Please make sure that your school board members know how unhappy you are with their decisions for your children. They need to hear from the public that this is not over. Don Richardson said on March 4th “When you have a 2 year old car, and maybe it’s sputtering a little bit, you don’t get a new car. You get a tune-up.” This “car” happens to be a lemon.

She was told that recently ‘cos when they put in place, they didn’t give a reason. It was just the result of a biased adoption process.

When we started asking questions, they said it was middle school SOL scores. When we proved they were not in crisis, it was “high schoolers can’t think”. Now they say it’s NCLB and we have proved that to be false, they’ll blame someone else.

You may as well blame Santa Claus; just get rid of Math Investigations.

As KFD suggested, they are not Republican elected officials fprichards…they are, by State law, INDEPENDENT elected officials. Although the Republican Party has foolishly attempted to “endorse” candidates for School Board office, as have the Democrats, few abide by the decision of endorsement making it rather irrelevant.

By the voting what can we surmise…using a little basic mathematics? Only 50% of the elected Board officials in the PW Republican party are supportive of choice in our schools and adherence to the letter and intent of state law and local regulations that govern our public school system. An absolute disgrace!

Lattin and Richardson are the worst offenders - I’ve watched them attack parents in public (January 21st Board meeting), pontificate endlessly about the virtues of a hollow educational program…that they have no fear of having inflicted on THEIR CHILDREN, and back a group of zealots on the PWCS Superintendent’s staff who clearly have ulterior motives to further their own association with a radical anti-math cult that’s wreaked havoc in every district and state across the nation.

This is now a referendum on THIS SCHOOL BOARD and Republican Leadership in PW County! Remove and replace this Board. This issue has handed the next election over to any group of Democrat candidates that have the sense to simply run on the promise of supporting parents and following the law. And parents deserve ANYONE other than Lattin, Richardson, and Otaigbe if this is the best the Republicans have to offer!!

“Most of you know that the population that is in my district is a heavy population of low income, African-American, Hispanic-American children. And when we talk about closing the achievement gaps in math and sciences that is why M.I. was put in place. That really was the reason; I kind of recall that.”

Coming on the heels of another board member reporting the Investigations is needed because NCLB requires school districts to demonstrate improvement in the AYP ethnic and social groupings, her statement is indeed enlightening.

It seems to me that the school district is stating that they selected Investigations because it might help minorities and disadvantaged students achieve higher SOL test scores. I think that’s a wonderful objective, but wonder about the rest of the students. Apparently, they don’t matter.

The comments are even more enlightening when you look at performance of the AYP groups since Investigations was implemented. For 2/3 of our minority students and all of our disadvantaged students, pass rates are down, considerably. And rather than shrinking, the achievement gap for that same group has gotten larger.

Anon2009 - parents do have the right to refuse to allow their children to sit for the SOL. The SOL is a state mandated test designed to assess and evaluate school performance against state standards. School districts are required, by state statute, to have every child tested (this requirement was put in place to prevent school districts from only testing carefully selected students). There is no statute prohibiting parents from pulling their child from the test.

At the elementary level the SOL is used solely to assess school performance. It isn’t used to determine inclusion into gifted or other programs. In High School students must pass a certain number of SOLs to graduate, but there are no such requirements at the elementary level.

Your school Principal may not be too happy if you don’t allow your child to be tested, because that might reflect poorly on her, but you have a right to refuse testing for your child.

The SDMT is another optional test. It’s not even state mandated. The SDMT is given in 1st and 2nd grades and has only been given since Investigations was mandated. It’s sole purpose is to monitor student achievement under Investigations - it has no other purpose. Parents of 1st and 2nd graders who teach at home are within their rights to refuse SDMT testing for their child. We wouldn’t want to corrupt the data set, after all!

Interestingly, the SDMT is a Pearson product (Pearson being SFAW and Investigations publisher) and is generally used by school districts which use SFAW or Investigations. So you have the textbook publisher providing the tool school districts use to assess student achievement for textbook they publish. Can anyone say conflict?????

I do believe the test scores for MI will be skewed by these kids who are being supplemented at home — it will keep the scores at a decent level. I bet the scores will plummet without these students. Frankly, if I still had a child in elementary school we would opt out of taking the SOL. I would like to see the SOL scores of students just taking MI without any supplementation from their parents that would give a true picture of what is happening in the schools.

