It's a Board of Ed week

And you can find the agenda for tomorrow's regular meeting of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education here. 

The big thing on the agenda is the annual release of school and district accountability data, 'though this message on the DESE School and District Profile page: 

...makes me think that we're probably getting some sort of a press event around noontime today. 

Let me give you my annual reminder here that Massachusetts state accountability is based on MANY THINGS beyond the MCAS, and anyone who makes MCAS the sole report they make--I'm looking here at you, Boston Globe, but I see school districts do this, too!--is not only not telling the whole story; they're misrepresenting what the state actually uses in measuring districts.

If someone has told you that the only thing we're focusing on is MCAS, that isn't DESE telling you that.

This will of course be new DESE Commissioner Martinez's first meeting, so it should be interesting to see how he interacts with the Board and with the DESE staff. Too often, in recent years, the permanent commissioner has left DESE staff out there on their own when facing the Board, which has both, in my view, been lousy leadership and not fair.

And speaking of leadership, the Board elects a Vice-Chair, and it will be interesting to see if they finally decide to start to move in the direction of the newer appointees. 

It appears from the posted topics of the chair and the commissioner that we're going to get two rounds on the 'are we teaching 9/11' thing, with--yes!--the Commissioner making reference to the actual state standards (someone is doing their job!). Both the Secretary and the Commissioner are updating on the recent state graduation council release of their Vision of a Graduate. I presume that this goes now to DESE and the Board, as they're the ones who have actual power to do anything with it.

There is also a vote proposed on the "let's clean this up" regulation changes on regional schools (which, no, do not have a single thing to do with admission to regional vokes).

There are also proposed adjustments on the conditions on the certificate of the Felix Virtual School.

I plan to be there and liveblog, as per usual.