Monday, January 9, 2012

The State of the Salem Schools: Read DESE's take

Every Salemite should read the DESE draft report on the Salem Schools. So why isn't it available? I'm told that the report will be released later this week. However, before it is, the city/superintendent will be given an opportunity to edit/remove some of the information contained in the draft report. I'll be very interested to see what they remove.

The basic gist is that teachers get very little direction from principals, and principals aren't on the same page with each other, because they've received little direction/mission from the school administration. The report paints the picture of a district-wide problem of direction, not just a problem with the Bentley School, as the superintendent would have you believe in a recent Patch article.

Who is to blame? I'll go with everyone for now. The former superintendent takes a lot of lumps the way this reads to me. Reading the report, you'll be glad he's gone. The school committee, led by the mayor, is responsible for selecting the superintendent, and evaluating his job performance. If the report is accurate, they failed to ensure that everyone was rowing in the same direction, and that Dr. Cameron effectively carried out his job duties.



All non-Asian Salem student groups underperform the state.

Let me address the fallacy that the problem with Salem MCAS results is in the LEP (Limited English Proficiency) and FLEP (Former Limited English Proficiency) populations. As you'll see above, it's true that LEP and FLEP students underperform their LEP and FLEP peers across the state. That said, so does every other grouping of students, except for Asian students. The only group growing achievement faster than the state average is African-American students. A district-wide problem is also a population-wide problem.

I've been trying to come up with a way to share this report with all of you, and am not having a lot of luck getting it to embed in the blog. Blogger don't play that. I was given this report by someone who had a copy, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart. I took it to a copy center and had a PDF made. Unfortunately, the report was long enough that the scanner split it into two files. I've uploaded the first PDF here. You'll have to stay tuned for the second file soon.

14 comments:

  1. Thank you for putting this out there. This is a report the parents and taxpayers of this city must read. I have already read the report. If anyone out there knows parents who are in the school system please make them aware. This is about our kids future education. Salem is a great city. The city of Salem has a school budget of 69 MILLION dollars, more than half the total city budget of 129 million.

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  2. I thank you and that someone from the bottom of my heart too.

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  3. For all of those supporters of Mayor Driscoll I hope you hold her accountable for this travesty. She has been mayor for 6 years and this school system is in shambles. Thank God for this blogger for putting this out there. Listening to Kimmy all we hear is how this is a wonderful opportunity for the schools. Wonder when the SEN will actually write about this report. The school Cmte should also step down.

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  4. For Years and Years, this Mayor has been stepping on all the folks in the school system that knew how to do their jobs. She basically shut them up, and ran things her own way. Most of them have since left for other school systems. So we hired a new school Sup for $180K a year, and his first action was to Hire Consultants to fix this issue? He should be Fired today…!
    If you folks think this is the only bad thing she has done for the city... take a look at the Salem City Budget when she took office. The city budget was near $105 Million a year. Just 6 years later the city budget is near $150 Million, and the city just took out a $500 million loan to pay for the City Pension shortfalls. This will add another $30 Million a year to the city budget for the next 30 years. That budget item will not show up until after her next election. Funny how that works out...!
    With the pending construction of 400+ low income housing units the Mayor has plans for all over the city, (St Joes, Mason Street, ect…) that will add over 500 Low Income Students to Salem’s school Population. Guess what that does to the school scores, and the city budget…! Any good school teacher would be smart and leave the school system now, before their careers become victims of Mayor Kim’s Politics.

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  5. Anon #3,

    I'll admit, my school committee vote would have been different if I had read this report before the election. Aren't you glad we just gave them a raise? At least it wasn't to $6,000 like Dr. Walsh wanted. As for this being an opportunity, in some ways it is. Level 4 status allows the city to do some things they wouldn't be able to do otherwise. I believe changes to things like hours and year length are much easier from a collective bargaining standpoint while we are in level 4. Some rules around curriculum are bypassed as well. Should it have ever come to that? Heck no.

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  6. Anon #4,

    I'm not ready to fire Russell. Reading the report it's clear that the leadership to fix this problem isn't currently in place. What would you have him do, if not try to get it elsewhere?

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  7. I also wonder, with what appears to be pretty lax oversight in general, if we would have re-elected Mr. Fleming, with his desire to spend so much time out of state.

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  8. Hi - I want to thank you so much for taking the time to post this. I have shared it on my Facebook page and have a bunch of eager parents hoping you will scan the second half. I realize how much work this is for you and wanted you to know how much we all appreciate it.

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  9. Looking forward to part 2! Thank you for posting this important report that should have been shared with ALL parents instead of being kept under wraps. Instead of being open and transparent, the school admin lacked leadership once again and decided to withhold information, have a subset of people come up with a plan, and try to look like they had their act together by the time the report got released.

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  10. I hope to have the rest of the report up tonight.

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  11. Every parent upset by the DESE findings needs to get involved. Part of the spin so far has been that we need more "outreach" to low-income parents. This amounts to blaming one segment for not testing well when nearly all segments are underperforming. The bottom line is that this report shows that the district has been failing at the basic fundamentals of school administration. We need to be very critical of all information and hold public officials accountable for putting in place the fundamentals needed fix to the underlying problems outlined in this report. I for one expect a transparent identification of all problems, measurable actions, and clear accountability. Anything short of this will be a continuation of the past four years of failure.

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  12. Thanks for posting this, it's very clearly written in the report that the issues lie with the administration and the School Committee. Hopefully at some point they'll acknowledge that and try to address the concerns identified in the report (instead of just trying to blame the parents).

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  13. Aren't all government reports publically available on request, by law?
    Why hasn't the media picked up on this?

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  14. This is frightening. I agree with the comment that fingers have been pointing to the demographics of the students, when the blame belongs to the old superintendant and the school committee. I would definitely have voted differently in the last election. Not only is no one leading the school system, but the people in the system don't seem to realize how broken it is. No consultant in the world can help fix people who have no idea what they should be doing.

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