Really, Dr. Hairston? What superintendent in America trys to force an untested, unpiloted, non-research based program created by a friend on his school system? If the teachers had been asked for input, if the program had been piloted and feedback given, perhaps the suggestion to marry AIM and Assesstrax could have avoided much of the controversy!

Although Dr. Hairston claims to have put this issue "on hold", we need to keep this issue at the forefront so that it doesn't come out of its current holding pattern.

None of us are manufacturing a crisis, we are simply standing up for what is right for our students and what is right for BCPS as a whole.

I'm tired of being accused of being a whiny teacher simply because I stand up and fight against a program that is useless. My big question that has yet to be answered... What happens after AIM progress reports are filled out? Do intervention or action plans need to be created and implemented so that students still at Acceleration or Instructional level can meet mastery? What are we going to do when students arrive in 5th grade not having mastered skills from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade.

I wish that "the powers that be" had taken time to pilot this program and make plans for the next steps involved. It's frustrating to me when I think about handing a parent this document that states that various skills haven't been mastered... some of which that aren't in the child's current grade level and I don't have answers as to how those skills are going to be mastered on top of trying to master the current grade level skills.

It's an overall lack of research and planning on the part of the BCPS administration. Everyone was so quick to jump the gun on this program since there seems to be money involved for the creator.

I am hopeful that Dr. Hairston really will streamline AIM and make it more user friendly and beneficial to our students but I'm hesitant to put a lot of stock in that at this point.

Let's keep fighting this and put AIM to rest for good.

Liz- Thank you for covering this story so thoroughly and taking the time to get the facts right. Unfortunately, I think the struggle continues even after today's article. You stated that what comes next isn't clear and I think it's going to stay that way, which is not good for teachers and students.

I tried calling the Superintendent today to discuss how administrators and teachers will be told that there are new direction/changes to the AIM progress reports mandate. I wanted to know what communication piece teachers should expect so they don't have to continue to scramble to learn how to formulate the reports and complete these flawed reports. I wanted to give BCPS the opportunity and at the same time urge them to send out a "clear" message to employees.

Unfortunately, the Superintendent did not call me back but instead had another office head make the call. I was told that the verbal message (only) back to me was that Dr. Hairston listened to teachers and has directed administrators to examine the issues raised by teachers in work sessions and the work they are doing will be shared at the January 26 Board of Education meeting. End of statement.

It's sad that the Superintendent couldn't contact me personally. I tried to ask questions such as what are teachers supposed to do with the checklists until January 26 since they've been directed to complete them by the end of the 2nd term. No reponse.

I asked if there would be a Superintendent's Bulletin or anything stating what subjects are now exempt. No response.

I pointed out that the January 26 meeting is only 2 days before the end of the term so until that time teachers and administrators will still be trying to complete the flawed reports that could possibly be revised. No response.

The only response I did receive is the statement read several times to me and that questions will be addressed at the January 26 meeting. Remember, the "work session" is only a time for the public to watch, not comment!

This is amazing, not surprising, but amazing! We have been overtly willing to work with the school system to share flaws and try to find a way to make all of these data and reporting systems work together. It sounded as if the Superintendent was finally listening in your article and now the usual spin game and lack of communication continues.

It's disappointing to hear that Dr. Hairston thinks that Superintendent's in America shouldn't have to deal with the details. Is he saying that teachers,students, and parents are just details? Education is details and working with educators who make up the largest part of the employee base should be a detail worth working on in this school system and in any school system.

We will continue our efforts to raise awarenss about this ineffective and cumbersome tool and to work to see major revisions and ways to streamline what we already have in place. Those who have written in your two previous blogs did an outstanding job of conveying the flaws of this new mandate. They are not whining, but instead taking a stand for what is right and speaking up for students and public education. I am proud of our educators.

Our teachers will be protesting at the January 12 Board of Education meeting and we will encourage them to continue the letters, blogs, emails and more. I think our message is clear! AIM progress reports need to stop for all subjects and grades until the program has been revamped to be intergrated in a useful and beneficial manner with all other data collection and reporting tools.

Again, thank you for helping us to have a voice on this important issue. I encourage you to ask Dr. Hairston if there is a clear directive for teachers and administrators regarding the changes he spoke about to you yesterday. Maybe you'll get a "clear" answer.

I am so disappointed by this shift in approach demonstrated by Dr. Hairston. What a relief I felt this morning when I heard I would no longer have to fill out 6,000 grades, in addition to 600 report cards, this term. And, now, I'm feeling so demoralized. So, our choices are either to fill out the ridiculous AIM checklist, just in case he flip-flops, or wait and cross our fingers until January 26?! What if he flip-flops, then? I have one week finish entering 6,000 grades!!!! That is just not right.

As a BCPS teacher, I find it amazing that Hairston has shared this information with the news papers - but nothing has been shared with the teachers or our administration yet! There were not any (to my knowledge) SI Bulletins today, no emails (besides the TABCO info), nothing on the web-site..... Hmmmmm - we think we do not have to implement AIM this quarter, but have we really heard that yet?

I am so discouraged by the disrepect shown by Dr. Hairston to the teachers and students in his care. As our leader, he should WANT clear communication between himself and his teachers. As a leader he should WANT what's best for his students. As a leader he should WANT to receive feedback on issues. But, instead, Dr. Hairston, our "leader", refuses to provide clear guidelines regarding his expectations for the completion of AIM this month. Instead, Dr. Hairston, our "leader", does not think clearly about how AIM will negatively impact his students. And, instead, Dr. Hairston, our "leader", calls his teachers whiny and misinformed.

Attittude reflects leadership. So it's no wonder that the attitude of BCPS teachers is currently so poor. What a shame for our children!

