I have been in many Baltimore City Schools and have seen first hand the work the school police have to deal with on a daily basis. I think the public would be shocked! How many people in the general public even know that we have resident police(and more than one) in many, many BCPS schools? And at what cost. Yes, we need them but as a society we should be asking why?At one new charter high school, the police officers are ever present and supportive.They do a great job! The hall monitor is amazing;compassionate and firm.This school had fires almost every day last year. At another K-8 school, the police presence is always evident and effective. Did the reporter check his facts? Paperwork is involved when discipline occurs hence time at a computer.This is true whan as administrator writes up an office referral. It takes a lot of time!

Although parents were present at this most recent forum, once again another major forum (essay,conference,research paper, article,meeting,PD ,convention,etc) where the responsibility of parents seems to be totally ignored.Dedicated teachers and administrators that I know are working long hours to engage children and change destructive patterns of behavior. Long years of parent neglect and abuse are difficult to unravel. WHEN will society begin to speak the truth about the responsibility that comes with creating and birthing children.Why are children suporting families? Why do kids not have school supplies? Why do kids not do homework? Why do kids come to school dresses in inappropriate clothing? Poverty is a problem but it is not an excuse! An eighth grade student recently asked me "Why can't my parents afford me?" A poor parent can and many do provide love, discipline, guidance, and basic essentials.Much of what kids need is free and schools can fill the gaps. Most superintendents, administrators, and teachers I have know for many years love their students and have dedicated their lives to raising the students almost as their own. My own children often feel I am more dedicated to my students than to my birth children! Yet on a daily basis I interact with parents who have no idea what is required to be a parent. We need to get to our older students and try to break this cycle! I believe we need a two prong approach. Our older students need information and counseling that would assist them in making good choices and allow them to finish college before starting families. Exisiting parents need specific guidance about effectively raising children and EXACTLY how to help them in school. Touchy-feely parent groups that eat and gossip are ineffective. How many times have I heard"Well, we got the parent in the school." OK. Now, what do we do to effectively assist the parent? My experiences with Baltimore City and what they call parent engagement programs/departments etc. is a disgrace. I believe AAA is doing a great job but he needs to seriously address the home connection.Getting kids in school,keeping kids safe, and delivering a quality education HAS to be a lifelong effort of schools, students, and families!

PS Sorry for all the typos. Obviously,I am passionate about this topic. I was in a hurry as I was on my way to the public library to spend all day Sunday on lesson plans! I hope my students and their families spend a fraction of this time on homework and other meaningful together time.I hope my students arrive tomorrow well rested, fed(yes, I keep food for hungry kids),with homework, a positive attitude, and ready to work. That would make my week! Smile.

I sincerely appreciate this blog post and the accompanying article. This is truly a critical issue worthy of significant attention, and it's central to my sincere belief that schools are the vehicle for social empowerment and crime reduction.

However, I find myself on both sides of the argument. On one hand, I think, schools have to provide students with information that the students may not find value in learning. Today it may be boring to them, but (as J. Brice pointed out) that information may be critical to their lives in the future. Sometimes that's boring, and teachers cannot set expectations to a level at which students get to check-out once their immediate interests aren't satisfied.

On the other hand, I think, we need to change the traditional teaching model. I'm reading a great book now, "Disrupting Class" by Christensen, which applies the disruptive innovation model to public education. The basic premise is that computer-based, individualized curriculum will change the face of public education... if we allow it to do so. I think this is a novel and worthwhile proposition worth pursuing. However, it's clearly not the full extent of the solution.

In any case, I hope there are a lot of posters to this blog because I'm very interested to read what people have to say about this idea (particularly from teachers & parents).

I find it pretty disconcerting that the original article allowed such a specific, personal attack on a job/position (the quote about the lone school police officer at Western) without hearing anything from the other side.

As a Baby Boomer I attended school in the '60s and '70's. I, too, was bored by most of my classes. I, too, found a lot of what I was expected to learn was not relevant to my life. However, it never occurred to me to skip school, blow-off homework or get poor grades. My family and my community expected that I would do well, so I did too.

