QUOLKE’S CORNER #47
THE REPORT CARD DEBAUCLE
If you did your report cards and had no problems, you may be the only one. To say that this was a difficult process is an understatement. The CTU has heard from many building chairs and members of the number of hours that were spent to input grades and competencies, frustrations with the inability to access the system during high use times and teachers who set their alarms for 3 in the morning so they could get up and access the system. This and many other things were frustrating and disheartening to our members. On the other hand, I report these incidences of hours spent and alarms set for the middle of the night with pride. These efforts show how dedicated we are as professionals and committed to providing critical information. Although I think at this point most would tell me to stop being proud of our dedication and fix the damn problems.
First of all if I could fix the system right now I would. If I could have fixed it in September I would have. Management Rights….Management has a right to select the computer system that they use for grades, attendance, scheduling, etc. Management has a right to choose their computer programming and they chose SunGard. Management also has the right to make poor decisions. How SunGard was the company that they chose to purchase this program is unclear to me. That actual decision was made before I was even elected President of the CTU.
As President I did have the opportunity to assign people to meet with people from the District and people from SunGard. This was The Report Card Committee. At the meetings the CTU asked for what we had or something simpler. Back in January of 2009, the committee asked to see and manipulate the report card entry the teachers have, so that problems could be identified and kinks could be worked out. Often at these meetings the representative from SunGard would inform the Report Card Committee that the program could and would do the things that were requested. Over and over again the committee was given pieces of information about the system and over and over again corrections and changes were requested. Then two of the districts point people on the report cards, left during the summer. Adrienne Noel, Deputy Chief of Research, Testing and EMIS retired and Cindy Kline, Deputy Chief of State, Federal and Foundation Programming and Special Education accepted a teaching position back in Toledo.
In the end, what happened with the first report card entry is inexcusable. The District should hold SunGard accountable for their promises and the CMSD and SunGard must do all that they have the power to do to make data entry for the second marking period a task, not an 8 hour torture. Meetings to improve the report card begin this week. I will keep you updated on the progress.
P.S. The final design of the report card that was supposed to be distributed to the parents was to look similar to that of last year - one page of paper with print on both sides. The new report card is 6 pages long. Hard to believe that this is 2009 and the technology is so bad that we had better technology in 1999 and that we are in a society that is becoming “greener” in 2009 and the District just took 6 giant steps backward.
We will make progress and I will keep you updated!
In Union,
David