I too want to thank you, Liz (and Cheryl too) for your hard work in trying to inform the public about AIM and what its effects would really be on students. The lack of communication from the superintendent is not unusual and quite expected. The idea that he should not get involved in the details is what led to the entire debacle. His lack of understanding concerning the details of AIM is surprising considering his staunch support of this ineffective product from his assistant and her company, Dezmon Educational Strategies, LLC. If he doesn't know the details, he should be willing to listen to those who do know what works. The apparent truth is that Joe Hairston will not listen to anyone but the one who has the most to personally gain from the initiative. It is unfortunate that Joe Hairston has turned his back on the goals stated in the Blueprint for Progress to prop up the personal interests of one employee. This is how I will remember his "reign" in BCPS. It is such a shame. On the other hand, I am quite proud that teachers, parents, and citizens came together to try to right a wrong being imposed on our teachers and students. Continue to stick together. Inform parents how this will affect their children's educational program.

Dezmon acknowledges that some of the items are in jargon, but says teachers and administrators should explain them so that parents understand.

Ok, so not only do teachers have to spend hours completing the AIM checklists but Dr. Dezmon wants them to spend the conference time talking about the jargon in the checklist. Seems to me that parents and students would benefit more from just a conference about the child's progress. Along with explaining the jargon teachers will have to explain the definitions of what A, I, and M mean. They do not mean what everyone who has attened a school believes an A means. Instead it means Articulated, however when we see an A we will believe that our students are doing fine!! So not only are we asking our teachers to take time away from our students to complete these very long checklist we are asking them to explain them! This makes no sense!!!

Cheryl and Liz,
Thank you for all that you are doing to keep us updated on AIM. When will those in charge realize that we are protesting the implementation of AIM so that our planning time is used to produce meaningful lessons and to assess what our students have learned? Again...thank you for all that you have done and continue to do for our students.

I was very relieved to read this morning that implementation of AIM has been postponed. I was very upset to read the comments made by Dr. Hairston about the issue. I guess Dr. Hairston is able to say that people created a crisis where there was none because he wasn't facing the crisis of time to fill in all the forms by his unilateral deadline.

Thank you, Liz and Cheryl Bost and all the others who have brought this issue into the public eye.

At this point I have no confidence that Dr. Hairston has any respect for the teachers of BCPS. How demoralizing for all of us who work so hard for the students in our care when our "educational leader" feels he must insult us in the eyes of the taxpayers who pay all our salaries, including his.

While I was overjoyed at the news this morning, I am still concerned about AIM. The parents of my students will have a difficult time understanding that the A in AIM is not a good thing. I am also concerned about the strain this will put on schools budgets. Schools have to pay for paper and toner out of their budgets, if we have to print out AIM checklists 4 times a year how we will be able to make copies for the assessments?

I am completely disgusted with Dr. Hairston's comment..."What superintendent in America gets into this much detail?" This demonstrates a complete lack of concern for his educators and the students we serve. Dr. Hairston, if you do not intend to worry yourself with the details, perhaps you should put the right people in place to worry about them for you rather than depending/trusting friends to develop system redundant, time consuming systems that you plan to mandate system wide!!!

Considering the confusion surrounding AIM, I can't imagine how it could be a useful tool for parents, or how it could be taken seriously. There needs to be some legitimacy demonstrated before AIM is a requirement for teachers. The time it will take is going to directly and negatively impact valuable teacher planning time. I'm sure most parents and students would prefer more stimulating lessons to AIM.

Teachers have not heard anything from Dr. Hairston that says he has heard our concerns and respects our "highly qualified" professional opinions. Quite the contrary,he implies we are overreacting, being mislead and "creating a crisis." I am disheartened by the entire prospect of AIM and the reaction of our Superintendent. The progress reports are only the surface of the problems in BCPS. Liz, perhaps you should also inquire about the complete turnover of the Elementary Language Arts department and the new "Linguistics" curriculum. One of the more ridiculous aspects of this curriculum is the expectation that fourth graders will learn about "Pittsburghese" and a phonemic alphabet. Another is the amount of money the county spent to send all Elementary School teachers a grammar reference book...The Little, Brown Handbook--HIGH SCHOOL EDITION! What a waste of money that could have been better spent on resources we could actually use to teach our Kindergarten through Fifth grade students!

I foresee a mass exodus of highly qualified, experienced teachers to surrounding counties if this trend continues!

By the way, Dr. Hairston, as the Superintendent, you are, in fact, even responsible for the details!

Dr. Hairston has repeatedly shown his interest in national coversage and national awards. He has not shown any interest in clear and cogent communication with his teachers. His assertion that this paperwork monstrosity is the result of imagination
and panic is patronizing and untrue. We will not stop until BCPS teachers are 'AIMless'

Why isn't Dezmon being called to task for creating and implimenting a program that she apparently hopes to profit from? She is a BCPS employee, not a paid consultant. Did she use BCPS tech resources to create this program? Did she spend any of her workday creating or researching this program? And she obviously attempting to use BCPS faculty and staff to test out her program. How in the heck can she expect to make a profit on something that should rightfully belong to BCPS.?

I am a former teacher of a restructuring school. I taught an HSA subject, which for those who teach these subjects know, is very stressful and time-consuming, especially in a restructuring school that requires you to do mandatory reports that were both ludicrous and a distraction.

When we were told that on top of EVERYTHING else that we had to complete AIM, we were not happy. At all. Considering that we already were keeping multiple reports to track a student’s progress (shortcycles, benchmarks, learning styles, quartiles), AIM inconvenienced us all.

Just to break it down for the working people out there who don’t know what AIM is, let me show you how much time it takes to complete. First, you have to pick objectives out. This requires you to find out what you will be teaching for the whole of the quarter, and which objectives you will be focusing on. This can take anywhere between ten and twenty minutes. On average, most people pick about five, HSA subjects probably pick more than this, but I will base my number on five.

After you pick your objectives, you have to go through each one of your class rosters. For each roster, you have to go through each student. So, if I picked Jane Doe, it would give me the list of objectives that I chose under her. Then, I have to pick one of the objectives. This opens up a whole new screen that lists the indicators for that objective with three radio buttons beside them. For each indicator you have to go back and look at student progress that reflects how well they are doing as far as that indicator goes and choose the appropriate radio button. Each objective can have anywhere from one and TEN (there might be some with more than that out there) indicators under it. The process to complete this for just ONE student takes about ten to twenty minutes. For the sake of playing devil’s advocate, let’s go with ten minutes. Ten minutes times twenty-eight students = 280 minutes, or four hours PER CLASS. If you have a 45 minute class schedule, you have five classes. So you are expected to find twenty hours of your time to complete AIM for one quarter.

