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By Molly and Richard Jesse
We preface this by noting that the Essex-Westford School District (EWSD) is engaged in the search for a new superintendent. While we address here what we want for EWSD, this is what Vermonters should also want for their own school districts.
The most important job of the superintendent of our Essex-Westford School District is making sure that our students are learning and achieving at high levels. The good, true, and beautiful things that students learn should fill them with wonder, ground them in truth, shape their affections, and equip them for purpose.
For their future success in life, it is crucial that our students love to learn, think clearly, listen carefully, reason and write persuasively, and speak precisely. The top priority for the superintendent then requires that he or she focus the district on student academic achievement by setting specific measurable goals and focusing district resources on meeting those goals.
Just how feasible is it for EWSD to prioritize/improve students’ academic achievement? The Garden Grove Unified School District (GGUSD) in Orange County, California, provides one successful example.1 The district established two district-wide goals that could be measured at the school, classroom and student level.
The goals were both reasonable and ambitious. These goals were that any student who had been in the district for five years would be proficient in reading and math, and that any English language learner would advance by one level each year on the statewide English proficiency test.
To eliminate effects from student mobility, schools and teachers would only be held accountable for students who stayed in the district for five years or more. With 35% of our EWSD students “below proficient “ in English Language Arts, 45% “below proficient” in Mathematics, and 40% “below proficient” in Science,2 this approach by GGUSD is a model that could be adapted by EWSD for the benefit of our students.
- From “What makes a great superintendent?”, GreatSchools.org, July 27, 2023, (https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/what-makes-a-great-superintendent). ↩︎
- From assessment data, Vermont Agency of Education, school year 2022-2023. ↩︎
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Categories: Education, Local government, Opinion
EWSD has been ground zero for the progressive UN agenda in Vermont’s schools for some time. Thank you Elisabeth Cady for being the one to step up and bring this to everyone’s attention. We miss you. Molly and Richard you’ve been close to the fire the whole time, too. Thank you and others of SPEAK VT for continuing to be a voice for families, parents, and those concerned about Constitutional Rights being upheld for all children.
Decisions were pushed out through the EWSD school board that wouldn’t past muster for mot decision boards when the ink wasn’t even dry on some reworded policies. Here’s hoping the next superintendent will be more concerned about parents’ rights in education and less anxious to shove the latest CRT, DEI, SEL, or Sex Education course down on EWSD students or jump ship to become the next President of the State Board of Education where the template can be rubberstamped the UN Agenda for our students under the guise community input with Batelle for Kids on school curriculum.
Find a superintendent that knows how to restore academic performance scores and will remind all that training young brains to accept and excel at mental challenges is vital to a healthy and strong education and the future of our communities and FREEDOM and UNITY for VERMONTERS.
Academics and an accurate history are certainly at the top of my priorities for our schools. I think, however, that we need a superintendent who understands that our schools are meant to educate our children; but do so on behalf of their parents and our community.
Thank you, Molly and Richard, for highlighting what we should really be concerned about in our search for a new EWSD superintendent as well as highlighting the gross negligence in our state education system. I am concerned that the current focus, as I’ve been following the process fairly closely, is more about diversity, equity and inclusion rather than merit-based, foundational education. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I’m wrong, but the EWSD school board seems bent on equity of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity and, I believe, will hire to that end.
You get what they want and you pay for it. Nothing to see here folks just move along. This dog and pony show will never end until there is a total financial collapse and this may be coming soon.