As a teacher I understand that we have to reach out to our students to help them to become engaged learners. However, we need to also empower them to seek out what they need rather than be passive. We (society, not just teachers) have to instill in them the belief that education is not something you are given, it is something you get - which implies taking an active role.

I'm not sure where to begin. Obviously something needs to change, because we've had the same mistakes and problems for years now. However, I find the quotations in the article to be sweeping generalizations made by *children*, and not facts that should be used as a basis for changing education.

When I went to school, a small private high school with individualized attention to each student, I thought what I was learning was boring and had nothing to do with me. Why would the works of Yeats, Byron, or Blake affect me, an all-knowing teenager? Years later, I'm an English teacher... the fact is what we teach now might not be "relative" in the now, but if it's taught well it will be relative in the broad spectrum of a person's life. I can't re-tool my curriculum every time something happens in the news, I can't plan for that.

As for engaging lessons, well, that's my job. I *try* every day to make my lessons engaging to the students. However, in order to understand Romanticism the plain and simple truth is we're going to have to spend a day on European History, Culture, and Society of the 18th Century. If not, the poetry won't BECOME relative because the student won't RELATE. I find it sad to say education as a whole has to be changed because children don't want to go to school. I never wanted to go to school, I was a teenager. I wanted to smoke cigarettes and talk to girls all day... but my family, community, and instilled aspirations made me power through those gray days instead of just giving up. Lets not blame teachers, for once, and look towards the culture that this "school is boring, so I'll give up" attitude was born from.

And as a sidenote, the school police at Thurgood Marshall High School are amazing, and without them the school would have torn itself apart already. Both Officers Wright and Stokes deserve commendations for their work

I attended the Juvenile Issues Forum with five young people, ages 10-18, from the Herring Run Youth Council. Half of us, including myself, participated in the group that discussed truancy. Jonathan Brice, of BCPSS, and States Attorney Patricia Jessamy began the conversation by stating the well-known reasons why young people don’t attend school (many youth take care of younger children or older family members, it is sometimes dangerous to get to school, etc.). While these reasons are all very real, it was one Youth Council member who bravely raised her hand and admitted that she had not gone to school in three days. All were silent for a moment, and then Mr. Brice asked the young woman why she hasn’t been going to school. She said, thoughtfully, “That’s a good question. I guess I just don’t like it, don’t like the whole environment.” This comment changed the conversation for the evening. It was a graceful but courageous seizing of control by a young person. From that point on, the young people were candid about when and why they choose not to attend school. Amongst one another, the students parsed out what it meant for them to say that “school should be more fun.” They decided that what they were really asking for was for school to be warmer, more engaging, more optimistic, more…fun. It was immediately apparent that this kind of conversation needs to happen much more frequently, with many more students, with able facilitators who are as open-minded and eager to hear youth voices as Ms. Jessamy and Mr. Brice were that evening. The young people who attended this meeting are clearly seeking to be engaged. Most of them are participants in extra-curricular programs where they take real leadership roles. They were motivated enough to attend this meeting and have their voices be heard on issues that are important to them and their peers. And yet these are young people that say school does not engage them. Mr. Brice got it right when he asked, “why?” instead of asking “what do we have to do to get you to come to school?” It seems that students appreciated being given a forum to express themselves, rather than to be negotiated with. The young people I came with talked in the car on the way home about how cool (their word) the meeting ended up being. They felt good about having spoken honestly. And at our Youth Council meeting the next day, they continued talking about WHY students don’t go to school. As someone who works closely with young people, this meeting was not “depressing”, it was a beginning. And I am confident that, whether or not the adults involved use what was said at the forum as a foundation to build upon, the young people certainly will.

Michelle, I can agree that many schools need an environment change specifically in safety. However, the students are part of that environment and if they opt not to change it (via their behavior or influencing the behaviors in their peers) we teachers can only do so much.

