I like my low property taxes as much as anyone else in Greenwich. But it’s clear that a major consequence of our self-imposed penury is the inexorable decline of the local school system.
As the Greenwich Time has been reporting in detail – in several articles since standardized test scores came out in late July – Greenwich ranks low in almost every measure of performance against its peer groups. I am waiting for several online services to report the full rankings of these scores but they may not be available until September because the state is slow to release all the data.
One service is http://www.conncan.org/learn/reportcards. Another is http://www.schooldigger.com/. Keep an eye on this post for updated school rankings.
The first flurry of data which comes out in July is largely irrelevant. They basically show how a particular school system performed against previous years’ scores. Like the SAT, these scores fluctuate year over year and one year’s comparison against another year is not particularly useful. Yet school administrators and school board members will jump on the slight improvements and grab headlines to manage expectations of an uninformed consuming public. I am still stunned at the virtual silence in Greenwich among parent groups and other putative school activists whom one would think would be all over the administration and school board ever since Greenwich rankings began their decline about half a decade ago.
It takes a few days to sort through the data to make some meaningful assessments. The first of these appeared in the Greenwich Time July 20 when reporter Colin Gustafson disclosed how poorly Greenwich did when compared to other districts.
He followed it up with the other article cited previously.
The excuse most heard in Greenwich for the declining standardized test scores is that they are being dragged down by the influx of the poorer and non-English speaking underclass in the western part of town. In whispers and occasionally not so subtle messaging, the gentrified folks will assure themselves that Muffy and Buffy are going to be okay. In Greenwich they will still get the best education that money can buy.
Only problem is that the facts do not support any of that. Take Eastern Middle School for instance. For decades Eastern was ranked the No. 1 middle school in the state. Then around 2005 Eastern began to slip. Last year it ranked No. 10. I am waiting for the new rankings to appear after the state releases the data. Stay tuned.
Old Greenwich school and Riverside School have had similar slips in rankings. The schools are virtually devoid of hispanic immigrants.
I feel lucky that I no longer have any children attending Greenwich public schools. The system is need of a major revamp and perhaps even an education recovery effort like a Marshall Plan. We need to engage volunteers more aggressively since no one is in the mood for raising taxes. There has to be other ideas as well.
Something has to give.
(I will give superintendent Sid Freund the benefit of the doubt for his failing to return calls from the Greenwich Time on the issue of these rankings … it is, after all, summer vacation time … but the system does have a fulltime communications director who is paid in the six figures. Eventually, there will be accountability).
Read your last sentence. They have a communications director paid in six figures to do what? Speak for people capable of speaking for themselves? The answer isn’t simply to throw more money at the school system. They have not demonstrated the ability to manage a budget. Their bosses on the school board to whom they are accountable are well meaning amateurs who have brought us Larry Leverett, Betty Sternberg, and the Hamilton Avenue school mess.
These people’s idea of cost cutting is to lay off Coach Brown, proctor of the student center in our 2500 student high school.
I’m sure the reason for the decline is multi-faceted and complex. I’m also not sure if statistically there is a huge difference in EMS being #1 or #10 in the state. It is still a good school.
But your point is noted that these numbers are troubling and are some sort of management indicator which merits attention. I would like to see a thoughtful analysis and plan of action before automatically assuming that the answer is to give the school system more money.
Comment by Craig — August 2nd, 2010 @ 6:14 am
Lincoln is RIGHT on target!! I was an administrator in the GPS and the decline in scores is reflective of the lack of respect for teachers/administrators as well as a lack of leadership. The entire system needs a major overhaul, the appointees to positions of leadership need to reflect the culture of excellence and yes, Greenwich needs to stop relying on the fact that it is Greenwich and realize that not only scores are failing, but the schools are failing ALL children there.
Comment by Mike — August 2nd, 2010 @ 9:08 am
What was even more disturbing was the quote in Hearst’s Greenwich Citizen by Superintendent Freund who said that he was targeting getting Greenwich Public Schools to the middle of DRG B or the top quartile over several years. Huh? One of the wealthiest towns in America with one of the best educated populaces which has had the motto for years of “setting the standard in public education” is striving to get into the middle of its reference group? And that only after several years? That is a disgrace.
You point out Dr. Freund’s silence on the miserable standardized test scores. But the silence from the board of education is also deafening. Let’s recall that this is the group that just a few short weeks ago touted the “success” of the town’s public schools and its Advanced Placement program. Yet in the recently released rankings of public high schools in America that are largely based on success in the AP program, Greenwich came in 844th. Just how in the world is that ranking, that is hundreds of places below its rankings just a few short years ago, a “success”?
Mr. Millstein, a while ago you highlighted the success of the Montgomery County school system in Maryland, just side of Washington, D.C. That school system, which is roughly twelve times larger than Greenwich’s, features substantially higher percentages of disadvantaged minorities, and serves an area with much higher crime rates, has achieved substantially greater success in algebra completion by eighth grade, AP test success, and other key academic metrics. So the hoary meme so often rolled out by our BOE and successive superintendents that our relatively poor standardized test scores are due to a higher than average percentage of poor students is pure bunk.
