May Board of Ed: The Boston one (opening and public comment)

 The agenda is here. Livestream will be here. Looks like public comment might be something:

If you build trust you don’t get a line waiting to get into your meeting to call out your racism pic.twitter.com/io96MLNFvD

— Roberto A. Jiménez Rivera (@hashtagRoberto) May 24, 2022

New Board of Ed member: Paymon Rouhanifard

State House News is reporting that Governor Baker is appointing Paymon Rouhanifard to the Massachusetts Board of K-12 Education. He will replace Margaret McKenna (whose terms are up, and who I will MISS!).
As for Rouhandifard, who moved to Massachusetts this year from New Jersey (when his wife Sara Rouhandifard, assistant professor of bioengineering at Northeastern, began working there), his best-known and most recent connection with education was as the receiver of the Camden Public Schools, appointed by Governor Chris Christie. You can read his reflection on that experience here, which opens with this:

Only New Orleans, which was re-created as a nearly all-charter district after Hurricane Katrina, has a higher proportion of students in charters.

The best piece looking at him and his work is from Eliza Shapiro in Politico; she would tell you herself to ignore the headline. Note his close relationship with the Democratic party chair, the state's adoption of the "Renaissance" model for charters, and consider the recent New Bedford parallel. He also did say to Shapiro: “We don’t know how much right now it costs to educate a student in poverty living in Camden,” which potentially could bear out in terms of the Board's position (or lack thereof) on the foundation budget reconsideration.
His two years of teaching in New York City were with Teach for America and he did go through Broad Center. His position with Propel Inc is as a result of a partnership with John White, the state superintendent of the Louisiana school system.
His speech last year at MIT in which he said:

If life outcomes are indeed what we are about, we should welcome state test scores going down.

 ...is I think the piece that is perhaps most interesting, which he knew:

As he sipped a green tea at a Starbucks outside of Boston, where he recently moved with his family, Rouhanifard flashes a quick grin when asked about his comment. “That may have been the most provocative thing I said that day,” he says. “It was intentional.”

If you're interested, read the whole thing, but a final piece of interest:

The basic rule, what we would want for our own children, should apply to all kids.

That's a pretty good perspective for a Board member to be using.

Mass Board of Ed April meeting: opening remarks

You can find the agenda here.
I'm posting remotely today via the livestream, so please excuse any hiccups. 
Chair Sagan announces that Roland Fryer has resigned from the Board of Ed.

Meeting the needs of students in poverty (MASC conference)

Margaret McKenna, who introduces herself as the daughter of two Central Falls (RI) schoolteachers.
"the first thing we should do is say the word 'poverty'"
"you don't hear it much said now...it should be the number one topic"

Oh, Boston Globe (regarding PARCC)

Because the Board of Ed meets tonight and tomorrow and PARCC is on the agenda, the Globe editorial board apparently felt that it couldn't put off deciding any longer, and came out in support of PARCC. The Pioneer Institute could not, of course, let that go unchallenged, and Joanna Weiss doesn't understand this very specific math problem.
Oh, Boston Globe (sigh)...
The survey the Globe is citing (72% of teachers support) is this Teach Plus survey of teachers who attended a Teach Plus PARCC conference. Yes, it was a self-selected group, and they offer no evidence that, as they say, "The views of Massachusetts teachers who attended the “Testing the Test” events are similar to the views of the teachers across the sites." It was a survey that included 351 teachers. So all that we can conclude is that 252 teachers think it's better. That's about 1/3 of 1% of Massachusetts teachers. Note that their only support for "great teaching" is also from a Teach Plus fellow (which Board member Margaret McKenna pointed out at a previous meeting is a group that comes to this with a certain agenda).
The column by Jim Stergios, writing for the Pioneer Institute, is replete with myths and errors: PARCC will take more time (no, particularly now that they rolled both parts into one); kids will delay entering algebra at all (no) and kids will end math with Algebra II (no); oh, and this:

That demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of standards-based reform. PARCC tests the elements of Common Core shared by all states, not the supplemental math or higher-level reading individual states may add. Given that over time what isn’t tested isn’t taught, PARCC represents a race to the middle for Massachusetts.

Well, throw out calculus and AP physics, then, folks!
 The column by Joanna Weiss is a more measured version of the hysterical forwards replete on social media around Common Core math homework, which more-or-less boil down to "I didn't learn it this way; why should anyone?"
Because we can do better. Because kids who actually understand how math works rather than just memorizing formulas actually are better at mathmatics, long term, no matter what they do in the rest of their lives.

Please understand: I post all of the above not because I am a PARCC apologist. I made my own position clear--neither--back in July when I testified before the Board of Ed. There are other options out there. If we are going to have this conversation about testing, though, let's please at least attempt to do without making things up, misleading the public, repeating things that are wrong, and otherwise trying to cloud the issue.
What if we debate this on its relative merits?

Board of Ed meets at nine: comments

The Board of Ed meets at nine; you can find the agenda here.
meeting today at Pioneer Charter of Science, as is the custom, the home school of the Board of Ed's student member

Commissioner: congratulations Margaret McKenna on her appointment as Suffolk University president
Teacher of the year appointment, very much believes in inclusion, keeps students in her classroom would not be there in other schools
in process of extending Lawrence turnaround plan for another three years
extending contract on receiver,  as well; he'll be here in June
Donahue report on Smith Vocational which I can't find online

Posting from the Board of Ed today

You can find the agenda here.  I'll post as there is reason to, and also I'm livetweeting here.
And sure enough, the charter supporters are out in force. I've heard that it was announced last night that there will be a hearing--date and time TBA--on the Fitchburg and Brockton applications.