Time is running out on the nine members of the Quakertown Community School Board. Under intense pressure from parents, former students, and their own teachers over the failed Integrated Math curriculum, they have now refused to even discuss board member Paul Stepanoff's motion to offer traditional math as an option next September. Buzzzzz!!! Sorry...wrong answer. But, then, our IM students have gotten used to wrong answers.
The board already insulted the 38,000 residents, stacking the first "math study" task force with pro-IM "experts" funded by the National Science Foundation, the organization that created the program. Not exactly an impartial evaluation. The public (and media) outcry over that heavy-handed embarrassment forced the board to form yet another committee to compare the two programs.
But, incredibly, the same outrage is being repeated! Before the new group ever even met, the board invited Dr. F. Joseph Merlino to make a presentation on IM. Merlino is NSF-funded, and is the presumptive author of the IM program used here. But there is apparently no money available for conducting studies, or bringing in consultants, to offer evidence about traditional math. What a joke! There is just no limit to our board's deceptions.
Frankly, we don't need experts to tell us that choices in education are good. This is not rocket science (or whatever passes for science using Integrated Math). Allowing students at least the option of traditional math should be a no-brainer. What could possibly be wrong with offering a choice, especially considering how poorly IM students are doing in testing here, and across the country? In fact, QCSD's whole thinking is backward. Traditional math should be the standard. IM should be (at best) an option.
But in a 5-4 vote, the board rejected even considering the matter until their latest tainted "committee" weighs in. Those five were Dr. Robert Leight, Zane Stauffer, Nancy Tirjan, Linda Martin, and new president Kelly Van Valkenberg. Remember the names; Leight, Tirjan, and Martin are up for re-election next year.
QCSD surveyed its own teachers this past June about IM. The results, which were never released to the public, are frightening: Students are entirely dependent on calculators. Many cannot do even single and double-digit addition and subtraction without using their fingers. They don't know the multiplication tables, can't perform long division, and lack simple algebra and geometry concepts. One teacher said that every year, 90 percent of their ninth graders are unable to do basic fractions, decimals, and powers.
Sample teacher comments: "Increasingly large number of students have poor work ethic. As that declines, so does their ability. It leads to a situation where we make learning easier and easier so students 'get it'. The consequence is that we are, in effect, doing their thinking for them".
"A disturbingly large number of my students can't follow simple directions, and want immediate assurance before they make even the easiest of academic conclusions. Instead of life-long learners, we are enabling life-long mental cripples. Test scores tell us our students are deficient in critical thinking areas."
But instead of reacting to their own teachers, angry graduates, and exasperated parents, the board members defend their curriculum. They are still unwilling to admit that IM is a failure despite the fact that other states, and even the national math teachers' organization that originally backed IM, now reject it.
Sadly, the real answer here comes down to money. These folks never met an expense they didn't like, or a staff position they didn't want to create. And unlike traditional math, IM gets outside funding. NSF pays the piper, and calls the tune. Our own form of pay-to-play. We have outsourced a key component of our kids' educations to a private company, which creates and sells its own textbooks, and trots out its own "experts", to promote its own questionable agenda (which keeps it in business). Perhaps next we can put foreign language choices up for bid, or allow the special interest group with the most money to put its spin on our history courses.
Meanwhile, they hire staff at a dizzying rate, raising our taxes over 50 percent to pay among the highest salaries in the nation. What does that tell you about their priorities? The problem isn't just a disagreement over math. It is the much broader issue of the overall role of the QCSD school board. Nine people from the community who are supposed to.....do what???
They are responsible for the curriculum, but don't necessarily have any educational background. They have total control of an $80,000,000+ budget, but don't necessarily have any financial background. They negotiate the expensive union contracts, but don't necessarily have any legal or negotiation background. Their decisions dictate our taxes, but they don't necessarily own property or pay real estate taxes here.
The nine QCSD board members have far more power to affect our lives, our pocketbooks, and our children's futures than any of the six town councils and supervisor boards. Yet very few people even know their names.
So, with no required education, knowledge, specialties, or recognition, what is the role of the board? Should the members be making decisions on their own, sticking to them regardless of the feelings of the community, or should they be reflecting the needs and concerns of the people - or at least discussing them? I believe the answer is behind door number two. Apparently the board feels otherwise.
Citizen input? Public awareness? Nyet, comrades. This is Quakertown Community School District, home of educational tunnel-vision. Closed-mouth, closed-mind, no-discussion reverence for Integrated Math. Myopia in handing out huge teacher contracts without demanding accompanying student performance. Addiction to huge tax increases.
No wonder Haycock Township is considering abandoning QCSD in favor of neighboring Palisades (taxes 22% lower!). Bureaucratic red tape may prevent this from happening, but it is just one more embarrassment for a board whose time is running out.