We generally get 45 minutes to plan, 45 minutes for lunch, and 45 minutes for our “duty.” So, in addition to planning our normal classes and making sure that we are aligned with the curriculum and all its objectives and indicators, we have to somehow find time WITHIN THE SCHOOL DAY, to complete AIM. Why within the school day? Because we do not get paid overtime to stay and do it after school. Many of stay after school to help our students or run after school activities. Now we have sacrifice that too?

AIM is a gigantic waste of time and it negatively affects our students in the long run. We have so many other ways to track student progress that already consume our time, there is absolutely no need to add this to our work load. Some schools have edline, where parents can just as easily track their student’s progress there. Teachers are also usually aware of a student’s weaknesses through good teaching. We do not need a chart.

I left my restructuring school partially because the work load that was expected of me was unhealthy for me, took time away from my teaching, and unfairly punished my students. Dr. Hairston is level-headed enough to hopefully realize that AIM has no place in our classrooms right now.

If you want the students to succeed, you need your teachers to succeed, and they cannot do that if they are bogged down under needless data tracking. I am a teacher. If I wanted to track and chart data, I would have found a job in data entry.

I am writing as a BCPS resource teacher who will not have to complete any AIM reports, but who is concerned about the program nonetheless. I resent the implication in so many of the communications that have been sent from Dr. Hairston and his staff that his employees, our teachers, are simply complaining about spending planning time entering data.

While time taken to complete the AIM forms for every student will take away from the time spent on other tasks that are integral to teaching –

1) grading daily work so that we can make decisions about subsequent lessons
2) meeting with the guidance counselor to discuss how to support a child whose parents are divorcing
3) creating a PowerPoint so that we can present curriculum in a manner that is engaging and addresses multiple learning styles
4) conferencing with the nurse to draft a health plan and identify the triggers for a child whose asthma attacks are interfering with his learning
5) partnering with the special educator to develop an IEP for a child who is not meeting expectations
6) finding the perfect video on-line that will make next week’s social studies lesson come alive for my students
7) emailing a parent to respond to a question about a recent homework assignment
8) discussing intervention strategies with the reading specialist so that we can meet the needs of a child who is reading below grade level
9) touching base with our ELL teacher so that we can develop materials that make the county curriculum accessible to the student who just moved from China
10) meeting with the other sponsor of our Environmental Club to plan our next session (yes – the club that is NOT a paid responsibility, but a tremendous experience for our students)
11) enlarging curriculum materials so that a student with visual impairments can be as successful as her non-impaired peers
12) scoring and scanning the mandated BCPS short cycle assessments and benchmarks

- planning time is NOT the issue. I’m sure that the public understands that the list above could continue for pages. Of course, you also understand that it is impossible to complete these tasks in the 50 minute planning period that we are given daily. Teachers at my school routinely and willingly spend 3 to 4 hours each night on school-related tasks because they care about their students and want what is best for them.

Teachers are not whining about having to spend time doing our jobs. We simply understand the basic math involved in a 7-hour day. We do NOT understand collecting data for data's sake.

If there is a proven, research-driven plan to utilize the data from AIM to make improvements in teaching, offer new instructional strategies, and benefit our students I have not heard it. I question the ethics of adopting a county-wide program that was developed by a school system employee without any trial period or research to prove that the program will benefit our students. Although I have never met the author of AIM and I hope it is not true, it appears that BCPS is adopting this program so that the creator can then profit by selling the program to other school systems. That is tantamount to a classroom teacher insisting that his students purchase a text that he has written so that he can market it in other schools, without the text being edited or proofed - unethical in any light.

Teachers currently enter data and test scores in an existing BCPS data program, AssessTrax, but do not have the time to truly reflect upon the data that is collected because the next test is just around the corner. It would be of greater benefit to our students to look at how we could use AssessTrax as a pretesting strategy, allowing teachers to analyze students’ prior knowledge and plan accordingly. Small groups could be formed to meet student needs and lessons could be planned to clarify student misconceptions. Classroom time would be used more meaningfully by skipping lessons that include concepts that students already understand. Post-tests in AssessTrax could indicate which outcomes have been mastered and what concepts still need to be reinforced. I urge the Superintendent and his staff to help teachers use a tool that is already in the schools, and that has already been paid for, to meet the same goals of the ill-conceived, un-proven, unrealistic AIM program.

Hariston is upset that we expect him to explain himself and his actions in detail? Really? Wow, I once again feel demoralized, and underappreciated. Does he consider us professionals, or are we just his pawns?

As a BCPS educator I too am disheartened by the comments of the Superintendent. I work with amazing people who spend countless hours outside of the school building working to improve education and provide meaningful and engaging lessons. We would all gladly welcome a tool that improved communication with parents and students but for the reasons listed throughout these comments AIM does not.

Furthermore, I would not speak to or about a student in the disrespectful manor that Dr. Hairston addressed his teachers through the media. I agree with all those who predict a mass exodus of highly qualified teachers.

I hope the media continues to follow this story and keep the public updated.

What Dr. Hairston does not realize about these reports is that yes, we already use our judgment to determine a student's level of mastery of countless skills, but what we don't do already is sit in front of a computer and enter that information. I sat with my team for two hours just choosing objectives. We have 25 students each. I did not choose this profession to sit behind a computer all day. Additionally, in the Southwest area, teachers are still forced to complete Focus Plan-style interventions, which multiplies the amount of data we must produce. Finally, Dr. Hairston is not seeing the outcome of this kind of system. By having unmastered objectives follow students through the grades, teachers will be less likely to train for secondary positions and choose positions in challenging schools where fifth graders read on a kindergarten level and still count on their face.

Teachers are not asked to do something they don't already do? How about SEVERAL HOURS of pointless clicking?

And I resent the fact that Dr. Hairston is making his employees out to look like "bad guys." We are putting in countless hours working our tails off. So much for feeling appreciated!

