Last night, as I'm sure you know, two teachers spoke favorably of MVP at the School Board meeting. While I may disagree with them on the topic of MVP, I welcome the dialogue and support their right to be heard.
Now that two teachers have gotten up and spoken in favor of MVP, I call on you as leaders of this curriculum rollout, to lift the gag order on teachers speaking out against MVP. Please do not deny that you have told teachers repeatedly that they need to keep their comments to themselves. This culture of intimidation in WCPSS against teachers is not only for public speaking but in private internal work sessions, where most good employers would provide a safe place for employees to give constructive feedback without fear of retribution.
Some of the comments I received over a month ago demonstrating this include:
- It’s sad that we have to choose between doing what is best for our kids and doing what is told by the county
- Basically “do this or else”. I have teachers saying that they’ll only do this to pay their mortgage
- We were given a script to say at meet the teacher night in support of this. If we do not comply with supporting this, even if we are only acting in support of, we could easily be fired on the spot for insubordination. Which now a days is the only way to get fired.
- Teachers can’t speak out about this, even if you tell us it is confidential and/or anonymous. Most of us have to pay the bills so we cannot afford to lose our jobs- especially the young and single teachers.
- “We have to be on board, especially to parents”, or it’s our job.
- I am a single teacher and need my job- which I love when I get to do it.
- You all will not probably get very many responses and/or honest for fear of their job
- We were literally told we “will support and by-in to the mvp program.”
- Teachers were told point blank, you will use this or you will be put on an action plan
- They (WCPSS) monitor teachers like crazy. Like big brother in Wake County.
Pardon me if I'm telling you something you know, but I feel I must share this having worked in corporate America for 30+ years and having led multiple huge strategic changes. There are whole consulting practices built around organizational change management. But for this email, I'm going to try to be brief.
Here's how organizational change works (and I would consider curriculum change a great example of this).
Please reference this article: 7 Organizational Change Management Best Practices
According that article:
- Plan carefully. I am going to give you the benefit of
the doubt on this, except for one point. Around the country,
the MVP rollouts we've seen have all been tiny compared to
WCPSS. So trying to scale this to 400+ teachers and 60+ schools
over a 3 year period - having ZERO firsthand experience in MVP -
was much too aggressive and risky.
- Define your governance. I am going to give you the
benefit of the doubt on this topic because I don't know enough
about your internal governance to critique it. However, the
evidence that the implementation across the county was so
irregular indicates weaknesses in governance.
- Assign leadership roles. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this topic since I think you two are in charge of this. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- Keep stakeholders in the loop. OK here's where the wheels start to fall off. Parents and teachers are your key stakeholders. And students too, but let's assume that if parents and teachers are on the same page, then students will fall in line.
- Problem 1: During the infancy days of MVP in WCPSS when
teachers were being trained, their internal questions and
concerns were not addressed adequately. One teacher said,
"The MVP representatives came across as mostly dismissive of
our concerns." This type of start leaves many - I would argue
a majority - of your stakeholders in the dust. This cratered
the program before it even started.
- Problem 2: You conducted 4 community information sessions at
schools on one side of the county but not the other. I can
speculate on whether this was accidental or intentional. You
know the truth.
- Problem 3: Now that MVP is in full force and parents have
complaints, you shut them down. The GHHS information session
on Feb 22, 2019 was the perfect example. Well over 100
parents. Angry. Mad. Wanting answers. Instead of letting
us vent and get everything on the table, you silenced the
parents and only accepted questions via post-it notes or
online. THEN, you used teachers (some under duress I'm sure)
to pitch the material pretending as though they believed in
it. THEN, you selected a few softball questions with prepared
answers, and acted as though those were the questions all the
angry parents were asking. The handling of the whole session
was HUUUUUGE MISTAKE!!! - because we parents are NOT STUPID.
Don't forget you are in the Research Triangle Park, where
probably over half that room has either Masters or PhD degrees
in technical fields. YOU CANNOT (redacted) THESE PARENTS, and that
is exactly what you tried. THAT session, Dr. Tillery and Ms.
Dupree, is what has set the tone for what has transpired
since. DIVISION and ACRIMONY. Angry emotional board
speeches. Posts and pleas on Facebook about the harm being
done. A successful student walkout at Green Hope. A stifled
student walkout at Wake Forest. Signs. Blogs. Tweets.
Comments. Public records requests. People from around the
country and world joining our cause to fight MVP. Material
objections filed from ~10 schools. ALL OF THAT ESCALATED
because starting on Feb 22, it was clear that WCPSS had no
interest in keeping stakeholders in the loop. That was a huge
"butterfly effect" I will never forget.