I guess official boards have to meet in that style of formality, but if I had been up there I would have wanted to correct and argue back the incorrect arguments instead of speaking one by one. It is frustrating to watch.

I say that not to slander the residents of her district, but as a comment on how difficult it is to spread the word. Just a few weeks ago I ran into a father at a bookstore in the west end of the county digging though the math study guides. We got to talking and he said he hated the math program but had no idea there was an effort underway to get rid of it.

I believe that if a choice were given to parents in an unbiased, non-judgmental manner, that more than half the county parents would prefer a more traditional instructional program for their children. That’s part of what was so disappointing in the vote - it didn’t have to be either or. The balanced approach is valid and the objectives set forth in the motion would apply to any program - whether based on a traditional or a constructivist program.

Two tracks wouldn’t have destroyed the school system - we could have had two different programs which provided a balanced approach to mathematics education - one which used a classical text as the core text and another which used a constructivist text as the core.

That 4 of our school board members were so short sighted that they couldn’t imagine that is shocking.

His Obama-ness is already being attacked by his once-loyal groupies. This will become more common as every issue becomes a dire emergency and requires immediate obedience to his wishes. OR THE WORLD WILL END!!!!!

Thank you for bringing up Ramirez’ SOL scores. The public needs to know that she is full of it. Where are the people in 22191? Are they not paying attention. I will let you know that I am. I am a voter in 22191 and I’m most certainly paying attention. I’m definitely not voting for her in the next election. I’ll be sure to let all of my friends and neighbors in 22191 know that we should not support someone who is closing the gap on our children. I’m furious with her! What was she thinking? She needs to go.

If you notice she always picks up a thought that is the same as one before her.

She’s trying to make a big play,as her Husband tried to run for Supervisor last time ,so they are gearing up for the next election.
Hear Principi wants to go for Delegate. Wow. Are we in for a treat.

Vaughan - down 4
Featherstone - down 2
Leesylvania - down 3
Marumsco Hills - down 4
Porter - Up 2
Potomac View - down 2
Kilby - down 11
River Oaks - down 10
Belmont - up 1

I’m also not sure where she got her data about the achievement gap because, based on the SOL, the achievement gap has increased since MI was mandated. The SDMT was never given to county students before MI was mandated and any conclusions citing it as evidence of MI’s superior performance can’t be substantiated because there is no SDMT baseline from the old program to compare against.

It’s actually kind if sad. Mrs Ramirez’s district does have a high number of title 1 schools and district desperately needs the best program possible because those are the families least likely to be able to afford private tutors and who have the least free time to teach their kids at home. It was disheartening to see her so willingly parrot statements from the math department without taking the time to check their accuracy. Her district, of all the districts, needs choice.

Apparently we all need to feel the love for MI……

I was impressed with Ms Lucas - she asked well researched, valid questions and made critical points. She got the superstar award last night.

I was astounded at how willing staff were to misrepresent information - especially with regards to state statutes. Yes, state statutes allow school districts to select non-state adopted texts, provided the criteria they use to evaluate that text and all other texts is disclosed to the school board and officially approved by the school board, BEFORE the text is selected.

That never happened. The PWC school board was never approved the textbook evaluation criteria. The requirement makes sense when you consider why such a step would be necessary. The school system is considering a text which the VA DOE has determined does not meet it’s standards for various reasons. In an open society, the school system has to disclose those reasons to the appropriate public officials so that they can discuss and debate those reasons.

Of course - the school system claims that they selected a newer version of that text as a defense. The state is silent as to what procedure local school districts should follow when selecting a subsequent version of text. But PWC isn’t. PWC, in regulation 653, SOP 6 - 15, states that schools can select a newer version of previously approved text provided they review the text for content match with the SOLs. Check out the first few words - of a previously approved text. MI was never approved and has not subsequently been approved for Grade 5 or as a K - 4 or K - 5 series. So this regulation doesn’t apply.

PWC regulations are equally clear about non-state approved texts (same regulation - 653). They can only be used as supplemental material.

I do wonder whether anyone on the board will challenge the math department on this point.