As to the rest of your comment: school isn't fun? That's not a news flash, not every day can be entertaining in education! I am not a paid actor, I am a paid teacher. As I said above, I try to make every lesson engaging... but engaging doesn't mean 'fun' every day. I don't go to work to entertain, I go to work to teach... and even on those 'boring' days the students that are motivated to learn (and not apt to just not show up) do learn.

I agree that often work is just that - work. It can be hard and obscure and I don't think that that is a bad thing for kids to learn. On the other hand, I think an infusion of technology could really help in drawing at least some kids in, without watering down the content or "dumbing down" the work. I thought this (click for a link to a YouTube video on web 2.0) is a pretty cool and engaging use of technology. I know that this level of technology use would be expensive and require a lot of training and support, but maybe it's part of the answer. Typically this is a rich school/private school only approach, but I think City School students and teachers deserve no less.

School wasn't fun when we had to go either, however we all did it. We had to learn about things that we didn't think we fun or relate to us when we were 16,17 years old either, however we did it. Isn't that how we make sure history doesn't repeat itself?

As teachers, we still have to do things we don't deem fun. We sit through faculty meetings and PD where the discussion is usually based on topics that the administration, central office think are necessary, but are often unrelevant and put most of us to sleep. Does that mean we don't go? No. Life isn't always fun. If education is supposed to prepare our children for life, then education won't always be fun either.

This is a really touchy subject, but a very important one. I really think that all posters have valid concerns and comments. For me personally, I would like to take the focus off the classroom teacher for a minute. Not that I don't think teachers should be held accountable for engaging lessons, they definitely should (whether the information is "relevant" to their lives or not).
However, what about the school environment? I'm not even talking about the way people treat each other. I'm talking about our horrific lunches (hopefully in the process of being changed?), our unpredictable and ridiculous heating and/or air conditioning, our 6 year old computers, our dirty hallways, our lack of extracurricular activities, our constantly broken copiers, and our general lack of resources.
Don't even worry about the lesson plan (yet.) Maybe if school didn't seem like a prison training ground, they wouldn't be so against it.

I'm sensing a new argument here. I find this idea that "education isn't supposed to be fun" line of thinking rather compelling. I even used it in my post above. But, now, I sit back and think, especially after reading this from other teachers.

Why isn't learning supposed to be fun? Who made that rule? Is it so because we say it is? When research shows that children learn most effectively when they're engaged in the material, then why do we try to find ways to argue against it? The common answer is... well that's how I learned, and I'm successful now, so that method works. As the book I mentioned earlier points out, this has been the argument made by nearly every failing corporation when a competitor or new innovator hits the market. When people sit back and say, well that's not how I had it, I have to think... I didn't have the modern internet when I was in school, I didn't have youtube, I didn't have facebook, I didn't have encarta online, I didn't have CNN podcasts, I didn't have web design, etc. The basic assumption that we should do things now because they've worked in the past is rather flimsy when we evaluate the underlying conditions and the changing goals of modern public education.

I bet if we changed the evaluative measure to student satisfaction and incentivized school engagement, schools would find a way to meet that moving target. Just like with HSAs & curriculum guides before that, schools tend to meet the goals set for them (although it takes varying amounts of time and finishes with varying levels of success). I'm not saying that we should take this path, but I'd like to pose a question:

If we had sound research that showed a causal relationship that (a) students are more successful when they're engaged in tangible concepts, (b) higher engagement leads to higher graduation rates, (c) higher graduation rates lead to reduced crime and lowered reliance on public assistance, then wouldn't it be worth pursuing? Clearly, the old model isn't successful.

A Parent,

In this renewed culture of site based management it has become even more important for Parents and students to be engaged and make demands of their schools, outlining what it is they expect of their schools. Thank you for actively researching a way that schools could be more engaging for students by reaching out to them using digital media. I want to encourage you to go to www.bcps.org and register for a parent account so that you can have access to the digital content available to all students of The City Schools. There is a perception that The City schools fall behind other districts in having the capacity to reach students digitally. The opposite is indeed the truth. BCPSS is ahead of many of the school systems in the state when it comes to having the capacity to reach out to students in this manner. The TSS is a tool the overwhelmingly underused by schools where not only online instruction can take place but students can blog, wiki and podcast. Not only do teachers and students have this great tool at hand the City Schools have also taken a lead in the state of Maryland in implementation of Interactive classrooms such as the use of ACTIVBoards and student response system. This is equipment and online tools being used in Baltimore City Schools not a fancy private school. The only downfall to this is that due to the budget cuts the department that supports the PD activities and training for all these great tools has been cut to the bone and teachers and principals are left to try to figure these tools out for themselves with little assistance from curricular departments.

