28 Comments - the Patriot - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 6:56 am: No surprise, 3rd through 8th graders can’t vote, or contribute to the campaign so the guv doesn’t care. I believe I was attacked yesterday for commenting the governor needed to oust the political hacks and hire people qualified in their respective fields. For a guy boasting about education, he sure doesn’t seem eager to get the materials to measure his success to the students. - Horace Mann - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 7:02 am: Second that, Patriot. Randy Dunn and Mark Kolatz (now gone to the campaign, er, Governor’s Staff) are Exhibits A and B of what folks said would happen when ARod took over ISBE. - skater - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 7:19 am: whoa. check the facts. this was a screw up on Harcout’s end - they have admitted this several times, including last month’s ISBE meeting (in which SBE members, appointed by the Guv, grilled Harcourt’s top execs). The company failed to communicate problems with ISBE, instead allowing the situation to explode when schools recieved incorrect testing materials. yes, it’s fun and easy to make a connection between the Guv’s office and this whole mess, but take a step back folks. sometimes we’re too quick to assume foul play when the executive branch is involved. - Mike's Used Sport's Section - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 8:12 am: This would matter if the Republicans were competent enough to make this into a real issue, but they aren’t so it won’t. - ISBE - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 8:27 am: Skater, you’re right, Horace Mann out to get his facts straight. I don’t know of any ISBE employee that wouldn’t say that Dr. Dunn is doing a great job. And by the way, at least Horace could spell his name right, it’s KOLAZ, not Kolatz. - annoyed all the time - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 8:49 am: I am with skater - this company was unable to meet their deadlines - I am sure it takes time to iron out kinks in a new program unfortunately this is one that is very important and has deadlines - I think the kids can do just fine still on the tests as long as the local school administrators handle this well - who knows if any of the other compaies who bid would have been in the same situation - truly Harcourt is supposed to have experience and be the best at it but even the best have trouble sometimes - I think the republicans are trying to make this into a governor and his lobby friend issue more than an issue of a failed contract which is what it really is - this is the part I hate about election year - it’s sometimes just a bunch of bells and whistles and hot air being blow around and blame and fingers being pointed instead of what it really is - a business failed to provide the testing material on -time. - Truthful James - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 8:57 am: The ISBE is that organization that dumbed down the ISATs and then normed down the results so that more students would pass — making incompetent teachers look better and assuaging parents who otherwise would be up in arms. That woulld break the Democrat/NEA/PTA front, and we can’t have that. ISBE is full of Ed School graduates with advanced degrees who do believe in relative standards and not in absolute knowledge and are there to validate what is being taught rather than what needs to be learned They are supposed to be a control agency, guarding our children. Instead they are a roadblock to the reform necessary to compete in the 21st Century world economy. - Sound Reasoning - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 9:24 am: Ok let’s not blame the ISBE even though they had the oversight responsibility on this project and should have detected this monumental failure much earlier in the process if they had been performing their jobs correctly. Let’s blame the company as others have suggested. This is the same company that is also a major campaign contributor to our current Governor. This isn’t a Republican that is trying to make this into a Governor and his lobby buddies issue. It is a documented fact that the company is a major backer of our current Governor but I’m sure that has nothing to do with them keeping their contract. - steve schnorf - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 9:50 am: I certainly don’t think it is accurate to include Randy Dunn in anyone’s defintion of “politcal hacks”. There surely are some, their were some in every administration that I ever worked in, but Dunn isn’t one. He is clearly qualified for his position. - Truthful James - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 10:03 am: I don’t believe that Randy Dunn is a political hack. He is certainly qualified by education (PhD). But beyond that, please define him for me. What qualifies him to lead a necessary reform of the Illinois education system in the 21st Century? - steve schnorf - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 10:15 am: Truthful James; What qualifies him is simple for me. He was selected by a democratically elected Governor with whom we imbued the authority to do so, and confirmed by a Senate also elected by the people of the state. As I like to point out, the Governor didn’t seize power in a coup. And when we elect people, part of what goes with that is the power to make those kind of decisions and responsibility for the results. - It's 5 O'clock somewhere - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 10:23 am: When I was in school if I did not finish my assignment on time, I was given a failing grade. Now in the business if I fail to do my work, I pay the price (no raise, no promotion, or get fired.) I think the educators should also pay the price - Yellow Dog Democrat - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 10:49 am: Lets also not forget, if memory serves me right, that Ron Gidwitz was still in charge of the ISBE when this RFP was bid out. - Cuban - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 11:17 am: I applaude State Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia for standing up to the board of Education and saying it like it is! Those two people should resign or better yet should be fired for negligence and mismanagment! I have followed what was going on, and have found that State Rep. Chapa LaVia is one of the few independent voices in Springfield who we the public can count on to stand up for us! Thanks to her, finally someone is doing something to fix state education in Illinois! - skater - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 11:53 am: if we’re going to get into a debate about standardized testing, let’s remember that that ISBE is REQUIRED to assess students thanks to