I find it difficult to believe that Dr. Hairston did not know exactly what was being released to the teachers on December 17th. As superintendent, Dr. Hairston is responsible for knowing exactly what is happening in the system whether or not he is present. While I respect his time off for surgery and recovery, like any other leader, Dr. Hairston is supposed to be in the know. It sounds to me that teachers, parents, and other BCPS stakeholders have done a great job of bringing common sense to the forefront and Dr. Hairston must backpedal to cover his tracks. Let's keep the pressure on and let common sense continue to prevail!

As a teacher new not only to Baltimore County, but also teaching in general, I'm already swimming up-stream to keep up with my planning and grading, not to mention maintaining relationships with my students and their parents. As it is, I work at least 12 hours each day, and all weekend.

I was introduced to the procedures regarding AIM today, and estimate that the process as it currently stands will take more hours than I have in a day to complete. If this is mandated, then everything else--planning, grading, communicating--will go by the wayside.

No wonder so many good teachers leave teaching.

I don't understand how anyone could make the argument that teachers' frustration with AIM has anything to do with a lack of understanding. Teachers are, by trade, intelligent people. They've looked at AIM and they've tallied the extra hours of work (nearly 20,000 mouse clicks alone!), so they know what sacrifices this program will entail. Let's not insult their intelligence by assuming otherwise.

And Dr. Dezman spent over 20 years working on this program? That's longer than any student in BCPS has been alive, and THIS is what she has to show for it? Disgraceful.

As a teacher in a "core content area," I'm quite bothered by the fact that Dr. Hairston's idea of "backing away" is to burden once again the teachers who already prepare students for the PSAT, SAT, ACT, state exams...the list goes on. This lack of awareness of the burdens of these teachers is one of those "details" he may wish to familiarize himself with.

As a parent who has had a child in private school and now one in a high school in the BCPS system, I must say this is the most impressed I've been with the system. I find it sad that it took this situation to bring out the best in the teachers and administrators who make up the school system as they speak out against this, a one writer summed it up, 'mess' involving a flawed, cumbersome, subjective reporting system for data, a blatant conflict of interest (I'd like my portion of the tax dollars refunded please by Desmond as she used county equipment, 'company time', and staff to create this,) and a very serious ethics violation as noted in the code of ethics which can be accessed online. Finally,it has been written that Desmond plans this as a pilot program to then sell to other systems. I can tell you as a professor in the human service field, that requires informed consent. In the event the administration has the hubris to move forward on this, I will be contacting Drs. Hairston and Desmond and informing the principle of my child's school that she will not be involved in this project without the proper consent papers being on file. I encourage other parents to do so as well.

While there was jubilation at my school this morning, we are all still waiting for the "other shoe to drop". Dr. Hairston's condescending manner toward educators is demeaning and his treatment of our organization's representative, harkens back to the days of sweatshops and union busting. His "who do they think they are to question me?" attitude clearly provides a window into how teachers are viewed in this county. We are supposed to be "misinformed" about the program. I felt quite well informed as I held the 25 hard copy pages in my hand! I too encourage the media to stay on this story. The money trail needs to be followed, and all dark and secretive places explored!

I know where I will be on January 12th. I will be at the Board of Education meeting at 5:00. I hope to see you there. I do not trust or believe or have a vote of confidence in Dr. Hairston. Please this madness must stop.

Parents need to be given a complete (unchecked) copy of what they would be receiving from the school system each quarter if AIM is implemented. In fact, if the Sun would print just ONE of the ridiculous reports (try 4th grade math, or 11th grade U.S. History) I think everyone would understand how ludicrous this proposal is.

I am an employee of Baltimore County Public Schools. I respect the leaders of the enterprise I work for. I do what I am instructed because they pay my salary. However, I am also a professional educator. I am skilled, I am highly qualified. My statements are not ill-informed. I do not attempt to create controversy or blow issues out of proportion. I am disappointed and angered that Dr. Hairston seeks to characterize the comments and concerns of the experts paid to teach Baltimore County's children in this way. AIM is a redundant, poorly conceived program. As a professional, I am concerned with what will best help the children. Even if there was no extra work involved, the AIM program would not be beneficial to children. It either needs to be completely reworked (not streamlined) or scrapped all together. I fervently hope that the community and media will continue to pay attention to this issue.

Please do not be fooled. The first way the county, taxpayers, politicians, parents, and teachers are being fooled: this is not going away. In fact, Dr. Hairston is going to require this still be used by core content teachers, as he already stated. (This is why no official word has come from the county stating AIM was being put on hold; it only came from the newspapers. And that was to try to keep the negative press from adversely affecting his plans.) Secondly, don't be fooled when Dr. Dezmon says that this was a decision made by the "leadership team." AIM is not supported by most of the leadership in the county, but because Dr. Hairston has fired so many upper personnel, everyone is too afraid to speak out about it. This was a directive given by Dr. Dezmon to the leadership team; they had no say in the matter. Notice the directive was given when the superintendent was out, it went clearly against earlier directives, it violated board policies about piloting programs, and it was timed to try trick teachers who were getting ready to go on Christmas break. Thirdly, do not be fooled into thinking that what is currently in AIM was not closely examined by Dr. Dezmon and her staff. It was scrutinized with a fine tooth comb. It was taken down and reposted. It was questioned. She will have you believe she had no knowledge of the educational "jargon" that currently exists, but she did. She scrutinized every aspect of AIM. She is back peddling and blaming others for the inability of a parent to understand the content, but don't be fooled. She knew and approved what the content was long before this problem became public. Her failure was in not involving parents and teachers from the beginning to see if they would like or understand or find useful the information and the way it is being reported. And Dr. Hairston's failure was in trusting her and believing the lies she was telling him. If they had piloted the program and involved parents and teachers from the beginning, NONE of this would be an issue. If they allowed their administrators to openly dialogue about AIM, instead of yelling at them in meetings for asking questions, they would not be in this pickle.

Thirdly, don't be fooled into thinking this program will help minority or disadvantaged youth. Has anyone stated specifically how the data gathered will help? Do we have specific plans in place as to how this program is going to help us "race to the top?" What is the vision of how this program and the data collected will help? Has it been clearly articulated?