All that to say parents must be engaged to direct schools and the technology is in place in many schools to reach the digital natives of the 21st century.

Bill, I'm not sitting here saying learning and education shouldn't be fun. I'm simply saying that it will not be fun every day. Even if it *was* fun every day, I'd have to diversify the fun-ness (so to speak). What is fun for one student may not be fun for another. Additionally, since when does the word "engaging" mean "fun"? A lesson can be engaging without being an entertainment piece.

What I am arguing is that just because a student finds a class "boring" (which could be a result of a number of things) doesn't give that student an excuse to not come to class. All of us had boring classes, but I don't think anyone posting here just stopped going to school. My parents nor my community would have ever given such an arguement any clout... why are we sitting here making more excuses for these children? You don't like a class? Oh well, that's no excuse to fail it. Pass it, move on, and when you get higher education (or when you're an independent after graduation) feel free to persue the classes and topics that you want to.

Here's a perfect example of 'fun' having no actual sway in the classroom when a student is actually doing what they're supposed to. I am wrapping up Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in class. I had 2 students who fell behind and simply did not understand the language because they had missed the lessons where the class learned to disect Elizabethan English (not a "fun" day, but a lesson that let them have fun when the read the comedy and actually understood it). Over the break I gave both students a copy of the No Fear Shakespeare version of the text. One student returned, having read the text and completed the various assignments I gave and has participated every day since. This student did the work, and is now engaged in the lessons every day. The other student ignored the work over break, and is still not engaged.

One student put an emphasis on the importance of education, and is now engaged. The other did not. It had nothing to do with me being a fun teacher (which I am, when the situation calls for it). I'd invite anyone who thinks we teachers should be fun all the time to step up to the plate, get certified and teach fun lessons 100% of the time. You'll have the same unengaged students unless they (and their families) put an importance on learning.

A Former Teacher:

Your comments are pretty intriguing, especially as I've been working on trying to get my students blogging and creating wikispaces. I've met roadblock after roadblock, though, because so many sites are blocked by Bess. Hearing that TSS has this stuff is intriguing, but I find the site nearly impossible to navigate or utilize for anything, let alone things I'm not that comfortable with to begin with. I've spent a significant amount of time lately trying to set up all my students with edublogs accounts, so they can blog about books we read - but is this something that can be done through TSS? Every teacher I know gets frustrated with that website.

@A Former Teacher - I did try to set up a TSS account when my PTA sent out a notice encouraging us to do so. After filling in a ton of data I found out I needed BCPSS ID #'s so I put it off until I went home and dug up old report cards to find those numbers. After filling those in for 2 of 3 of my kids and waiting several days I got an automatically generated error email in response, with a message that made no sense to me. At that point I gave up. I had hoped with all the information I had entered a person would get in touch with me and tell me what the issue was. I never got any such contact.

As far as I can tell none of my kids teachers use this website - there are gradebooks on other systems and never once has a teacher communicated something they are doing using TSS. I'm not a website designer, or even a software engineer, but I am computer literate and I can easily find my way around the web. If TSS is too much for me I doubt it is a good way to engage many City School parents.

As far as City Schools having enough technology to allow students to be engaged in blogging, wiki's and the like, I have my doubts. Honestly, I don't see how that can happen unless every child has a laptop. If City School teachers say that isn't an issue I'm willing to believe there's another way for this to happen I just don't see occasional periods in shared computer labs being enough.