NCLB. I think the agency would much rather spend their time creating and monitoring programs and development opportunties instead of analyzing test scores. James-I urge you to look outside of traditional media for info about the change in the IGAP scoring system; the alteration was necessary. ISBE staff are well qualified and choose to serve with the agency because of their commitment to education and the kids of Illinois. again, a uninformed, knee-jerk reaction is satisfying to submit on the blog, but check your facts before you wave around your opinion outside of Rich Miller-land and spread misinformation. btw-I’m sincerely interested in your thoughts on what ‘education reform’ should look like. - annoyed all the time - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 12:14 pm: In response to Truthful, who DOESN’t contribute to campaigns? Many people and many corporations do. And i would bet that most everyone who does business with any state agency gives contributions. It’s not illegal to do so. And yes, Gidwitz was there when the RFP was won. - Truthful James - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 12:31 pm: So we are going to blame the problems in ISBE on Ron Gidwitz? That is laughable. There is no doubt that as a public executive he leaves/left a lot to be desired, but don’t go peeing into the wind on this. To whom did he report? - Truthful James - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 12:50 pm: Annoyed all the time – You really, really, really aren’t going to compare my four tickets to Rich Mell and to the Mayor of Chicago, with the money, voting bloc, etc. of the teacher’s union, are you? And I never asked either for anything — let alone the expensive early retirement program which has brought Districts teetering close to insolvency. skater — The ISBE has been doing ISATs long before NCLB was born. You sound like you are on the inside of the ISBE redoubt. Best you tell us all why the test results were normed down — or do you deny that. Try not to overwhem me with the malarkey about ISBE people being well qualified and self sacrificing. There isn’t a hair shirt in Springfield. If they are so well qualified, why aren’t they enforcing standards on the Districts. And by the way, their District financial review process is abysmal. NCLB attempots to provide national standards, which boards, administrators and teachers do not want to see. Suggest you open your mind to the President;s Adviosry Commission on Science and technology (ranking various grades in comparison to the rest of the world), and the complaints from the national Governors Association regarding the cost of remedial education of their entering college students. Let’s admit the problem and correct it. - Budget Watcher - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 2:36 pm: The link between the incompetency of the contractor and the hiring of a very well-connected lobbyist absolutely is valid. John Wyma, and by extension the Governor’s Office, had to be part of the decision calculus. Also valid is who in the ISBE was responsible for performing oversight of the contract deliverables. Fair or not to Mr. Dunn, he was, and still is, the person in charge, and he has to bear the responsibility to the public and to the General Assembly. - Swani - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 3:14 pm: At least Dunn stepped up to the plate and took responsibility for this mess. Blo-puffer-vich should take some lessons from him. - skater - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 3:22 pm: you are correct that standardized testing was in place prior to NCLB. the ties to funding are new - this is the issue. the stakes are incredibly high, putting schools in a really unfortunate position of choosing between testing prep and quality learning. i do not work for ISBE and will leave that to people with more experience and a broader knowledge about educating kids in Illinois. my interest in this topic is our emphasis on one-dimensional testing as a basis for funding and comparison, which compels me to learn as much as i can on the subject. here’s the skinny on the new cut scores; the changes bring the scoring system in line with that of the other grades, and bring it in line with nationwide percentiles. i was skeptical about the change, and sought out information until i was satisfied that it was indeed important for the reliability of the test. you say, let’s admit the problem and correct it. here’s the problem. we need to change our national perception of education as a failing cash cow and develop a philosophy of education that motivates teachers and administrators to develop curriculum emphasizing creative problem solving and hands-on learning, assessed by writing and information synthesis instead of rote, multiple choice testing. we need to make parents understand that their involvement and support is CRITICAL to the success of their kid’s education. and we need to build facilities that energize kids and get them excited about spending their day at school. difficult? yes. this is directly related to socio-economics, geography, race, religion, $$$, and any other hot topic that you want to throw in. do we have a choice but to confront it? no. and we’ve gotta do it soon. i’m not sure what you mean by ISBE not ‘enforcing standards on districts’, James. please clarify for me. - Horace Mann - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 3:35 pm: Pardon my mispelling of Mr. Kolaz’ name. That notwithstanding, my point remains that one did not witness this blatant political interference into one of the most sensitive public contracts in Illinois until Team Blago took over. Kolaz’ predecessor was an attorney and budget guru who was an acknowledged expert on school finance. Kolaz, on the other hand, was a field director for the Blago campaign and ran several failed small businesses. An experienced management team would have supervised this major contract much more closely and not had the 11th hour “aw, shucks” response this group did. I only hope they don’t have the stonies to come out and label a bunch of schools as “failing” after their total failure at administering this test. - Truthful James - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 4:08 pm: You are correct in indicating that parents are an essential leg of the stool of knowledge on which students sit. There are several problems which don’t go away. First, we have now passed a couple of generations through the system — either school leavers or graduates — many of which do not believe either in the basic American concept — necessary now as ever — of interclass mobility. We can see this evident in the attitudes of the earlier Eastern European and the more recent Asian families. For them, education is an economic and a