- Problem 4: The handling of the material objection complaints. After citing a single word to radically change how our complaints are handled, Dr. McFarland cites that a committee will be formed which includes parents, teachers, and student representatives. Yet he refuses to tell how those key members will be selected and how the committee will operate. We smell a huge setup here.
- Problem 5: Continued ignoring of parents. This is where we are now. Board members feign ignorance about MVP and the problems we present on a bi-weekly basis OR they cite their credentials (again - to smart RTP professionals) and arrogantly respond to parents that "all is well." Central is exercising extreme caution in responding to parent complaints, likely due to concern for a lawsuit or mucking up the carefully orchestrated dismissal of the material objections we are anticipating.
- Find and support advocates. There are no shortage of
MVP advocates but they seem to speak and tweet only in the
language of buzzwords. Those advocates need to show us tangible
results - not lofty research papers with no empirical evidence.
- Constantly assess and review. Another phrase for this
is monitor and measure. This is another area where I think you
have failed miserably. Otherwise, we wouldn't be where we are.
- Monitor: As far as I can tell from what we see in the
public, the only monitoring you do is to sit in teachers'
rooms and observe them. I have heard countless stories that
when you people from Central show up, the teachers change what
they're doing and suddenly become MVP performers, going
through the motions to appear to be following the recipe. How
much are you talking to students and finding out the truth
about how its working? If you've talked to fewer than 600
students about MVP (that's just 10 students per school) then
YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH!
- Measure: It seems the only measurements you have cared about
are the now-infamous 1.5% and 1.9% end of year scores from
2017-18. And presumably, there will be another set of end of
year scores to look at this November. These end of year
metrics are useless when we are 1.9 years into a program that
is on the cusp of lawsuits and increases attendance at school
board meetings by 50% every 2 weeks. YOU NEED TO MEASURE ON A
DAILY BASIS. And that means POWERSCHOOL. If I was in your
position, I would be scouring PowerSchool for QUIZ and TEST
data across the county. You should be looking at historical
trends on a per-student basis. When you see former A students
who WCPSS KNOWS are excellent students, and they are FAILING
4-5 weeks into MATH 2... YOU SHOULD JUMP ON THAT RIGHT AWAY
instead of sitting back and focusing on damage control and
narrative control. This is what frustrated me last fall when
my son's grades plummeted. I almost accepted that it was HIM
because he is merely an A-B-sometimes-C student. But when I
heard of friends and their straight A students failing math
suddenly, I wondered why I was even having to bring this up.
This should be something WCPSS catches proactively IF IT WAS
CURIOUS AT ALL about the efficacy of MVP and cared about the
future doctors and engineers and leaders. I'm not dismissing
the lower performing students, but my point is, you should
notice A to F changes more quickly than C to F changes. You
should have - and should NOW - be looking at grades on a daily
basis and investigating that. Likewise, where classes of MVP
students are scoring high on tests, you should have curiosity
about that too. Are they really using MVP or is the teacher
cunning enough to supplement and make sure the kids are
learning, while flying under your MVP radar? The truth hurts,
and I don't think you want to know the truth to that question.
- Address workforce concerns. This is similar to #4
about stakeholders, but deserves its own practice. WCPSS has
failed miserably here. My understanding is that ~6 one-hour
sessions are being planned for math teachers to come together
and discuss MVP pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses. If
this were true and teachers were truly given the latitude to
speak freely, AND given more than hour, this would be a
wonderful step in the right direction. However, the only way
that meeting stays to 1 hour is if the teachers remain fearful
to speak up. So it's your choice. As the link above states for
this item, "It is critical that you keep the workforce aligned
as you make changes within your organization. This requires a
detailed understanding of how the change is affecting them and
any worries and concerns they may have. You don’t want to get
too far off course, but people’s needs must be addressed. If
people are having a negative emotional impact they will never
fully adapt." That is right on. You cannot keep the workforce
aligned ONLY by intimidation and fear! YOU HAVE TO address the
real concerns teachers have!!!!
- Halt the further deployment of MVP Math 3 next year.
- Lift the gag order on teachers, APOLOGIZE to them for
THREATENING THEIR JOBS, and BEG THEM for their constructive
feedback about MVP. Listen to them and take action on the
feedback.
- Complete transparency with parents. Hold large town hall
meetings with verbal (not written) dialogue between parents and
staff. Let parents vent. Answer our questions - ESPECIALLY the
hard ones. Parents will respect the process a lot more readily
if they believe their concerns are being heard AND acted upon.
Sincerely,
Blain Dillard
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