@a parent - you are correct that using TSS is difficult. The difficulties range from being able to log on to having the available computers to access it. In some schools, teachers are fortunate to have A computer in the classroom. Even then, the computer is so antiquated it takes forever to download anything. The library may have a few stations, but that's not adequate for use with a class of 25-30 students. The laptop labs that each school got a few years ago are hardly adequate, either. One lab for a school with 35-40 teachers just doesn't cut it. As for navigating TSS - I'm like you, computer literate, but I find it to be cumbersome and hard to find things.

I totally agree that students need to be able to utilize the digital media and other resources to be effective. However, under the current budget constraints, BCPSS will never be able to upgrade the computers enough to make them widely available for use in the classroom. Let's not forget about filters that won't allow students to research breast or prostate cancer and yet will allow them to research the NBA statistics at their leasure. What a joke! I am so frustrated by the computer system in the city that I have my own wireless account that I use when I need to get online for something that I know will be blocked. Why should I have to do this?

I am an experienced teacher, have two graduate degrees, am a parent and am entrusted with students every day.I am a professional who has had child abuse training every year! All this and I am not trustworthy enough to have an over-ride password to free up a website I have located after hours of work at home at night.There is no time during the day to do this kind of indepth planning.I have heard all the reasons for the filter but why not entrust highly qualified, experienced teachers with a password to open a site which WE have determined meets the needs of our students? How insulting! The IT situation in BCPS is backward and almost not worth the investment. All or nothing,I say.The frustrations mentioned in all the other blogs are too numerous to mention. BCPS pays tuition for teachers to take tech courses but then we are not able to apply many of the skills taught due to lack of hardware, software, connectivity, the filter, etc. AAA, trust your employees! We trust you.

I’ve enjoyed reading all these thoughtful comments. I hope I’m not stating the obvious by pointing out that truancy has many and varied causes, and those causes differ from student to student. There seems to be one faction that says “truancy is caused by schools not engaging students” and one faction that says “truancy is caused by parents and students not being responsible.” Both explanations are correct, and both are incomplete. As someone who’s worked in schools, it seems clear that 1) schools often do a poor job of engaging students, which negatively impacts student motivation to come to school, AND 2) parents sometimes abdicate their basic responsibilities to get kids to school while kids sometimes fail to take responsibility for themselves. The reasons for 1) and 2) are themselves complex. Beyond school disengagement and personal responsibility, there’s other causes of truancy that could be added to the list as well. All these causes interact with each other in complex ways and have varying influences on different kids, and we should be working on all of them. Pointing fingers at any side, or making excuses for any side, is not helpful. If you’re in a school and you feel like you have limited impact on what goes on in the home, then focus on what can change in the school, and acknowledge that students and families have valuable input and need to have a voice. If you’re a policymaker, get more resources for education and more support for struggling families. There’s lots of good research and recommendations out there for changing schools and policies to address truancy and the closely-related dropout crisis. Personally I like the Grad Nation guidebook from the America’s Promise Alliance.

A few comments/responses:

1) First and foremost, very interesting discussion.

2) Brandon, I agree. I'm more posing a hypothetical to generate thoughts. I feel your frustration 100x over, I'm just wondering if there's a different way to approach it. No answer here, just more questions.

3) We're falling into the exact trap that occurs with new technology or new innovation. Old, traditional systems just to adapt the new technology to the old model, thereby creating a "sustaining" use of the technology. However, the technology is completely different and truly requires a new approach to the teaching and learning model. We can't just throw a computer or a smart board into schools and expect that to be enough. We have to change the whole way we approach technology and learning.

4) TSS is a disaster. I appreciate the efforts, but it's a mess. It should be extremely clear based on the usage statistics, but someone keeps ignoring those. There are too many vested interests in the system, and it's ashame because it's truly a waste of money. I say this as a former teacher, as a friend of many current teachers, and as a central office staffer. Good idea, absolutely terrible implementation & sustainability.

