Ridgewood students, educators trying to find a way through the pressure
JULY 1, 2014 LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, JULY 1, 2014, 3:22 PM BY LAURA HERZOG STAFF WRITER
This past school year, Ridgewood High School (RHS) Assistant Principal Jeff Nyhuis dealt with a surprising problem.
He had to work with sports coaches to block out unscheduled time – during the summer. Some families have children playing so many summer sports, it’s a struggle for them to find time to vacation.
“It ends up encompassing the whole summer, so no one can really get away,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”
It’s just one more indication of the P-word: Pressure. It’s a well-known word in Ridgewood.
And it’s a word that Ridgewood’s recent graduates, and RHS’ upcoming juniors and seniors, will learn even more about in the future as they struggle to stand out in a world that can be far more competitive and demanding than RHS. Some concerned educators and parents worry about RHS students who are already struggling too much to be the best in everything, working harder but not necessarily smarter, and sometimes forgetting to enjoy what they are doing.
In recent years, some concerned parents and educators have been fighting back against sources of stress (facing adults, as well as children), and this year was no exception. On the other hand, some parents and educators point out that pressure itself is not bad; challenge and competition can motivate and ready students for a tough world, they observe.
Governor Chris Christie Promises New PARCC Approach Jul. 01 Chris Christie, Common Core, Education no comments By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Both sides of the aisle have big problems with Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) testing, Save Jerseyans, so during an under-reported exchange at last week’s town hall meeting in Haddon Heights, Governor Chris Christie told a teacher participant that he’d pitch a fresh proposal to address those concerns in 7-10 days.
The stakes are growing as the landscape darkens. New Jersey is facing extreme fiscal pressure as another budget fails to meet basic obligations without borrowing, and the Republican 2016 prospect is hoping to roll out a new pension and benefits reform package soon, too, all while presidential speculation and Bridgegate rumors keep Trenton on edge and his Administration off-balance.
What would a new approach to PARCC/Common Core even look like? Here’s what he had to say…
Mandates lead to call for new school administrators in Ridgewood
JUNE 23, 2014 LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, JUNE 23, 2014, 1:52 PM BY LAURA HERZOG STAFF WRITER
The Board of Education (BOE) recently renewed discussions on whether the district should add two more administrative positions next school year.
The move is part of the superintendent’s three-year plan, which was announced last year, to ultimately replace seven administrative positions that were cut in 2010, when the district lost all its state aid and had to make big budget cuts.
The new positions would help lighten the load facing the district’s overworked administrative staff, argued Superintendent Daniel Fishbein. The schools chief first proposed the new positions, a science supervisor and a special education supervisor, at a BOE meeting in May.
But some BOE trustees, especially Jim Morgan, had doubts about the superintendent’s proposal, because it would add fixed costs of around $300,000 to the already strained, and rising, budget. Morgan also questioned the necessity of adding administrative positions, because the district is already operating effectively.
BOE Vice President Vince Loncto and trustee Christina Krauss also expressed reservations at the time. BOE trustee Michele Lenhard was absent for the discussion, and BOE President Sheila Brogan expressed support for the new positions.
In light of the opposition facing him, Fishbein came prepared at a June 2 meeting with a data-based argument in favor of the positions. He quantified the workload of administrators, and provided trustees with a list of other districts similar to Ridgewood with larger administrative staffs.
Assembly Puts Brakes On Common Core Jun. 18 By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
If I told you that the Democrat-dominated New Jersey Assembly voted 72-4 this week to slow down the pace of Common Core State Standards implementation, Save Jerseyans, you’d probably feel the urge to get your eyes checked. But that’s exactly what happened on Monday. Go figure….
The legislative effort spearheaded by Assemblywoman Mila Jasey (D-Essex) won a dozen primary sponsors and overwhelming bipartisan support; if it becomes law, the bill would establish a task force to review (not scrap) state participation in the controversial new Common Core standards and the equally controversial the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) testing.
It’s a step in the right direction, however tiny… and not necessarily for the right reasons…
Key to understanding this story is whom the initiatives manage to offend.
