You may have missed how busy this day was. It was a red letter day for Delaware education.

I would like to direct your attention to information about today.

Accountability Framework Working Group Update Interesting Meeting

Breaking News: Delaware DOE Wants To Add Charters To Priority & Focus Status In ESEA Waiver Request

Big Mouth Strikes Again: What Did Earl Jacques Say This Time To Diss Parents?

And finally….

State Board of Education: “Poverty Is Not An Excuse…It Is Not Destiny”

Reading through all of these one understands just how much change has taken place in Delaware’s educational field that was not approved by Delawareans… In fact, most of us are solidly against it.   But by handpicking working groups, by having the state board dismiss or add whatever it wants, and by giving the DOE the right to make up whatever it wants with no oversight by anyone, certain agendas have now been set in stone….

But like the Emperor’s New Clothes, the ruse is based on a sham….

That sham is the new upcoming school rating.

It is sort of like a credit score but for schools.  As you know, you may try to always keep up your good credit score, but if some entity can benefit from your scores’ lowering, there is really nothing you can do… That payment mailed last month, didn’t arrive until the day after it was late, and your surcharge and note to a credit scoring company was unfortunately already sent.

Now credit scores are beneficial for banks wishing to credibly loan money.. But should they also determine more than your driving record of what you pay for automobile insurance?  (They do)… Legitimate entities like banks may need to know how well you pay back what you borrow.  But should employers also be able to cut out every applicant for a new position whose score is below their preset level?  (They do).

The idea behind linking all these necessary life functions to your credit score, was to make you scared and try very hard to keep it as high as you possibly can… Which means banks will get their money.

The original idea pushed in the survey just last year over the stoplight rating of schools, was that knowing how a school performed would help take some of the trial and error parents experience as they try to find the right school for their child…. What the above articles now show us, is that this is going to be used as a whip to flagellate public schools.

  • Opt out percentages…. will count against your score.
  • Charters if allowed in… will now be able to win all the reward prize money because they get to handpick their students and public schools don’t.
  • Everything  in this score depends on how every student does on this one single Smarter Balanced test.
  • Poverty is being dismissed as the prime factor in a student’s score; blame is being shifted on teachers by the State Board of Insolence…..
  • Charters are being rushed into existence bankrolled by large charter operators, despite embarrassing local operations.

This is the agenda of the scored school rating;  to make people do what this administration wants… What this administration appears to want, is to have everyone who is affluent do well on the Smarter Balanced Assessment.  And put everyone who doesn’t, in cheap-ass charters.

And this narrow agenda is bad for Delaware’s education overall.  Because charters do take lots of money from public schools and put it directly in the wealthy’s private pockets.  Charters hurt the 4 students remaining in public schools more than they help the one who jumps to charter.

Charters do not teach as well as do public schools… We know this in Delaware because under the past DCAS public schools out-taught charters across the board.  The DCAS tested all children at the beginning of the year, and then in the middle, and if they weren’t passing at that time, they retook it at year’s end. From studying those results one can quickly see that public schools actually taught more (had more improvement) than did charters…. But some charters scores were higher than everyone else’s, simply because they hand-picked the top affluent students from the four districts around them.

The current test, Smarter Balanced Assessment, only illustrates the end score… No one even cares if a teacher took on a class that couldn’t read and got them all up to the third grade level…. She will always be a failure because her school had only 16% whose knowledge was two grades in advance of their age: (the newest definition of “proficient“.  If one is in 3rd Grade, their child is now tested at the 5th grade level and if passing, deemed as “proficient”.

The fix is in.  That jumps readily from reading the posted links above.  Here are clues.

  • The State Board will ignore all recommendations made by the task force and instead do what the Governor insists.
  • Out of all 62 Delawares representative elected officials, 52 sided to allow opt-out to be punitive-free. Yet it is held up by a veto until the Board quickly passes new penalties for opting out…
  • The State Board is ignoring all evidence of poverty’s influence on student learning.  It is assuming that teachers in one year can adjust for 8 years of educational neglect.  It will fire those teachers who can’t in someway make those scores magically better.
  • Earl Jacques said all fvckin’ parents are stupid ho’s because hes so smart and they dare disagree with him…
  • No one likes the system but are being told they have to follow it because of the……… “Feds”…….  This is balony btw, Most other states will not go the extremes this governor is pushing this state to go, and none of those states will have negative reactions from the feds for not being as reactionary as is Delaware.  This new agenda here is being driven solely by corporate investors, and those governors who are minions of that select group, are the only ones pushing it as hard as we… which means it is us and New York, home of Wall Street.

So even though quite possibly only 1% of Delawareans support using the Smarter Balanced Assessments to rate all of Delaware’s schools, as well as punish schools who parents are smart like New Yorkers and protect their children by opting them out,  this policy is still going forward solely from is inertia and from being pushed by moles, hidden and visible, as well as stealthy emerging from secret meetings behind closed doors.

Can you say fix?

So what needs to be done to stop the train wreak from happening?

As anyone who has every watched old Westerns either on TV or the movies knows, to stop a runaway train, you have to shut down the engine.

And what is driving all this blooey is the Smarter Balanced Assessment…   If we shut down the Smarter Balanced Assessment, then like the train, education will be saved….

The easiest way to shut down the Smarter Balanced Assessment is for our legislature to do these things.

All DOE policy changes regarding testing of Delaware’s students must be voted on by the full General Assembly and pass both houses and be signed by the Governor.

The state of Delaware will not fund the Smarter Balanced Assessment after this upcoming school year.

The State of Delaware will create it’s own test.  First gather a task group consisting solely of teachers to come up with good tests per grade levels. then sell it to an overseer board made up of business, colleges, and educational interests (but no educational corporations), then redo the recommendations handed back down, then with the overseer’s approval, send it to the state DOE to vote up or down on using that test.

Every parent has it as their constitutional obligation to opt their child out of this test.  This test is purposefully testing your child on material they do not know in order to close down your child’s school.

We already have no confidence votes by teachers and by administrators and by district boards of education… What is needed now is the vote of no-confidence by every Delawarean parent….

Your opting out your child is a direct challenge to this administration which blindsided you by putting this program in place, and opting out does two things. It protects your child from this horrendous test;  it makes a statement that you, a parent, do not wish to participate in a competition, where the fix is already in…..