Superintendent and board members confirmed that it is going to be "CHOICE" for the middle and High School students in Visalia next year! Hip Hip Hooray!
Even though this is the best news in 2 years for the students of our district, now is not the time to become complacent. There still exists too many hold-outs who would have us think that we have won and those who insist that nothing has changed.
It is time that the gnashing of sabers be sheathed and some positive direction taken towards putting our students back on track and ahead of task in their math as they enter the college system.
Let it be understood that I did not do this alone and that I will not take that credit.
I will however have a small victory party (maybe a shallow one would be more appropriate) at my home within the next couple of weeks with all involved invited.
Thank you MC for all of your support too.
Combat complacency was the motto of the 1961 National Key Club Convention, I have always tried to remember that. This is especially the time to keep it in mind. Over the coming year of assessments of both programs, that is all the time we can count on.
Jim Best 209-627-5430
July 10, 1998
In a conversation with the newly appointed VUSD Supt., Dr. Linda Gonzales I am pleased to announce that "Choice" is going to be the path taken during the coming academic year. This appears to be the avenue at this time to be recommended at this time by Dr. Gonzales to the VUSD Board and my understanding also table any recommended new text purchases for the coming year.
At this time a small victory for the students planning to take college prep course work and those also going on to pursue a vocational career, Hooray! This coming year will be a traking pursuit. It will be necessary to assure that students are not placed but have the choice without the coercion of either side as will it be necessary to keep a close watch to make sure that the higher scoring students are not used as in the past to skew scores. Now is not the time for celebration but one for dedicated work to assure that all are dealt with fairly and that testing is done by all and not the top 1/3 or so. If this is the way it will be handled then both classes should be handled the same way.
This past year a principal was overheard chastising a counselor for allowing some certain ethnic students to take the SATs as they were ESLs and would lower the schools scoring. This also underlines the necessity to instruct towars academics and not test scores. The students want to learn so now once again they will have the opportunity, let's protect it.
Board meeting will be the actual decision time, be there.
June 10, 1998
We now have a new supt. on board, a Mrs. Gonzales, formerly of the Bassett School Dist. East of LA. Her comments in the paper sound promising but with my understanding of the Bassett Dist. they remain a very liberal system with many persons taking exception to the innovative curriculum changes she made, I would like to hear more on this from someone.
In our local paper she advocates retaining basics while also using new technology and instructional materials. Guess it depends on whether this remains as status quo with 3rd graders with calculators. As one teacher said "sure some parents complain because I give my 3rd graders calculators but after all how many times can they punch in 6 x 5 without knowing it is 30, a monumental number. In fact I would say based on some cashiers it could take a lifetime and a day.
Anyway on the 23rd of this month at our board meeting there is supposed to be as one of the alternatives,,CHOICE of math programs,,basic or conceptual (cpm) proposed along with others, textbook programs of a general low quality. Parents PLEASE come out or once again the board will be innundated with a mass of monumental verbacious semantic soliloqui in which many words will be tossed around with no meaning. This missal will be followed by the usual "You must act now or we will lose our window of time to make the changes for this coming year as you were promised."
Now comes the question; what happened to all the tradional text books. If in fact they were not destroyed we will not need to spend the 1/2 million bucks on the new books and if they were destroyed as is rumored someone should be prosecuted for this atrocity. The rumor is that there were two dumpsters of textbooks ordered thrown out by one of the dept. chairs, I doubt it as that would be a callous breach of law but stanger things have happened here.
Questions? Contact Jim Best.
Mar 23, 1998
The VUSD board of trustees took no actions again last night, essentially stating through this procedure that Algebra in its traditional form is no longer being offerred here. This was after a parent spoke regarding her son who wanted to go into engineering was having to take algebra at the College of the Sequoias to obtain the necessary math basics to get in the UC system. Following her was Ms' Tracy Gustafson, math instructor at College of the Sequoias who also stated (for the 2nd time) that the CPM program does not prepare the student for college work and that contrary to popular opinion is not taught on the college level. My conversation with Cal Poly SLO confirms that even though CPM author Dr. Sallee was instrumental in establishing the criteria for entering freshman in the UC system it is faulty. If students meet all the pre-requisites set forth in the pamphlet chances are they (the student)will be thrown in the bone-head math for remedial work befor being allowed to enter into mainstream courses. My contribution was to show the poor stats from COS that our graduates have in both the English as well as the Math departments. Also reading a document from Mr. John McGrath, University Recruiting for IBM which emphasized that BASIC MATH is an integral part of the math test potential technical employees must take. The score they make on the test directly affects the applicants position in the hiring pool. This information was also backed up by DOD research showing the declining standings of the students on Mathland. All this, and silence save for the red flag that my 3 minutes were expired. I will host a coffee/snack meeting next week for parents and community members who would like to be more active or supportive in the effort to place basic sound math and language back in our schools, k-12. Jim Best
Update March 17, 1997
VUSD is in the planning stages of planning a curriculum planning meeting. Tentatively this meeting is for teachers and dept. administrators only. Parents and the community including the local Jr. College (COS) must be a part of this process. It is my belief that we can even have a meeting allowing those who did not have the opportunity to speak because of scheduling conflicts to be heard. Please contact me so I can pass on the numbers to the interim supt. and board members.
[Note: For a report from the media, see Math debate draws a crowd: More than 100 discuss use of traditional vs. college-prep, by John Andrews, Visalia Times-Delta, Mar. 4, 1998]
Last nite (Tue. March 3) the VUSD board of trustees held the meeting as promised, the first hour and half was pretty much a re-hash of the Sept. 30 meeting where we were told about CPM (as if we did not know) and a 10 minute out take from 60 minutes bashing traditional.
The board heard 32 persons with the majority being staff who responded to the call to come and support their program. It was however refreshing to hear several teachers acknowledge that due to problems they supported choice, including one of the CPM teacher instructors stating that he was hearing some horror stories and this was not his teaching.
The bottom line is the board acknowledged they heard us, Hoo Rey.
Now it is our job to keep the issue alive and not return home and feel the job has been done.
My personal thanx to all those who made this the largest group of parents attending an academic based meeting in this district, at least in many years. Thank you all who E mailed me information and thank you Mathematically Correct.
Jim Best
1815 E. Buena Vista.
627-5430