social good. The alternative is a permanent welfare underclass. No country can afford that. If the parent(s) do not believe in a way up, if by example they show that to the child, the teacher — even early start and head start can not make a permanent difference. There are exceptions from family to family, from neighborhood to neighborhood, no doubt. But if the parents have failed in their duty to the family, the teachers have not succeeded either. Education methodology is well and good, necessary to manage a classroom. But where is the subject matter mastery and love which is essential to teaching mathematics, the sciences, even English. Teaching certificates alone are not enough. Each subject has its own rhythm and discipline and it behooves the classroom teacher to educate himself or herself as an undergraduate major and following that in graduate programs, keeping knowledge up to date. The best teachers love their subject matter, will do anything to inculcate that love in their students. They will stand for periodic examinations in the subjects they teach That leg on the stool needs to be reinforced. Within the profession the teachers — as well as separately in medicine and law, their own practitioners — need to shun and weed out their incompetents. The question here is straightforfard == how do we maximize the value of a public education on a student by student basis? I believe in local control of schools, with funding coming from Federal, State and local resources. The third leg of the stool is the taxpayers, combined with the boards they elected and the administrators In concert they must provie the answer to the Optimization above, subject to the constraint of available resources. The taxpayers (aside from the trusting parents) no longer have faith in the boards and the administrators. That is why we have open warfare at referendum time. Boards have hidden agendas and expenditures. Teacher contracts, for instance, advertised as 4% increases find salaries increasing perhaps 7% as longevity factors and raises for additional education courses are factored in. Temporary loans from Working Cash Funds are made permanent, and that Fund abolished, with additional Bonds then sold to reconstitute that Fund. For as long as sufficient parents voted for tax rate increases, they outnumbered the empty nesters. That pendulum has swung back. Oddly enough — in Cook County the PTELL law coupled with the seven percent solution were in reaction to taxpayer dissatisfaction. But they crippled non home rule communities, including school districts. Even referenda freely passed could not permit the unit of government to extend taxes at the approved rate. The cost equation has been bollixed up by these laws. Given the restrictions, then, how can we increase quality? The only solution is competitive choice. Include all qualified schools with qualified teachers in the education function. As long as the cost per student remains below the revenue per student, allow the District in support of the parents to pay tuition at another school. But let the District retain for its own purposes the ‘overage’. Let the District evaluate the chosen schools. We — the families of Illinois, the State of Illinois, and the United States — can afford nothing less. - Truthful James - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 6:04 pm: skater — I did not address some of your points earlier, for which I apologize. I disagree completely with your expression that the cchoice is betweem “…testing ptep and quality learning…” That’s braiwashing material straight from the NEA. In point of fact you (the schools) were teaching to the ISAT before. Every education system teaches to satisfy the source of funding. In this case the NCLB test results were showing such a variance with the ISATs as to throw doubts on the State system. “…a philosophy of education that motivates teachers and administrators to develop curriculum emphasizing creative problem solving and hands-on learning…” I am sorry, but I agree, The schools have not even got half this far. But after this, you hit all the buzzwords — which sound good but have little intellectual content. If creative problem solving is what you want to get to, then it will have to be well grounded in the basics, which the kids are not now getting. This is the sort of approach which works only with a small set of the seniors. New Trier tried to set up something like this in the 1970s, but it never worked out and for one reason or another wa dropped. For creative problem solving you need creative students. Science demands creative problem solving but that comes at the college and Graduate level when they understand the problem and its components. Education school theory has in its creativity retarded atudent development by using fuzzy math and proximate spelling. Rigor is learned over time. “…and we need to build facilities that energize kids and get them excited about spending their day at school…” That is a cop out. It is the teacher in the classroom who sets the environment in which learning is energized. That energy creates the excitement. If the ISBE is not the setter, monitor and enforcer of educational standards in public schools in Illinois — then why have it? - dumb o'l country boy - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 6:26 pm: Wow, sure did not take YYD to place the blame on someone else, a Republican no doubt, it’s Nixon’s fault. Typical, YDD, except no blame and point the finger at someone else…. Right out of the Hot Rod’s political play book. - Pointer - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 7:55 pm: The contract with Harcourt was signed November 2004 by current State Superintendent Dunn and Chief Counsel Jon Furr. Seems they should look at who’s fingers were on the pen before they (and the Rod”ettes”) begin lambasting the prior folks in charge. - Four fingers back atcha - Thursday, Apr 6, 06 @ 8:21 pm: The contract was signed by them, but the Board that approved it had no Blago appointees on it. That’s why the “pay to play” allegations aren’t sticking — Wyma never lobbied Blago’s board or superintendent, he was lobbying Gidwitz. And I haven’t seen them ever accuse Gidwitz of wrongdoing. But the meltdown occurred on their watch, and presumably both they and Harcourt share the blame from what’s happened since — you can try to break up a percentage, but it’s clearly some of each. Trackback ArchPundit - Friday, Apr 7, 06 @ 9:29 am: One Way or Another, It’s a Problem This follows up on the comments below though I hadn’t read the article yet. The Pantagraph blasts the Senate Democrats for confirming Tim Martin for the second half as head of IDOT. They are right–perhaps confirming him might be reasonable,… Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.