“But he hasn’t got anything on,” a little child said.*

I generally gauge how the Board of Ed meeting went by how relieved I am that we have strong local control laws in Massachusetts. And last week, boy howdy, was I glad that we have school committees working with superintendents in Massachusetts.

As I have thought back on it, it isn't, in retrospect, solely the irresponsible decision to devote Board of Ed time--and a promise of state funding--on student cell phone bans the day after an entire high school fled their building due to an active shooting swatting incident (which turned into an actual gunfire incident after a police officer fired his gun in a school bathroom accidentally; that officer remains actively working for the Danvers Police Department), a panel discussion which had zero discussion of responsibilities we have to students in teaching them to manage their time and attention, nor of the current realities of education in the United States, nor of looking to the future of work for our students. 

That was inane and not supported by research and part of a very long tradition of education always being freaked out by whatever the latest thing is--look up educators responses to paper, or store bought ink, the ballpoint pen, or even computers sometime--but while that was an indicator how troublingly out of touch the Commissioner is, it was another section that is even more worrisome. 

About 3 hours and 35 minutes in (video's here), you can watch a presentation (which isn't posted) and then discussion (I guess?) on what's being termed the Department's "Educational Vision."

Let me start from me on this: as someone who taught and as someone who now is in public office, I really think that it's important to explain things in ways that people can follow and understand. This presentation, as with the presentations I've seen associated with this work, is very lingo-driven and very difficult to follow. This is not a public-driven or -derived group of work.

I also think it's just wild that a state department is just out here...making up what their vision is, without reintegrating that to the state? or the Constitution? Or founding documentation?

I had thought it was odd when this vision work had been mentioned in passing at earlier meetings that there had been no mention of outreach: no one seemed to be going to listen to people about what they thought maybe the vision or direction of the Department ought to be. It's easy enough to be make quips about this, but it turns out it was because...

The PowerPoint isn't online, so you're getting photos

...it's using what they came up with in 2019...

I am struggling to put into words how stunning it was thought that this was the place to start, or even move from. We're not going to ask if we're in a different place; we're not going to ask if we have things to learn from the pandemic; we're not going to ask if this means we need new priorities...we're just starting from this.

Now we're told that this then went through the Department's Racial Equity Decision Making Tool, which the Department appears to reference in a very on again off again fashion (put the charter school creation through this):

Somehow, this says this involved public input. Please let me know if that involved you, or if you even heard of it. 

That somehow then yielded this:

In essence what then has been done is that the Department took all 400+ of their programs and organized them under these themes, as best as I can tell. 

So rather than consider if what the Department is doing aligns with the above, it took what it had and sorted them.

The Board discussion then...did not involve or relate any of the above.

So, look: I am one person, who happens to serve on a school committee in Massachusetts, and who follows Board work quite closely. If I don't understand or follow and struggle to believe that this is what the Department should be doing, where are we, exactly?

*The Emperor's New Clothes, Hans Christian Anderson