I hope this entire problem forces the school board to examine how one person in this county (Dr. Barbara Dezmon) has been allowed to have so much power without involving important partners in the decision making process. The last I checked, I thought I lived in America, not Nazi Germany. The ethics violations that have occurred, the blame that is being passed around, the lack of involvement of parents or teachers in making this the best program it can possibly be, the fact that even 8,000 teachers, politicians, and the Teacher's Association are up in arms and the superintendent is telling them they are making a big deal about nothing, the fact that Dezmon still plans to move full speed ahead and has misled the public and the board that hired her, has made Baltimore County the laughing stock of the state of MD.

Where is integrity in all this? It is disheartening that no one wants to step up to the plate and accept responsibility for the fact that teachers were indeed told that they ALL needed to implement AIM within the next three weeks. This is not a game of He said/She said. If Dr. Hairston did not direct school administrators to deliver this message, then who did? It was made very clear to principals that AIM was to be implemented NOW. How did teachers blow anything out of proportion? The whole idea of the implementation is out of proportion to begin with. And where are the board members, who certainly purport to be education advocates, which includes support for teachers? And how come no elected officials spoke up? What's going on with everyone? Teachers who have the most to lose certainly did not lose their integrity. I am so proud to be a teacher right now, so proud that we stood up for what is right, but so disappointed that important people did not do the same. Credibility for the school leaders who made this dumb decision is nil. How will we ever again attract quality teachers to a school system that made such a devastating mistake? So much for leadership...what a mess.

What needs to be reinforced is the fact that we already use one platform (AssessTrax) which gives detailed information (aligned with MD State Standards) to parents for every short-cycle & benchmark test taken throughout the year in each academic area. That information is regularly printed & sent home for parents to analyze & determine each child's academic progress. The problem that teachers, including me, have is that these 2 platforms~ AssessTrax & AIM~ do not communicate with each other (unbelievable in this day & age), necessitating each teacher, to input data~ AGAIN~ and send it home in yet another format!

WHY should THAT be this year's new initiative? We already send interim reports, team reports, administrative reports, sometimes daily reports, AssessTrax reports, quizes, unit tests. We have parent conferences/telephone conferences & send home quarterly report cards. Now AIM? How many reports are necessary to communicate student progress? Most parents would prefer a 10 minute conversation for an update regarding their child rather than a ream-full of educational PR~jargon.

Implementing AIM is a preposterous waste of teachers' time, an unconscionable loss of valuable instructional time for our students, and just another feather in some bureaucrat's double-dipping cap.

When I read the quote which stated Dr. Hairston saying, "I am the Superintendent.", I couldn't help but get the image of Dorothy, The Tinman and Cowardly Lion standing close by! Maybe it's time for a one way ticket back to Oz!

First
Not all courses, in fact very few, use AssessTrax. Stop trying to save face and save AIM. A bad program is still a bad program.
Second
Most courses already have objectives and indicators aligned with testing. AIM conflates a five grade objective grading system into a three grade subjective system. How does this create more detail? How is this better? It only creates more work.
Finally
How does this help minority students?

I was discussing AIM with my sister, who is very involved in her children's school. She stated that she would not even look at the report. What she has time for is the report card. As long as her children are doing well on their report cards, she doesn't see the need for another report telling her that. No college will care about AIM. Colleges want grades and SAT scores. If we teach every student as if they are going to college, then we should not focus on a report no college will ever look at.

Yesterday, I was quite confused when teachers received a forwarded e-mail from the principal of our building containing a link to an article in the Sun regarding Dr. Hairston and the AIM issue. I read the article title and was confused that Dr. Hairston found the time in his busy schedule to present a statement to the press without first addressing the concerns of his employees directly with his employees. I read the article and was appalled that Hairston was defacing his teachers in the public eye. Trying to save face and backtrack, Hairston chose to point his finger and blame others, stating that the confusion was caused by misinformed teachers who were over-reacting and causing panic. What superintendent in America gets into this much detail?" !?!! WHAT !?! Being “detailed” towards your teachers, parents, and students is YOUR JOB! Hairston, why don’t you step up, communicate clearly with your employees that you are supposed to be leading, stop trying to save your tarnished public image, and do what is right? With all of the trials and ludicrous amounts of work that teachers deal with on a daily basis, it is imperative that teachers have administrators and support staff who are willing to back them up. Instead, Hairston has thrown his “professional and respected” teachers in front of the train screaming its horn and charging ahead 200 miles an hour.

And where is this illustrious author in the mess? Why has the press not been pressuring to speak with Dr. Dezmon? Why is she not making public statements in support of her program? Why is she being allowed to hide behind the apron strings of Baltimore County Schools?

Where are the priorities?

While I have many problems with AIM and the way it was mandated, my biggest issue now is how confused I am. In December my principal told us that AIM was now mandatory for everyone. While there were gripes and groans, I figured I'd be the good person and suck it up to get done what my "boss" said to get done. Now I'm getting information through a television crew or a newspaper article and not through the superintendent. In what organization or other profession do employees get information about mandatory job requirements through newspapers and TV news stations? Hairston-you messed up, and that's ok, but you need to tell your employees first, not the media!!! Until I get a letter or e-mail from the superintendents office, I am NOT completing any AIM reports!!!

I cannot continue to work in a under-rated, under-paid, underappreciated, extremely difficult, time-consuming, life-altering profession when it’s leaders agree with and act upon the ailing attitudes of the public. Sick.

The unanswered questions are:

Did Dr. Dezmon create this program on work time?

