A few thoughts on Tuesday's Board meeting

 This is my ongoing reminder that the only thing you see here is me thinking about things; no one else's policy or position is here.

• While getting to Methuen was a bit of a pain, it's nice for the Board to meet somewhere other than DESE's office. The degree to which the Board is very removed from schools is not helpful.
  
  
• We now have regulations that adhere to the mess of a law the November ballot question left us with, pending further action--eventually?--by legislators, which I guess are going to be informed by the Statewide Graduation Council. I've already noted that I am dubious about this group and its makeup, and I'm even more dubious about the work of any group this large writing a report. Plus, I don't think the Legislature should be the body deciding what it takes to graduate from high school. 
  But obviously, no one asked me.
  
  
• Given the discussion that has taken place since November, it is genuinely odd to be that the bit the MTA seems stuck on is IF a student cannot otherwise prove they have completed what is required for the competency determination, THEN the MCAS can count. This means the MTA's position is that the students should have to retake courses they already have taken, given what is otherwise outlined in the regulation. 
  As a former high school teacher, the part that I find troubling is how often the word "audit" is being used in conjunction with teachers' grades, and that Marty West even mentioned teacher's plans in Tuesday's Board of Ed meeting. While I don't think the Department has either the wish or the staff for that sort of oversight, it bothers me much much more than a kid taking the ELA MCAS to avoid having to retake two years of English.
  
  
• It's genuinely odd to me that in all of the months of coverage of vocational admission regulations, so very little of it ever noted what Member Stewart did yesterday: at ground, this was a debate about if and how much one group of schools would be allowed to discriminate against some kids. That those who argued very publicly and often in very explicit terms--seriously, the public comment was shocking, as Stewart characterized it, about every month!--for discriminating against some kids were not characterized as doing so is a problem. If we don't name what it is, we can't combat it when it happens.
  
  
• I saw some passing comments about the Board's (or DESE's) concern about THESE schools and why not X, but something that matters here is purview: much like charters--and that is something DESE oversees, though I think they've given more leash in some cases than they should--this is a group of schools that they by law can oversee.
  If you want to know why we still have a heavily segregated state system of school districts, I'll invite you to go re-read the report on segregated school districts the Board of (then) Education sent to the Legislature in 1965, and then look at how much of it has been implemented.
  
  As I recently saw quoted from Beyoncé: