BOE president Robin Kulwin can’t handle (or seem to tell) the truth

In a letter to The Montclair Times on 10/2/13, BOE president Robin Kulwin expressed her dismay over information in the paper that she felt inaccurately portrayed the Board and the Superintendent, Penny MacCormack. 

Kulwin’s letter provided corrections to info that she deemed erroneous.  Perhaps if she had truth-checked her letter before sending it in, it may have been more convincing:

KULWIN’S ASSERTION:  “Over a 20 year career, Dr. MacCormack has worked as a teacher, dean of students, principal, assistant superintendent, and chief academic officer. This is the résumé of a career educator, not a corporate executive.”

REALITY:  It would be great if Kulwin would share MacCormack’s resume with us, but she hasn’t.  In fact, no one has.  It’s never been presented by the BOE, and it’s not findable online.  Did she work as a teacher for one day?  One month?  One year?  If so, where?  Just because Kulwin says it doesn’t make it so, so if she really wants us to believe that MacCormack has credibility as a “career educator”, she should present actual facts, not imprecise, possibly fabricated, and misleading BOE “facts”.

KULWIN’S ASSERTION:  “Allegations that the Board of Education is making our students take an ‘additional layer of high stakes tests’ are inaccurate.”

REALITY:  Actually, it’s quite accurate.  The tests as originally planned were supposed to represent 25% of a student’s marking period grade in each subject.  A poor student performance in a poorly crafted non-teacher designed test (more on this later) that didn’t truly represent what a student was learning in his/her class would have been dispiriting, valueless, and a dangerous drag on his/her GPA, affecting transcripts and college options.  Sorry, but that’s high stakes.  Again, just because Kulwin says otherwise doesn’t truth-ify it, especially when – as is customary in all MacCormack related matters – she offers no data to validate her assertion.

KULWIN’S ASSERTION:  “These new assessments are not standardized, multiple-choice tests but balanced, teacher-designed assessments.  They are designed by Montclair teachers and administered and graded by classroom teachers.”

REALITY:  Of course the tests were standardized:  that’s why the BOE approved the spending of thousands on Scantron machines to grade them.  It’s another fib to say that all of the tests were designed by Montclair teachers.  As the Star Ledger discovered and MacCormack admitted, many were cut and pasted from existing tests that are available online.  So saying that the CQAs are teacher-designed would be like me buying Costco cupcakes, putting sprinkles on them, and calling them homemade.

KULWIN’S ASSERTION:  “These assessments will simply replace some of the ‘end of unit’ tests listed in the old curriculum guides, and they will replace the mid-term and final. They will not increase the amount of tests that our students take.”

REALITY:  Pants slightly on fire.  The “no increase in the amount of tests” claim may apply to students in some classes, but not all.  Under the original plan, the majority of students in the district would have needed to have taken 16 additional tests (four subjects/four tests per subject/year).  Also, the amount of class time devoted to preparing for all of these exams would have made the term “teaching to the test” a daily reality.

KULWIN’S ASSERTION:  “After Dr. MacCormack arrived in November 2012, she conducted 110 meetings with the community and staff… The strategic plan introduced in spring 2013 was the result of all of those meetings.”

REALITY:  I won’t quibble over the legendary and oft-cited “110 meeting” figure, which may be more of a BOE “fact” than a legitimate, verifiable fact, so let’s move on.  The bottom line is that at none of these meetings – which were more venting sessions from the attendees than constructive community dialogues with MacCormack - were standardized tests ever proposed, discussed, or debated.  Ever.  Kulwin kind of suggests that they were, but that never happened, and she knows it.

KULWIN’S ASSERTION:  “After the meetings, a draft of a plan was made available for public comment.  Four additional, extremely well-attended public meetings were held to solicit feedback on the draft. Extensive on-line feedback was also received… In short, public participation in the development of the strategic plan was active and plentiful.”

REALITY:  Kulwin’s “well-attended” meetings consisted of stacked houses that were comprised primarily of invited supporters who wouldn’t raise a ruckus.  And again, there was no discussion or debate at these meetings about the role that standardized tests would have in the vaunted strategic plan WHATSOEVER.

Speaking of public participation, I recall the big presentation at the high school in spring 2013, where hundreds of parents submitted suggestions about how to improve the district’s educational performance.  Were the results of these suggestions ever shared with the public?  Any bar charts?  Graphs?  Percentages?  No.  And of these many suggestions, did any call for high stakes standardized testing?  I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I’d say with 100% certainty that no, none did.

For someone who’s so focused on gaining wisdom from the data resulting from the implementation of MacCormack’s strategic plan, Kulwin has been especially stingy with any data that confirms the plan’s feasibility or usefulness.

KULWIN’S ASSERTION:  “The suggestions that the BOE should ‘slow down’ the adoption of the common assessments because too much change is happening at once are misguided.”

REALITY:  Pure opinion.  Kulwin doesn’t provide any factual info that substantiates why these suggestions are misguided, she simply says that, well, they are.  They just ARE, ok???  Now enough – “this is not a dialogue!”

In a Montclair Times article of 1/6/14 about a report by the Township Manager which determined that hacking didn’t cause the October ’13 assessment test leak, Kulwin seems to bemoan that fact that the report “asks readers to take municipal officials at their word”.  If she’s frustrated that her claims (and the claims of her fellow BOE members and MacCormack) aren’t met with similar believability, there’s a reason for the suspicion.  False proclamations, deceptive actions/decisions, non-transparent behavior, resistance to a true dialogue/collaboration about education in the district, reckless and secretive spending, opposition to “back and forth conversations” with the public at Board meetings, harassing subpoenas, and – last but not least - dishonest op-eds are ample testament to why their reliability is in question.