The DOE Education Survey
The Delaware House Dems have sent out an email asking for responses to the Department of Education’s most recent survey concerning a new grading system for schools. Take the survey by December 30, 2014. The results of the survey will be posted online. I will note, having taken the survey, that the survey is framed as if a grading system is a good idea and a done deal.
An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that this survey was being conducted by the Delaware House Dems. It is actually being conducted by the DOE.
This survey is baffling. After identifying who you are (parent, teacher, etc.) you are then asked:
1. What do you think makes an excellent school?
There isn’t a choice for excellent teachers. Nor is there a choice for improving high poverty schools or enrichment programs or equitable funding.
2. What do you think makes an excellent school? (Um, isn’t this is the same question?)
Your first 3 options deal with school surveys (parent, staff, student). Your next choices are as follows: Number of suspensions and expulsions, Civic engagement, Parent attendance at conferences, Social-Emotional Learning (i.e., teaching students how to handle their feelings), and Staff attendance.
I guess people putting up a survey would think school surveys are important. What they avoid throughout this entire survey is the deliberate creation of high poverty schools and how expensive they are to fund. All the civic engagement in the world won’t add teaching units.
3. Please view the illustrations and rank your choices below. The illustrations are for demonstration purposes only and do not reflect final graphics.
The illustrations are of a stoplight (I guess green is good, yellow is warning and red is bad), Letter grades (A, B, C, D, F), Symbols (Green Star, yellow check, red X – like the stoplight) and Performance ratings (Distinguished, Meets Expectations, On Watch, On Probation).
Talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I guess if we only changed letter grades to a stoplight we’d see improvement.
4. How would you use the school performance report card if it was accessible on a website? Please select from the options below (check all that apply):
– To gather information about a school so that I can find the best educational opportunity for my child.
– To get a better understanding of how my school is doing (strengths and areas of growth).
– To help plan for support/professional development for the school.
– Other
Wait… what is this “school performance report card” based on? Test scores? Surveys? Suspension/expulsion rates? Civic Engagement? Could we use it to allocate funding? Or would it be used to target more schools for charterization and privatization? I’m not sure and the survey doesn’t say, so… I wouldn’t be using it at all until I knew what performance was being measured. The survey never tells us, so we move onto more important things like…
5. Please review the names listed below and let us know which one you prefer:
– Delaware School Accountability Framework
– Delaware School Success Framework
– Other
Yet again, we are rearranging deck chairs. Maybe we could call it “Delaware House Dems search for a new talking point” or “A rose by any other name”? Perhaps instead of stoplights and marketing ploys Delaware House Dems could actually get up to speed on education issues and their causes? Because far too many of them (not all) are completely clueless when it comes to education.
I’ve said it before… if you aren’t up to speed on education issues you aren’t up to speed on politics. This is the issue. Don’t believe me? Then ask yourself why Wall Street and hedge fund managers are so involved in education (just like they were the last time they tapped into all those tax payer dollars and crashed the economy). This is our new sub-prime and derivatives scheme.
6. This page asks if you have children in public, charter or private school and, if so, what grades.
7. This page asks for your zip code, race/ethnicity, and how much education you have.
8. We will be publishing survey results once all responses have been collected. If you would like to ensure that you receive the overall results, please enter your email address in the space below. Your email address will not be shared with any third parties.
Did a survey representative notify you about the survey or assist you in its completion?
This survey demonstrates how little the survey writers know about education in Delaware. It has nothing to do with educating children (who aren’t even mentioned except for a possible student survey). It has nothing to do with resources/programs. All it seems to have to do with is creating talking points for politicians who are woefully uneducated about Delaware education.
Maybe we could call it… Delaware Accountability “I need to look like I’m doing something so I’ll come up with a new name and logo” Framework.
I guess I sound cynical, but… come on! I hope we didn’t pay people to put this together.
I took the survey also and had many of the same thoughts Pandora voiced in her comment. Especially regarding #5. What? What do any of those titles even mean?
The survey was very lacking and I do not believe anything useful will come of it. Seems that surveys are so easy to put together these days that everyone and anyone uses them to act as if they make decisions with input from the community they are attempting to serve or dictate to.
I wasn’t comfortable with how the questions were going, but I made it to the graphics page–Stop sign, grades, etc. and then I bolted. No way was I was going to participate in this charade and “endorse” this type of grading system that continues the pattern of pitting one school against another when fundamental issues such as funding are ignored.
I stand corrected. The survey is from DoE. The email is from House Dems. Sorry, I was reading quickly. The survey is still horrible. 😉
This is the DOE’s way of making it look like they are getting collaboration from families and the community. It’s all a smokescreen. They put in choices from best to worst, knowing parents will put in the obvious choice. Whatever scheme they have cooking this time was written a long time ago. Don’t believe for one second they want public input. This is their way of holding schools accountable so they can turn on them like they are doing with the priority schools. The very fact that the Delaware Dems would send this out in an email shows who is in bed with who. Who in Legislative Hall actually sent this out? Was it a unanimous vote among the Delaware Dems? I highly doubt it.
I am a member of the Del Dem. caucus and I totally disavow this solicitation by the Del Dem email alert. This does not represent or speak on my behalf and I actually agree that this survey is a carefully placed propaganda piece to try to gather the “appearance” of public engagement in a horribly flawed process constructed that will harm public education, teachers, administrators and the children in the Delaware public school system.
To be clear, Drew Volturo contacted me after I originally posted this saying that the Delaware House Dems were merely passing the survey along at the suggestion of Rep. Kim Williams. I was originally mistaken in the post in saying that this survey was from the House Dems. It is not. It is from the DOE, and is being passed on to the House Dem Email Distribution List at the suggestion of a representative, which I believe they do on a whole host of issues.
As I recall, DDOE cited a very high number of expected participants by years end. I will assume that Kim Williams was being nice in trying to help them get closer to their estimate (I posted a lot of the links here but don’t have time to look through them for the DDOE projected number of completed surveys http://delawareway.blogspot.com/2014/10/education-update-ddoe-seeks-public.html)