5) Apex computer-based learning and others are all about individualized styles of learning. And the programs change based on the results that students demonstrate and the diagnostics that the program offers. Additionally, class-size becomes a very different issue when you can have a laptop cart with 40 laptops and one teacher facilitator. I know it sounds crazy, but I watched a video of the successes (not from the company but from other TFA teachers in Oakland region) and I was amazed. In a neighborhood school with historically rough numbers/statistics, one teacher was overseeing a class of 50 students on computers and literally EVERY student was engaged. It was amazing. Of course replication always causes a problem, but we have to step back and approach teaching a learning from an outsider's perspective.

TSS was a good idea but unfortunately it is not mandnatory that teachers use it. And I am sure it is quite hard to get into considering the state of the computers in the schools and the lack of real help from ITD.
I wrote a note to my sons teachers concerning the fact that none of the 4 have anything in TSS so that I am able to utilize it to see where he is doing well or needs more help with. I was told by all but one (he has another site that I can go to for his class) that they do not have time, there is too much to do.
This process was promised to parents 2 years ago and we are still asking for and not receiving this must needed information. There are far too many of us who work long hours and are not always able to speak with a teacher when we do have the time to do so.
If BCPSS can spring for Plasma TV's on North Avenue, then why not better equipment so that the teachers and parents can be on a level playing field?

In regards to the TSS bit: I do agree. I tried to use the gradebook two years ago, but I had to manually scroll down to enter my grades, and it didn't always update with SASI to add or remove students from my class. Now I use TSS for the resources- the UnitedStreaming movies, SIRS Discover articles, and for students to upload files so that they can print them on my personal printer (which is a disservice in itself to our students).

I would love to see each student have his/her own log-in to a personalized desktop, like I had in college and like most high schools have now.

I also got the library services people to unblock one website- because I refused to get off the phone while I was teaching- my kids needed to enter a poetry contest whose deadline was that day. In two other cases, nothing happened after multiple emails, faxes, and phone calls. I would love to see an IT person in each school with access to the override password.

I'm loving what I'm hearing about TSS, because it's exactly what happens in our school. I think it's a big waste of money that very few use.

Many school districts give teachers a passcode through blocked sites. Look through YouTube - there are tons of high school student projects on there; they create videos that show their understanding of a text or issue. Students in the BCPSS couldn't do that; it's blocked in all the schools. Ditto most blogging sites, many poetry sites, wikispaces, etc.

Over the summer, I spent some time creating a googlepage for my classes, full of links, documents I'd uploaded, and resources. I was going to use it all year as a resource for students and parents. Unfortunately, it's blocked.

At the same time, I was creating - with other educators from throughout the country - a wikispaces with Shakespeare resources. It has a lot of great stuff. It's blocked.

The new thing this year is nings. At the National Council of Teachers of English conference this year, a ning was created to bring teachers together with resources. Then, Jim Burke started a ning called English Companion, which now has over 1000 teachers from around the nation. I thought this would be a great thing to create for my class of Juniors, a place where they will get together online and be able to discuss what we are reading. Unfortunately, all nings are blocked at school.

I've never been successful getting an override.

I am shocked at what I am hearing about the TSS. It is a tremendously useful tool that conveys information and allows families to see academic content. If you haven't been able to create a parent account, then you haven't asked for help. I did and got help right away. As far as computers and equipment, I know that more than half of BCPSS teachers have been loaned a district laptop. The question is how many take them out of the closet, plug them in and use them? From what I hear from my child's teacher the gradebook is much improved. Plus, I've been able to go online and see grades. Now I know how my child is doing all the time - not just when report cards come out (that is too late to provide help).

There are a few resources that might be of interest:

1) Snapgrades - this is one of the many E-gradebooks that are out there. We are currently using this for our teachers - it offers access for both parents and students, ways to manipulate grades and dates that go far beyond what TSS/Blackbord offers. The only issue is the lack of direct integration with SASI, although I hear that's on its way out. It might be worth looking into.

2) Gaggle.net - this is a filtered, teacher controlled email service that has a free flavor (limited size for mail boxes, attachments and the like as well as having ads). It's amazing in terms of what it offers - teachers control passwords so that if kids forget them or if kids need a "time out" the teacher can change the password. Teachers get copied on email that is suspect meaning that it is blocked and can only be released by the teacher. It's worth checking out. And BESS doesn't block it

I would encourage people to contact ITD to complain about blocked sites. I believe James Smith is the person in charge of some of this stuff.

