Don’t let it be lost that Lt. Gov. Dan Forest’s response to the State Board of Education’s 8-2 vote to not extend the contract with iStation was made five days after the vote occurred.

Don’t let it be lost that Lt. Gov. Dan Forest is a State Board of Education member and was not present to make a vote himself.

Don’t let it be lost that Lt. Gov. Dan Forest’s response to the State Board of Education’s 8-2 vote to not extend the contract with iStation was made on April Fools’ Day.

But it should not be surprising that instead of proactively trying to lead as the current Lt. Gov., Dan Forest is simply loudly reacting to what other actual leaders are doing: making decisions based on the needs of citizens.

Remember this about Gov. Cooper’s decision to close restaurant seating a couple of weeks ago?

Forest’s office released a statement titled “Lt. Governor Forest Questions Validity of Restaurant Ban” in which he said Cooper’s order would doom the state’s economic vitality.

“His mandate will devastate our economy, shutter many small businesses and leave many people unemployed, especially in the rural areas of our state where food supply is already critical,” Forest said in the release. “After the press release, and shortly before a scheduled press conference, I, along with other Council of State members, was asked to concur with the Governor’s decision with no discussion. The Governor held his press conference and made the announcement even after a majority of the Council of State voted not to concur with the Governor. Thus, he does not have the authority to issue this part of his executive order.”

That order probably saved lives. Forest was worried about Cooper looking like a true leader.

And now he issues a statement on iStation?

Here is the statement:

“The decision made by the State Board of Education last week was not in the best interest of our students. At a time when we should be doing everything we can to provide stability and continuity in the distance learning plans for students in our state, this action does not.

“This decision sends mixed signals to parents, teachers and school districts on what our expectations should be for our students. When we have a Board of Education advocating for waivers from the General Assembly to eliminate benchmark diagnostics, it makes it seem as though learning at home is not necessary when students are out of school. I, for one, will not advocate for blanket waivers for our students. I am very interested to see how students learn and progress during distance learning, but you cannot gather a true understanding of how students grew (or didn’t) by eliminating diagnostic tools during this COVID-19 statewide school closure. Diagnostic tools, like Istation, show parents and teachers how much a student has grown in a subject by continually tracking the student’s progress, rather than administering a standardized EOG test.

“Finally, the guidance in the State Board’s own document for distance learning stated that ‘When remote learning occurs in grades K-5, LEAs/Charters will provide meaningful feedback to promote student growth.’ By not continuing the contract, the SBE decided to not proceed with the only statewide resource/tool for systematically measuring the reading progress of all 461,441 students, kindergarten through 3rd grade.

“During these uncertain times, it is more important than ever for the State Board of Education to provide certainty for parents, teachers and school districts. I had hoped the Board’s decision of discontinuing the state’s system to track the reading achievement of K-3 students would be reversed after significant conversations over the last several days among DPI staff, educators from across the state, and board members. However, it now seems that the original decision will most likely stand.

Still, I remain hopeful a positive outcome can emerge for our students.”

That’s rich considering his staunch loyalty to Betsy DeVos’s agenda and his wanting to expand vouchers to every student in the state.

That’s rich considering his “letter” to teachers last December that literally was full of so many spun claims that debunking them all was a simple exercise.

What Forest did seems more like helping Mark Johnson save face in what has become an absolute PR nightmare soon after losing a primary for Forest’s current office – badly, I might add.

But it also shows you the disconnect he has with public educators who have been loudly telling DPI and Raleigh that iStation does not provide what they need and that many parents were raising questions how accurate iStation really was. And now that we are in a pandemic with stay at home orders, iStation’s inability to truly and accurately measure a student’s reading skill gets even more exacerbated.

And it shows his ignorance to the fact that mClass is offering its services for free right now.

 

Consider the following maps and data graphs below and answer the question that follows.

From page 10 of the NC Justice Center BTC Report “Strong medicine: Why Medicaid expansion is the right treatment for rural hospitals, economies:”

And this is the map of cases of COVID-19 and other data graphs as of the writing of this post.

Question: Taking into account the spread of COVID-19, the rising number of cases requiring medical treatment and hospitalization, and the number of closed and financially threatened hospitals in rural North Carolina, does it seem apparent that the insistence of the powers in the NC General Assembly to not expand Medicaid was not in the best interest of this state?

