Access to all levels and programs for all?

nan said:

"This is a great step forward! Yeah! Too late for my kid, but yeah anyway!"

Yay. It's yay (the sound of cheering).

Or yea (meaning "yes," a procedural vote of affirmation).

Yeah is pronounced "yeh," and isn't all that emphatic, unless you write it thusly: YEAH!!!

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

/pet peeve

Well, @tjohn, if you put us on a national Bell Curve for standardized tests, that is close to true (about the children anyway).

JCSO, really? You don't make these kinds of errors when writing? Especially on something as insignificant as a message board? I find myself caught up for seconds at times when errors of word choices are made, but I don't find a need to correct the other person. I am often amazed at the typos I make in social media. It isn't that I don't know better, it is just that I am typing quickly off the top of my head.

susan1014 said:
Here is the text of policy being given first read tonight. If I'm reading this right, this is a very broad policy, although the implementation details would matter greatly.
5755.1 Access and Equity
All elementary, middle school, and high school parents/guardians and children in the South
Orange-Maplewood School District shall have access to, and the ability to choose between,
different educational programs in all academic subjects, and at all academic levels.
In furtherance of this Policy, all students shall be provided with age-appropriate academic
supports for access to advanced-level courses, including, by way of example, but not limitation,
readiness programs and courses, in-school and after-school tutoring, Saturday readiness
sessions, and summer institutes. The District shall also engage in a pre-K through 12th grade
curricular alignment, ensuring that all students develop the knowledge and skills fundamental to
successful performance in Advanced Placement and advanced level courses by providing the
highest levels of academic rigor in Pre-K, Elementary, Middle and High School courses.

I don't get this sentence: "In furtherance of this Policy, all students shall be provided with age-appropriate academicsupports for access to advanced-level courses, including, by way of example, but not limitation,readiness programs and courses, in-school and after-school tutoring, Saturday readinesssessions, and summer institutes."

Does that mean that all students have the right to support sufficient to get them to the class they want to be in? How could that be possible? The after school "office hours" for the teachers at MMS were reduced this year from 30 minutes to 10 minutes.

sprout said:

ctrzaska said:

sprout said:
Ctrzaska,
I'm not reading it as deleveling (which I think was the Rockville Centre model). I'm reading it as open enrollment to higher level courses.

Tomato, tomahto IMO. It's semantics to a large extent when the aim and the endgame are the same-- equal access (equity) to a rigorous curriculum (excellence)-- and the demands on taxpayers, budgets, teachers and students are identical. Call it Rockville Lite then.

I don't see them as similar at all.
Deleveling is when all students take the same course levels. (No student choice)
Open access allows for students take different course levels. But instead of having the next course's level be dictated by the teacher (another way to have "no student choice"), the student's now would have a choice of which course to take.
I see this as very similar to college enrollment. In college, one could sign up for any course that is next in the sequence, regardless of the grade one achieved in the previous course in the sequence (as long as it was 'passing').

Yes I understood the difference, but I'm focused on the endgame and the means to its end. In college you're not getting the extra help to succeed whether the bar is set high for all students or you get to pickball the level it's set at. RC set it high and spent tons of money to get students there. You still had math levels, for example, however...its part of the sequence as you know. In "Rockville Lite" we're still keeping the other bars but opening up the upper ends, then (presumably) throwing money at those who need all the extras to see if they can achieve at that level. So still "Equity and Excellence" by definition and with its myriad costs. My obvious skepticism remains as to how to do this in a capped budget framework, with existing contracts, and with little to no guarantee of any widespread success as currently laid out.

ctrzaska said:

In "Rockville Lite" we're still keeping the other bars but opening up the upper ends, then (presumably) throwing money at those who need all the extras to see if they can achieve at that level. So still "Equity and Excellence" by definition and with its myriad costs. My obvious skepticism remains as to how to do this in a capped budget framework, with existing contracts, and with little to no guarantee of any widespread success as currently laid out.

If I remember my teenage years correctly, I liked having choices. My choice was not to stay in a class I was going to need a lot of extra help in (which would have resulted in less time for social life). Granted, I also didn't have helicopter parents coercing me into staying in honors History.

Other than if we end up having a 'curriculum correction' (which I suspect may happen for Math), we may not see a great deal of increased demand for "extras".

