'Diving for data': Portland School Board needs a translator fluent in 'educationalese'

Drama may be a rare commodity at a Portland School Board meeting.  But mind-numbing, eye-glazing tedium?  You can count on that.

Consider Monday's meeting.  Following a moderately engaging discussion of the role of counselors in schools (and a lively recognition of Jefferson High's championship girls basketball team --woohoo!  Go Dems!), board members were 'treated' to another in the seemingly endless succession of power point charts, timelines, and bullet points, courtesy this time of the district bigwigs in charge of the latest effort to make sense of Portland's muddled and inequitable array of educational offerings. 

New Super Carole Smith has created three 'teams' to figure things out --four if you count the "overarching" Equity team.  They are the

• Pre-K-8 team
• High school strategy team

and my favorite

• Accelerating Achievement team

You may wonder what the last one is all about.  So does the team itself.  Its first goal --it said so on one of its power point slides-- is this:

• "What does accelerating achievement mean?"

Good question.  To me the terminology says it all.  It's about test scores.  As for accelerating, which in normal English means "speeding up", wouldn't it be better to simply say "improving"?  Why do we want to speed things up?  Education should be outcome- based, not deadline-based.  Good educators know that students learn at different paces, at varying rates.  Some simply need more time to master skills. 

And shouldn't "achievement"  --which smacks of test scores-- be banned from the discussion altogether and replaced with "learning"?  Schools, after all, are places for learning, not achieving.

But here's where the translator is sorely needed.  One of the stated goals of the AA team is to

"Identify the desired attributes of real time data management systems"

which (I think) has to do with making test scores more user friendly to teachers and principals so they can more easily "accelerate achievement."

The murkiest and most indecipherable jargon came from John Wilhelmi, head of the high school strategy team.  He spoke of "tension points", "drivers of the vision", "design options"and "typology distribution".  One of his team's power-pointed goals was

"Define district understanding of the design elements of key decisions that will form..." something or other. 

Wilhelmi was also the one responsible using the term "data dive" to describe the agenda of  the team's first meeting.

I waited in vain for one of the board "directors" to jump up and shout, "Say what?"  But it wasn't to be.  Maybe they understood it all.  Or maybe their brains were too benumbed to to respond the way I wanted them to.  Perhaps something like,

"Could you guys just try speaking in plain English?"

*****************

Board members managed to sidestep drama and dispute at the previous meeting, the one where the board approved the custodians and food service workers contract by a 4-3 vote.  Not surprising that rebuttals to the three naysayers --Regan, Sargent, and Henning (Henning?)-- were polite and devoid of indignation.  The seven "directors" are so constrained by board protocols and fear of offending that there's little danger of untoward exuberance sullying their "debates".

But ...the opportunity certainly presented itself last week for the other four members to stick a final fork in the market-based arguments opposing the contract.  (In Portland, the almighty free market determines which schools thrive and which ones die.)

We see heated exchanges in the Presidential debates.  Why not occasionally at a school board meeting?

I like a spirited argument.

Comments

[Steve R.]

Watching the meeting Monday, with all its PowerPoint and buzzword soup led me to a sad conclusion.

The Carole Smith honeymoon is over. We're just seeing more of the same old, same old.

The word "equity" has been co-opted. I keep hearing it, but I'm still not seeing it.

I hear Jefferson may be losing as many as 4 FTE next year.

If they are not debating in the meetings, like they should, (open government, transparency, standing up for what you think is correct and stating that to your constituents etc.) then the debates are taking place somewhere else. Or by somebody else. Your pick.

Steve R., I am so surprised you can't see the equitableness of PPS -- after all, each kid has the same administration, is in a classroom, has a teacher, is in a school, how much more equitable do you want it to be? We've always been "equitable", just needed someone to bring the term to the forefront. Goes hand in hand with "closing the achievement gap" (pretty much an impossibility unless the kids at the top quit learning so the others can catch up), "strengthening neighborhood schools" (something all of the board members had as part of their campaign platforms), "increasing achievement" (meaning more improved test scores on a seqment of what might be termed education), "educational excellence" (see increasing achievement above), and "becoming world class competitive" (with third world countries I now presume).

Since when does the school board count as a democracy? Why would they need to have a debate? Would you rather they stage one for the public's sake? I often wonder if they debate before the board meetings which is why they look so somber...

I would rather they have honest debates which are public. It is how you hold your elected representatives accountable -- a basic tenet of any democracy.