Kudos to Greenwich Time and reporter Colin Gustafson for finally revealing that the Greenwich education emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.
Mr. Millstein is absolutely right in pointing out Greenwich’s “self-imposed penury”. We have been starving our school system of funds for many years. First, does anyone think that it is a good idea to operate such a bloated high school as Greenwich High School? It is second in size only to impoverished New Britain, which has no choice but to operate such a large school. But Greenwich has the resources. A few years ago, Fairfield, hardly in Greenwich’s league in terms of fiscal resources, built a second high school when the first high school’s student population reached 2,000. GHS is now over 2,700, roughly double or larger than virtually any high school in suburban Fairfield County. Does it really make sense to cram our youth into such an overcrowded school?
And several years ago the schools superintendent here decided that he would not hire any more mid-career teachers in order to save money. His rationale, backed up by the rubberstamp BOE, was that mid-career teachers weren’t any better than new teachers, so why not save money? Look at the district’s test scores and you’ll see that something is very wrong, and we should take a good hard look at who’s teaching here.
And though literally thousands of town residents signed petitions urging the town government to rebuild its woefully inadequate auditorium and practice rooms, facilities that were outmoded even in the sixties when they were built- again, due to short-sighted penny-pinching by the government back then- our current first selectman went back on his promise to rebuild it, instead shelving the project to rebuild a fire station.
And our BOE, in their infinite wisdom, also decided to stop paying for AP test fees a few years ago, a move that resulted in a ten percentage point drop in students’ taking the tests each year. Though the BOE argued that subsidies were there for economically disadvantaged students, the data are there to show what a bad idea it was. Yet while refusing to pay test fees for challenging academic courses, such as Biology, Chemistry and foreign languages, our district refuses to ask students participating in interscholastic sports to pay a single cent. There is something patently wrong with that set of priorities. Greenwich parents should be aware that Simsbury, with substantially better test scores than Greenwich, does operate on a pay-to-play basis.
There is also something horribly wrong when our school district can’t be bothered to pay for AP test fees ($86 per test per student), but the town pays out tens of thousands of dollars for overtime alone for our recently beefed up narcotics squad that has arrested scores of GHS students for marijuana or drug paraphernalia possession. Of course, the police and the BOE refuse to tell us just how many young people attending our town schools, in the town with one of the lowest crime rates in America, have been arrested. My back of the envelope estimate is around 100 at GHS alone. And perhaps none at our town’s private schools.
One also has to question the priorities of our town’s PTA, which a couple of years ago shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to install a high-resolution closed circuit television surveillance system at GHS to replace another slightly lower resolution system that also cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And this in a school that has ranked for years as one of the safest high schools in the state.
So our town pays to maintain the biggest security team of any school in the state in Connecticut, a hi-resolution surveillance system costing hundreds of thousands of dollars (which, in fact cost well over ten times the annual pilfering it was meant to deter), a full-time police officer, and a K-9 team to sniff for drugs throughout the GHS campus. But we can’t be bothered to pay the salary of mid-career school teachers to come here, nor to encourage GHS students to sit for the increasingly important AP exams.
Lincoln Millstein is correct to point out the need for a “major revamp” in our educational system. And he’s right to be shocked by the lack of outrage from the town. Just where did our school system lose touch? This, after all is the town whose school system proudly claims as its motto, “setting the standard for excellence in public education”. Not only are Greenwich public schools not setting a standard for excellence, they are aggressively setting a standard of some of the worst academic performance among America’s wealthiest towns.
It’s time to hold our town officials- all of our officials- accountable for the shameful decline of our school system. Indeed, it’s well past that point.
Comment by Sean — August 2nd, 2010 @ 9:59 am
Mr. Millstein and Sean are absolutely on-spot! However, the thrust of the problems directly related to the lame productivity of the Greenwich Public Schools lay not within the , limitations of the students, teachers or administrators, but within the de facto “power” and business related experiences of the members of the Board of Education. Until there is a complete revision of selection process and a total cleaning out of the existing members of the board the outcomes will remain the same- you cannot expect change when you repeatedly vote for the same business-corporate-lawyers-real estate folks as members of the board. Greenwich board of education requires a number of members on the board that have had successful tenure as professional educators. As much as Greenwich would like to believe, schools should be run as a business, it has not and will not produce the desired results… Cheers, Herb, the school custodian
Comment by herb foster — August 3rd, 2010 @ 8:11 am
… and now our children in elementary schools will make their way through the high school system and the low scores will continue. Teachers have tenure and the union, they are untouchable, my children’s school is full of lazy indifferent teachers who know they don’t have to do anything, just skim by the year and then the low scores are blames on everything else, but not the awful lazy teachers we have. Principals continue to allow this behavior, thanks to the union. Go Greenwich, my taxes may be low but at the cost of the children’s education. God help us all.
No one is taking responsiblity, just passing on the buck and blaming others.