Why I’m pulling my kids out of public school By Lynne Rigby Sunday, June 8, 2014 6:21pm
Lynne Rigby with her husband and five children. “Today’s public school atmosphere is all about accountability and not about the actual needs of the child,’’ she writes in her open letter to Gov. Rick Scott and school officials. “Not everything in education can be quantified.’’ Lynne Rigby photo
Editor’s note: More than 150,000 people have read a posting byLynne Rigby, a 40-year-old Seminole County mother of five children, on her website, lynnerigby.com. Rigby, a former teacher, addressed it to Gov, Rick Scott and Seminole school officials. The following is a condensed version.
I am a parent of five children in Seminole County schools, aged 4 to 16. My husband and I are deeply embedded in this community. We are both successful products of Lake Brantley High School. I graduated from the University of Georgia in 1995 and came back to Seminole to teach kindergarten; he is currently the pitching coach for the Lake Brantley varsity baseball team. We stayed here so our kids would be blessed with a similar educational experience.
This year has been completely disheartening for us. You see, I’ve been okay with FCAT … show what you know, I get it … some sort of accountability. That was until this year. My third-grade son, Jackson, has had mostly As, a scattering of Bs through his Bear Lake Elementary career, much like his brothers. However, he has had the Discovery Education tests added to his school year. I saw his score on DE in first grade and it was scary low, in the 20s. But his teacher said he was doing fine. Same thing in 2nd grade, though knowing that FCAT was looming, I began to panic a bit.
We read out loud together each night through the summer, talked about the books as we read, and I believed that would pay off on the first DE test of third grade because he was doing really well. I was wrong. His first DE test was similar to others, but now his teachers started panicking because their pay depends on it. He was sent to remedial LEAP and ultimately a math pullout group. All the while he has had mostly As and a few Bs.
Disconnect. That’s the word that plays over in my head. How can he do all his homework on his own, never struggling with any topic and get such a low percentile on a test? Then, an epiphany. What is the validity of this test? How does it relate to our curriculum?
LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. – On Tuesday, May 13, the Northern Illinois Patriots , President Greg Clements, sponsored Dr. Duke Pesta, Freedom Project Education Academy Director — an online school offering a complete classical education for students from Kindergarten through High School, free from public school spin and Common Core indoctrination — as its featured speaker at Austin’s Saloon and Eatery, 481 Peterson Road in Libertyville. Dr. Pesta’s topic: “Common Core: Dangers and Threats.”
As a teacher himself, Dr. Pesta is not anti-teacher despite his negative opinion of Common Core. If truth be told, many teachers oppose Common Core but are told to keep quiet or lose their jobs. Pesta received his MA in Renaissance literature from John Carroll University and his Ph.D. in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature from Purdue University.
He has taught at major research institutions and small liberal arts colleges, and has been active in education reform, developing and implementing an elective Bible course that is currently available for public high school students in Texas. Currently he is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh in addition to his role as Academic Director of Freedom Project Education.
The chilling truth behind the new national standards are sure to terrify you, as they did to those who attended the Northern Illinois Patriots event. A question Dr Pesta asks at the beginning of each of his events is how many are familiar with Common Core? As is the case most often, 90 to 95% are still foggy about the nature of Common Core.
Dr. Duke Pesta, using research done by others, presented Common Core as the drive it is toward complete government control of our children’s education through a series a slides and commentary titled, “Common Core: Dangers and Threats.” Dr. Pesta considers Common Core a hugely bi-partisan problem. In Wisconsin Republicans refused to allow a vote to be held on Common Core legislation. Nationally, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie are in total support of Common Core, as is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Dr. Duke Pesta divided his presentation into three parts
Part 1: How did Common Core come about? a Research Fellow in Education at the Heartland Institute
Common Core State Standards (CCSS) implies that that all states were consulted before they signed on to Common Core, as though it were a democratic thing instead of Banana Republic tactics. Not so! Joy Pullman, a Research Fellow in Education at the Heartland Institute, traces the writing of Common Core back to five individuals. One of its writers, David Coleman is considered the chief architect of Common Core. According to Dr. Pesta, Coleman is not qualified to write on any subject. Worrisome is that Coleman has since moved on to become president of the College Board where he will integrate the AP assessments with Common Core standards.
