We Expand Access and Give it Our BEST

I continued to write grants and try to add machines to my school. My first goal was to bring the TLC program into fourth grade. This required some planning and careful persuasion as no other school was implementing its own network. I did lots of lobbying to get the needed hardware and wiring installed.

I was relentless and was able to bring the program into daily use in the classrooms. A number of things had already changed in grade three and fourth was seeing the same. Gone were chalkboards, as microcomputers don’t do well around chalk dust. In addition to computers and wiring, there was a need for tables and chairs to accommodate the machines and they had to be located together to minimize cost. The teachers accepted these changes, although I am sure there was some reluctance.

The district had a new initiative that was to fail miserably. The superintendent wanted us to move to writing and testing district standard objectives. The objectives and tests were to be written by the teachers who were deemed to be the best source of what was important to learn and test. The problem was that teachers were not trained to be designers of reliable tests. The tests were to be called “Bloomington Educational Standard Tests or BEST”

Teachers were given training in writing standards and put to work developing the BEST for each subject at each grade level. Even with expensive consulting help, the tests were far from the best. They reflected the beliefs of the writers, which may not reflect what was considered as a standard. The tests were unreliable indicators of learning. However we were required to give them annually.

To more fully implement this disaster, the director of curriculum, now called the “Chief of Instruction” was tasked with locating and implementing computer software that was to report out the test results. Each principal was required to access this data and use it to formulate plans for improvement.

The software was called “ABACUS” (thanks Don Melican, Sheridan principal, for remembering)and it was terrible. We all did get computers, and we all were given access to district email. This was the only good part of the program. It consisted of a large amounts of commands to locate the data from the BEST. No one could use it without multiple calls for help. I was probably the most knowledgeable of computer software of all of the principals, and I couldn’t use it. We were not allowed the data unless we accessed it ourselves, but were required to report on it. Still our “Chief” would go out and make presentations claiming we had full implementation of the software in our district. It was a complete lie.

Fortunately, the superintendent decided to retire. There were incentives passed by the state of Illinois to encourage teachers to retire when they reached a certain age and years of experience. These incentives applied to administrators. The superintendent’s decision came as the board of education was pursuing a merger with Unit 5. He was convinced that it would happen in a few years. We all hoped the incoming superintendent would fire the Chief or at least kill ABACUS. It turns out, I got to help with both.