The D11 Fact Sheet

There is much disinformation and misinformation circulating around the School District 11 community. Much of this misinformation is being spread by those who are intent on maintaining the status quo. This blog will set the record straight and it will educate the public on the identities of these defenders of the status quo.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

How D11 is Destroying our kids Futures in Math

Dora Gonzales, the department chair for math in D11, has been pushing Everyday Math on the district for years, as well as other constructivist math approaches. Mary Thurman, her boss, has allowed her to continue to push this destructive math on the students of the district. Of course, none of the superintendents, including Terry Bishop, have had the guts to order the removal of damaging curriculum from the schools.

After those of us who were elected in 2003 held a math town hall in February 2004, the Doherty block of middle and elementary schools pretty much eliminated this constructivist curriculum from their schools. Holmes Middle School teachers have always done the right thing by refusing the administration threats to adopt constructivist math programs. The result has been that Holmes students tend to perform very well in math compared to their counterparts in other D11 schools. Unfortunately for the Holmes students who move on to Coronado, the Coronado math chair refuses to admit that constructivist math damages students' ability to understand math, and she advocates for this math in her school, much to the detriment of her students.

The video at the below link is a must-see for any parent whose student is suffering through Everyday Math and other constructivist math programs in their schools. Be prepared to be both outraged and sickened by what you see. These so called "experts" have taken a fairly straight forward concept (math) and they have mutated it almost beyond comprehension. This is why I believe that Dora Gonzales should be removed from her role as a math chair in D11.

The link to the math video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI.

They're Coming to take it away (Choice, that is)

Parental choice (as in school choice) has been a part of the Colorado education environment for years. Liberals and Democrats have been fretting for years over how to take choice away from parents. They have had to go so far as claiming to support choice, but only opposing vouchers. Those of us who have had to deal with these dishonest people always knew better.

Now that the National Education Association labor union has taken control of the Colorado state government through the election of a Democrat party majority, the left has found its opening to attack parents. Michael (Honey, will you please go out and steal my opponent's yard signs for me) Merrifield is leading the charge to destroy the charter school movement in Colorado.

Merrifield and his labor union allies are pushing for legislation that would limit charter school attendance to only students who fall below a certain income level. In other words, he wants to take choice away from middle class families, effectively trapping them in low performing schools when necessary. This was from the January 9th Gazette: "State Rep. Michael Merrifield told us during an interview that he also would like to means-test applicants to charter schools and online schools, limiting participation to “at-risk students.” But that takes the choice of schools out of the hands of parents and falsely assumes that only children in lower socioeconomic circumstances can be “at-risk.”

It is interesting to watch as the anti-parental choice left fights this charter battle from both sides. In D11, which is populated with anti-choice board members and administrators, the argument against charters locating in low income neighborhoods is that there would be no transportation provided by the charters, so poor families would not be able to get their kids to the school. What the administration and liberal board members are saying is that poor families don't care enough to make an effort to get their kids to a quality school, so there is no use in placing one in their neighborhoods. Out of the other side of their mouths, administrators such as D11 CFO Glenn Gustafson are pushing the Democrats to prohibit middle class families from attending charters because Gustafson claims that charters are hurting D11's budget. The argument is that when students leave their neighborhood schools for charters, the money follows the student.

Notice how Gustafson and other anti-parental choice educators and legislators always attack the parents for removing their kids from their failing neighborhood schools in attempt to give them a quality education, but they never acknowledge that these schools are failing those kids in the first place. To people like this, it is more important for a child to bring money into a district by occupying a seat in a neighborhood school building than it is for the public school district to actually earn that money by thoroughly educating that child.

To be clear, the leftists are saying on one hand that it is meaningless to locate a charter in a poor neighborhood because those kids won't attend the school anyway. On the other hand, they are attempting to create legislation that would prohibit kids from middle class neighborhoods or higher from attending charters at all. The highest performing schools in the state(TCA, Cheyenne Mountain Charter) would not exist should this legislation become law. That, of course, is the ultimate goal .

Those on the left have criticized my use of the term "anti-parental choice" to describe them, but they are proving me to be correct once again. After the Democrats have had their way on the state for a couple of years, an education system that already has very little accountability will have even less with the removal of parental choice. It certainly is not about educating kids for those elitists on the left, many of whom send their kids to private schools. It is about using kids,however, to continue to fund an education system that spends more money on politics than it does on education.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Kultursmog

Kultursmog is a word that was originally coined by American Spectator editor R. Emmitt Tyrell. He uses it to describe the leftist political culture that is pervasive in this country. I think that it is a perfect match for the education culture as well, and specifically for D11.

Below are several descriptions/definitions of Kultursmog that I find appropriate to describe the administrative culture in D11. The descriptions are from Tyrell himself or from others who have borrowed the term. They are in italics.

The Kultursmog has petrified more inaccurate ideas and stupid prejudices than any moron religion or idiot cult ever heard of.

