Sunday, September 7, 2014
Greeley CO District 6 Board's Best Chance at Real Change
I agree there have been some good changes made over the years and this must be acknowledged. Especially in the Board of Directors changes have been significant. Plus certainly the decision to not renew Lang's contract is the highlight of all that's good in education for the town of Greeley. The chance for a superbly highly qualified and competent Superintendent with the ability to construct a well-honed team lurks on the horizon. I hope the search is extensive and the interview process inclusive of a high regard for education rather than the political dogma and ideology which has gutted the possibilities of District 6 for so long.
However some disturbing news has reached me and raises some new concerns (the reason for this posts obviously) on this topic. As such I am urging citizens of Greeley to be vigilant on the process of hiring Ms. Lang's replacement. It means everything to your child's future that this process be fair, impartial, and objective--with a formal professionalism.
The selection of Mr. Eads to Interim Director is very troubling. As I blogged on some years past, http://greeleyville.blogspot.com/2010/01/financial-crisis-or-house-cleaning-for.html, for example or here http://greeleyville.blogspot.com/2009/10/part-iii-greeley-school-district-six.html as a second example; As an Interim Director with Mr. Eads tendency towards nepotism and favoritism, and I'll argue manipulation of the leadership of the Board of District 6 through the art of "Credentials over Substance", could lead to a very shaky hiring process when combined with other professional debris Ms. Lang left behind. That spells out an even bleaker future for District 6. It is time for the Board to be strong and do their own homework independently.
Emails and conversations have reached me from concerned parents who have brought some dubious actions into light--citing that those with long ties to District 6 are already feeling the tip of the sword Eads is presumed to have been given to wield. It is not a strong sign of Democratic leadership for the leader who climbs into the throne seat to first thing shed the school district of any person worthy of challenging, logically and reasonably, some of the poor positions and decisions that lurk in the District 6 history. In fact it is the sign of desperation to purge those who disagree or challenge one's authority.
To be fair, a strong and well-reasoned human resources executive, along with an objective Board of Directors should check this power surge. Sadly though these historical nepotistic trends in District 6 are not one of the positive changes the Board has driven. The wagons instead, have been circled, allowing those with questionable credentials to pick and choose their friends with even more questionable credentials and place them in high value jobs. An audit on these selective systems and managers would indeed I believe uncover a murky history or clear it once and for all.
Alas, for now, I will hold out that this newer Board will act fairly and objectively, ensuring that their Interim Director has no conflict of interest in selecting Ms. Lang's long term replacement or influencing the people who will choose that person. A truly professional process must be given the chance to thrive. While the local paper will remain a rubber stamp for the inappropriate, and some will argue, corrupt democratic shenanigans, there are twenty-six thousand others watching and reading as a force for doing what is it right--and above question. Democratic process in public institutions after all is a part of the whole job and the check and balance the public relies upon to curtail abuses of power.
I'll be one of those watching this with interest--keep those documents flowing; I'm reading with great concern; I still have family in D6 schools. :)
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Greeley District 6 CASP Scores Are Out! Not Pretty.
Unbelievable. If you have a kid in a public school in Colorado I strongly urge parents to make both the State and Districts accountable for fully publishing these scores. It appears the State, at least, are playing them down. Too close to elections.
It looks like they have changed the display of the scoring system so results don't look so dismal. 4th grade Math D6 has moved from 33% proficiency to 40% proficiency while 25% are "partially proficient". Hah! That will get those kids a job all right in our future economy--Walmart Stockboy. It looks like they have broken out the Spanish Speaker scores. Anyway you look at it there are still 60% of 4th graders failing full proficiency in Math.
I just took a look at the Colorado State Education site. Oddly, I don't remember it being this difficult to find the CSAP scores last year when I reported on them. Most incompetent school board, District 6, and administrative staff I have ever encountered. And the community of Greeley is doing relatively nothing about it. Both Ms. Lang, Superintendent and Mr. Eads are still raking in the dough with Mr. Eads having extraordinary power for his known qualifications. It was Mr. Eads, if Greeley remembers, who put up the strange figures for the proposed 16 million dollar budget loss--that wasn't really a 16 million dollar budget loss after all but helped the Board sweep through personnel and the Teacher's Union with a wide brush and strike fear into classified personnel. After having spent, in the previous year or two, the District's reserves on software instead of saving it for an emergency prudently!
Meanwhile the Teacher's Union has zero power after the Board forced it to role over while claiming budget woes and drastic cuts that turned out not to be quite so drastic after all. After the District had shed a lot of teachers, undermined the hispanic community schools, consolidated all the violent offenders in with the low performers, and clearly refused to clean house at the Administrative level.
Yet few in Greeley seem to care. Why is that?
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Greeley School District 6 Cuts Government and World Culture Requirements
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Should We Concentrate On Building Better Teachers in Greeley Colorado?
Around the country, education researchers were beginning to address similar questions. The testing mandates in No Child Left Behind had generated a sea of data, and researchers were now able to parse student achievement in ways they never had before. A new generation of economists devised statistical methods to measure the “value added” to a student’s performance by almost every factor imaginable: class size versus per-pupil funding versus curriculum. When researchers ran the numbers in dozens of different studies, every factor under a school’s control produced just a tiny impact, except for one: which teacher the student had been assigned to. Some teachers could regularly lift their students’ test scores above the average for children of the same race, class and ability level. Others’ students left with below-average results year after year. William Sanders, a statistician studying Tennessee teachers with a colleague, found that a student with a weak teacher for three straight years would score, on average, 50 percentile points behind a similar student with a strong teacher for those years. Teachers working in the same building, teaching the same grade, produced very different outcomes. And the gaps were huge. Eric Hanushek, a Stanford economist, found that while the top 5 percent of teachers were able to impart a year and a half’s worth of learning to students in one school year, as judged by standardized tests, the weakest 5 percent advanced their students only half a year of material each year."