In homage to test questions of yester-year we ask, what is wrong with the following statement:
Most teachers don’t trust the leaders of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
Of course that should read Every teacher does not. Seriously, when consultants working with the Uptown task force on CMS point to a survey that finds that only two-thirds of teachers distrust the Ed Center you know they are not getting the true picture. More importantly — much more — is the fact that the CMS leadership does not trust its teachers. If this reform excercise is going to have an meaning at all it has to recognize that reality and try to find ways to change it.
Like I pointed out the other day, the pressure CMS feels to get its end-of-course test scores up has morphed into a full-court press to teach the tests, including dispatching cadres of testing coordinators into the schools to ride herd on the teachers. If and when the test scores fall short of their goals, the teachers understand that they and they alone are gonna take the fall. The Ed Center will throw up its hands and say we did all we could.