Hence, the curriculum was written by a small group of individuals and then copyrighted by two Washington lobbyist groups, making it devoid of any government ownership. This is important because the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Acts was the first federal attempt to regulate and finance schools. In 1979 the law that created the Department of Education forbids it to exercise “any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum” or “program of instruction” of any school system. The mechanism of control were the tests all students had to take to be written by the people who created Common Core. To pass the tests, the Common Core curriculum had to be taught. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $170 million to support the creation and implementation of Common Core State Standards. To date they have contributed $2.5 billion.
But there is no way Common Core could have been brought into the nation’s schools given that it was the product of a small group of activists supported by billionaire Bill Gates. As background, in 2001, President G.W. Bush came up with “No Child Left Behind” which he gave over to Senator Ted Kennedy to write. “No Child Left Behind” was a disaster from the beginning as it was based on “outcome” education, which is akin to socialism. Every single child was expected to meet the same arbitrary standard through high stakes testing.
Fast forward to 2009. President Obama is now in office. It was in 2009 that President Obama took $5.1 billion of taxpayer money and offered it to states to sign on to his “Race to the Top” program. The catch: If states accepted “Race to the Top” money they had to accept Common Core State Standards (CSSS) sight unseen. Additionally, a waiver was granted to states so they could opt out of Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program if they signed on to Obama’s” Race to the Top” program.
Forty-four states agreed to trade their K-12 math and English targets and tests for those of the Common Core’s State Standards yet to be written. Now that CC is in place, in some states longer than others, Dr. Pesta looks upon Common Core as “No Child Left Behind of steroids.” He also refers to Common Core as a social justice curriculum that comes before the ABC’s. Remaining at its core is a one-size fits all definition of education. But what if the high standards can’t be met? It becomes obvious that the only way to get more children to the same place is in time to lower standards.
Part 2: Nature of Common Core Curriculum
Although it is often said that Common Core is not a curriculum but a set of standards, Common Core standards are being put into textbooks which then become curriculum. Pierson, as the largest education product sales company on earth, has a monopoly on education products, including textbooks. This month Bill Gates — the second richest man on earth who almost single-handedly funded and marketed the entire Common Core movement going back to UNESCO and its goal to bring a master curriculum worldwide – has joined forces with Pearson to create a one size fits all curriculum. Although it is claimed that states can deviate 15% from what is being taught in other states, if this were true there would have to be a different test for each state.
Dr. James Milgram, professor of mathematics at Stanford University, and Dr. Sandra Stotsky, professor emerita at the University of Arkansas and former Senior Associate Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education, as members of the Common Core Validation Review Panel were the only experts on the panel in their subject area. Both Milgram a math expert and Stotsky an English expert refused to give Common Core Math and English standards, respectively, a good recommendation as did the rest of the panel. Both have gone on to testify with a warning voice to state legislatures and school boards about the inadequacy of the standards.
Hear Dr. Milgram talk about “What happened to Math education and why Common Core won’t help.”
James Milgram points out these flaws of the new Core Curriculum math standards:
By the end of fifth grade the material being covered in arithmetic and algebra in Core Standards is more than a year behind the early grade expectations in most high achieving countries. By the end of seventh grade Core Standards are roughly two years behind. Core Mathematics Standards are written to reflect very low expectations and do not reflect the mathematics education that underlie the results in the high achieving countries. The explicitly stated objective is to prepare students not to have to take remedial mathematics courses at a typical community college.
Common Core applies a never before seen methodology in the way common math problems are solved. Parents can no longer help their children with simple addition and subtraction not understanding the system. Staking of numbers is no longer permitted, instead children must draw dots, circles, squares, etc., to come up with the answer.
Dr. Pesta used as a demonstration a Champion News video of a Grayslake D46 Curriculum Coordinator relating how under the new Common Core math system if a child determines that 3 + 4 is 11, that’s perfectly fine if the child is able to explain how he arrived at the answer. Even if a child can do math beyond his grade level, he must stay put and not try to move to a higher level.
