Recently I happened to see a video clip of the October 4 Parenting Center presentation on the achievement gap (I missed the meeting itself). In it, School Superintendent Brian Osborne claimed that, 

“Every step of the way [that] we’ve expanded access to higher-quality coursework, or support for struggling kids, we’ve faced opposition, whether it’s including more students with special needs in the regular classroom, leveling up more students into college preparatory classes, creating Jump Start programs to directly connect with parents who may have had a negative experience with students, with schools themselves, ending the practice of assigning students to classes by rank ordering them first, and then assigning them to class, asking the community to invest in full-day kindergarten, providing step-up classes so students could advance levels, even re-allocating the way guidance counselors work at the high school to make sure that struggling students got more attention, we’ve faced opposition every single step of the way.” 

I am troubled by this statement, and offended.

First of all, the superintendent implies monolithic opposition to the various initiatives he has brought to this district. If you have been against (or merely questioned) ANY of them, you have been against them all. This is simply not the case.

I happen to think full-day kindergarten is a great idea, as are the Jump Start and step-up programs. I had no objections when my children were assigned to special-needs-inclusive classrooms in elementary school. But as a parent with longtime concerns about the overall quality of curriculum and instruction in this district, I have been highly skeptical of plans to de-level our middle schools and high school. I simply have not been presented with any information reassuring me that de-leveling will not lead to less challenge for our higher-achieving students and a watering-down of the curriculum for students in the middle ranks, which would eventually have a detrimental effect on the students who struggle most. I object to the notion that this opinion places me in some anti-progressive camp and marks me as a person who doesn’t want more of our district students to be well-prepared for college. (Please. My voting record for the past 25 years is enough to give any self-described conservative the vapors.) Over the past two years I have talked to many district parents, white and black, who are skeptical of de-leveling. Some of them speak up in public forums, but far more of them voice their opinions quietly, afraid to be seen as covert segregationists. 

To far too great a degree, the debate over de-leveling has been dogged by quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) suggestions that those who oppose de-leveling are against opportunity for all students--are possibly even racist. This must stop. Leveling and de-leveling are educational approaches. In our district, lower-level classes are disproportionately made up of African-American students. This is a pressing problem, but it does not mean that every opinion about de-leveling is an opinion about race.

Superintendent Osborne, please try to avoid us-vs.-them language as we hash out our differences as a community. Some of us are displeased about your administration’s willingness to use ambiguous data to push through a de-leveling agenda before there’s been real time to evaluate effects, and about the dismissal of reasonable rebuttal. This does not mean that there exists an anti-progressive cabal determined to oppose your leadership “every step of the way.” I ask respectfully that you keep that in mind.