Back in June, the Board of Education’s Ad Hoc Reporting and Grading Committee issued a report outlining a new policy affecting students in grades 3 – 12 that would make homework worth between zero and 10% of a student’s grade.
The report received little notice; perhaps it was lost in the brouhaha over school uniforms. But homework deserves at least as much attention as polo shirts and khakis.
How will cutting or eliminating homework improve education? The Committee’s report doesn’t say. Fortunately, the policy is still in the draft stage, so there’s time for the Board to raise questions and hone the policy. Implementation is not expected until at least 2010.
Sometimes you CAN judge a book by its cover, or at least a building. Parents at the new Patterson Mill Middle High School in Bel Air have plenty of concerns about the walkways, fields and facilities on school grounds. Meetings with school officials are ongoing. But now that the building has been open for a year, it turns out there are problems on the inside too.
The school might have some of the latest technology, but something as simple as lockers are scarce. Patterson Mill was planned to handle 1,600 students and 1,672 lockers were installed.
The new Patterson Mill Middle High School should be the pride of Harford County. Thanks to the decision to forward fund several schools, Patterson Mill was the first in a string of long overdue construction projects intended to launch our students into the 21st century. Patterson Mill boasts many state-of-the-art features on the inside, but on the outside at least, someone clearly dropped the ball.
With several big ticket projects in the works, namely Bel Air and Edgewood high schools, Deerfield and Youth’s Benefit elementary schools, not to mention two brand new schools in various stages of development, the Patterson Mill experience may serve as a cautionary tale to the thousands of parents and other taxpayers who want to ensure that their school facilities are planned appropriately and delivered as planned.
A long-awaited independent review of the high school reform plan known as CSSRP was provided to the Board of Education by Leadership Capacity, Inc. at the board’s work session Monday, April 21st in Bel Air. The board received a 300-page report reiterating many of the issues brought to the board’s attention by teachers, parents, students and administrators as far back as 2005.
Particular interest was sparked by focus group reports indicating a low level of support among teachers for many aspects of CSSRP ranging from the block schedule to the mandatory class “Living in a Contemporary World”.
Board president Tom Fidler wasted no time concluding that this reflected of a “failure of leadership” on the part of Superintendent Jackie Haas and senior staff members Dave Volrath and Gerry Scarborough.
The Dagger just received another survey that’s full of questions the folks who got paid the $46,000 didn’t even think to ask. The new survey was created by a local high school teacher who wanted to know more about one of the Concepts of Comprehensive Secondary School Reform (CSSRP) - the one theorizing that students should choose a “career pathway” in high school, because students would be more interested in school if they had “coursework with an exit purpose.”
So let’s find out what kids really think about picking a career path when they are still freshman in high school and what happens when students are, as one of them put it, “pigeon- holed” into taking certain classes.
The Honorable Sheila Hixson
and Members of the House Ways and Means Committee
The State House
Annapolis, Maryland
Dear Delegate Hixson and Members of the Ways and Means Committee:
I am writing in support of HB 779 which would provide for an elected Board of Education in Harford County. I retired from the Harford County Public School system in December 2006 after more than 33 years as a teacher and administrator. I have served as the principal of Bel Air High School, the principal of C. Milton Wright High School, and as the Director of Secondary Education. I am the immediate past president of the Maryland Association of Secondary School Principals. I continue to pay close attention to the operation of the public schools in Harford County and to public education in Maryland.
For the past two decades I have observed and worked with the various people who have been ...Continue Reading