Comment by Simone — August 3rd, 2010 @ 9:32 am
Herb makes an excellent point about the broken process for BOE selection. But the solution is not the one that Greenwich Time campaigned for so hard a year ago. This paper said that the way to reform the board was to make sure that each and every candidate who came forward was endorsed by each party’s town committee, it’s official party organization, in order to give voters a chance for change. The Republicans, being an innately authoritarian group, has always, and will always, make sure that the party leadership selects its candidates internally and assure that only those anointed candidates are put forward without any party opposition. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, contrary to repeated false reporting in Greenwich Time, has never- yes, never- restricted the number of candidates it endorses for the board of ed. But it should, and here’s why.
Given the preponderance of Republican voters in town and the Republican leadership’s ability to get its members to “bullet-vote” for the most conservative and malleable Democratic candidate on the ballot (each voter in the general election is permitted to vote for two Republicans and two Democratic candidates, regardless of the party affiliation of the voter), Republicans have long been able to choose the Democrats they most want on the board, those Democrats who will “play ball” with the Republican members. And given that the chairman of the BOE has always come from the party whose candidates receive the most votes, it has meant that malleable, conservative Democrats join with conservative Republicans and a conservative Republican chairman to keep things running as they always have- in other words, keep the school system running down into the present mess of lousy test scores, misplaced priorities, overcrowded classrooms, and a high school bursting at the seams.
This past election, however, the Democratic leadership tried to get a real reform-minded Democrat elected to the board by attempting to nominate only two candidates out of the three that came forward, so that those two candidates would be assured election. But the rank-and-file refused to go along. That meant that, once again, the two conservative, only nominally Democratic, and pro-status quo candidates- Nancy Kail and Leslie Moriarty- would not only get the benefit of Republican votes, but likely a big pot of Republican campaign dollars as well that would swamp the prospects of the reform candidate- Jennifer Dayton. Indeed, Moriarty, Kail, and the out-going Susan Ellis had banded together precisely for the purpose of defeating Dayton. So seeing the writing on the wall, Dayton dropped out. Greenwich Time got what it thought it wanted- all comers from the Democratic Party- but ended up with exactly what it did not want- the same old status quo board of ed that sees no problems with the school system in spite of the overwhelming evidence right in front of their eyes.
Next time round, Greenwich Time would be well advised to wake up and understand the electoral calculus in this town and demand that the Democrats make sure that real reformers get elected by nominating only reformers, and only the two nominees that are sure to get elected, and not the same old see-no-problem, keep-costs-down, status quo candidates that have been favored in the past.
Though I doubt it will ever happen, Republican voters and parents need to raise hell with their own nominating process and their status quo candidates. Republican Chairman Anderson should be asked some pointed questions about his leadership, specifically how he feels about the school system now after having touted its “silver” status in the US News & World Reports ranking two years ago, when Greenwich High School received no ranking at all from the publication this year. If he thought it was such a prize then, is he not deeply disturbed that Greenwich has fallen out of even the “bronze” category this year?
It’s time for some very serious questions to be asked, and for major changes on the BOE, as Herb Foster rightly points out. Let’s see Greenwich Time, whose reporter Colin Gustafson has begun shining a light at the problem, continue on by asking some serious questions of our BOE members. And let’s see GT do a mea culpa about their “take all comers” strategy that once again resulted in a continuation of the status quo on the board. It’s OK. To err is human. But let’s get it right next time.
Comment by Sean — August 3rd, 2010 @ 9:54 am
Greenwich spends just as much – in fact, more – than higher-scoring districts. You can find the actual numbers here:
http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/cwp/view.asp?a=2635&q=322588
So don’t blame it on people not paying enough in taxes. Somehow New Canaan and Westport are doing just fine while spending less.
You have overcrowded classes (my son’s K class was 23, with 1 teacher, I shudder to think about high school), and the biggest problem is – if you are a fantastic student, there are programs for you. If you are a “troubled” student, there are programs for you. However, for that vast middle, you can easily, easily fall through the cracks. You’re not failing out, but you’re not living up to your potential either.
Comment by Look at the numbers — August 3rd, 2010 @ 1:42 pm
Mr. Millstein and Craig are right to point out the problems with communications. Before Greenwich Time began revealing how poor these test results really were relative to comparable schools in Connecticut, the school system and its communications director tried to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes by pretending that the results were actually quite good:
http://www.greenwichschools.org/uploaded/district/pdfs/News_Archives/News_Archives_2010-11/2010_CMT-CAPT_Report_Release.pdf
Titled “CMT & CAPT Scores On The Rise”, the press release touts the district’s “three to five year highs at virtually every level.” Superintendent Freund, citing “early indications of our success”, is quoted in the press release as saying, “we will continue to achieve new heights of student performance.”
Nowhere in that press release does it mention the depressing truth that Greenwich students underperformed their peers in DRG B at virtually every level. Only after reporter Colin Gustafson began making the dismaying comparisons across districts did Dr. Freund change his tune and declare that the results were “unacceptable”. Have the school administration become so used to stenographic reporting that they figured they could get away with this grossly misleading press release? Did they figure that Greenwich parents and taxpayers were so apathetic that they wouldn’t ask questions?
