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TPS Curriculum Committee Oct..23 - I attended the Curriculum Committee meeting which featured a half dozen reports on great sounding special improvement projects at maybe a dozen schools. I'll post my notes when I have time.

In a nutshell - good things can happen when principal, building TFT leader, and 2/3 of teachers get involved. But does that happen often enough?

A key word much bandied about was "alignment" of textbooks to State standards & testing [at least 3 different "brands"]. They've bought a bunch of cosly new ones, & a supplement to fill in a math gap from 7th to 8th.

Steel is in his forte knowing this jargon & acronyms. I found it time very well spent, & started getting familiar to the insider language. Barnett had to end the meeting on her soapbox hoorah.

Of couse we heard about good things - that was the agenda - it was a welldone show. BUTT - the devil is in the details -- at least one of 3 for Children has complained that these good examples fall by the wayside within a few years -- TPS shelves are littered with great trials [even if weak on measurable results].

And we need to pull Dr. Schletke's TPS Reform Report off that shelf and start taking it seriously. [TPS pulled the pretty good abstract of it off their website - perhaps Flagg can post it at TPSINFO.com, & don't forget Myers ideasfortps.com for $ ideas]

We need to get involved in this detail - I'll be posting detail later.

I'm off to hear Dr. Don Pribor, UT Biology, present some of his concepts on REFORMING higher education - critical broad conceptualization acomplished in a less costly 3 years. AT 6:30pm tonight at DownTown Latte', South St.Clair across the block from Spaghetti Warehouse -- the hub of creative Toledo networking!
posted by robertbrundage to education at 5:12 P.M. EST     (4 Comments)

Comments ...

Thank you Robert. I look forward to your other notes. I was not able to make it to the special board meeting today either. Had a meeting at work.
posted by chrismyers at 07:50 P.M. EST on Wed Oct 25, 2006     #

Robert - I've been out of town the last few days but will return later today. I have the original Schlecty report, the report the Reform Committee's executive committee revised and the "Action Plan" released in May 2003. It is interesting to note that the original report was never shared with the entire Reform Committee. It was edited by a small group they designated as the executive committee. This executive committee was never acted upon (as in voted upon) by the entire Reform Committee. I don't think most of the committee even knew it existed until we pointed it out to them.

We only got the draft and revised draft because we requested it under the Ohio Open Records Act - ORC 149.43. It was interesting to note the changes. One big one was that Schlecty’s recommended that the Reform Committee be turned into a 501(c)3 organization privately funded. The revised report turned that recommendation into a more formally organized committee. Obviously Sanders did not want to lose control of the committee and its findings, etc.

Of course, with the way things go in TPS all he really had to do was wait. Every major study or evaluation of the district ends up on the bookshelf gathering dust - as has the May 2003 action plan. Not a single recommendation was ever implemented and the Reform Committee last met, I believe, in September 2005. I don't believe the committee met more than 2 times after the May 2003 action plan was presented to the community in another great press event.

I'll have the reports up on the tpsinfo.com web site by Friday. And I’ll post here when I do.
posted by sflagg at 04:13 A.M. EST on Thu Oct 26, 2006     #

Glad to hear some good news Robert - on the curriculum meeting.

And is there any reason not to pull that Schlecty report and resulting plan out and review it :-)

We paid for it....

"The revised report turned that recommendation into a more formally organized committee. Obviously Sanders did not want to lose control of the committee and its findings, etc. " <--sflagg

Well it looks like the obstacle block to that recommendation is now someone else's problem. I'll look for the info on your website.
posted by katie82640 at 10:11 A.M. EST on Thu Oct 26, 2006     #

Okay - you can go to here (http://tpsinfo.com/reforms/reform.html) and review all the information - draft report, revised draft and final report to the community. I've added some narrative so it puts it into perspective. Some of this data was already posted to the site, but I added to it.
posted by sflagg at 04:12 P.M. EST on Thu Oct 26, 2006     #

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