In many ways, Dr. Shirley Weber summed up the feeling of the Board regarding the need for standards which are clearer with regard to both content and timing when she said, in the context of the need for clear year by year standards, Parents want to know "How is my kid doing? Is he getting it?"
In spite of a great deal of specific criticism of the Draft Content and Performance Standards by all members of the Board and by the public, the Board voted to approve this draft as a "consultation draft." In doing so, the Board may have been being kind to the members of the Planning, Assessment, Accountability, and Development Division staff.
The consequences of this provisional approval are now known. The District staff has not acted in good faith to carry out the wishes of the Board. The District staff has not set about the task of developing high-level, grade-by-grade standards that can guide education in San Diego to substantially greater success. Instead, the District staff has largely ignored the wishes and comments of the Board and covered up this disregard behind minimal changes. This will not benefit San Diego.
The Plan is not in accordance with either the statements from the Board or the spirit behind the acceptance of the draft document.
The Plan asserts:
The standards submitted for adoption in October 1996 were offered in a CONSULTATION DRAFT FORMAT. This means that the standards have already received sufficient review to be considered substantive consensus items, but will continue to be reviewed during the coming year by various stakeholder groups for refinement and clarification.
As anyone who attended the October 22, 1996 Board meeting should well know, the extensive criticism of the standards by the board and the members of the public made it abundantly clear that this draft is not composed of substantive consensus items, but rather of items requiring substantial revision.
The Plan further states:
The board action resulted in the approval of seven specific recommendations related to standards implementation across the district and in all schools.
The Plan goes on to enumerate seven points, but these will not be recalled as the edicts of the Board in connection with their vote on the draft standards. The above sentence suggests, but does not state, that these were the recommendations by the Board and is therefore misleading.
For example, in point three the Plan asserts:
Use of standards-based portfolio and exhibition systems, providing a common scoring mechanism across sites and clusters. These will be piloted in 1996-97, with districtwide implementation in 1997-98.
The failure of the Board to overtly criticize, or approve, a portfolio/exhibition assessment system does not constitute approval, and certainly does not authorize using the draft standards to design pilot projects in 1996-97 or district-wide implementation in 1997-1998.
Point four again appears to contradict the will of the Board:
Use of district standards as the basis for the district assessment and accountability systems. The standards are used now in PQR/WASC and Comprehensive Site Plans. The accountability system will be implemented in 1997-98.
This point seems to run entirely contrary to the intent of the Board in that the draft standards are being used in an official capacity. This is not appropriate for a consultation draft document. In any case the Board vote on the standards document did not authorize a specific accountability system for 1997-1998.
Recent actions by District staff again indicate the disregard of staff for the wishes of the Board.
Specifically, as stated in the Discussion:
As of the week of December 9, 1996, all district schools received a standards digest for each teacher which enumerates the juncture content standards and a wall chart which highlights district performance standards.
Not only do these charts summarize the very standards that the Board ordered substantially revised for clarity, specificity and content, they do so under the guise of being the official and approved District Standards. As observed by members of the public and members of the Board, these charts are not marked CONSULTATION DRAFT as was explicitly and specifically directed by the Board.
The grade level standards which will be developed this year will maintain the alignment of the juncture standards.
There was not even a hint from the Board that the juncture standards are appropriate in their own terms, much less that they should be used as the basis for development of the grade by grade standards mandated by the Board.
The Plan discusses various other documents with which the revised standards will be aligned. The first of these are local school standards and local cluster standards. To the best of our ability to determine, few if any such school or cluster standards exist or are being used to guide instruction. In any case, basing new District Standards on those (putatively) in current use is no way to raise standards.
The Plan asserts alignment with the unapproved Draft Challenge Standards, in part because the Draft Challenge Standards are reputed to be in alignment with the existing State Frameworks in Language Arts and Mathematics and with the standards of the New Standards project. The Plan also asserts that the District Standards will be aligned directly with the New Standards Project standards and with the unofficially developed California Education Round Table Draft Graduation Standards.
These affinities are ill advised.
The time allotted for public review of the draft document at this point is entirely insufficient and falls at a time when many students are out of school and families are out of town.
Hiring a public relations firm to promote the standards and deal with the public issues before the standards are even complete is no substitute for a reasonable opportunity to review and comment on the revised draft document.
San Diego City Schools have the opportunity and the potential to lead the United States back to the position of being a world leader in education. We should not fail to take advantage of this opportunity.
1) Insure that ALL documents containing information from the District's draft standards be clearly marked CONSULTATION DRAFT - NOT FOR OFFICIAL USE. Misrepresentation by the District must stop.
2) Direct that juncture standards be abandoned until specific grade-level standards have been defined. There is no reason to try to fit the pieces of the grade-level puzzle into the inadequate standards draft developed earlier by the District. Instead, high-level standards by grade level should be defined first and, if any need exists at all, then junctures can be easily defined from the grade-level materials.
3) Direct that kits to assist in developing and evaluating high-level standards (developed by The American Federation of Teachers) be purchased and utilized by the District and a public report of this process be issued. The benefits of this approach outweigh the costs by many orders of magnitude.
4) Direct that the draft standards submitted by Mathematically Correct be officially reviewed and either accepted or responded to in a public document by District personnel. This action would insure that the citizens of San Diego will be able to fully understand the intentions and actions of the District.
5) Insure that parents be afforded an opportunity to review any proposed document for a period of at least three months prior to any Board action, with at least half of this review period being during the normal school year, and ample time before the Board to make their opinions known. The document would influence the education of all children for years to come, and it is therefore unwise to restrict review and comment opportunities.
6) Insure that notices of the availability of the standards document for review be sent home with students to all parents, that an announcement of this review period appear in local publications, and that copies of the proposed document be made readily and conveniently available for this purpose. The District should be taking measures to assure that public review is extensive.
Update, April 7, 1997
Needless to say, this is a difficult undertaking indeed. The committee members are to be commended for their willingness to undertake this task and for their intention to complete the task they have before them.