And I could see some current "extras", like the summer step-up program in Math, being incorporated into the regular school year with a new curriculum/course offerings (like some other districts have in terms of faster paced courses).

I may be overly optimistic - but I think this will force the district to actually get their curriculum and support systems more organized. I guess we'll see.

BaseballMom said:

susan1014 said:
Here is the text of policy being given first read tonight. If I'm reading this right, this is a very broad policy, although the implementation details would matter greatly.
5755.1 Access and Equity
All elementary, middle school, and high school parents/guardians and children in the South
Orange-Maplewood School District shall have access to, and the ability to choose between,
different educational programs in all academic subjects, and at all academic levels.
In furtherance of this Policy, all students shall be provided with age-appropriate academic
supports for access to advanced-level courses, including, by way of example, but not limitation,
readiness programs and courses, in-school and after-school tutoring, Saturday readiness
sessions, and summer institutes. The District shall also engage in a pre-K through 12th grade
curricular alignment, ensuring that all students develop the knowledge and skills fundamental to
successful performance in Advanced Placement and advanced level courses by providing the
highest levels of academic rigor in Pre-K, Elementary, Middle and High School courses.

I don't get this sentence: "In furtherance of this Policy, all students shall be provided with age-appropriate academicsupports for access to advanced-level courses, including, by way of example, but not limitation,readiness programs and courses, in-school and after-school tutoring, Saturday readinesssessions, and summer institutes."
Does that mean that all students have the right to support sufficient to get them to the class they want to be in? How could that be possible? The after school "office hours" for the teachers at MMS were reduced this year from 30 minutes to 10 minutes.

The "office hours" at the middle schools were reduced to make way for a new "WIN" period - Whatever I Need, so whereas before a struggling student in math or Language Arts may or may not have chosen to come for help, now that time with their classroom teacher is built into the daily schedule.

Re the WIN period -

It sounds great, but I understand it is only for 6th and 7th graders. So what happens for the 8th graders?

If I had a struggling 8th grader, I would reach out to the classroom teacher and see if Achieve tutoring was possible. My 8th grader served as a peer tutor at MMS in the past and frequently no one would come for the free afterschool tutoring, so maybe it's good the support is more mandatory than voluntary now.

My kid is in 8th grade so I have no idea what the "WIN" period is At BTSN we were told that our child should not go to their locker but race to the classroom of the teacher the child needed to see - who might assign extra work to help the child. I have no idea what my kid is supposed to do if work was missed or extra help is needed. So are 8th graders exempt from the proposed policy that is quoted above?

Thread drift alert -- but at BTSN the LA teacher said that the 8the grade curriculum was being revised at the end of the summer and is still a "work in progress," so the teacher was not able to answer some salient questions about what to expect this year.

It's a familiar redrain, sadly.

Thread drift alert: I wish the admin would discuss curriculum/schedule changes with parents at some point in time. I don't know if that is asking for too much. At this point, my 8th grader is doing world geography instead of world history. Teacher did say something about this at BTSN but I am still not sure how it fits into the World History II they are supposed to do in 9th grade. Also not clear is how 8th graders who need extra help are supposed to do it. Clearly, 10 minutes are not enough. Do they miss electives? Or are there no electives this year?

@dg64,

Is this at MMS or SOMS? Do both have the WIN period, or is that just MMS?

Dg64 - use Lets Talk to ask your questions. Also, is this MMS? My 8th grader is definitely doing world history

No, SOMS.

@Sprout, both SOMS and MMS have WIN for 6th and 7th graders, but not for 8th graders.

gerryl said:
JCSO, really? You don't make these kinds of errors when writing? Especially on something as insignificant as a message board? I find myself caught up for seconds at times when errors of word choices are made, but I don't find a need to correct the other person. I am often amazed at the typos I make in social media. It isn't that I don't know better, it is just that I am typing quickly off the top of my head.

My pedantry was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, for of course we all make such errors.

Although sometimes these are not mere oversights. Sometimes they are deep-seated mistakes in judgment, deliberate attempts to infiltrate my mind and make my eyes bleed, and evidence of horrendous moral failure.

sprout said:
I may be overly optimistic - but I think this will force the district to actually get their curriculum and support systems more organized. I guess we'll see.

