Comments on: SES: Creating the Future or Endangered Future? http://www.varpartners.net/?p=1542 Supporting the most important work in the world… yours. Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:24:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Tom Vander Ark http://www.varpartners.net/?p=1542&cpage=1#comment-2189 Tom Vander Ark Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:04:49 +0000 http://www.varpartners.net/?p=1542#comment-2189 Here's an emailed comment: I’m an SES provider...You’re dead on. It couldn’t have gotten off on a worse footing with the education establishment. Not just SES, but NCLB was seen as punitive. Schools Eligible for Assistance would have been a better way to characterize schools in need of improvement. And even though NCLB doubled our state’s Title I budget while only requiring part of that increase to go to SES, the notion that private organizations were stealing from the districts was never addressed. The program was never explained, let alone ‘sold’ to principals much less teachers. That it came from the Bush administration was just icing on the cake for those who disliked it. Which is to say everyone but the parents and students who benefited from the program. In our case that number is about 5,000 over the years. Some districts saw the value in it…and those tended to be districts where the Title I directors came from the same socio-economic backgrounds as the families it was intended to serve. Some districts actually saw it as a law that needed to be implemented because that’s what laws are suppose to require. Others fought it was a nastiness that I found genuinely shocking in the world of educated adults. It has been a fascinating learning experience from a unique vantage point. That being from the parent/student point of view as well as the educators’. And there are flaws. No question. Many of those flaws criticized by educators seem very similar to flaws underlying the poor performance of public education in the very areas where SES-eligible schools are found. I have maintained that the program was partially intended to determine which type of SES approach worked and that those approaches would be carried on. I think that was naïve. The measurements so disliked by SEAs and LEAs were cloned in measuring SES. Where it was supported, it became another tool in district toolbags for passing the tests. Little thought was given nor any indices created to gauge the impacts on student attitudes and confidence, etc. Parents were not queried about the program or its impacts on their children. This isn’t the place for me to discuss my observations on how parents are treated but in my view they are given short shrift aside from occasional meetings over report cards which tend to be one-way conversations. Given this and the expressed outlook on ‘middlemen’, I’m not at all confident in the future of SES. While this means a major change for me and some inconvenience for the 200 – plus teachers and other competent adults who work with us annually – not to mention the students who will be herded into after-school group ‘help’ activities that mirror what has not worked for them well in the previous six hours of their day – I think the saddest aspect is that there will be no effort to see if anything positive came from SES. At all. Just down the memory hole and on to the next educational fad. Here’s an emailed comment:
I’m an SES provider…You’re dead on. It couldn’t have gotten off on a worse footing with the education establishment. Not just SES, but NCLB was seen as punitive. Schools Eligible for Assistance would have been a better way to characterize schools in need of improvement.

And even though NCLB doubled our state’s Title I budget while only requiring part of that increase to go to SES, the notion that private organizations were stealing from the districts was never addressed.

The program was never explained, let alone ‘sold’ to principals much less teachers. That it came from the Bush administration was just icing on the cake for those who disliked it. Which is to say everyone but the parents and students who benefited from the program. In our case that number is about 5,000 over the years.

Some districts saw the value in it…and those tended to be districts where the Title I directors came from the same socio-economic backgrounds as the families it was intended to serve. Some districts actually saw it as a law that needed to be implemented because that’s what laws are suppose to require. Others fought it was a nastiness that I found genuinely shocking in the world of educated adults. It has been a fascinating learning experience from a unique vantage point. That being from the parent/student point of view as well as the educators’.

And there are flaws. No question. Many of those flaws criticized by educators seem very similar to flaws underlying the poor performance of public education in the very areas where SES-eligible schools are found.

I have maintained that the program was partially intended to determine which type of SES approach worked and that those approaches would be carried on. I think that was naïve. The measurements so disliked by SEAs and LEAs were cloned in measuring SES. Where it was supported, it became another tool in district toolbags for passing the tests. Little thought was given nor any indices created to gauge the impacts on student attitudes and confidence, etc.

Parents were not queried about the program or its impacts on their children. This isn’t the place for me to discuss my observations on how parents are treated but in my view they are given short shrift aside from occasional meetings over report cards which tend to be one-way conversations.

Given this and the expressed outlook on ‘middlemen’, I’m not at all confident in the future of SES. While this means a major change for me and some inconvenience for the 200 – plus teachers and other competent adults who work with us annually – not to mention the students who will be herded into after-school group ‘help’ activities that mirror what has not worked for them well in the previous six hours of their day – I think the saddest aspect is that there will be no effort to see if anything positive came from SES. At all. Just down the memory hole and on to the next educational fad.

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