Isn't this a conflict of interest? Although BCPS won't have to pay for it; won't the fact that a school system uses it be part of the marketing and thus benefit the employee? Smells rotten to me

Dr. Hairston has just demorilized us as educators in this County. I came to the County because I wanted to be appreciapted by my "educational leader", but I guess that was just a hope that was crushed by what Dr. Hairston said yesterday! AIM is a program that as a new teacher and a technology liasion I have had to sit through numerous 2 hour presentation about. Are you kidding me, no one knows how to implement the program and sure I could navigate around AIM, but that doesn't mean I know how to choose what mark my students would get because no one knows and cannot tell us how to separate between the 3 categories. I get to school over an hour and half early and do not leave until at least 7 most nights, not to mention how much time I spend on the weekends working on planning engaging and meaningful lessons for my students, so that they can move on and feel confident in their learning. By trying to make us implement AIM, they are basically telling us that we should drop all that and spend that time on this program! Hello!!! Most parents hardly look at the marks on the report card let alone a document confusing them about where their child stands with their education. Parents want to read the comments at the end to really get an idea about what their child is learning and how they are doing. If we have to complete AIM this quarter all the teachers are going to have no time to sleep because it will take too long to enter the "data". If we don't sleep we won't be prepared to drive to school let alone teach our children!! I can't believe that we as educators even have to fight for our rights on this. If he (Dr. Hairston) really cared he would realize how long it would take us to fill out all the "data" and put it into AIM... Maybe he should fill it out for us, if he wants it done so bad!!!

In response to Carol Ann, the first comment on this blog, I completely agree! Teachers-think of the last time someone mandated an educational "research-based" program that we later find out was not properly tested....NCLB ring a bell?!? An just look how happy we all are about that and how well it turned out! You will have every single student (no matter their learning ability, home issues, or language background) reading by 2012 right? Have we learned nothing from that monstracity?

The public needs to be mindful that, even if only the core subjects (i.e., reading/English, math, social studies, and science) are required to be monitored with AIM, this will still be an incredible burden on teachers, especially elementary teachers who teach all four subjects.

Example: Grade 3 teacher with 25 students, 4 core subjects and 100 objectives per subject.

25 x 100 x 4 = 10,000 objectives to enter and monitor each quarter (on top of regular teaching responsibilities).

Dr. Hairston says that teachers are uninformed about AIM, yet says that he was unaware that a bulletin about AIM was sent out. Who is really uninformed?
We already waste enough taxpayers money in the BCPS school system. Why waste more?

If Dr. Hairston hopes to align AIM with AssessTrax, I hope he'll pay to have some decent Benchmark and ShortCycle tests developed first. Garbage in, garbage out.

Ill-informed teachers? Miscommunication?
Yes, Dr. Hairston - you are correct. Teachers WERE ill-informed and there was miscommunication. But, it came from you and your offices - or perhaps more importantly- it DIDN'T come from you (clear communication, that is).
Who does the "superintendent's bulletin" come from - if not from the superintendent?
That is all teachers have to go on... Oh - and reading the Baltimore Sun -

We had AIM training at my school yesterday. Thankfully, the principal did not ask teachers to prepare sub plans for the hour they were out of class and is being extrememly supportive of us during this very confusing time.
For a tool that is recieving so much attention and praise (by BCPS supes) it is incomplete, repetitive and not very user friendly. Teachers cannot enter classes themselves. The classes need to be set up by the data entry clerk, further adding to their already mountainous pile of work. So, I cannot use AIM until my classes have been set up. When I clicked on the user manual within the AIM site, I got an "under construction" message. The items do not reflect many of the targeted areas I am required to complete on the progress reports that go home with my English Language Learners twice yearly. My principal didn't know there were ELL items in AIM, and no one seems to be able to tell me if this would be required during quarters when progress reports do not go home.
I, too, was disappointed that there has still been no word directly from the superintendent about what will happen next. While he tries to save face, we are left hanging in limbo. Thanks to Cheryl and the Bmore Sun for their diligence on communicating with teachers about the issue as it develops.

Does anyone besides me find it strange that Dr. Hairston claims he was out for knee surgery the day the directive was sent? This means one of two things: either he really doesn't know what's going on or someone went against him to put out the directive (which had his name on it, correct?). So either he isn't doing his job or someone is being insubordinate. If the case is the latter, I'd like to know who's getting fired. If it's the former...

I'd like to know where Dr. Dezmon got her information that minorities in the southwest area are not getting the same education. Personally I know I teach the same thing to them that I teach in my school in the northwest. When's the last time she actually came and saw any southwest area teachers teach?

And even if they are not getting the same instruction, how is AIM going to make sure that happens? The teachers know the objectives already. If they don't teach to it now, they're not going to after AIM either. Especially seeing as we've been told to just put an "I" on everything by county officials.

Dr. Hairston needs to own up to the fact that he made a mistake, not make excuses. And he also needs to follow through on his public promises. If he can't do these two things, maybe he needs to step down.

An issue like this is why the rest of the world openly jests about the career of a teacher. Our own leadership condemns us to essentially "busy work" and treats us like interchangeable cogs in a machine, any of which squeak, can be replaced. Sometimes I feel like a teenager still working at Taco Bell, and corporate, so concerned that employees, too immature to take initiative themselves, give menial tasks to fill the time. I do. I feel like I've been given a mop and told to go clean the bathrooms. If you want us to click a few thousand circles with arbitrary judgments, then fine we'll do it. But does the superintendent or anyone really expect the students who are struggling or their parents who have failed thusfar to intervene with their child, to study the list of skills for each subject and pin-point areas of concern? Every teacher worth his or her salt knows that the only change we enact is by one-on-one interaction with students AND parents. That's why we don't complain about parent conference nights or meeting with support teams before, during, or after school. At least then we know something is being accomplished; our time is being effectively spent.
I can already evaluate through written work, participation, interaction, and standardized tests which of my students need additional help and in what areas they need it. The Catch 22 of AIM is that any time that could have been spent on creating additional resources or time to help remediate struggling students will instead be spent on AIM itself. And trust me, those of you not in the profession, AIM will take time if executed as intended.

As a first year teacher, I am diligently working 12 hour days 5 days a week. I am still learning the "ins and outs" of the BCPS report card and becoming acquainted with the everyday challenges us teachers face. To add this to our plates with little to no training, background knowledge, and time is unrealistic and ridiculous. Teachers will be forced to spend hours of meaningful planning and instruction to scrutinize over each assessment, objective, and goal of students and record their every move. Parents will not even understand the report because they have not been clearly informed either. I agree that we, as teachers, should be accountable for tracking the progress of our students according to curriculum goals, but as of now AIM is neither an effective or efficient way of doing this. SOMEONE needs to think clearly and practically. What do the kids REALLY need... they come first!?