As everyone knows, California often leads the nation with new ideas or trends. Good or bad, these trends tend to spread across the country. California was one of the first states to adopt “new-new” math, which is math that requires students to “discover” their own formulas and math processes. As a result of this experiment, California students began to perform poorly on standardized tests at all levels. Someone in California took notice of this downward trend, and new-new math became a thing of the past. The result was improved learning and performance. In D11, despite the damage that this same math is causing to kids, the administration continues to push this curriculum on the schools. Likewise, national statistics show that phonetic reading instruction is much more effective than whole language teaching. Rather than change the district’s approach to reading instruction to a phonetics approach, D11 administrators changed the name of the reading instruction. They now call this failed approach “balanced literacy.” Same poor results, different name.

A “stupid prejudice” that the D11 administration clings to is that poor and minority students are not able to learn as well as white and affluent students. This reasoning is used constantly to explain and excuse D11’s poor performance. Because of this prejudicial thinking, students who fit the “poor” or “minority” category are subject to low expectations. Profiling is criticized in the world of law enforcement, but it is perfectly acceptable to use race to predetermine a child’s performance in the education community.

Kultursmog. It is the popular culture of the United States, polluted utterly by a weird politics, a politics often called liberal but is actually simply leftish and adolescent. It has no fixed values or ideas other than to disturb the peace.

Academia is populated by “leftish” professors who possess no ideas and who certainly have no solutions to this country’s education problems. This “leftish” political climate is equally pervasive in the K-12 arena. The teacher’s labor unions spend more time supporting left-wing organizations and causes than they do addressing education issues. These labor unions support liberal candidates over conservatives on a ratio of about 95% to 5%. The D11 labor union and administration will only support liberal candidates for the school board. None of these candidates or board members bring any ideas to the education debate, but they are told to repeatedly spout the phrase, “I support public education.”

As for disturbing the peace, watch the labor union rally its most militant members against any idea that sounds different than the status quo. These rallies are designed to project a sense of chaos that the labor union can then blame on others. No rallying ever seems to take place for increased student achievement

The Kultursmog is always politically correct, ever sensitive to the Democratic National Committee's whims, and increasingly anti-intellectual.

A look at the labor union’s national meeting agenda items shows that academia is completely wed to the Democratic Party with all of its anti-intellectual glory. (The national meetings are attended by leaders of the local CSEA labor union). Rather than strive for excellence and intellectual rigor, D11 administrators, board members, and labor union leaders brag about being “average.”

The Kultursmog may be anti-intellectual, vulgar and politically out of touch, but it remains very influential. To a vast degree, it decides what the chattering class talks about and is aware of. Its most effective influence is omission. It simply omits what it does not want to acknowledge.

D11 has an information representative whose job it is to disseminate one-sided propaganda. While constantly telling the community that D11 is as good as it can be, D11 administrators blame parents of students in poor performing schools for not being fully involved in their schools. Unless and until the district admits to its shortcomings and correctly declares a crisis in many of its schools, parents and business leaders will see no reason to become involved. Why spend time assisting a district that claims that it has no need to improve? Omission is a huge problem in academia and D11. Education leaders tend to hide the problems in their districts so those problems neever get fixed.

The D11 propaganda machine is very effective and influential. It uses the union, PTA, and its brand of cronyism to spread its message and to avoid accountability. D11 administrators never have to explain why they cannot educate 28,000 kids with a $500 million budget.

The Kultursmog has steadily corroded standards.

In many D11 middle and high schools, students rule the hallways and classrooms. Basic discipline and dress codes are not enforced, neither for students nor employees. Students are permitted to "walk" at graduation ceremonies even though they do not meet graduation requirements. As a standard practice, spelling and grammar are not corrected on student papers in many schools. Students are passed from grade to grade even though they have not met the requirements to move forward.

The Kultursmog… smeared anyone who objected (to its ideology) as "right-wing."

As soon as 4 of us who are considered “conservative” were elected in 2003, the labor union called on the Progressive Majority in Washington, D.C., to bring hundreds of thousands of dollars to bear to purchase the D11 board seats for liberals. All ideas for improvement are ridiculed as “right-wing” efforts to destroy the schools.

The liberals, so-called, totally suffuse American culture with the pollutants of their politics. Their bugaboos (white males! tobacco! homophobia!) and desiderata (law suits! regulation! more males undergoing community service!) are everywhere, creating not a culture of lively ideas but a Kultursmog that deadens the life of the mind and stifles free discourse.

D11 employees are expected to follow the “party line” in every way. Anyone who speaks out against the status quo is barred from administrative jobs in the district. Teachers who dare to speak out for improvement are shunned and pressured into silence by labor union heavies. New ideas are not welcome in D11. Employees of D11 do not work in a vibrant, open environment. Instead, they work in an environment where all control and direction comes from Central Administration and labor union leaders. For a “public” entity, D11 is a very closed society. Law suits and threats are frequently used against anyone who questions the practices of the district.

Like any Socialist regime in the world’s history, the main focus of the D11 administration is not to serve the community, but to serve the interests of those who make their living off the backs of the taxpayers, primarily senior administrators. When dealing with administration, teachers and parents alike find themselves buried in a bureaucratic nightmare.

