School board competition coming?

Halfway through filing,  we have exactly one candidate signed up for each of the six Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board district seats.

Surely that will change in the coming week.  Uncontested school board races are a rarity.  Four years ago,  five of the six district races had competition,  with District 3 pulling nine candidates.  In 2011,  14 people signed up for the three at-large seats.

Let me apologize in advance for temporarily ignoring anyone who files next week. I'll be off and will catch up on the race when I return July 22.

A couple of leave-behinds for all that free time you'll have without reading my blog:  First, I almost overlooked this interesting report from the N&O's Lynn Bonner on the state Board of Education trying to figure out the best way to use the new state exams.  Many of us will be eager to see what they come up with in August.

Second, I just stumbled across an entertaining self-parody by some Teach For America cadets,  called "S*it TFAers Say"  (thanks to ed blogger Alexander Russo for sharing it).  A few phrases baffled me,  but anyone who spends time around educators will surely get a few good chuckles of recognition.  As Russo notes,  the video "reveals an admirable level of self-awareness."  Enjoy!

New tests bring twists, frustrations

It's hard to miss the irony:  Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools didn't have enough confidence in new state exams to stake students'  grades on them,  yet student performance on those tests will be used to evaluate teachers.

That's not necessarily a sign of hypocrisy from the district.  Local officials had a choice about counting the tests toward student grades,  but the state has mandated that value-added ratings generated by the SAS Institute's EVAAS system be part of teacher evaluations.  Still unclear is whether lawmakers will use scores from the new exams to assign letter grades to schools this year.

CMS leaders aren't saying the new exams are bad.  They're just saying there are too many unknowns this year,  with teachers having little information about what would be on the new tests and how to prepare students.  (Those of us who have been around awhile know the state has a history of discovering glitches after kids take a new test,  and these have not been field-tested.)

Rather than risk a student failing a class,  which could potentially jeopardize or delay graduation,  CMS decided the state exams won't count toward grades this year.  That's frustrating to some teachers,  who believe students will put little effort into an exam that can only benefit or harm their instructor.  To top it off,  teachers have to spend unpaid time scoring new items on the tests.

CMS created a parent guide to explain the exams students are taking now  (some exams started earlier in May and some will run through June).  In addition to the familiar terms  -- end-of-grade exams in elementary and middle schools, end-of-course exams in high school  --  you'll now hear about  "common exams,"  sometimes called MSLs,  for measures of student learning.  The difference is that EOGs and EOCs will be used to grade schools,  while common exams will only be used for teacher evaluations.

I'll be curious to hear what parents and teachers think as the exam period plays out.  If there's one consolation for those who think this is too much testing,  it's that the new state program doesn't include the K-2 tests CMS tried in 2010,  requiring adults to administer the tests one student at a time.  However,  officials do expect an early-grades reading test in 2014.