At the June 3 meeting of the Elementary Math Program Review Committee, a number of the teachers spoke in favor of the current program, Investigations, and against putting a different program in the hands of teachers in a pilot test of a different curriculum. Other teachers at the meeting remained silent, however, and one teacher spoke up to offer her mixed feelings about Investigations, prefacing her comments with, “I may be hanging myself here, but …”
At Board meetings last spring, curriculum support staff tried to explain why there were so many petition signers with negative impressions of Investigations by saying that many parents were confused and pressured into adding their names and soon after regretted having done so. It is true that one petition signer did ask me to remove her name from the petition, but this was a SCASD teacher who had written effusively about her dissatisfaction with Investigations and made her request to be removed fewer than 24 hours later.
At the June 3 meeting the possibility of a teacher and/or parent survey was raised, and this is an excellent idea. It is absolutely critical that this survey be conducted by an independent organization that can guarantee the anonymity of the survey respondents. At Penn State, companies like this one are used to survey faculty and staff on workplace climate and the performance of department heads and deans. A survey with names attached, or conducted by the district, makes sense only if the SCASD leadership is simply seeking justification for use of the current program.
The climate for teachers who do not hold the same views as the Math curriculum office personnel is not good. Any teacher with less courage than those who have already dissented would think twice about expressing their views openly.
I agree, that it is absolutely critical that SCASD Leadership make the survey anonymous.
Well, it is NOT anonymous!
Let’s be really clear here. The teacher that spoke up about “..hanging herself..” was referring to the fact that she could not yet judge Investigations 2 because she had not yet seen it and really did want to get her hands on it. The quote above makes it look like she was against Investigations 2 and that was not the case. She had not yet formed an opinion.
Andy,
Yes, let’s be clear. Anyone can view the C-NET tape to see if I misrepresented the teacher’s opening comment or her general impressions of Investigations, which I characterized as “mixed feelings” in my original post. I don’t see how what I wrote implies that this teacher is “against Investigations 2″.
I am grateful that this teacher had the courage to say what she said at the meeting. Given that she e-mailed me later to thank me for writing something similar in an e-mail to the Committee, I doubt that she believes I misrepresented her views.
I do not believe it is useful or fair to put this specific teacher on the spot any more than she is already. The point of my post was to call for an anonymous survey of teachers in order to get the most honest opinions. Can you offer a serious counterargument to this?
The District has gone ahead with a non-anonymous survey of teachers re Investigations 2 and, as you know from a report to the Committee, the early indications are that much of the feedback is negative. Shouldn’t this increase our interest in knowing what teachers say about Investigations when they are not reporting it face-to-face to their bosses?
Steve
I agree with Steve. Annonymity is the best way to get anonymous feedback.