This also leads to a discussion about what kids might be motivated by - the filter and access to online resources - what a great way to investigate the 1st amendment:-)

History Teacher,

The school system was moving to place a technolgy integration analyst in every school but this plan was abandoned after the last round of budget cuts when all 36 TIAs lost there jobs and Dr. Alonzo with this thoughtless move set technology support and education back years this making the digital gap wider for teachers and students.

Baltimoremom is right teachers need to stop crying about the lack of equipment tools and use whaay they have . The TSS is a great tool and I loved it to help create an online learning environment for my students. Part of the problem here is that teachers whine to much about change and that principals could care less it are to scared to embrace and force teachers to use a tool that would effectivly change teaching and learning. We need some risk takers and Heros but those are few and far between in "The City Schools".

@ Baltimoremom:

I'm relatively handy with computers despite my English background. The PC I use at home I built by hand through ordered parts. TSS as a system works with constant help, true, but that help is not as readily available as your experience seems to suggest. You were lucky.

But to my actual point, you write "I know that more than half of BCPSS teachers have been loaned a district laptop". I am one of those teachers who has worked in the system long enough to get my free laptop. Several of the teachers in my school and I picked them up. Their batteries do not hold a charge, they cannot be turned on, and those that can be turned on have hardware/software corruption. Like I said, I build computers.. I can fix a lot of the problems with these laptops. But not without extra copies of windows to format and reinstall on them, or access to extra hardware. Either of these things would cost me hundreds of dollars a piece.

The question isn't "how many take them out of the closet, plug them in and use them?". The question is where did these pieces of junk come from? And to stick to the topic, why would an entire school system of teachers say TSS isn't usefull to OUR profession if it actually was? We are not the embittered, jaded, disenfranchised teachers the system would make us out to be. Most of us (especially the teachers that post here) would love to see things change for the better... we're just spoon-fed the bull so much we come across negative. TSS is an abomination of what could be an effective use of the blackboard utility. It simply needs to be re-tooled or scraped and rebuilt from scratch. Many colleges use blackboard effectively for the very same purposes we want to use it: Share materials, display grades, offer professors and students tools to help education. BCPSS needs to find a working model and emulate, not re-invent the wheel every time we come across a speed bump.

It is interesting to read about TSS and the issues that some of the people are having with this tool. I've been involved with it since 1998 and have seen its growth as a tool since that time. The latest numbers for the TSS indicate that over 36 million views have taken place in the past six months. The vast majority of the views are from students whose teachers have been able to find the means to make the tool work in their classrooms.
The content placed on the TSS is fully searchable. If you want to find something, click on the search tool, enter a keyword and let the system find it for you.
The Grade Center was a terrible tool that has been greatly upgraded by Bb in the past year. There area number of training tools available on the TSS to show how to use the Grade Center. I'd think that a request to the TSS team always results in support being offered. I know of no time when help requested did not result in help being offered.
In the K12 world, Blackboard regularly comes to BCPSS to get a model for use with other districts. Contact me if you need help making use of the TSS. Equipment in the schools is an issue that I can not help with, but the TSS is another matter, for those who really want to use it as is being used by many teachers in the district.

@ Bert: Thanks for the update. I guess my initial reaction is that the 36 million number really, really surprises me. Now that most of the documents are uploaded onto the system there's not much variability or options, so it may be artificially inflated by being the only tool in operation. However, 36 million is a lot. Is there any way to see the number of teachers who regularly use the system, i.e. in their daily practice? It's also good to hear that the grading system was improved; I know a lot of my friends haven't looked back since a year or two ago when the initial program was used.

Also, the support generally is great. But I don't think that's really the issue. I think the problem is that teachers (with all of their many, many responsibilities) want a system for which tech support is the last thing on the to-do list. Compared to my current school's blackboard, TSS seems rather cumbersome. I very well could be wrong, though.