For that matter, what credibility does the communications director have left after this deliberately deceptive press release? A six-figure salary for deception? Is that what the taxpayers deserve?
And on the subject of communications, how is it that if one clicks on the “reports, studies and surveys” page of “district information” for the Greenwich Public Schools website, there is nothing but one entry: a two year-old “preliminary” summary of CAPT and CMT results from 2008? That’s it? Over the past few years, reports, data, and surveys have been progressively taken down from the schools website, as performance has slid steadily, including a review of the science curriculum revealing that Greenwich’s science program has produced by far the worst results in DRG B. That report is nowhere to be found on the website anymore, having been taken down. Is this what the school system and BOE think is honest communications?
http://www.greenwichschools.org/page.cfm?p=2468
Comment by Sean — August 3rd, 2010 @ 2:13 pm
In response to Sean,
As the person who wrote the editorials urging the parties to give voters an actual say in who sits on the Board of Education (I know, a radical concept in a democracy), I fully understand Greenwich’s “electoral calculus” as you put it. It’s not that complicated.
But please consider your argument. You are saying that the Democratic Town Committee is incapable of nominating three or four candidates without two of them being Republicans in Democrats’ clothing — “only nominally Democratic” as you put it.
If that is in fact true, then the Democratic Party in town is in enormous trouble.
As for your reform-candidate: i have no reason to believe she would not have made a good board of ed member, but in her candidate’s statement that I requested all candidates provide, she wrote, in part: “I will provide effective management of the education budget to ensure sufficient and budgetary-conscious funding for excellent instruction.”
Nothing wrong with that position, but those are not the words of a budget reformer who is promising to fight for a major change in the level at which the town funds education.
From my point of view — and I admit this is only my point of view — the major change in board of ed philosophy that you are looking for will not come until the members of the board of education are answerable to the parents of the children they serve, not the party leadership.
My purpose in this post is not to pass comment on the board of ed itself, but if it is, as you say, a status quo body that puts money first and children second, the primary responsibility belongs with both – yes both – parties in town that have appointed members to the board. And yes, an appointed board is what we have.
It is true that the DTC has been much better at nominating more than two candidates than the RTC has, and contrary to your statement above, Greenwich Time made that perfectly clear last election.
Your assertion that the town’s education problems are the fault of the RTC and Greenwich Time, while the DTC is innocent is fantasy.
I think the best solution for Greenwich, given the ability of one party to dominate, is for the board of ed to be non-partisan. Hold Board of Education elections in the spring. Candidates get on the ballot by petition and run solely on their own educational platforms. Parties play no part. It works that way in many parts of the country.
Then we would have accountability. And the town could see what would happen when a “democratically elected” board was actually elected democratically.
If I remember correctly, it would take action at the state level to enable that to happen.
Comment by Tom Mellana — August 3rd, 2010 @ 3:30 pm
Dear Mr. Mellana, let’s take this one point at a time. First, you don’t deny the fact that Greenwich Time repeatedly reported that the DTC’s nomination of more than just the two candidates for the two seats available “broke with tradition”, and that the DTC had regularly restricted the number of candidates it nominated. That was false. It behooves Greenwich Time to admit that it was wrong about that; better late than never. So your supposed urging “to give voters an actual say in who sits on the Board of Education (I know, a radical concept in a democracy)” was precisely what the DTC had been doing at each election. Your assertion that it didn’t was patently false.
But though you “fully understand Greenwich’s ‘electoral calculus’”, and that “it’s not that complicated”, in fact, you demonstrate once again that you don’t understand it. I know that it’s difficult for you to understand how difficult it is in Greenwich where Republicans have enjoyed more than double the number of voters, and still hold a double-digit lead in voter registration, for Democrats to win elections. But you have only to look at the fact that a Democrat hasn’t won election to the General Assembly since before World War I to understand that winning elections here has been difficult. Though you look at that condition and suggest that the Democratic Party is in trouble here, I would point out that Democratic registration has been increasing in the past decade, but we are still outnumbered by a large margin. If you don’t understand that, and the fact that Republican voters, guided by RTC leadership, can and do pick winners among Democratic candidates for the BOE, then you still don’t understand the electoral calculus.
And if you still can’t understand that the strong Republican plurality makes it next to impossible for a true Democratic candidate to win when the Republicans are bullet-voting, then there’s little more I can do to explain things to you. Suffice it to say that most of your readers will figure this out, will understand that for minority candidates for the board of ed to get past Republican campaign funds and votes, and will understand the need for Democrats to focus on getting true reform candidates nominated and elected through narrowing the nomination process.
As for your thumbnail sketch of Jennifer Dayton’s positions on education and reform, I suggest that you dig a bit deeper than one sentence, sit down and have a long conversation, and I think you’ll find that her positions were starkly different from the group that controls the BOE today.
Your suggestion to make the BOE election non-partisan is misguided in a number of ways. First, it’s difficult to conceive how you could believe that a supposedly “non-partisan” process in a town where Republicans strongly dominate voter registration rolls, would result in anything but an even larger Republican presence on the BOE. Take a look at the supposedly non-partisan RTM. Republicans dominate with roughly three-quarters of all members. Democrats are a small minority. So to suggest that the parties “wouldn’t be involved” is severely naive. Furthermore, it is Connecticut state law that there be minority representation on each major municipal board, including the board of selectmen, the BET, and the BOE. That is the situation across the state, and the law couldn’t be suspended for Greenwich’s BOE.
