FYI - Park Board Meeting
There is a secret special meeting tonight at the Park District at 7:30 p.m. It's not posted online or on the marquis. They will be awarding some contracts with the money they don't have. Should be interesting....

Dear Anonymous

I contemplated whether or not to dignify your drunken rant with a response, but here goes.

I join other public school parents fighting for lost causes such as recess, excessive and unnecessary homework, age appropriate pedagogy, and less testing because it's the right thing to do. When things don't change, I do the best I can for the ones I love the most.

My child sat out of six days of district-mandated testing since the beginning of May. We spent that time together while her classmates muddled through round after round of multiple choice standardized test questions that will sort them out and tell their parents how they rank on a bar graph. I wish I could stop the nonsense for all kids. In the meantime, I do what is best for my child.

I, as well as many other contributors, are very proud of this blog and the awareness we have raised in our community. This is evident by the number of subscribers and visitors we have on a daily basis. If you don't like what is written here, then stop coming by every day.

Posting administration and teacher salaries is nothing new. They are posted on many websites as well as in various newspapers each year. Taxpayers have a right to know how and where their tax dollars are being spent.

The "one person" that made a mistake in spelling was not just anybody, it was the PRINCIPAL of the middle school. This is a position that people look up to. Why is the bar set high for our children, but not for those making the decisions in regard to their education? Should we expect less of those in charge of the school?

I am not perfect. I make mistakes but I do my best to learn from them and use this knowledge to guide future decisions.

You ask that I stop complaining about irrelevant things. Do you think that a child's education is irrelevant? Do you think keeping an eye on how tax dollars are spent is irrelevant?

You asked me to "model something that will make your child a great contributor to this nation." I am doing just that by taking my children to be a part of the welcome home ceremony this evening at Midway airport for veterans of World War II. We don't just read about veterans or sit in assemblies listening to speeches; we participate in celebrating their wonderful contributions to this great nation of ours. Can you think of a better way to teach a child about the sacrifices these brave men and women made so that we can be free? Would you care to join us at Midway tonight?



Another thing I do is ride bikes to and from school with my children as well as other kids in my neighborhood. We live about a mile from school and must ride along a busy street not to mention up and down the very crowded School Street. Bicycling teaches the children the benefits of staying healthy through exercise while also helping the environment by reducing our carbon footprint. I also wrote and won a $400,000 grant on behalf of the Village of Willow Springs to install sidewalks on the routes to school. Why don't you ask Superintendent Mark Fredisdorf, Willow Springs Mayor Alan Nowaczyk or the Pleasantdale School Board what they have done to see this project through so that children can be healthy and safe on their route to school?

My emotions are not guided by hate and anger, they are guided by courage, truth, honesty and doing the right thing for all. It is far easier to do what is popular than what is right.

Not on the Test

This might explain why middle school principal Pokorny would not let the PTA host cultural arts programs at the middle school this year.

Standardized Testing and the Flight to Homeschooling

By Laura Brodie, Ph.D. on May 14, 2010 in Love in a Time of Homeschooling

 Our public schools are facing a test-prep overdose that cries out for a parent-driven intervention. Read More

Come One, Come All to the Park Board Meeting - May 12, 2010!

Here is the agenda for the Wednesday night's park board meeting. Click them to enlarge.

It is ridiculous that we have to post this online because the park board and their honcho Katherine Parker refuse to do so, even though it is a law. You can read the law for yourself here:
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=84&ChapAct=5 ILCS 120/&ChapterID=2&ChapterName=GENERAL+PROVISIONS&ActName=Open+Meetings+Act.&Print=True%20)  (5 ILCS 120/2.02) (from Ch. 102, par. 42.02) 

The July 4th Celebration Issues ought to be a good discussion. Let's see if K.P. and the P.B. kissed and made up with the Village of Burr Ridge.

Don't expect the board to approve the closed meeting minutes because those are the meetings in which the board discussed terminating Roz and the stolen stationary incident as well as the forged document to a court of law to satisfy a community service debt owed by commissioner Pettrone's son for breaking the law.

Here are some of the excuses you might hear about why they will not cannot approve the minutes:

• "What closed meeting minutes?"
• "The tapes were accidentally erased," in a similar fashion to board president Brad Martin's July 14th speech when it was requested via the FOIA.
• "The need for confidentiality still exists," because after all, they are talking about a crime that was committed by one of their very own. 
• "We inherited the closed meeting minutes from a previous board."
• "The Chalet parking lot is full every night!"