Finally we are seeing Dezmon exposed, and teachers are asking the right questions! This is truly reminiscent of the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Toto exposes the man behind the curtain creating the image of the great and powerful Oz. Dezmon has been calling the shots for the last 2-3 years behnd the scenes and for some reason been given free reign to destroy our curriculum and instructional program. Her decisions are based on her own monetary interest in AIM and the American Reading Company. She claims we are implementing a faulty curriculum - really??? Since when has the State Curriculum been deemed faulty? That's what I have been teaching and to what BCPS curriculum has been aligned. Please let her run away crying, so we can get back to good instruction and focus our energy on positive initiatives!

As a parent, I am extremely disappointed with the super-intendents decision to force teachers to complete this report. I am an involved parent and spoke with my children's teachers about this situation. They showed me an example of the report and I was SHOCKED!!!! These teachers who work so hard as asked to complete a report of over 100 questions/ratings of EACH STUDENT!!! When are they supposed to do this?... DURING SCHOOL!!! So, my children are missing out on instruction so that some head honcho can make a buck on this evaluation! PITAFUL! Think about the kids, families, and teachers first!!!!!

I'm most interested in the ethics piece. I do not understand how Dr. Dezmon got away with using taxpayer money to fund BCPS teachers writing the AIM program (objectives, etc.). . . and then COPYRIGHTED it. The fact that Dr. Dezmon is giving AIM "free to MD counties" only mutes the issue. How is it possible that Dr. Dezmon could sell it at all? To anyone? To any county in any other state? Ultimately, even if Dr. Dezmon sells the program once, doesn't that mean that she is using taxpayer money to fund a personal business venture?

Put another way, let's assume that Dr. Dezmon does have the best interests of the students at heart, and that, in some fictional place this program would be advantageous to the students, welcome to the teachers, and understandable to the parents. Even if all of that were true, Dr. Dezmon has used taxpayer money to create a product from which HER OWN PERSONAL BANK ACCOUNT stands to benefit.

So, I ask: even if her fiction imagines positive results for the citizens of Baltimore County, how can Dr. Dezmon imagine that AIM has been, is, or ever will be, ethical to its taxpayers?

Hairston is quoted as saying, "Teachers aren't asked to do anything that teachers don't already do." REALLY ???!!! OK, Joe, come over to my classroom after school, where I spend 2-5 unpaid hours after school each day, planning, grading, staying in touch with parents, preparing for meetings, etc. SHOW me how to magically find extra hours in which to input thousands of pieces of useless, redundant data. This does NOT fit into what my contract describes as a "reasonable amount of time spent on duties before and after school." Can you do elementary-level math? My 22 students x 124 AIM objectives each = 2,728. Mulitply that times 4 marking periods per year = 10,912 pieces of data to be entered on my personal time, after hours. I DON"T THINK SO. Maybe when you build me a furnished bedroom attached to my classroom, so I can live here full time (which I practically already do). Not to mention, Joe, AIM's creator seeking personal profit by copywriting the program for later use in other school systems, AFTER you expected us to slave away on it on our own, unpaid, personal time. GET REAL. We are not stupid, we are not going to put up with this, and frankly, trying to act like you don't know what the fuss is about is beneath you.

MANY thanks to Liz, and the other Sun reporters who are covering this huge issue. Teachers out here appreciate your diligence and your willingness to present ALL of the facts, not just Hairston's egotistical talking-without- actually-saying-anything. Please keep it up!

I just calculated that if I do AIM for a complete school year for my over 130 students I will have 31,200 clicks. This is just a conservative estimate. I do not trust Mr. Hairston when he says he is going to "streamline" AIM. I think he is just going to "paint" it a different color. If there is a communication problem it starts with him. If it were not for my TABCO reps I would not understand any of what was going on.
How can people treat teachers as the professionals that we are if he doesn't treat us that way. He must think we are stupid if we were to accept this. I think he should take time out of his "busy" day to teach a class once in awhile. We are always his scapegoat if things don't work out. Why doesn't Dr. Dezmon have a seminar on how to teach since she thinks that the SW teachers are incapable of teaching the same things to minority students. Don't give up fighting against AIM or it may come back in a different way!

As a special educator, I know how onerous, burdensome and time-consuming paperwork is for an average caseload of 20-25 students (25 page IEPs with a new goal bank of over 60 objectives and goals from the Voluntary State Curriculum).
I spend countless hours filling out paperwork! These are hours that could be spent planning excellent lessons, learning new technologies to assist hadicapped students, planning with the general education teachers or modifying the curriculum so that our students can have the very best chance to learn! I can teach, or I can write about teaching, but I don't have time to do both; there are only so many hours in the day. Time spent with students or time planning for students is cut short by the documentation that is required by BCPS. Now BCPS wants to have all of teachers doing the paperwork that has so negatively impacted student achievement? ABSURD. Parents, please be aware that all this documentation really does is take time away from the instruction and progress of your child..

Congratulations to all of us.

Until Monday's faculty meeting, I did not completely understand AIM. As a teacher of statistics at the college level, I can state professionally that the AIM program is statistical insanity. Just like a student can achieve mastery over an objective such as, "Compute the percent of a number," a student can also forget. At the faculty meeting, we were told that at the beginning of each school year teachers will receive the list objectives that each student had not mastered as of the end of the previous year. The teacher would then have the responsibility of recording mastery if at some point during the school year the student attained mastery of that objective. Conceivably, teachers could also be required to monitor loss of mastery.

Assume that there are 150 objectives for each math course. When a student arrives in my geometry class he has been responsible for mastering perhaps (6 x 150 =) 900 objectives. If I have 150 students, that means AIM would require me to keep track of (900 x 150 =) 135,000 pieces of data. This is not humanly possible. On a daily basis, each 7-period day teacher would have to monitor performance on each of these 135,000. Today, did Johnny exhibit mastery of "Compute the percent of a number?" Was it revealed that Johnny, who used to be able to change a fraction to a decimal, could not "Change a fraction to a decimal?"

Suppose AIM asked us to record the data for merely one of our students. I can prove conclusively that such a process would be nearly impossible and would have absolutely no validity.