You write that I “asserted that the town’s education problems are the fault of the RTC and Greenwich Time”, a suggestion that is patently false, and you can see is false if you read what I posted. And you write that that the assertion that “the DTC is innocent” is, as you put it, “fantasy”. Again, read what I wrote carefully. I pointed out that Republicans, directed by their leadership in town, have in the past been able to, and actually have, used “bullet-voting” to influence the choice of Democratic candidates to get conservative members who play ball with the Republicans. No one who has been paying attention to past BOE elections can deny that fact. And, as I pointed out, the prospects that this would happen in the most recent election led one candidate to drop out when the DTC membership failed to restrict the candidates nominated. Now you are free to continue with your own interpretation of reality, no matter how fantastical. But I think the voters in this town understand the lay of the land. Moreover, I believe the voters will look at the abysmal results of our public school system and demand change going forward. Democrats would do well to make sure they nominate change candidates and use the tools of the DTC to avoid permitting the Republicans choose which Democrats get elected.
The RTC has for many years made sure that there is no competition within their ranks, and have made sure that Democratic and independent voters aren’t given a choice of Republican candidates. Clearly, they have no regard for your “let them all through” notion. Go back and work on them.
Comment by Sean — August 3rd, 2010 @ 7:47 pm
“Look at the numbers” is correct about the per pupil spending figures. It’s interesting that the highest cost per student in Connecticut is in the smallest school systems. The figures for suburban Fairfield County districts are pretty close. But it is true that our class sizes are high, our school buildings have been falling apart for years, the high school is grossly overcrowded, and the auditorium there was inadequate on the day it was built. But it’s also true that our per student spending is substantially lower than in many high-performing districts in Westchester County, and teacher salaries are higher there as well. Though taxes are also higher, clearly tax payers there are getting a strong return on their tax dollars. Are we?
And you’re also correct that the vast middle of the student body at GHS is overlooked. Perhaps that’s why the test results have been so poor. And the guidance counselors are overworked and really don’t get to know most kids until they begin to apply for college, well after the point when they could have made big impacts on their high school careers.
I think it is the case that Greenwich used to have the highest spending in the state per student by far, but the differential has narrowed to nothing with other suburban districts.
Comment by Sean — August 3rd, 2010 @ 8:04 pm
Sean,
I don’t want to get in a day-long slap fight over this, but let me just say a few things in response.
Your assertion that the DTC has given voters a choice for school board in every election is not true. However, this decade their record has been pretty good.
2009: they ran three candidates
2007: the minimum 2 (even though there were no incumbents running)
2005: they ran three
2003: the minimum 2
2001: they ran 3
I covered the school board for most of the 90s, and during that time, I remember only one race in which they nominated three. for all of the others, it was the minimum 2.
I know that in at least two of my editorials last year, possibly more, I made clear that the Democrats have a better record on this score than Republicans do.
This is from a July 5, 2009 editorial: “There have been exceptions, with Democrats having a better history of giving voters choice, but too often the “race” for the school board has been decided before a single vote was cast.”
Onto the ‘electoral calculus’ — do Republicans ‘bullet vote’ and put on boards the Democrats they like best when given the chance? Of course they do. My point is that the Democrats should be able to put up 3 or 4 people who are not closet Republicans, who will stick to Democratic ideals and the DTC platform. Now, while I say that, I recognize that it can be hard for the Dems to field candidates, for precisely the reasons you mention.
As for my ‘non-partisan’ idea. I said it would take action on the state level to make it possible, so I don’t know why you bring that up. And because of that, I realize that the idea is a distant long shot. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. It is the best solution that I can see.
I also realize that it’s no panacea, and far from perfect. But I do truly believe that the only way the town could ever achieve a major shift in how it funds education would be through parents, who constitute a huge voting block, having direct power over the Board of Ed. And the only way they can do that is by voting for them.
Isn’t that the most fundamental idea behind American democracy?
Consider it this way, even if the DTC were to put four descendants of John Dewey on the school board, they wouldn’t be able to achieve much without some cooperation from Republican members. You are absolutely right that Republicans ultimately have control of the board, event though it is bi-partisan. And you are absolutely right that the RTC allows for zero competition. If my memory serves, in the roughly 20-year time span I mentioned above, the RTC nominated three candidates only once — and that was only because they were trying to force an incumbent off the board.
The RTC executive committee picks their two for the school board, and the RTC rank and file don’t challenge them. That’s how it goes. So unless school board voting is made more democratic, and some power is taken from the executive committee’s hands, the changes you are seeking simply won’t happen. That’s the ultimate ‘calculus’ that you have to contend with.
When you say ‘Moreover, I believe the voters will look at the abysmal results of our public school system and demand change going forward.’ How will they make that demand if they can’t do it at the ballot box?
