>18. New interim principal is hired and she has to clean up the mess. But instead decides a blind eye to the mess is the best approach – on ward TERC ho!
19. New Interim Superintendent realizes (KNOWS) TERC is a scam but is beholden to his board – and its defacto leader, as she leads him around espousing the tale that it is not the materials. Look at Orchard, they score so well.
20. Since it’s not yet at the high school, reform math is dead on arrival there but instead the school fancies itself with Authentic Assessment.
20. Look for reform math to slowly fade out of Travell and Orchard – not at all. Look for it to fade in your childs backpack so as to further obfuscate the issue while in her ivory tower, Botsford can search for glory on the reform math trail – citing Ridgewood NJ as proof in the pudding – reform math works. And if thats not the case, it will be more of it across the board – further damaging kids. Only when the scores TANK will the school ever acknowledge it. Ridgewood has an inner city adminstrative mentality to public education but the affluent budget – a sham on all levels.
21. Don’t look for the BOE to ever admit that it made a mistake. The board could never begin to pay the price for those children it messed up with their ignorance. Watch the political two step come election time.
22. Look for parents to watch as bright kids do not compete with their peers. But forever marked on the internet let it be known – it wasnt the kids – it was the teaching and the materials and the superintendents and principals were to blame – not the children and not the teachers (serfs in this medevial system of public education)
>A Willard parent was telling me yesterday of her dismay over the latest trend of parents having their children tutored. She said she was shocked when other mothers were listing off the names of kids being tutored at the various learning centers.
Our school district’s test scores are high. Is that because a good percentage of our students are being tutored? My children graduated out of the system years ago and I never knew of any children getting tutored. Our schools took care of educating our children. It sure doesn’t say much for our school system now.
>Best to take matters into your own hands and get a tutor for your child. The BOE, led by Regina Botsford has swallowed this reform math thing hook, line and sinker. Their only duty to them is to the state standards. Ridgewood’d once great public education system is now more like Fair Lawn’s. Sorry Fair Lawn, you may be faring much better than we are.
>–Our school district’s test scores are high.–
This is based on a pretty low performing standard in the first place. NJ’s state standards culminate with the HSPA in 12th grade that NJ education officials agree is a test of 8th grade skills. IF a Ridgewood 12th grader can’t ace an 8th grade test, then God help us.
>Why is this so hard for the BOE to understand??? Are they actually following Mark Bombace. He pretty much admitted when he didn’t know that some of our schools had terc that he didn’t know what he was talking about. He’s not thinking independently because he relies on what the faddish administrators tell him. He can’t research and think on his own. He’s living proof of that limitation. Can’t believe that we have to endure this band of Merry Men and Women until the next election.
>In the olden days a dunce cap was worn. Should our boe wear dunce caps at their next meeting?
>I hear a lot of discussion about the next BOE election being an opportunity to bring about change in the school district, particularly with respect to the math program. However I suspect that the visible problems of the math program might only be the tip of the iceberg. The school system has obviously moved past a tipping point at which the grownups became outweighed or outnumbered, or both, by the children. By now it appears that the few teachers or administrators left in the system who are at least capable of acting in the manner of a reasonably responsible adult when confronted with hard facts that squarely contradict their initially-held beliefs or opinions on a given issue, are surrounded and hemmed in by those who are not only unmoved by such facts, but take an odd sort of pride in demonstrating their inertness, or ‘unreachableness’. This tells me that the latter group is dominant in the organization, to the point that were you to speak to such any such individual on a one-on-one basis, you’d soon learn that there is no ‘there’ there, but rather, that you are attempting to communicate with a drone.
Unless I am mistaken, there are two seats on the BOE coming due for election next year. If the district has any chance of being lifted out of its now unreasonably and impossibly prolonged stupor, solid adults need to run for those seats, and do so as a seamless team. Should they both win an open seat, each will need to take a blood oath to defend the other against what is certain to be a ruthless campaign to deligitimize them and freeze them out.
Heaven help us if only one adult is added to the BOE orphanage next year. I’ll leave it to the reader’s imagination what that person’s fate would be. Ever read Dante’s Inferno?