The "More" Child

Last week I waded further into school advocacy waters by sitting in on the first meeting of the SIT at M.’s school.

Translation? SIT = School Improvement Team. The SIT is charged with developing a SIP for the school. SIP = School Improvement Plan. In MCPS, every school develops one. It’s all part of the monstrous, soul-sucking Baldridge Plan hoo-ha that MCPS adopted several years ago. Data and benchmarks and “stakeholders” and “mission statements” and databinders for second-graders (shudder).

Anyway, the PTA president asked me if I would join her at the meeting. I was going to blow it off (how many working parents can get to a school meeting at 4 in the afternoon from downtown?) but at the last minute I decided to shuffle my schedule and leave work early. I walked past the classroom where the meeting was to take place and at first was confused. A rather intense meeting was already under way. Had I missed the SIT? Evidently not. The PTA president showed up and promptly at 4 the door opened. Seems that was a “Leadership Team Meeting” with key staff members.

We walked in and I snagged a desk/chair near the door so that I would be able to slink out promptly at 5. ( I had to join a conference call via cell phone for work.) There were maybe 20 people the room, of whom I recognized two: the principal and the 6th grade counselor. They widened the circle so everyone could fit and we, the two lone parents, were invited to introduce ourselves.

Up on the Promethean board (yay expensive technology!) the schematic for the 2008-2009 SIP was projected. It was completely unreadable from the distance I and many others were sitting. What’s more, this was the 2008-2009 draft–and neither I nor my PTA friend had ever seen it before, much less had a copy in hand. [Note: Much to its credit, at least this school has its 2007-2008 SIP on its website. I just checked the websites of 4 MPCS middle schools...*none* had it posted. So much for parent involvement, transparency, accountability...all those things Baldridge is supposed to be about.] The principal proceeded to walk through the elements of the schematic: goals, leadership, stakeholders, performance results. There was lots of jargon, much of it mind-numbing, and I admit my attention started to wander. What it fixed on instead was the new book sitting on the desk of every staff member in the room: Courageous Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools.

With about 30 minutes left of our allotted hour, the principal broke everyone into small groups and doled out the goals. There was school climate, and special ed and rigor and… rigor…that’s where I went. It was just me and the–surprise!– Literacy Coach. The very same one who had advocated such an atypically out of the box solution for M. and been politely rebuffed.

So, on to the goals. Goal 1: Meet the goal of rigor by increasing the numbers of kids taking advanced/GT classes. I cut right to the chase. The first measure I told her is, in my humble opinion, meaningless. The school can stuff as many kids as it wants into a “GT” class to meet the directives set from on high (to the point that it becomes a heterogeneous class) but it tells me absolutely nothing about what happens *in* that class.

Goal 2: Increase the number of kids who score “advanced” on the MSA, the state assessment. All well and good, I told her, but meaningless for the significant (and diverse) number of students who come into the school already scoring “advanced.” As written, the goal focuses institutional attention and resources solely on low-performing students. There is no obligation to move the already advanced students a commensurate amount. And, I added, we all know that the MSA is a weak and watered down measure of achievement.

The Literacy Coach took it all in and asked me to write my comments on stickies.

We never got to Goal 3, which I think was something about increasing the number of students on the honor roll. I had to leave promptly at 5 and the meeting ran over so regrettably I wasn’t able to see the reaction when our group reported out. I’ll learn more at the next meeting.

Interestingly, the SIT/SIP process has recently been the topic of some conversation on the GT listservs. It’s being touted as one of the few ways parents can speak up for enriched and accelerated instruction. I have to say though, after going home and flipping through that book on Amazon, I don’t feel that my parental input is exactly the kind they have in mind.