Finally, I did look back at my paragraph that began ‘Your assertion that the town’s education problems …’
You are right, it did misrepresent what you wrote. I apologize for that.
Comment by Tom Mellana — August 4th, 2010 @ 11:39 am
Mr. Mellana, you are absolutely correct about the numbers of candidates that the Democrats endorsed each year. But you leave out a major fact: that was all the people who stepped forward to run, or could be induced to run in each election. No one was excluded by the DTC from a nomination who came forward to serve. Perhaps you would like to write an editorial, or a series of editorials encouraging more Democrats to serve on the board. Because we have certainly looked for new candidates.
I think that the relative disparities in voter registration mean that restricting candidates on the Democratic side to make sure that candidates who will indeed fight against the Republican status quo on education get through makes sense; I also think that leaning on the Republicans to open their process makes sense. Though they never will.
But here are some constructive suggestions for the editorial board and GT’s reporting going forward.
BOE Chairman Anderson touted GPS’s “silver” designation by US News & World Reports a year ago, an honor that we no longer receive. Indeed, we don’t even rate a “bronze” designation. Why not sit down with him for an interview and ask him if he thinks GPS is performing as well as he told us before he was elected? Why not ask him how he views the standardized test scores of the past year now? Why not ask him how in the world he could have approved the release of a press statement titled, “CMT & CAPT Results On the Rise”, when reporting by GT’s Colin Gustafson later showed how truly poor those results were compared with our peer districts?
And why not go back to the candidate statements of last fall which contained demonstrated falsehoods regarding GPS performance and get some clarifications today?
A few weeks ago, a letter from all eight BOE members appeared on your editorial page extolling the success of Greenwich Public Schools, in particular the AP program. Given that we are now ranked just 844th nationally based largely on our AP program, why not take those eight members- both Democratic and Republican- to task for their rosy letter, and ask them how they believe their stance is still justified?
And why not pen some hard-hitting editorials taking our town and school administration to task for a few things. Among them:
Why are we spending tens of thousands of dollars on police overtime alone for the recently enlarged narcotics squad to arrest kids for smoking pot, when those same funds could be used to hire another guidance counselor to help relieve the pressure on the grossly overworked guidance counselors at GHS? Should we really be transferring police officers to narcotics and paying massive amounts of overtime? Or should we be spending that money on new and better teachers to improve academic performance and reduce class sizes?
Why does GHS not pay a penny for Advance Placement test fees ($86 per test per student) for its students, while it pays through the nose to maintain the biggest staff of security guards of any school in the state, as well as a full-time police officer in a town that is one of the very safest in America in a school that was already one of the safest in the state?
Why, when our nation and town are suffering from the economic downturn and unemployment, did the PTA spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to install a video surveillance system covering virtually every inch of the school and its grounds, money that could have been used for scholarships to defray the ever-rising cost of college tuition? I realize that the economic collapse came after the installation. But did it really make any sense back then either?
How about writing about the antedeluvian system of “gatekeeping” at GHS that is used to sharply restrict the number of students taking AP courses, when research has clearly demonstrated that taking AP, even if one fails the test, is highly correlated with success in earning a college degree? Why does GHS put just two in five graduates through that program, when comparable schools put twice the percentage through?
And the best topic that your reporters and your editorial page can and should debunk is the constant and false excuse put out by BOE members and superintendents that our poor performance on standardized tests is due to a relatively high percentage of poor people in our schools. It doesn’t take much digging to see how false that claim is; indeed, economically disadvantaged students themselves perform worse in Greenwich than at any other school in DRG B. If you can destroy that argument and make sure that no BOE member or superintendent ever again leans on that crutch, you will have done the community a major service.
And here’s another. In your recent article, your reporter pointed out that the largest number of GHS graduates would be attending a community college. Please ask the question of our leaders why graduates of the public high school serving one of the wealthiest towns in America with one of the very best educated populaces in the nation would send so many graduates to community college rather than a four-year college. And why is the percentage of GHS graduates going to four-year institutions so much lower than at comparable suburban high schools in our region?
If you pose those questions and demand answers, and don’t stop asking those questions until you get good answers, then Greenwich Time will have performed a very valuable public service indeed.
Comment by Sean — August 4th, 2010 @ 12:50 pm
Certainly with no disrespect to Sean, it is encouraging that a number of students are seeking their post education experience in community colleges. For too long community colleges have not gotten their respect that they are deserved. What this number reported represents for me is that students are beginning to realize that costs and employment possibilities are more advantageous via the community college route. Moreover, because of c.c.’s affordability they are most likely more attuned to the students’ career goals. Good luck to all those students that are seeking an alternative route to achieve real-life experiences and employment possibilities. Furthermore, once an associate degree is earned the students can always transfer to a four- year institution. The research clearly indicates that students who earned their associate degrees are much more successful in completing their four year degree than students who begin in a four-year program.
Let’s us not look down on community colleges for they provide more affordable and worthwhile employment-oriented opportunities that four-year institutions rarely offer.
