’t seen the paragraph.
His argument seems to be that since no one sees the actual questions ahead of time, that it would be impossible to teach to the test. He’s arguing for the security of the STAR test and in doing so, he shows that he doesn’t understand teaching, testing or teaching to the test at all.
I do so love situational irony.
Let’s see if we can help him out here a little. If a teacher knows, as he claimed in his “we’re not teaching to the test speech” that her students are going to be tested on algebra, then a teacher knows that spending time talking about geometry is a waste of time, even if the students raise questions that are geometry questions. If a teacher knows that the test questions are based on the ability to remember details from a paragraph, then a teacher knows that spending time talking about the meaning of a paragraph is less important than talking about the content of the paragraph.
Teaching to the test doesn’t require knowing exactly what questions will be asked on a test. That’s cheating, not teaching to the test.
Teaching to the test means that a teacher knows that the test will cover 10 mathematical concepts, and so the entire focus of the class is then directed toward mathematical concepts ignoring the other questions or pathways that might arise from classroom discussion, questions, or as I mentioned above, intellectual curiosity.
In short, Dr. Wardynski has once again demonstrated his failure to understand the educational process.
Education is More than Testing
Let me see if I can finish with an example of what I am talking about here.
I teach, among other things, a Survey of the New Testament class. In this class, we review the historical underpinnings and development of the New Testament. One of the final assignments in the class is to write an argumentative research essay on what the New Testament has to say about a controversial subject such as abortion, homosexuality, poverty, whatever the student wishes to study.
This is the test that the students must complete. It tests their ability to use resources they’ve been exposed to in the class. It tests their ability to use various methods of Biblical criticism that we’ve discussed in the class. It tests their ability to discuss Scripture intelligently and reasonably.
One semester, I had a student who just couldn’t get her mind around the assignment. She had been struggling all semester, her writing was, to be frank, terrible, and I was to the point of suggesting to her that perhaps trying the class again at a time when her personal life wasn’t interfering with her education might make the class and the assignments easier. You see, her child was dying, and the idea of debating Scripture just wasn’t connecting with her.
But while talking to each other, I discovered that she did have an extensive interest in Mary, Jesus’ mother. She felt connected to her and her loss of her son, especially at that moment in her life. So since I had been the one to design the test, and since I have the freedom to find a student’s interest and run with it, I was able to redesign the assignment into a research essay on Mary.
This student, who had had difficulty even stringing together three sentences in a coherent way, wrote the best essay of the class, and in fact, one of the best essays I have received since. She was getting the learning objectives of the class, and once the test was modified to the student, she was able demonstrate that to me.
Education must be a personal, direct experience between the teacher and the student. When a district determines the test, the curriculum, and what’s important for a student to accomplish, they are taking education out of the hands of the teachers and students, and putting it into the hands of politicians and private companies who sell the test.
We should, we must teach to the student not to the test.
This is why Dr. Wardynski is unconcerned about the quality of the teachers he hires or the experienced ones he runs off. Teachers don’t matter in this brave new world.
A hyper-emphasis on testing results in an educational system where neither the teacher nor the student actually matter.
Dr. Wardynski, your approach of intimidation, demoralization and fear, sir, is what is entirely unacceptable.
It seems that nearly every week, Dr. Wardynski does something else to consolidate his power over our school system. This week, every principal in Huntsville City Schools awoke on Sunday to read, “All Huntsville Principals’ Jobs on the Table, says Superintendent.”
This type of headline tends to put a bit of a damper on your week, don’t you think? Not exactly making that Monday morning commute to school an enjoyable one did it?
I’m certain that if you asked them individually, they would tell you, with no prevarication, that it didn’t effect them in the slightest. Our principals are professional educators. And every single one with whom I’ve worked or met absolutely loves their job. Without exception, they would clearly tell you that they have the greatest job on the planet as they get to help educate our children.
So, since that would be their public response, I want you to step into their shoes for a moment. Imagine how you would feel if you woke up Sunday morning to see your direct supervisor telling the city that your job is on the table? (I fully realize that this isn’t a difficult thing to imagine for many of you. The tragic cuts to NASA have made this a recurring reality for many in this city.)