A. Yes

B. No. It is totally within the parameters of ALEC and that’s who many in the NCGA obey.

C. No. Giving constituents health care coverage is against the idea of freedom.

D. No. It makes too much sense.

E. No. It is a trick question.

 

North Carolina currently has a minimum wage of $7.25 which is the federal minimum.

North Carolina is one of seven states to make collective bargaining illegal.

This is a map of the economic well-being of each NC county as reported be the North Carolina Department of Commerce. The LIGHTER the shade of blue, the more economic “distress.”

North Carolina is one of seven states with the deepest cuts to K-12 while also cutting corporate tax rates.

North Carolina ranks #3 in lowest corporate tax rates.

North Carolina is one of 14 states to not adopt Medicaid expansion.

North Carolina is one of two states that measures schools with a formula which allows achievement to weigh more than growth and that stigmatizes poverty stricken schools.

 

Remember this from last July?

Three people received those letters. Those individuals had in their calling as public school advocates and as tax payers sought information and exposed the reasonable doubts surrounding Mark Johnson’s unilateral decision to award iStation a contract.

All three Cease & Desist letters were published in WRAL. Here is the text of one of those letters all of which included the same language and claims.

This letter is to advise that Shanahan Law Group, PLLC represents Imagination Station, lnc. (“Istation”). As you are no doubt aware, Islation has been awarded the contract arising from the North Carolina Department of Public Read to Achieve RFP (“Contract”). Please direct all communication regarding this matter to me here at if you are represented by legal counsel, please direct this correspondence accordingly.

We have become aware that you have been making demonstrably false, misleading, and defamatory public statements about lstation. its agents, its products, and the process by which lstation was awarded the Contract by NCDPI. You were not involved in any part of the process by which this Contract was awarded, and NCDPI is just now beginning to release documents pertinent to the process. NCDPI has indicated that further documents will be released. Thus, your public statements are based on nothing more than unverifiable speculation and unsubstantiated statements by a former employee was not involved with the entire RFP process. Nevertheless, you have represented speculative, false, misleading, and defamatory information with respect to our client as fact in public media and other forums. Among other things, your conduct amounts to  defamation and tortious interference with the Contract that [station was legally and appropriately awarded by Accordingly, we hereby DEMAND that you immediately cease making false and misleading representations about Istation, its products, or the process by Which this Contract came into existence, whether in public or private, and retract your false statements,

Preservation Notice

As my client considers its legal options with respect to your conduct. please be advised that we believe that you are or may be in possession of documents, tangible items, and electronically stored information that will become an important and irreplaceable source of discovery and evidence. By this letter, you are hereby given notice not to destroy, conceal. or otherwise alter any papers, audio or video recordings, digital or electronic files, or data generated or stored on a computer or other storage media (6. g. hard disks or drives, floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, backup tapes, flash drives, PDAs, smart phones, tablet devices, laptops or netbooks, PCs, servers, or backup media) from January 1, 2018 to the present that in any way relate to Istation, its products, or the process by which this Contract came into existence. Please note that this notice includes e-mails, chat logs, instant messages, text messages, voice mails, and social media posts, messages or writings of every kind. Failure to comply with this notice may result in severe sanctions being imposed by a court for spoliation of actual or potential evidence.

Accordingly, you must make every reasonable effort to preserve all documents and information related in any way to the categories of items listed above. These efforts include, but are not limited to, an obligation to discontinue all relevant data destruction, backup tape recycling, and auto-deletion or auto-preservation policies. This obligation also includes, but is not limited to, preservation of all documents, tangible items, and electronically

If you have any questions regarding this correspondence, please do not hesitate to contact me, or have your attorney contact me. Nothing in this correspondence is intended to prejudice any and all rights and remedies available to Istation under applicable law. All such rights and remedies are specically reserved.

Sincerely,

SHANAHAN AW GROUP, PLLC

And from last Friday in an NC Policy Watch report:

Despite a plea from State Superintendent Mark Johnson, the State Board of Education (SBE) on Friday rejected a $1.2 million contract extension with Istation, the firm that provides the state’s K-3 reading diagnostic tool.

The SBE voted 8-2 during a remote conference call to table the contract until the General Assembly considers a request to waive the reading diagnostic requirement in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.

Kind of like a Cease & Desist in its own right.

 

Good morning.

Let’s state the obvious. This is not how it should have happened. A little over two months left in your senior year of high school and a few things were supposed to occur before graduation – maybe prom, some sports, definitely hanging out with friends.