Why do most folks in this country believe that every graduating high school student MUST attend a four-year institution? What is a four-year degree “worth” now compared to what a four-year degree meant 20-30 years ago in terms of obtaining a balanced, in-depth and research-based educational background?? One only has to look at the on-line degree programs for masters and doctorate degrees obtained in the comfort of one’s own home- such a disgrace to the folks who actually earned their degrees by attending classes with other students, and hopefully, accommodating differing attitudes, feelings and beliefs.
To Tom- Unfortunately you or I could not find four descendants of John Dewey for the Greenwich school board- remember he had “communist” tendencies?? My word!!!
Cheers, Mr. C. Herb, the accountant
Comment by herb foster — August 4th, 2010 @ 1:43 pm
“where is the outrage” – I couldn’t agree more! Nothing will ever change unless parents demand more from the education of their children in this town. The administrators of the public schools in this town are more interested in providing employment and benefits for themselves and the teachers. As long as they maintain an appearance of providing a decent education that is good enough to sustain property values and keep taxes low they are left alone to go about their business. If during this process some children manage to get educated then all well and good. If we as parents do not stand up and insist that this is not good enough then nothing will change this dynamic.
Last year you printed the results from Schooldigger.com on your blog. I was astonished to learn that the school my children attend had very poor results despite being told for years by my principal that the school was one of the top schools in the state. I took the results to school and tried to get some support from my PTA to take some action and get some explanation from the principal. I got one of 3 answers from every person I tried : 1. Disbelief, “Clearly the figures are wrong”. 2. Disinterest, ” Well,
my child is doing OK” 3. Dismay, “Yes, I know but there’s no point in bothering just hire a tutor, that’s what I did”. The PTA listened for 2 minutes then carried on talking about their book sales.
Education in this town will not improve until you can get those attitudes to change .The administration will continue with their announcements that “scores are heading in the right direction” and the parents of Greenwich will continue to believe them. My question is, how bad does it have to get before the parents of this town will consider it bad enough to take action? In my book we already past that point years ago but clearly I am in the minority and until I am in the majority, nothing will ever change.
Comment by Ceci — August 5th, 2010 @ 5:17 pm
Dear Ceci- You are correct to be outraged, but where are your fellow parents? Let us establish the fact that the parents are those folks that vote (if they bother to vote) for their representatives to the board of education that hires the administrators, and the parents are seemingly oblivious to the lack of service that is being provided by the board of education.
I suggest that the parents become better informed and less political in their voting selections to the board. The outcomes of the past board of education members has been abysmal, but I do not hear parents expressing their OUTRAGE.
You, Ceci are a voice of reason, a parent force and you could be the leader in expressing this need to the PTC leadership: to get on-board and begin to foster more parent representatives to choose to run in the next board of education election. The present board and the previous boards have all simply placed their heads in the Greenwich beach sand and have not been held responsible for this mess. This is an outrage as well.
Remember, in this current political climate- you get what you vote for, or sadly in most cases, perhaps did not bother to vote at all.
Best of luck to you, Ceci. Let’s hear from you soon.
Cheers, Herb,
Comment by herb foster — August 5th, 2010 @ 8:17 pm
I agree with the comments above that nothing will change until the tide of public opinion forces change on the decision makers and ultimately that can only happen when the BOE decides to flex it’s muscles and demand more of the superintendent – whether that is possible under the current structure I leave to the more informed respondents above. I want to look know the reasons for the decline in standards and therefore how we solve it. I understand from above the answer is not underfunding since apparently we have a comparable per pupil cost and our teachers are paid above average. To my mind there can only therefore be a few reasons for lack of excellence – poor leadership, poor curriculum choice, ineffective policies and incompetent teaching, would be among my suggestions given what I observe in my Children’s school.
I agree with Simone above, my school seems to have an above average number of non-performing teachers. The parent body are all aware who they are, we know the principal knows who they are from the number of non-requests he receives every year and yet year after year they continue to destroy the lives of our children. Even the good teachers are hampered by using ineffective programs. The new spelling program for grades 3-5 was a classic example – a new program, untried, untested, without any research from the publishers proving efficacy , the district jumped in and purchased it despite findings from it’s own selection panel that it was lacking in several areas, which the district then was forced to develop it’s own “supplemental” materials to make up for the defaults in the program – hardly the scientific research based program that we have been promised the district will use. On top of this, teachers in the upper grades refuse to correct and return work to parents, a policy approved by the principal, for which the concealment of a child’s progress can be the only purpose.
Of course, all of these are simply my personal observations of potential problems in the school district – since the administration however refuses to comment, I can only
conclude that my personal observations are valid. Anytime that Dr Freund would like to give us the benefit of his thoughts on the decline then I would be very interested to hear his thoughts. Since the district is still in denial mode and the apex of Dr Freund’s ambition appears to be to achieve mediocrity sometime in the middle of the next decade, I do not hold out any great hope of the district instigating any of the needed change of it’s own accord in time for it to be of any benefit for my own children.