That's exactly what I'm thinking.

Decent summary of W.I.N. program at Village Green:

http://villagegreennj.com/schools-kids/w-n-facts-new-middle-school-enrichment-period/

JCSO said:
nan said:

"This is a great step forward! Yeah! Too late for my kid, but yeah anyway!"


Yay. It's yay (the sound of cheering).
Or yea (meaning "yes," a procedural vote of affirmation).
Yeah is pronounced "yeh," and isn't all that emphatic, unless you write it thusly: YEAH!!!
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
/pet peeve

Next time why don't you be more helpful and send me a private message. Not sure why you want to humiliate me publicly for a typo, but hope you enjoyed the experience. The whole world now knows you can spell "yay" Guess that's a yay!

Oh come on, nan. You weren't "humiliated."

I was and that's not for you to decide. Go away.

I won't be going away, nan, but I'm sorry you felt humiliated.

I will say that I am happy the district is finally ready to go in this direction. I would be interested to see how the head of the math department Dr. B. responds to the challenge . I found her to be the number one proponent and stickler of the level system fighting parents and kids from rising from the levels.

Maybe these concerns and questions have already been addressed - but please explain to me how this does not create a situation where the external leveling or gatekeeping becomes internal leveling in the class and where the need for differentiated instruction then, becomes unaddressed as has very often been our experience? The situation faced by kids who have worked hard and/or get the material quickly are sitting doing their hw or reading for the majority of the period because they've finished the work, while the teacher catches up the other students. Also, what are the criteria students/parents use to decide they want to go for higher level math?

daisy123 said:
Maybe these concerns and questions have already been addressed - but please explain to me how this does not create a situation where the external leveling or gatekeeping becomes internal leveling in the class and where the need for differentiated instruction then, becomes unaddressed as has very often been our experience?

Theoretically, the course would still be taught at the current level. Additional support outside the classroom, or dropping to a lower level course, could be the options provided to struggling students (rather than slowing the pace of the course taught in the classroom).

daisy123 said:
Also, what are the criteria students/parents use to decide they want to go for higher level math?

We'll probably find out in a couple of months as they would need to completely re-write the academic placement regulations if/when this new open access policy is voted in.

ETA: I could see teachers providing level recommendations, and/or providing parents/students with a summary of performance information of previous students (e.g., a graph of grades achieved in current course, to grades achieved in the options for the next course) to inform current students' choices.

jfburch said:
Decent summary of W.I.N. program at Village Green:
http://villagegreennj.com/schools-kids/w-n-facts-new-middle-school-enrichment-period/

Thank you, @jfburch. After reading this, I now know that the 30-minute conference period/office hours after last period has been reduced not to 10 minutes but to 9 minutes.

According to school officials (as reported in the Village Green piece), the conference period was reduced to 9 minutes because students weren't using it. Speaking from my own experience, my kids use(d) it all the time -- when they didn't understand something, were absent and needed to get the homework, or to make up or finish a test. Since my 8th grader doesn't have a "WIN" period, for us it's just a "LOSS" of a valuable resource.

My kid used it regularly and sometimes had to wait. Nine minutes is ludicrous...at that timeframe, why bother? And what to do for those kids who are doing rather well but want to do even better or just want to discuss something about the classwork? Fend for themselves, I suppose, since they're doing well enough by the district's standards?

think this policy will increase, or decrease, the percentage of graduates attending open enrollment community colleges?

I suspect that opening access to higher level classes will not result in a huge flood of students into higher level classes, because most students (and hopefully their parents) want to be in the appropriate level and in most cases they are already in the appropriate level. But it is an important and positive step to reduce or eliminate those cases where students are NOT in the appropriate level AND to just improve the learning environment in general by eliminating some real or perceived barriers that really don't help anyone. Also, for those who may not be in the appropriate level, there may be a need to challenge those students to aspire to a higher level in some cases.

Montclair High School has open access. I trust our people are talking to their people to make sure we learn from their experiences. While I expect that most students will pick appropriate levels, it doesn't take too many mistakes to create a lot of extra work for a lot of people.

Story from Village Green on new policy:

http://villagegreennj.com/schools-kids/will-access-equity-policy-move-s-o-maplewood-schools-good-great/