The structure of this public entity is designed to enforce a code of silence that is killing the district from inside out. Rather than being a completely open and transparent district as one would expect of a public entity, all information is closely controlled. If there is any doubt that certain information might make the district or its employees look bad, the district’s law firm of HRO is called in to provide legal cover to prevent the information from leaking to the public.

The Kultursmog that exists in D11 will never lift as long as the district is controlled by a large central administration. Those who receive the largest paychecks in D11, and are therefore dependent on the current structure, will never willingly allow needed change to occur. As long as the teacher’s labor union spends its time and resources on party politics instead of focusing on issues of education, there is little chance for improvement. The last thing that school administrators want, but the best thing that could happen, is for the public to take control of its schools.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Followership, D11 style

No, followership is not a real word, but it is totally appropriate when talking about the 5 status quo members of the D11 school board. The two newest members are no exception.

New D11 board member Charlie Bobbitt will fit right in with the existing status quo members of the board. During a board retreat on Saturday, January 13th, Bobbitt made it clear that he was just there to serve, but not to serve the public. Bobbitt stated that he was there to serve, (you guessed it), the D11 administration. This was from the January 14th Gazette:

Bobbitt said he fully trusted the administration to tell the board what was needed and that he planned to back its recommendations. Breazell countered, saying, “I’m not here to rubber-stamp what the administration says.”

Thank you, Willie Breazell, for undestanding the role of the board. Like all labor union purchased school board members, Bobbitt likely has no ideas of his own, so he has to blindly rubber-stamp anything that the union or administration tell him to do.

Before Bobbitt was placed under union control, he did not seem to think that rubber-stamping was such a good idea, at least when his self interest was involved. Bobbitt made his presence known at public hearings and school board meetings to speak on the issue of D11 boundaries. He is a member of the Longfellow Elementary School neighborhood, and he was appalled that the administration was recommending a boundary change for that school. Bobbitt insisted that the board ignore the administration’s recommendation and vote to leave the Longfellow boundaries unchanged. At the time, Bobbitt felt that the administration was putting its financial interests ahead of the interests of the community by setting Longfellow up for reutilization.

Now that Bobbitt has gotten what he wanted at Longfellow, and now that he has accepted union support for his election, he has been given the standard labor union marching orders: “Do as you are told.” Like most status quo school board members, Bobbitt apparently has no intention of taking his role as an elected official seriously. Rather than represent the people as he is supposed to do, he has publicly claimed that he will take the easy road and simply nod approvingly of everything that the administration tells him to do.

Welcome aboard, Charlie. You will follow well in the footsteps of many other do-nothing D11 school board members who preceded you. Your apathy about student achievement will bring you close to Gudvangen, Hasling, and Mann, and it will certainly get you invited into the clubhouse with the Teja’s, Wierman’s, Kaiser’s, McNally’s, and Doyle’s of the world. After a decade of doing nothing on the board, make sure that you blame Willie for your failures, especially if he has the nerve to continue to push for improvement. After all, average is good enough, especially if it means that you won’t have to think.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

For the BOE

As a D11 parent and taxpayer, the following advice is for the board, whose members work for me and every other taxpayer.

1. Hold administrators accountable for their jobs and show an interest in improving the district. All of you besides Willie claim that nothing needs to improve, but you are wrong.

2. Make Terry Bishop turn in his performance objectives. John and Tami have failed to enforce the contract so far, showing a continuing lack of leadership. Terry has also failed to give the BOE monthly updates on the progress of the district towards site based management, something that the board instructed him to do.

3. Consider replacing Mary Thurman. The district has failed to meet its academic growth objectives since she was hired. Although she continues to receive bonus pay, the district will not meet NCLB goals by 2014 at its current growth rate.

4. Consider replacing Dora Gonzalez as math chair. The district has continued to have math proficiencies in the 10-20% range in different categories under her watch. She refuses to acknowledge the serious curriculum problems that she has caused, which is having a detrimental impact on the students of this district. The public has made it clear that they want better math curriculum. Dora refuses to listen to that feedback.

5. Totally revamp Human Resources. Dave Schenkel has stated that he does not like technology, and is therefore unwilling to upgrade human resource processes. Additionally, HR receives the same negative findings in the annual external audit year after year. At some point Dave Schenkel needs to be held accountable.

6. Take disciplinary measures against Sandra Mann for participating in Board meetings while intoxicated. District employees have been removed form school grounds for this same reason. If John and Tami want to claim that board member behavior is the main issue with the board, then they need to deal with this problem. Both John and Tami have been aware of this issue for the past year, and as board leaders, both have failed to act on the issue for political reasons. No board member has a right to participate in meetings without having a clear mind as to the business at hand. I tried to get John to deal with this issue in November and he chastised me for even bringing it up.

Board policy BCC is the appropriate policy to use for this disciplinary action with one exception. This matter may not be handled in executive session as it is not covered under the provisions of Colorado Open Meetings Law. HRO attorney Deborah Menkins informed the board by email that public officials did not have the right of executive session for discussions about them . The email was sent during the reprimand proceedings of Eric Christen.

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