Dr. Sandra Stotsky has come to refer to Common Core standards as propaganda. Hear Dr. Sandra Stotsky describe “What are the major problems with Common Core English Standards?”
Dr. Stotsky’s concerns about Common Core can be read here.
Common Core is a step backwards for English Standards. The architects of Common Core’s English Language Arts standards never claimed that their standards would do so; rather, they claimed the standards would make all students “college-ready,” Common Core English standards require English teachers to emphasize skills, not literary or cultural knowledge, such as how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text at all grade levels, which may lead to a decreased capacity for analytical thinking. Common Core standards require English teachers to teach “informational” texts over 50% of their reading instructional time rather than literary texts. There are, however, 30 books sexually unfit for high school kids to read on the Common Core approved reading list, one such book for the 11th grade: The Bluest Eye. Writing is emphasized more than reading, but kids only learn to write well after they can read well. When writing they will most likely write what they read in their textbooks such as the global warming, threat, ways to save the planet, or a denial of American exceptionalism.
Here is Dr. Pesta’s anti-Common Core Speech similar to the one he presented at Austin’s on Tuesday, May 13.
Article 2: “Shocking Far Reaching Tentacles of Common Core” as referenced in 3rd part of Dr. Peta’s presentation on Common Core sponsored by Northern Illinois Patriots Tuesday, May 13.
Authored by Nancy Thorner at Illinois Review https://eagnews.org/thorner-chilling-truth-behind-common-core-state-standards/
ILLINOIS REVIEW
Founded in 2005, Illinois Review is a digital media site, providing an alternative perspective and source of Illinois news and information.
Analyst says politicians who oppose Common Core are being rewarded at the ballot box
May 13, 2014
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Opposition to Common Core is proving politically beneficial, at least in the states of Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina.
PJMedia.com’s Tom Blumer writes in his latest blog, “At least a half-dozen victorious candidates in GOP state legislative contests in those three states … discovered that the key to motivating voters on their behalf was expressing genuine and vocal opposition to the federal government’s stealth imposition of the Common Core and testing regime in their schools.”
Blumer cites “a reliable longtime” activist who says Common Core opposition helped four Ohio Republicans win their primary races for the state House of Representatives last Tuesday.
“In the Buckeye State, Common Core polled as the number one issue of concern in the GOP primaries, even ahead of Gov. John Kasich’s authoritarian expansion of Medicaid,” Blumer notes.
The most stunning example of Common Core leading to political success was Tom Brinkman’s seven-point victory over incumbent Peter Stautberg.
“Brinkman’s trump card over the wishy-washy incumbent was his vocal opposition to Common Core,” Blumer writes. “Stautberg claims to have not taken a position (on the nationalized learning standards). My source calls BS on that; but in any event, convenient neutrality doesn’t cut it. It instead allows force-fed ‘Fed ed’ to become a permanent fixture of the educational landscape.”
Voices from the First Round of the PARCC Tests in New Jersey Schools
The second phase in the field tests of the online PARCC exams will start next week, with the state Department of Education inviting still more districts to take part.
New Jersey is already one of the biggest participants in the shakeout, with more than 60,000 students taking part last month. More than 1,000 schools are expected to participate next week.
During the first cycle of field tests in April, NJ Spotlight asked its readers — teachers, administrators, parents, and students themselves — to comment on the new exams. As the second round starts next week, we’re again asking those involved in the testing to share their experiences with us.
Here’s a small sampling of what we’ve been told thus far:
“Teachers and nontesting students have no access to computers and media resources during the testing days. This is getting to be a real problem, since the amount of testing days can approach 30 and administration has not indicated that there is going to be an improvement in access next year.” — teacher with students involved in the field test
“Education in the school came to a screeching halt. No other uses of technology were permitted during testing time. Students reported that the test itself was a big waste of time. Students also reported many problems with the process itself. Administrators were invisible during the process, as they were preoccupied with the tests. — teacher with students involved in the field test
“She enjoyed the experience. She said the questions were hard . . . . Learning to manage your time as you take the test seems to be the biggest challenge. — parent of a child in the field test
“It will force technology to be used in instruction, and it will raise the bar for students to learn touch-typing. Classroom instruction time will be reduced due to testing time . . . It was very frustrating getting all students logged onto the [test site]. Some got on without a hitch. Others took over an hour of trying and retrying.– administrator in a district involved in the field testing. (Mooney/NJSpotlight)
Over 60,000 New Jersey Students Take Part in Field Test of Online PARCC Exams
More than 62,000 New Jersey elementary and high school students were part of the nation’s first large-scale test of the online PARCC exams, an early trial that officials are calling a success — despite some glitches.
