[rooseveltubc] Re: SF Community school is NOT using the universal screener (fwd)
- From: Averel <averel@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rooseveltubc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2015 21:19:59 +0000 (UTC)
Once again, I fear I am standing out on the end of a limb as I saw it off...but
I see Universal Screener (as tedious as it is to fill out) as a way to channel
services to our students most in need of them. Executed carefully and with
good intent, how can it possibly be considered "racist" or "gross"? Those
children who are identified are given extra support, not penalized. It may be
more of a blunt instrument than a scalpel, but we need to have some method of
allocating limited resources to our students most in need of them.
Just my two cents.
Averel
----- Original Message -----From: Susie <susie@xxxxxxxxx>To:
rooseveltubc@freelists.orgSent: Wed, 28 Jan 2015 17:11:21 -0000 (UTC)Subject:
[rooseveltubc] Re: SF Community school is NOT using the universal screener (fwd)
Pretty impressive what SF Community School has done. Susie (:
---------- Forwarded message ----------Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 21:21:54
-0800From: Andrew Libson <andrewlibson@xxxxxxxxx>To: Adrienne Johnstone
<adrienne.johnstone@xxxxxxxxx>Cc: EDU- Educators for a Democratic Union
<EducatorsDemocraticUnion@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>Subject: Re: SF Community school is
NOT using the universal screener
Mission High School is also NOT doing Universal Screener assessment for ALLthe
reasons that SF Community listed.
Our staff felt that the direction the district was going was subjective
andracist. There was no parent involvement in a test that has teachers who
areNOT qualified to make assessments like these labeling their children withall
sorts of terms from 'defiant' to 'bullies' to 'depressed'.
It's nonsense and I think other schools should feel empowered to push backon
the Universal Screener as well.
Andy.
On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 9:00 PM, Adrienne
Johnstone<adrienne.johnstone@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: Hello all,I wanted to spread the
word that the staff of our K-8 SF CommunitySchool decided unanimously today to
refuse to use the UniversalScreener the district is using for behavioral-RTI
across the district.After a pretty impassioned staff meeting (with our
principal absent),we worked out a brief statement for our principal and anyone
else whois interested. I walked into the meeting thinking I might be the
onlyone who was seriously pissed about this thing. How wrong I was! Weworked
together to clarify our concerns (none of which were addressedby the union's
side letter agreements about paying per diem for extrawork) and are not using
this gross thing. I'm excited for our stafftaking a stand. Draft statement is
below.....
AJ
At a meeting on January 27, the staff of SFC unanimously voted to notuse the
Universal Screener for Behavioral-RTI at our school. There area number of
concerns that have gone unaddressed for our staff and leadus to opt not to use
this tool.
We support the goals and approach of behavioral-RTI and are eager tocraft a
vision for San Francisco Community School while designingtools that meet the
needs of our community. We believe that adifferent screener could be a useful
tool for our school.
We do not all equally share all of the below concerns, but we allshare some of
these concerns, enough to prevent us from moving forwardwith this tool.
*
The tool was acquired from Pearson. We have no assurances that the data will
only be stored and available here at the site. There are also no assurances
that data will not be shared with other sites, with the district, etc.
*
Parents have neither been informed nor given consent for this screening to take
place.
*
We believe a teacher-created tool that will help us make more informed
decisions for effective interventions should be created at the school, for our
community and with family input.
*
The language of Universal Screener raises numerous concerns about bias, about
implicit values and about racism
*
The first externalizing item, a ranking on "defiance," is particularly jarring.
We recognize that our students live in an unjust world. We listen to defiance
and recognize "passive defiance" as a symptom of an alienating school culture
and will not rate on students on such a metric.
*
This universal screener is a purely quantitative tool that devalues other kinds
of data. Behind the education jargon about “data driven” decision
making is a devaluing of other kinds of observation and data collection and a
general mistrust of teachers as knowledgeable decision makers.
Signed,
the teaching and counseling staff of SF Community School
--You received this message because you are subscribed to the GoogleGroups "EDU
information - Educators for a Democratic Union" group.To unsubscribe from this
group and stop receiving emails from it, sendan email to
EducatorsDemocraticUnion+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx post to this group,
send email toEducatorsDemocraticUnion@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.Visit this group
athttp://groups.google.com/group/EducatorsDemocraticUnion.For more options,
visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups"EDU
information - Educators for a Democratic Union" group.To unsubscribe from this
group and stop receiving emails from it, send anemail to
EducatorsDemocraticUnion+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx post to this group,
send email toEducatorsDemocraticUnion@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.Visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/EducatorsDemocraticUnion.For more options, visit
https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Other related posts:
