Herb Strather still owns three parcels of land with two of them totaling 125 acres on Precinct and 3 acres of egress off of route 44.

Trading Cove @ Mashpee owns 4 parcels totaling 205.87 acres.

Genting owns none of this land and neither does the tribe so this is a big cluster you know what. The tribe would have the land donated to them by the investors if and only if the land goes into trust for gaming purposes. This is a mess and as it stands now I don’t believe anything will be built in that area. Herb Strather has made it clear that he invested a lot of money into the tribe and he wants his cut so it could get tied up in court for years.

You’re right though – this is not a great year for snowshoeing. If we *do* get snow, you have to make hay while the sun is shining.

Not sure how I feel about this very strange winter. I must admit I love still wearing a fall jacket but I do enjoy at least some snow to do some winter activities. One more month and we are out of the woods.. at least most of them. It appears my snowshoes may have a light season.

I have tutored the last four years at a program I use to work in so that is what I will post about. It is a self contained program for high school students who cannot cope with or have been dismissed from the “regular” high school for a variety of issues. The tutoring is strictly designed for students to pass MCAS and is done in conjunction with other academic intervention programs within the school. The idea is to target selected students who have failed previous MCAS tests and need specific areas addressed outside the standard classroom curriculum. Simply put it is additional support.

In four years every targeted student has passed MCAS math (about 20) and all but one has passed ELA. Most moved into the needs improvement category and a few advanced into the proficient range. These were academically needy students who had an extensive resume of academic failure and also coupled with a variety of learning disabilities, emotional problems and behavioral issues. So it can be done with the most needy imagine what can be done with those with less needs?

Now comes the most difficult of MCAS tutoring and that is biology where our collective rate is in the 60% range although we did have a student score a 254 on the spring retest.

Now when I tutor it is individual or with two students and it is all grant driven and is not cheap. But options do exist and a volunteer network is one possibility.

I do want to put out a word of caution about tying teacher pay/advancement to standardized test scores. Many things contribute to MCAS scores (instruction, test taking ability, home environment, illness, etc.). When a kid is up all night every night because his parents are having a drunken brawl, or when kids come home to take care of siblings because their parents work several jobs, or when kids simply aren’t encouraged to care, it has nothing to do with the teacher. Yes the teacher can try to overcome these obstacles to learning, but we need to be careful.

Things that make you go hmmmm….which generation will pay off these debits?

It doesn’t.

Here is the problem in Middleboro as I see it.

1. School administration does not hold teacher’s accountable. The Sullivan years were a disaster yet the School Committee gave him glowing reviews. I’ve heard it said numerous time that it was going to take years to recover from the Sullivan years – so why where we giving him great reviews, renewing his contract, and accepting year after year of crap performance? The newest Superintendent is of an age where she is padding her final three years of work for her pension. There is no incentive for her to shake things up. If that’s not true – how about some performance-based incentives? .. Uh Huh.
2. The MTA: You can be sure: If the MTA supports it – it’s bad for education. If they oppose it’s good. They are about TEACHERS not STUDENTS
3. Middleboro itself. We have a relatively low percentage of households led by college educated people and the lowest per-capita income in Plymouth Co. Now I know that sounds “elitist” – like I’m saying that a household let by non-college grads can’t have kids that succeed. It’s not that they “can’t” it’s that statistically they don’t perform as well as those led by college grads. There are a lot of factors there – more education generally leads to more income – which in turn leads to an environment that is more conducive to learning.
4. Teacher accountability: While there are means for dealing with non-performing teachers, those steps are onerous and Middleboro NEVER, EVER, takes them.
5. Teacher longevity clauses: When we have to cut – we cut teachers based on their length of service – not their value.
6. Teacher/Admin raises that are based on contracts – not merit. At my company, your raise is based on your performance for the last year. All teachers get the same contractual raise so there is no incentive to go above and beyond. Let’s take the worse case of a teacher who is near retirement and sucks at his/her job. They can’t be fired except for gross incompetence, they get the same raise as every other teacher, and can’t even be laid off until all the teachers with less seniority have been canned. It’s a totally broken system.

First and foremost – is that School Admin and Teacher’s are not accountable for poor performance. Start making raises dependent on performance and watch those scores skyrocket.

I’m sure I’ll be hammered for this assessment – but Houston, we have a problem and this is how I see it. If you don’t like my assessment – please share yours.

I admit there are other towns that spend more than we do and have good school systems but the ones I mentioned around us I believe show it is not a direct correlation. Check it out. http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/ppx.aspx.

Rich.

http://www.thesunchronicle.com/