And now you have virtual classes amidst a pandemic with a “stay at home” order. Furthermore, the State Board of Education voted last Friday to put into place a plan that almost assuredly “ended” elements of schooling on an academic scale for seniors. The inquiries I received just from students over the weekend alone told me that news has already spread.

Yes, this is a bad set of circumstances on many levels.

So, what are you going to do about it? How do you want to remember in the future how you handled this time of adversity? Most assuredly, many of you answered a response on a college application asking you to describe how you handled adversity or a big unforeseen challenge.

I ask because I am a teacher of seniors, and there is a high school senior living under the roof of my home.

My grandmother, who is still alive and remains wickedly sharp, lived through the Great Depression. My grandfathers were overseas during WWII. My mother lived during a war that claimed the lives of many of her childhood friends. I remember 9/11 like it was yesterday.

All different, yet all life defining. So, the question remains – what are you going to do about it?

And I am not talking about academics necessarily (although that could be part of it –  making sure that finish your secondary school education with as much energy and passion as possible).

This could be the time where you can work on so many things that no test would ever be able to measure, but the rest of your life could reap benefits from.

Be a bigger part of your family. Help your parents with things around the house. Pursue a curiosity. Reach out to loved ones. Have meaningful conversations. Write letters. Read great books. Help your younger siblings. Do outside yard work for older people (socially distanced of course). Look into possible college majors. Learn or relearn a musical instrument. Do the house work. Learn to cook or get better at it. Call people instead of text. Exercise your mind and body.

Learn what you have taken for granted and become more grateful for those very things. Be there for people who really need your help and support. Be the person today that you reflect upon later and can honestly say that you did not let this current situation keep you from growing as a person.

When young adults come back to see me during college or contact me after they have started a career, the last thing I ask them is what their scores were in school. I want to know if they are becoming the people that they are proud to be.

And I want them to know that I still care.

Be the same great person you have always been.

In 2012, the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation for the “Read to Achieve” initiative.

Over seven years later, it has not really achieved.

From an October 2018 Charlotte Observer report:

The General Assembly passed Read to Achieve legislation in 2012. It was modeled on literacy efforts in other states, including the “Just Read, Florida!” program created by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2001. The goal in North Carolina was to end “social promotion” by keeping students in third grade until they could read at grade level and providing extra support to help them get there.

But in the years that followed the percent of North Carolina third- and fourth-graders graders passing state reading exams stayed flat or declined. National reading exams showed equally discouraging results.

First, we should never try and emulate anything that Jeb Bush does to “reform” education. Read to Achieve and the School Performance Grading system have done nothing to help our students except funnel money into private hands and create empty excuses for other “reforms.”

Secondly, this is a failure that lies on the part of Phil Berger who was one of its biggest champions when it was introduced as a NC initiative. He needs to own it, but he seems too busy trying to blame others for having no state budget rather than backing up his claims for his #NCSuccessStory.

The scores for those 3rd grade reading tests over the years are eye-popping.

That 2018 Charlotte Observer report referenced a comprehensive study by NC State in conjunction with the Friday Institute that found really no success in the Read to Achieve initiative on a state level.

However, on a local basis, there were some local initiatives that showed some promise. Look at pages 23-24 of the study report and see how actually fully funding a reading instruction initiative and supplying those initiatives with effective instructors makes a difference.

“Indeed, we have heard from many practitioners from across the state who believe their localized versions of RtA are having an impact on their students, but because of the sometimes very small size of the group of students impacted in most of the state’s (school districts), we are not able to test these intuitions statistically,” the report says.

In fact, fully funding schools and making sure that there are enough professionals in the rooms with the students are vital in any place. The fact that any success in this depends on the local professionals (teachers, assistants, administration) being able to dictate what can be done and having the faith that required resources will be available simply flies in the face of people like Berger who preach “smaller government” but actually practice more overreach.

Right now we as a state have no budget and all of our schools are closed. And if the state had any sense at all, it would go ahead and eliminate any testing mandated by the Read to Achieve legislation.

And then it should end the Read to Achieve program, take the money it would save needlessly spending for it, and invest it into more early childhood education opportunities.

 

…flood my school email inbox with offers to try a new educational technology that aligns to curriculum for standardized tests.

Not all of my students have the resources to access the technology if I was even in a position to purchase and use it.

Most all of my time now is devoted to just providing what I can educationally to the students I have within the framework of existing technology.

