It's Been Awhile

I've been taken to task for negative posts and, after the primary election for School Committee, in which 2000 of 34,000 eligible Walthamians bothered to vote, followed by a School Committee Meeting performance rivaled in dysfunction only by the one this summer when one Committee Member stormed out after dissing the mayor, well, there hasn't been much to write about.

I'll take this opportunity to share official good news, Waltham: the Fitzgerald Elementary School received a Level 1 designation from the MA DESE: 
http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/accountability/report/school.aspx?linkid=31&orgcode=03080060&

Our educators managed this feat despite inconsistent leadership and issues of overcrowding. Big ups to them, and to the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders who took the MCAS and performed so well.  

You can easily go to the pull-down menu to see how your student's school did.  Sadly, the Fitz and the Stanley were the only elementary schools with a Level 1 designation.

One thing that took a bit of the wind out of my sails, though, was when I clicked on this page
http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/analysis/default.aspx?orgcode=03080060&orgtypecode=6&
and saw there schools from towns similar to Waltham and of the same size and demographics with even higher scores than our kids achieved.  

So what gives, Waltham?  With all that we have going right, why, as @Liz often points out, do we still not have the test scores to match?  If I were to ask if anyone is looking at similar school in similar districts, I am too certain that the answer would be 'Huh?', so I won't bother.  This is what I mean about benchmarking, though, and I have to think that it's a lot easier to get to Quincy to do it than it is to get to China.  Did I just say that out loud?

Well there I go again: I started out all positive and just went deep south.

Meanwhile, it seems that the rest of the School Committee meetings until the November election will feature Committee Members who are unprepared (or who "brought the wrong bag") for meetings or who are already on to the Next Big Thing.  I will keep the pressure on Waltham to elect School Committee members who work as hard as our educators and our students do: they don't deserve any less.