C&E1st Responds to V4DE Exec. Dir's NJ Letter

Sadly, I found that I was wrote this reponse that it took a bit of snarky turn. I apologize for that.   It's just difficult to take a newly-christened organization seriously when it's first big endeavour was politicize school board elections in Delaware! I know that times are changing and change is coming and you either need to get off the track or jump on the train... but I just can't do either.  I believe that school board elections are sacred.  And if I end up as flast as a pancake, sobeit.  The BLUE below - those are my comments.

On May 16, The News Journal published a letter by Jack Palidori making several allegations against the organization I direct, Voices 4 Delaware Education. The News Journal did not note Mr. Palidori’s role as the National Education Association’s “campaigns and elections specialist.”

Greg, I don't think it was the News Journal's responsibility to "out" Jack Polidori - and that's Polidori with an "o" - as an elections specialist.  In fact, the same could be said for you - a former Cincinnati, Ohio politician with his own Wikipedia page.

The NEA, through its state affiliate, the Delaware State Education Association and related PACs, is likely the biggest contributor to political campaigns in the state. We respect their right to share their voice, but frankly in education policy for many years, it’s been the only one.

No, dear.  NEA is not the only voice in education policy.  There's DPTA, DSPAC, DSBA, PIC, DOE, Charter Network, Chamber of Commerce, Rodel, Vision Network,  Ed Voters of DE (oh, right, your organization ate theirs); you get the idea.  In fact, rather than add a voice to the educational landscape - one could presume that you snuffed one out...

So, we hope they respect our right to speak up on behalf of other citizens, including students, parents and community and business leaders.

Really?  Again?  PTA, DSPAC, DSBA, PIC, DOE, Charter, Chamber, Rodel, Vision, Rotary, the Gov. Council for Exceptional Persons... 

Being a new entrant into a political environment dominated by one voice, Voices anticipated that the natural reaction of the current monopoly would be to attempt to discredit and marginalize us, including questioning our legal standing.

Of course you expected it - you sent hate mail to voters - to education voters - voters who take the time to learn about their candidates and make a concentrated effort to hit the polls in school board elections. In DELAWARE, geographically not the smallest state, but in degrees of separation, we're almost as inbred as Cecil County, Maryland! 

We hope the affirmative response by the Delaware Elections Committee and Attorney General’s Office addressed those concerns. 

It may be legal, but it's not ethical.  I think one of the biggest differences between your organization and all the others that have a voice in education policy in Delaware is that we can see who is supporting those organizations, who is on their boards. THEY OPERATE IN SUNLIGHT! Your backers hide in the dark.  And that's just SHADY.

But this is not about “us versus them.” There will be times we agree and times we won’t.

Did you know that both Voices's backers and the "union" all signed onto the RTTT MOU? (Me? Still Proud of that Big, Fat, NO!)

Voices believes Delaware can be a national leader on education, but we also believe that to get there, change is going to be incredibly hard and it will require outstanding leadership at all levels.

And the disastrous and horrific media campaign perpetrated by your action fund shows that Voices endorses dirty politics in order to silence anyone who might disagree - including a freakin' stay-at-home mom (like me.)

As a state, Delaware has a great plan and the leadership and resources to implement it. Its strategies have been validated at the highest levels.

No, no, no. Great Plan?  I never thought that, hence my big, fat, no vote to the RTTT MOU!  Resources?  Try a temporary four-year grant with a three-year spend down of federal resources and then a pass off onto cash-strapped locals... No.  And those strategies have not passed the litmus test as far as peer-reviewed research and efficacy.  In fact, longitudinal data on the "models" show only pockets of success - NOT overwhelming or even middle-whelming success.  Pockets, baby, don't hold many children!  And I need to educate all of mine, not just the ones that fit in your pocket or the deep pockets of your slimy backers.

The Obama administration, for example, rated Delaware’s education plan No. 1 in the nation, while awarding the state $119 million for its implementation.

Delaware and Tennessee share that honor.  And everyone knows that Delaware got the Biden bump.  The plan, itself, was nothing more than a re-spew of Ren10 and Chicago's turnabout disaster... And we all know that that is where Arne Duncan crawled out of the woodwork...

The state’s education plan raises academic standards so that our kids can compete with the best in the world. It seeds or builds upon innovative strategies to ensure students reach these standards. A major component of the reform work is to improve teacher effectiveness. This includes rewarding the state’s most capable teachers, and developing professional learning communities within which teachers learn from the successes of their peers.

For this one, I will defer to DSEA and CEA.  Only my teachers in the classrooms can tell me if these programs will work.  Do they believe that financial rewards will make them better teachers?  Do they feel that PLC are benefiting children in the classrooms?  Do they have better suggestions that we've simply never listened to?  Teachers - feel free to chime in!

