TRUST!

The supplemental educational services (SES) provisions exemplify the principles

discernable in No Child Left Behind (NCLB) that rely on accountability and competition

as mechanisms to improve education and produce better opportunities for disadvantaged students. No Child Left Behind defines SES as “additional academic instruction designed to increase the academic achievement of students in low-performing schools,” and indicates that they “must be high quality, research-based, and specifically designed to increase student achievement.”

Thursday, September 20, 2012 Sylvan Learning Center was being discussed as a continued provider of services to eligible students in the district. For some reason there seemed to be a problem as to whom the services were available. One Board member, Glenn Garrison spoke up with these remarks.

 "Using the services of Sylvan Learning Center constitutes outsourcing. That is contracting out for services that are available in the district."  

He was joking. He laughed at his own off color joke. His was the only laughter in the room. The children who are eligible for these services are not his concern.

That is what I remember from the School Board Meeting on 9/20/2012. I can't get those words out of my mind. They are ingrained there with the "Do we care" statement uttered last year when non compliance to the QSAC was being discussed by the same board member. 

The paraprofessionals were fired with written promises of employment in their hands. 

They were Outsourced. Abolished.

They are not smiling.

Some of them are being evicted from their homes.

Is the Englewood, New Jersey School Board the only one conducting business as if all the

tenets of NCLB have been abolished?

                                                    How are the children?