The good news about the meeting will be that a new board president will be elected. Let's hope whoever they pick will actually show up to meetings, answer emails or questions and serve the public instead of themselves.

To the class of 2010

We do not remember days, we remember moments. ~Cesare Pavese

Enjoy your final weeks at Pleasantdale and cherish the moments along this journey. 

"LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WAKE UP IN THE MORNING WITH REGRETS. SO LOVE THE PEOPLE WHO TREAT YOU RIGHT, FORGET ABOUT THE ONES WHO DON’T AND BELIEVE THAT EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. IF YOU GET A CHANCE, TAKE IT. IF IT CHANGES YOUR LIFE, LET IT. NOBODY SAID THAT IT’D BE EASY, THEY JUST PROMISED IT WOULD BE WORTH IT."  UNKNOWN

Word to the Middle School...

In regard to the Gates "practice" Test given to the students recently...

Is it ever appropriate to use the actual test forms (those used in the

current year or subsequent year) for test preparation?

No, providing students with test items or test answers in advance of the test

is highly unethical. Such activity puts the focus on getting particular test

questions right rather than on measuring student achievement in the subject

area represented by the questions. It is highly rare that a given test item is so

important that its content should be learned by all students or taught to

students directly. The questions on a test represent only a small sample from

all the questions that could be asked when measuring achievement in, say,

science or math. When the exact test is the focus of instruction, the test scores

lose their meaning, and they portray an achievement result that is dishonest.  Wink, wink!

Taken from http://www.education.uiowa.edu/itp/documents/ITPGuidanceDocument.pdf

Use of Practice Materials and "Test Prep"

In August 2005, Iowa Testing Programs distributed a document to all Iowa districts and schools to provide information about appropriate test use and test preparation activities. "Guidance for Developing District Policy and Rules on Test Use,Test Preparation, and Test Security for the Iowa Tests" also is available on this website. Questions and issues about use of practice materials or preparing students in test content should be addressed by referring to the relevant sections of this guidance document.

Each test in the ITBS and ITED batteries begins with one or more sample questions to give students some practice with the content and format of the test. Extensive experience with testing students indicates that no further practice is needed for most students to understand what to do. Furthermore, the sample items represent the only kind of "practice" that students in the norm group received.

There is disagreement among educators about what kind of practice is legitimate preparation for administering a standardized achievement battery. The controversy has centered on the question of what type of practice might give assistance to test takers in excess of that afforded the students in the norm group. That is, to what extent do certain pretest activities offer an advantage to test takers, causing their scores to represent higher achievement levels than they have actually attained?

The issue of legitimate practice is important because it relates directly to both the integrity and the interpretation of standardized test scores. At the heart of the matter is generalizability. The questions in each test are a sample of the many questions that could be used to test students in a particular content domain -- reading, language skills, math, etc. Of course, teachers are interested to some extent in how students in a class answer particular questions, but they are far more likely to be interested in what students' responses tell them collectively about the students' reading achievement or math skill levels. If students get advance practice on the actual test questions, or on very similar ones, the ability to generalize beyond those questions becomes restricted. In sum, the more the practice questions resemble the actual questions, the less the user can generalize about what the students are able to do or what they know.

The problem of generalizability can be illustrated easily by considering the weekly spelling test usually given to elementary-grade students. Suppose that students are given 20 words to learn to spell by the end of the week and that Jeremy gets 16 words right on the Friday test. In interpreting Jeremy's score, it would be foolish to generalize about his spelling ability because he was given the 20 words to learn in advance. However, if another set of 20 words were given to Jeremy on that Friday, words that he had not known would be tested, his score on that 20-word test would tell us something about Jeremy's spelling ability in general. As can be seen from this example, if students are given practice ahead of time on the spelling words on a standardized test, then it makes little sense to use their scores to generalize about how well those students can spell the words on a long, unseen list. Of course, the same principle applies to reading passages, math problems, or any other tasks that appear on a particular standardized test.

Commercially Developed Test Preparation Materials

There are various test preparation materials on the market that claim to ready students for standardized achievement testing. Thus far, however, there is no consistent research evidence to support the use of such materials. Most of these materials are designed to raise test scores without increasing student achievement in the long term. Such preparation actually serves to misrepresent what students know rather than to demonstrate real, substantial growth over the previous year. The authors and publisher of the Iowa tests do not endorse the use of such materials.

Taken from http://www.education.uiowa.edu/itp/itbs/itbs_use_prep.aspx