Heath Morrison - Superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - Called Board Meeting - 5:30 P.M.
Dallas Morning News - December 25, 2012- Click Here
"Trustee Mike Morath, who was part of a board committee that created the evaluation criteria, said he believes it’s a more rigorous assessment than used for the past superintendent.
“We wanted to raise the bar in terms of performance expectations, and we wanted explicit ties to student achievement,” he said. (Translation - "we wanted explicit ties to student test scores")Trustees approved the Superintendent of Schools evaluation instruments by an 8-1 vote.
Voting Yes to tying Superintendent pay to student test results
Lew Blackburn
Mike Morath
Bernadette Nutall
Nancy Bingham
Eric Cowan
Elizabeth Jones
Dan Micciche
Adam Medrano
Voting No
Carla Ranger
Paul Thomas of Furman University (Ed.D) in South Carolina states:
Tests Fail South's Legacy of Inequity - Click Here
"The essential flaws with high-stakes standardized tests are magnified in states shackled by social inequity and poverty because tests function as gatekeepers (for example, the SAT) and mechanisms for educational inequity: Children born into poverty are tested, labeled, and then sorted into a educational system that reflects and perpetuates that inequity.
For decades now, ample evidence shows that test-based accountability labels high-poverty schools as failures and affluent schools as successful. Any deviations from these patterns are rare and outliers.
Continuing to focusing on tests and seeking new and better tests are commitments to distracting society and education from addressing the real and systemic problems facing both. America's test-mania is a test we are failing.
Especially in the South, investing in new and more high-stakes standardized testing is a failure we can no longer afford."Dallas ISD Trustees have now monetized tests as never before in the history of the district.
Trustees have now imposed additional test related pressure on the teachers and students of Dallas ISD by connecting standard test results to huge monetary awards for the Superintendent.
Some call it "a more rigorous assessment" but others might call it irresponsible to put huge dollar signs on the backs of children and teachers based on "an inadequate and unreliable measure of both student learning and educator effectiveness."
National Resolution on High Stakes Testing- Click Here