@bertross: I'm also curious about the 36 million number. Maybe other schools are different, but I've heard of no teachers using TSS at the 3 we're involved with. There are a good number of teachers using on-line grade books, but not TSS. I'd be interested in how many active accounts there are in TSS when you define active as actually logging in and getting some sort of data at least once a quarter. If this is a tool that is being used extensively in some schools and not at all at others, maybe you could do some sort of peer-to-peer training to try to convince those not using to tool that it isn't that hard to use anymore. I will say that for parents there has been no communication about setting up an account and the process that was required the one time I tried (>a year ago) was much more painful (and in the end unsuccessful) than any of the online accounts I have, including technical/data accounts that I have in regards to my work as an engineer.

Bill - The numbers reflect the amount of actual student log in and work on the TSS. There are hundreds of teachers who depend on the TSS for their daily instruction. I know this by carefully exploring the stats that track all aspects of the TSS by user name and role. I also hear immediately from teachers when the network problems at the data center cause issues with connection to the TSS.
The actual use of the TSS for access to system documents is increasing, but at a rate far less than classroom use. The lack of staff to support the teachers who want to use the tools to enhance instruction is a problem that has to be addressed at the school level since Fair Student Funding shifted funding for in school support to the school's option. There are a number of tools made available on the TSS that provide a set of pointers on how to use tools that maybe of interested to teachers.
The Grade Center resulted from my constant complaints to Bb that their Gradebook was worthless. When Bb purchased WebCT, they took the WebCT grade center and worked with many of the K12 users across the country to make it more useful. It is still not as good as those grading programs that specialize in grading but a huge leap in usefulness for those who want to make grades transparent to the students and their parents.
I cannot agree more that teachers need the basic resources at hand and ready to use with minimal input. We have struggled to get the support from the district to populate the courses in the TSS with the recommended materials that a student/parent should be able to access to enable their learning experience to extend beyond the classroom. (I’ll reference the Parent Portal in my comment to aparent.)
Improving what is available is always at the core of what the TSS is about, please feel free to contact me off line to discuss your ideas.

aparent – This forum is not the best place to go into details regarding use of the TSS by teachers throughout the district. However, the number of teachers who use the TSS, daily is in the hundreds and those who use it regularly as you define it, is nearly 2,000. These numbers are reflective of just what you suggested, a grassroots movement among the teachers who have found it useful sharing with their friends and colleagues. Money to support a cadre of classroom teachers who moved into a position that allowed them to travel to schools to work with the teachers in the use of the TSS, among other educational technologies, was devolved to the schools in the Fair Student Funding initiative. There are several schools that have opted to fund a fractional FTE to support their teachers in the use of 21st century classroom tools. Sadly the majority of the schools did not opt for a technology support staffer.
I cannot agree more that the process to enroll for a parent observer account was full of issues. An enrollment process that is unique to the Bb community has been developed and is ready to be released when the Central Office gives the go ahead. This process will confirm that the request to view a student’s TSS course is legitimate by sending the requests to the school for confirmation. This will be done via a series of automated emails to confirm to the parent that the request was received and then approved. The parent request will be immediately acknowledged by a return email. The issue of ensuring that a request to observe a student is legitimate is a major requirement to protect the children from dangers associated with unfettered Internet access to people who may not be who they claim to be. The current method is way too limited and difficult to make the response time anywhere near acceptable.
With that being said, the parent access will be of little use if the resources available to the student and parent when they come to a course on the TSS is not present. Since I am not capable of producing the content that a course must have to make it useful for teachers, students and parents, I am hopeful that involving parents in the equation will break the log jam that exists in getting content from a central perspective and from the classroom teacher’s engagement. I believe Dr Alonzo when he says the district needs engaged parents if we are to have Great Kids and Great Schools. I also believe that the correct understanding of what is available on the TSS will go a long way to making that goal a reality.

Both conduct disorder and antisocial personality disorder are categorized as personality disorders under the DSM-IV-TR and share extremely similar definitions as explained above in 'Mental Disorders'.