According to Alexandra Fenwick Norwalk Advocate it took 4 hours for parents and teachers to weigh on on the proposed mandates from Corda’s “instructional specialists”. From the article:
Parents got a chance to weigh in last night on proposed policies on homework, grades and student promotion and retention - and weigh in they did in a meeting that lasted four hours and had to be moved to City Hall’s community room to accommodate the crowd.
About 20 attendees, including some teachers and one student, debated the policies with instructional specialists who presented the proposed changes. The crowd was allowed to submit written comments on a form circulated at the beginning of the meeting.
Board members also publicly discussed the proposed changes for the first time.
Among the most heated topics were retesting procedures, homework makeups, homework time guidelines and a grading scale for final quarter grades.
The proposal is a response to district inconsistencies, current educational research and, in large part, the federal No Child Left Behind Act and its standards-based system for measuring achievement.
“Assessment is no longer viewed as a snapshot in time with no further chance of improvement, but feeds back to the teacher and what the student needs,” said Karen Lang, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.
Supporting policies he believes will promote learning, board member Robert Polley said parents might not initially favor them.
It’s safe to say that instructional specialists are a waste of taxpayers money. Let the teachers teach. Let the students learn. And one lesson that is self evident, is that when you don’t turn in assignments, a zero is what is earned. Not 50%.
source: Norwalk Advocate, Doing their homework: Parents speak out about promotion and grades, May 30 2007