Answer honestly: Would seeing that in the paper have an effect on your morale? Would it affect your desire to go to work on Monday?
For myself (and I’m one of those people who do have the best job on the planet), the answer is a resounding yes.
This is why I decided to speak at the board meeting on Thursday night. Again. Yes, I know that the board and superintendent are sick of me and wish I would just go away. I know that many in the community who attend the meetings or watch them online feel likewise.
It may come as a surprise, but I feel that way, too.
I hate spending every other Thursday night away from my family. I hate sitting and watching the board members (not all, but the overwhelming majority) fall all over themselves praising Wardynski (pretty much as they did in the article above). I would much rather spend my evenings at home helping with homework and playing with the kids.
I go for one reason: I believe it is the right thing to do. I believe standing up for our kids, our teachers, our principals and schools is my duty as a parent and citizen.
And so I go: if only to remind the superintendent and the board that they work for us.
Here are my comments from Thursday night:
I’m here tonight to speak about morale in the district.
Morale and Motivation Matter. It matters how you treat people. It matters what you say to them. Morale matters.
When our teachers go for four years without a raise, when they see their step raises frozen, when they see their starting salaries reduced to the state minimum, all while the board votes to give bonuses, “state-competitive salaries,” and raises to the maximum posted salaries of the senior administration because they wouldn’t come for less, morale matters.
When our superintendent dismisses “traditionally trained” teachers as often ineffective in teaching students in high poverty areas, morale matters.
When our superintendent attempts to “motivate” teachers by posting student performance data on teachers’ doors, morale matters.
When our superintendent says that “all principals’ jobs are on the table,” morale matters. Punitive or not, morale matters.
When our board members claim that our superintendent is doing exactly what he was hired to do in doing these things, morale matters.
A love for education is what motivates teachers like Mrs. Roth to organize a star gazing event, on her own time, for Mt. Gap elementary students.
It’s what motivates Mrs. Bowling to continue to push her students to express themselves even when that expression is difficult to understand.
It’s what motivates Mrs. Dodson to take on extra work of evaluating additional assignments like poetry writing projects to encourage advanced students to continue to grow beyond merely the requirements of the test.
It’s what pushes parents and teachers to work together on projects like this year’s PTA Reflections competition on Diversity allowing for a total of 42 students across the district to go the state competition.
Good morale is not an enemy. We have excellent teachers. We have excellent principals. They love education. Help them, let them do their jobs.
Strangely on Thursday, the board seemed more than willing to respond to citizen comments. Dr. Wardynski, however, held his response to my statements until the very end of the night. This time, at least, he made his remarks in a publicly. You may read a transcript of all of those remarks here.
At a couple of points, Dr. Wardynski seems to be directly responding to myself and a parent who followed me, Ms. Kelli Thomas who spoke passionately about the fear she experiences every time she sends her child to school. I will be responding in great detail to his speech in the coming days, but there’s one issue that I would like to clear up tonight. At one point during his comments, Dr. Wardynski claimed that I was mistaken in my assertion that he was attempting to “motivate” teachers by posting student performance data on their doors. He did, in effect, imply that I was lying about the posting of data. Here’s exactly what Dr. Wardynski said during his comments following Citizens’ Comments:
We know the growth of students in our classrooms. Uh, we do not post it on the doors of our classrooms. We don’t need to. Our teachers can see it on their computers. And we discuss it every week in virtual teleconferences with our principals and our school leaders. And we review school performance at the classroom level in some cases, and at the school level in all cases.
Seemingly in response to my comments (although I know for a fact that many other parents have raised this issue with Dr. Wardynski privately as well) that teachers (at least in the “managed” schools) are required to post their students’ performance on standardized tests such as DIBELS and STAR Enterprise Testing in public areas for the entire school to see. Dr. Wardynski said, “Uh, we do not post it on the doors of our classrooms. We don’t need to. Our teachers can see it on their computers.”