New Jersey’s participation over the past month was among the largest in the country, topped only by Illinois and Ohio.
And depending on who is talking, the trial went fairly well, with comments still coming in. NJ Spotlight is conducting its own survey, too, for our readers to share their experiences.
The chief spokesman for PARCC — the acronym for the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers — said yesterday that the field tests, which involved more than 200,000 students in more than a dozen states, went about as expected, with no major problems but plenty of smaller issues to be addressed.
Taking place in more than 1,000 New Jersey schools, the trial was in the performance-based piece of the PARCC exams for language arts and math, in which students are asked to complete writing assignments or more complex math computations.
PARCC released new versions of the practice exam last week, allowing the public to take the language arts and math tests themselves. (Mooney/NJSpotlight)
For Democrats, a problem with seniors
By Alexandra Jaffe
Democrats are facing a senior problem that could get even worse this year.
The party has traditionally had trouble with older voters, losing them by 16 points in 2010 — when Republicans picked up 63 seats — and 12 points in the 2012 presidential race.
Seniors are the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc in midterm years, turning out in higher numbers than Democratic base voters. And a recent Gallup poll showed seniors have become even more Republican over the last two decades, and in 2013 48 percent considered themselves Republican.
“Democrats have to perform better with seniors than they did in 2010. They got shellacked with seniors in 2010. I don’t think the goal here is to win, but I definitely think the goal is to narrow the gap,” he said.
After a rough few months with the rocky rollout of ObamaCare, Democrats are more optimistic because of better-than-expected health care enrollment numbers out this week, but Republicans are pledging to continue to hammer Democrats on the law.
Put education back into state, local hands
By Scott Garrett
Many pundits claim America’s K-12 education system is stagnant and doesn’t equip our nation’s youths with the skills necessary to remain globally competitive in the 21st century. In response, President Obama has recommended the adoption of Common Core standards, a uniform set of benchmarks that must be met by students at the end of each grade. The president has sold Common Core as an innovative set of national standards that will achieve academic excellence.
Unfortunately, we have heard all of this before.
More than a decade ago, President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind was signed into law. At the time, NCLB was advertised as dynamic, flexible and federally driven — education reform that would advance academic achievement through accountability. Today, NCLB is considered a failure. After spending billions and enacting rigid punishments for failing schools, no discernible academic improvement was achieved.
The centralization of education did not begin with NCLB. For half a century, Washington has pursued control of the classroom by attaching strings to federal education dollars sent to the states. Yet despite spending roughly $2 trillion and decades of increased federal regulation, reading scores remain flat, education costs have more than doubled, student-teacher ratios continue to decline, high school graduation rates remain unchanged since the 1970s and achievement gaps persist.
The tradition of federalized education has failed our students. And on this tradition the president proposes to double down.
Common Core is the predictable result of the Obama administration’s coercion of cash-strapped states. In return for a state’s adoption of Common Core, the administration promised the states a share of a $4.35 billion bounty.
Some officeholders don’t trust people outside Washington to come up with solutions. I disagree.
Some officeholders don’t trust people outside Washington to come up with solutions. I disagree. Rather than centralizing education, I believe that states and localities — those closest to the students — should set academic standards. The state and local governments are our laboratories of democracy. By promoting innovation at the state and local level, where parents and teachers have a louder voice, we provide ourselves with the opportunity to replicate our successes and learn from our mistakes.
But arrogant, top-down dictates, such as Common Core, rob us of this opportunity. We should allow federalism to work and defer to local experience.
That is why I’ve introduced the Local Education Authority Returns Now Act. The LEARN Act would allow states to opt out of federal education regulations and retain the dollars that would have been sent to Washington by reimbursing the taxpayers through a tax credit. The process is simple, straightforward, and empowers parents, teachers, school boards and local officials.