The plan also includes strategies to turn around the state’s lowest-performing schools via Partnership Zones, which are spurring innovation. Some of the PZ schools, for example, have redesigned their curriculums to allow for deeper, project based learning. Parents who are frustrated by standardized tests and teachers who don’t enjoy teaching to the test are now welcoming changes that allow students to develop deep content knowledge. Students enjoy engaging in projects rather than sitting passively behind desks.

PBL - that's debatable, without the intense multi-year training required, PBL is a failure for both teachers and students.   PBL takes much more than an PD session or two and it's so early in implementation in PZ schools that it's much too soon to determine its effectiveness.  Add to that, I sat in on a meeting in January when DOE as much as admitted they were take-it-or-leave-it-folks when it came to PBL.  Heck, they offered to let CSD take it out of the Glasgow plan.   


As far as those who are frustrated by standardized tests - show me where Delaware laws and/or regulations allow a parent to opt their child out of DCAS.  SHOW ME! Mike Stetter in DOE is on record stating that the only exemption is a medical exemption.  Families can't opt out of the test if their child is frustrated nor can they simply opt into methods that "allow students to develop deep content knowledge." A totally uninformed statement by you, Mr. Harris.


You may be right about students enjoying engagement rather than passive sitting - I call that lecture-based curriculum delivery - which is the norm in comprehensive schools.  But, I challenge you to research other models of delivery such as the one employed by the Lab School of Washington D.C. that has educators teaching children each concept through at least three senses in an arts-based program.  While the D.C. school is geared to students with ADD/HD, it's local charter start-up is showing that the model applies to all students not just those with IEPs and 504s. And while no intervention is one-size-fits-all, systematically deploying methods like PBL across domains and locations only squeezes out time and room for other delivery models.  

Parents, Do you want your child to attend a PBL-school?  Would you prefer to send them to the PBL magnet school that has fully developed its teachers and is producing results?  Or do you seek to see all of your schools adopt PBL half-heartedly?   

Another focus is to build a top-notch early childhood development system. Brain development research shows that early learning, from birth to age 5, is the most important phase of a child’s development.

You are so funny, Greg! For decades, early educators and researchers have been telling us about brain plasticity and child development, begging for funding to for educational systems that tap into this rich opportunity to educate our youngest ones.  While RTTT has created an arm to address this well-known fact, investing in early childhood development was not a brainstorm moment.  And it's actually pretty shameful that it took until 2010-12 for the state and federal government to actually recognize the importance of the young mind.

The education arm is designed to increase public engagement in education, including voter turnout in school board elections. Earlier this month, less than 1 percent of eligible voters participated in school board elections that determine who manages hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. We need to change that.

Actually, Greg, I appreciate this.  You Super PAC's hate mail campaign did one important thing for local elections - it spurred Delawareans to hit the polls if for no other reason than to say no to decrepit campaign tactics.  Voters who normally would have ignored school board elections felt compelled to fight back and send a resounding message - and did they ever with an 0-3 for your c4.

Through Voices’ advocacy arm, we will support progressive educational legislation, as well as do what we can to recruit and support well-qualified citizens to run for school boards and the Statehouse.

"Recruit and support well-qualified citizens to run for school boards" because we can all see that Voices and its secret backers don't believe that the run-of-the-mill-parent is well-qualified.

Voices is a young organization, and rather abruptly inserted ourselves into Delaware’s political arena. We will only get better at what we do and develop our capacity to support change agents who are willing to run for political office. As long as education rates are lagging in the state, Voices will help elect advocates who have the best interests of our schoolchildren at heart.

You really believe the manure that the Delaware business community and your $$$ backers are feeding you, don't you?  So, tell me: what would happen if, along the way to educational policy domination, you determined that one of your elected advocates had parted opinions with your founders on just how to address the best interests of our schoolchildren? Would you toss that advocate under the bus to appease the money men or would you step up and support your advocate?

The May 8 school board elections are now behind us, and we congratulate the winners. What’s important now is that we forge ahead on our shared goal to ensure that all Delaware students, from pre-school to college, are given a world-class education.

If this was an apology, it sucked.  And it's pretty hard to forge ahead hand-in-hand with Voices when you know that just around the corner is another election for school board - mine.  And while I still have a yearning to return to full-time motherhood while my children are young enough to appreciate it, your c4 has certainly inspired me to want to run again!  Thank You for that, I'll be giving it careful consideration over the next eight or so months.  It could be an amazing race - given that I have spent three years publicly sharing my thoughts and views on this blog.  What a treasure trove for your super PAC.  They wouldn't even need to take my comments out of context!

'Til we meet again... Hoping things are grand in Cincinnati!