There is no telling what financial burdens are mounting on the shoulders of local school systems and individual schools just to try and make learning accessible while trying to meet the many needs of our students. Remember, we have a General Assembly controlled by people who are holding the budget hostage.

If you have existing customers and clients using your tools and technology, please focus on helping them make the most of what they have for their own students.

Now is not the tell to sell. Now is the time to show support that we as teachers who already use your products will then rave about to others when this pandemic is over and we realize that we as a system, state, and nation may have to re-prioritize how we approach certain aspects of schooling.

In the future, we might have the finances to actually purchase something that we know we will use for a long time and can benefit each student maximally. And teachers will talk about how great a product or customer support really was.

But if you are a streaming service of educational videos, online tutorials, electronic versions of books, or any other supplementary product that students can go to without to much guidance that can be used for free while this epidemic is still occurring, then contact the technology officer at the central office.

That would help tremendously because they would know best how it might fit individual schools.

I need my email inbox for my students, parents, and administrators.

 

 

I am a teacher.

By the third year of teaching, my daily routine outside of school was marked by a schedule that centered around teaching. Bells go off in my head during the summers. No matter what day it is, I naturally awake at the same time.

When there is complete silence, I sometimes have to turn on some sort of background noise.

Mentally, I can prepare for summer breaks, but much of what I do in the summer still revolves around my school because in truth a school never closes.

Two weeks into this epidemic that now includes a “stay at home” order and I am trying to explain to a person who does not teach what I am missing most. I tell him that it is the “organized chaos.” That’s hard to explain to someone who does not teach in a school, and until I had to put what I meant into words, I didn’t really know what it totally encompassed intellectually.

But I sure feel it.

• It’s the bustling hallways between class periods when students have that brief period of socializing with others at school.
• It’s the collaborative group work that occurs when students are engaged in an assignment.
• It’s the crowd at a sporting event supporting students representing the school.
• It’s the cafeteria during lunchtime.
• It’s the ten different conversations in a classroom taking place right before the bell rings to begin class.
• It’s the open area outside the building after school where friends meet.
• It’s the extracurricular activity that brings people with similar interests together.
• It’s that frenetic pace that teachers get used to over the years and find comfort because energy is being used to maximize what time we actually do have.

And it’s so much more than that.

Yesterday, I went to my school to collect some of the items and books that I thought I need now that schools have been shut down until at least May and an order to stay at home was to start in the evening. I conducted an online class from my desk with students who would normally sit in the very desks in that same room. When the session concluded and the screen went blank, there was that feeling of complete silence that many would find relaxing.

I didn’t.

I miss the bemused faces of students who are amazed that I find what I teach incredibly interesting. I miss the eye rolls from those who think my jokes are corny. I miss the honest feedback from students and colleagues about what we are doing about teaching and learning.

I am a teacher.

And when that school opens back up after this epidemic, I might be the first one in his classroom.

 

Today at 11:00, a meeting will convene with the State Board of Education to discuss a variety of issues surrounding the closure of public schools in the state and how to offer instruction to students to complete the school year.

Hidden in that agenda is a request from State Superintendent Mark Johnson to pay iStation $1.2 million dollars to prolong the use of an unpopular reading assessment tool for elementary school students based on a questionable procurement process.

Remember that HB17 launched a lawsuit that took money away from the state coffers and ultimately hindered the State Board of Education’s role in the budget to give over to an educational neophyte, unproven leader, and a political puppet.

Remember that that same political puppet used his office to run a failed campaign for higher office based on claims that he would rid the state of Common Core.

Remember that that same unproven leader  procured contracts with vendors based on unilateral decisions that were unpopular with teachers and local administrators and were ethically questionable.

Remember that that same educational neophyte said he was in Raleigh to root out and fight against the “deep state.”

Remember that that same individual bought a bunch of iPads because… well, we really do not know why.

The State Board of Education should not spend any more money on Mark Johnson’s recommendations if it is within its power.

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Chelsea Bartel has been following the controversy concerning Mark Johnson’s unilateral decision to purchase iStation and exposing its lack of transparency longer than most anyone. She posted this tweet today.

iStation wants $1.2 million for us to keep using their platform during the prolonged school closures. Amplify is offering theirs for free.

Justin Parmenter just released a great post about the agenda for tomorrow’s State Board of Education meeting in which will consider Johnson’s request to pay iStation. Take a look at it.

Dr. Bartel is right. No more red capes.

Except in fiction or on Hulu.