The LEARN Act works in three steps. First, a state decides that strings attached to federal money are hampering the ability of parents and teachers to educate their children as they see fit and enacts a law opting out of the federal program. Second, the Treasury Department determines how much money an opt-out state is entitled to. Finally, the taxpayers of the opt-out state receive a tax credit to reimburse them for the funds diverted to Washington. This method immediately cuts the authoritative and financial strings of the federal government, allowing states to set appropriate education standards.
The future of our nation depends on our ability to educate and train the generations that will carry on the legacy of freedom and prosperity. Today, states must focus on complying with federal mandates rather than cultivating an atmosphere that allows our educators to effectively educate our students.
We’ve experimented with centralized education before, and it failed. We cannot merely replace one set of federal dictates with another. The time has come to put our children first by returning control to those who know them best.
Rep. Scott Garrett is a Republican representing New Jersey’s 5th Congressional District
AS STATEWIDE TESTING LOOMS, LAWMAKERS START TO RAISE QUESTIONS
Concerns being raised on both sides of aisle about who is being tested and how the results will be used
Among them is a bill that would prohibit the use of commercially developed tests below third grade. Another would require districts to inform parents of exactly which standardized tests are being administered each year to their children.
A third bill would delay using the new tests, aimed for launch in 2015, as a factor in the state’s new teacher evaluation system.
If approved, the bills would face long odds from ever being signed by Gov. Chris Christie, but Jasey said this weekend that she wanted to prompt further discussion as much as make any specific changes to the state’s testing regimen.
“We need a conversation about what we are doing,” said Jasey, a member of the Assembly education committee. “How much instructional time are we losing. Is there an overlap in the tests? We need to talk about this.” (Mooney/NJSpotlight)
Delaying new standardized testing would benefit schools, students: Opinion
by Patrick J. Fletcher and Daniel Fishbein
Increases in academic rigor, use of technology in assessing student performance and professional accountability for teachers and administrators all represent a positive direction — but without expanding capacity in our state’s school districts, it may well be impossible to successfully implement these initiatives.
And since New Jersey’s schools, particularly those in Bergen County, are already among the finest anywhere, one unavoidable question arises. What’s the rush?
Beginning with the coming school year, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers standardized test series replaces current state testing. With 19 other states, New Jersey agreed to adopt PARCC to better assess students on the Common Core Standards. The test is designed to be administered online multiple times throughout the year, and data gathered also will be used to evaluate teachers and
principals.
Ridgewood administrator details Common Core standards
MARCH 27, 2014 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2014, 3:32 PM
BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER
Fresh off the heels of Indiana’s announcement on Monday that it would be the first state to formally drop the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for math and language arts, about 100 parents attended the district’s presentation on the standards on Tuesday night at Orchard School.
And in spite of all the looming national agitation, most parents appeared to leave feeling much less concerned about the initiative.
The presentation highlighted what the district believes are the many positive aspects of the CCSS, including its professed aim to improve the ability of U.S. students to compete globally.
Ridgewood father James Giordano stood up to leave at the tail end of the presentation and made an announcement.
“I came here to this meeting very pessimistic … This is very encouraging. I’m very pleasantly surprised,” he said.
New evidence Common Core was a waste
March 22, 2014
Heartland Institute
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new set of data analyses provides more evidence Common Core is likely a massive waste of time and money.
Here’s the conclusion of the Common Core portion of the Brookings Institution’s 2014 Brown Center report:
It is doubtful that even the most ardent Common Core supporter will be satisfied if the best CCSS can offer–after all of the debate, the costs in tax revenue, and blood, sweat, and tears going into implementation–is a three point NAEP gain.
The 2012 Brown Center Report predicted, based on an empirical analysis of the effects of state standards, that the CCSS will have little to no impact on student achievement. Supporters of the Common Core argue that strong, effective implementation of the standards will sweep away such skepticism by producing lasting, significant gains in student learning. So far, at least–and it is admittedly the early innings of a long ballgame–there are no signs of such an impressive accomplishment.