Comment by Jackie — August 6th, 2010 @ 1:30 am
Thank you to Herb for your kind comments. I agree also with the poster above – until the district acknowledges there is a problem they cannot begin to address it. I am very insulted by the district’s continued denials, clearly they do not credit us with the intelligence to look at a set of figures and deduce that an increase of 0.2% is not adequate given the depths to which the score has sunk, even if Dr Freund thinks it’s ” headed in the right direction”.
I, too wish to know what the district believes is the problem and how it is going to address it. If the person above is correct, then I hardly think Dr Freund’s “Evolution is Revolution” approach is going to be adequate – what does he even mean by that
nonsense anyway? I would suggest he uses a dictionary because evolution cannot actually mean revolution. I presume in Dr Freunds book evolution means “a good excuse for not actually doing anything to solve the problem because I won’t be here in a few years so why bother having to sort the district out anyway”
Comment by Ceci — August 6th, 2010 @ 1:57 am
Keep up the pressure, Jackie and Ceci. You can take charge of this situation.
There needs to be an upside down pyramid of power generated by professionally trained teachers before any appreciable changes in the current power structure of the Greenwich Public Schools. The current structure, that is, a pyramid with the few power brokers on top delegating down to the lower folks on that pyramid. This form of structure is designed to maintain the status quo- not unlike the military, prisons, corporations, and industry – all with the expressed outcome of maintaining the STATUS QUO=’s POWER. How else does one maintain control of others? Keep up the good work, Jackie and Ceci.
Cheers, herb
Comment by herb foster — August 6th, 2010 @ 5:10 pm
The problem with running 11 elementary schools is that you are paying 11 principals, 11 AP’s, 11 nurses, 11 school psychologists, 11 sets of cafeteria staff, 11 sets of front office help, etc. that is part of the reason our per pupil costs are so high. We are not spending the same amount of money on actual student education resources as other districts. We are spending our money on funding neighborhood small schools where resources are constantly duplicated and costing taxpayers extra money.
If you play around on cmtreports.org, you will see that several of our schools score as high, if not higher, then most schools in New Canann, Wilton, Darien. The 4th graders at Glenville, North Mianus and Riverside all scored as high as their peers in high performing districts.
Last thought – our BOE is all about governance and not management so they rarely seem to get involved in the nuts and bolts of education. They ask questions about monitoring reports and vote on policy but rarely discuss the day to day education in our district.
Comment by OGMOM — August 6th, 2010 @ 5:13 pm
Excellent points, OGMOM! Your point about the BOE and their governance role is straight-on. This “not to get involved” in the actual education of children has got to be changed. The suggestion made to find interested and qualified professional educators-teachers to run for the board is essential to this change. Cheers, Herb
Comment by herb foster — August 6th, 2010 @ 7:19 pm
Good points by OGMOM about the BOE. By the way, why is it that not a single solitary Board of Education member has uttered a peep about these terrible test scores? I know it’s summer, but the release of the state’s standardized test scores is an important moment for the school system in the year. Why don’t they tell the community what they think, and whether or not they feel responsible for the poor results?
And why hasn’t the Greenwich PTA made an issue out of these chronically bad scores? Why, for that matter, is the PTA still cutting out working parents by holding their meetings at noon? And are the Greenwich PTA’s priorities really straight when they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to install a hi-resolution video surveillance system at the high school, which has been one of the safest for years, instead of using that money for sorely needed scholarships or other instructional improvements?
And could Dr. Freund and his communications director tell us why they initially put out a press release that praised the test results, when the truth was that the results were lousy?
It’s high time that school officials began to give the community straight and honest answers.
Comment by Sean — August 7th, 2010 @ 3:45 pm
OGMOM Nailed it! How did we manage to walk to school in the old days packing our lunch?
Comment by IDAHO — August 7th, 2010 @ 6:08 pm
Sean is on the mark once again. I certainly second his comments and suggestions. Why has not the board taken any responsibilities for the dreadful results? Why do working parents not insist on meetings of the PTC be at a more convenient time in order for them to be present thoughts and opinions? Why has the supt. and his p.r. director been given a feee pass on their presentation of misleading data??? Sean brings these real issues out for all to think about and act upon immediately. Excellent job, Sean. Cheers, herb
Comment by herb foster — August 7th, 2010 @ 9:01 pm
I know some schools have evening meetings after dinner but no one shows up except the same handful of parnts…unless there is a crisis like mold or something.
Comment by greenmom — August 8th, 2010 @ 1:13 pm
Dear greenmom- We appreciate your contributions to this horrible mess in G. You point out another factor to the complicity of the problem. Parents that have the opportunity to attend the evening PTC meetings need to feel the obligation to attend and be a force. Without willing and able parents attending meetings the status quo will continue to exist- forever!! Cheers, herb
Comment by herb foster — August 8th, 2010 @ 8:19 pm
Great discussion. I was also surprised at the lack of outrage when the Greenwich Time published the salaries of the principals and administrators. They are crowding the classrooms and yanking aides from where they are needed, but have so many people making in the six figures. Where’s the oversight of these so-called managers, and what value do they bring? Another problem is the pervasive culture of the administrators trying to keep costs down at the classroom level.
Comment by Another OG Mom — September 10th, 2010 @ 12:42 pm