Concerning this, this superintendent is mistaken. It is actually quite common among the managed schools (those who students do not achieve some pre-determined testing goal) for compiled student testing performance data to be posting in public places in these schools. Some schools, such as Morris Elementary, post this information on the wall immediately beside the teachers’ classrooms. Other schools, like Highlands Elementary have posted all of their classes scores on the window looking into the lunchroom as seen in the photos below. I have intentionally blurred these photographs so that no personal information may be seen in them, but the photos still clearly show 22 individual charts displaying the standard STAR Enterprise Test Report. Highlands Elementary’s website shows that they have 20 Grades 1-5 teachers or if you prefer classrooms. Here is a sample of the STAR Enterprise Tests Classroom Report.
What we see in the photo below are complied student performance results for the STAR Enterprise Tests displayed in a public area for everyone to see. These pictures were taken by a concerned parent with a child at Highlands Elementary.
Next we see a shot of the DIBELS testing results as well.
I have furthermore received reports that similar displays may be seen at the following schools:
- Chapman Elementary
- Highlands Elementary
- Monte Sano Elementary
- Morris Elementary
I am fairly certain that these four schools are not anomalies in this. In so far as I am aware (I have not searched the entire school in either case), neither Challenger Elementary nor Mt. Gap Elementary have similar displays. I am convinced that either they have not been asked to do so, or that their principals have simply refused to do so. Either way, I am grateful.
Education is not a zero-sum game. It is not a competition where teachers fight against each other to make sure that their scores are higher. When such competition occurs, the result quite often destroys the educational process.
Posting scores in this manner creates a competitive environment in our schools between our teachers and between our schools. If this continues, our kids will be the ultimate losers.
Thus, it would seem that Dr. Wardynski is correct when he states that “we do not post it on the doors of our classrooms.” So far I haven’t found an actual case where it is posted specifically on the classroom door. However, it would seem that he is mistaken when he suggests that the scores are only displayed on teachers computers.
Either way, I am convinced that there is a systematic effort underway at the district level to demoralize our principals, teachers, and at least the “uppity” parents who question decisions and actions of the superintendent. That was what I was speaking against. It is what I am writing to oppose even today.
No single resource is as valuable to the education of our children as our teachers. Now, I agree with Dr. Wardynski that not every teacher should be a teacher. There are a small handful of teachers in every system who likely should be doing something else. And he is also correct when he says that good teachers “don’t appreciate working with teachers who don’t do their job.”
However, despite his words to the contrary on Thursday night, I know that given the concerns I outlined in my comments that the morale of the teaching and principal corps of our district are currently at dangerously low levels.
Our teachers and principals are the public face of our educational system, and it’s far past time that they were honored for the nearly impossible task they have shouldered. It’s far past time that we parents recognized our excellent teachers and principals publicly.
Look, as a parent first, I am completely aware that any teacher or principal caught on the wrong day can come across as difficult, uncaring, or blindly stubborn. I’ve had a few of “those” meetings where I left shaking my head thinking, “Were we talking about the same child?”
But those times, even in an extraordinarily stress-filled year as 2011-2012, are extremely rare. And when they have happened, in my experience all that has been required to correct the issue is simply another discussion with them to clear the air.
Our teachers and principals are human. They are not machines. They will occasionally make mistakes or seem brisk in their tone. However, these issues pale in comparison to the ever-increasing workload, ever-decreasing financial support, and more importantly, steadily increasing attacks.
Teachers and principals teach because they love our kids and believe in education. It’s far past time that we realize that standing up for our kids means that we must almost always stand up for our teachers because they are usually on the same side.
I do not believe that this superintendent nor this board are regularly standing up for neither our kids nor our teachers. And it is far past time for that, and the kind of attacks I’ve mentioned above to end. Not to challenge Willie Nelson, but my heroes have always been teachers. They are the light-bringers. They are the Truth-tellers. And if we value those qualities in our community, we must stand for them now.
I hope that the superintendent and the board have a better Sunday morning than they gave to our principals last Sunday.
Dr. Wardynski speaks directly to the community at the conclusion of the February 2, 2012 Board Meeting
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Wardynski’s Business Practice Comments
Permalink | Shortlink | Comments (0) | TrackbackFiled in polityTags: board comments, dr. casey wardynski, huntsville city schools, school board, teachingThis is a transcript of Dr. Wardynski’s comments during the board meeting on February 16th concerning business practices efficiency.