Teacher Anomynous

Teacher of Mathematics BCPS

Not only should it be asked if Barbara Dezmon used BCPS time to work on AIM....of course she did. But, who did and still does work with the technology? I believe she too is a BCPS employee paid by Baltimore County tax payers. If the program is copyrighted to Dezmon and her LLC, shouldn't she be responsible for sending her company employees to train teachers in use of the technology and shouldn't her employees address the multitiude of concerns surrounding its content and use? Oh that's right...she just uses the BCPS employees and the taxpayers foot the bill. Taxpayers....you should be screaming!!!!!!!! Parents...you should be rejecting this unnecessary product and demand that the financial and human resources of Baltimore County be spent on your children...not the personal business of one person. THIS IS INSANE! Let's stop this insanity and get back to our first priority-improved achievement of all BCPS students.

As least Hairston listened to his staff. In Baltimore City, Triple A (Alonzo) can hand out any unrealistic crap and the board accepts it. No one has any say. The sad thing is that because it is a city with a lot of minorities (teachers and students) no one thinks there is anything valid to be said by those effected by his crazy ideas. Baltimore City is much maligned while Balto County gets no scrutiny because of who lives there. Their teachers can scream and are heard. In Baltimore City no one can express an opinion. Its a new form of plantation living. It's sickening.

I have to add something to what Hmmm, Howard County pays more.....stated. I would like to encourage parents of elementary school children to take a close look at the curriculum and guides given to teachers by BCPS. The math curriculum, for example, does not build upon previously taught/mastered skills or afford teachers the time to evaluate data and teach/reteach for mastery or improved understanding. Could AIM jargon be an attempt to misinform parents about the education their children are actually getting?

Week long summmer workshops for 15 teachers to create the activities and assessments for the curriculum of one department in AIM: about $300 per day x 15 teachers

Weeks of inputting and editing the curriculum for one department by the supervisors and resource teachers, instead of performing their official duties : $50,000 to $100,000 salaries

Hours of "professional development" to train teachers to use AIM over the past two years: time taken away from meaningful classroom instruction and assessment

Articulation Instruction Module: worthless

I can only imagine saying to my parents, "What teacher in America gets involved in this much detail" when dealing with learning issues, friendship issues, self esteem issues, and the numerous other details and issues that a teacher deals with. It would be laughable. I can only imagine treating my students with the disrespect that Dr. Hairston has shown the teachers of Baltimore County. It would be demoralizing to my students. We are not whiny. We are dedicated, tireless, knowledge seeking, compassionate, and passionate about the future of our nation - children. This is why we teach!

Once again our illustrious leader shows how little respect he has for his well educated, highly qualified employees. I am one of many teachers who spend most of their waking hours working with and for the students in her class and school. More data is not needed to help our students reach their fullest potential! More time to teach well and better morale are what is needed the most! Don't stop fighting for what we know is right! Show your understandable displeasure of the newest events and remarks at the board meeting on Tuesday at 7PM at Greenwood!

The AIM program is folly. There is SO MUCH MORE to teaching than grading and assessing.... Planning takes time. Addressing student needs takes time. If student achievement isn't where it should be, the money and effort should be put into increasing parent involvement, increasing early learning opportunities (quality, accessible preschool programs in every public school anyone?), and providing targeted, pedagogically sound, systematic professional development for teachers (instead of the hit-or-miss, random, take-what-you-want system in place now). Asking teachers to do hours of brain-numbing busy work does not encourage retention, and it certainly doesn't increase job satisfaction or, most importantly, student achievement.

I don't know how teachers are "misinformed" when we've had the training on completing AIM reports and seen, first hand, how time consuming and laborious just clicking the hundreds of data entry buttons is (an average of 50 objectives for my subject for each child, and as a special area teacher, I see all 400 children in the school....so 20,000 clicks in the 4th quarter). That's 4 pages, by the way, just for my subject per child...so 1600 pages, 3+ reams of paper, and we haven't printed math, reading, science, or social studies yet. PER QUARTER. And my school is on the small side.

But yes, we were misinformed. The misinformation came from Dr. Dezmon 2 years ago when she told groups that AIM was not and and would never be mandatory, and that she had that promise straight from Dr. Hairston himself.

For being teachers you have Negative outlooks on EVERYTHING put out before you. Why are you so critical before you have even given this a chance. This is the"pilot" for this program and no one is making big Bucks off of this, this is free to our state so suck it up and try it out then you can put out your feed back ...your educated feedback not your irrational complaining.

But it is the teachers and parents that have brought us to the failed system we have today. Grade inflation has become an integral part of our education system. Nearly 60% of US high school students now have an "A" average. Are 60% really that outstanding? Not when you consider college graduation rates are only in the 30s. So half of students who are getting As in school, lack the skills required to succeed in college. And the parents are just as guilty as teachers. Everytime a parent complains about their child's grade, that parent is asking for academic integrity to be compromised. And it gets worse, you have parents who go to court over their child's class rank, and demanding schools to award the title of "Valedictoria" to as many as 20 students in the same class. What a sham!
AIM is not perfect, it is alot more work for our heavily burdened teacher force, and that is unfortunate. But I would ask those oppose, short of a mandatory grading curve, how else can we gauge student progress with accuracy.

I'm waiting for the next "end run" by Dr. Hairston. At least once a week, when my child comes home from school, I hear how the class had a substitute teacher because teachers were at a meeting. I understand that education is changing and teachers need to be kept up-to-date but weekly?
Now BCPS wants teachers to take more time away from teaching to complete AIM Checklists. I WANT MY CHILD'S TEACHER TO TEACH. That may be a crazy idea but it's the only way children, including my own, are going to learn the skills they need to be successful in life. These AIM Checklists aren't going to help my child learn no matter how much time teachers spend filling them out or explaining them to me.
My child receives a report card at the end of each term. That shows me how he's doing. It's written so I can understand where he is and where he needs extra help at home.
Again, I say, LET TEACHERS TEACH and put an end to all this unneeded paperwork that takes them from teaching.

To Josh,

The point of the conversation is that AIM is another measurement tool that we don't need. We already measure our children - what is needed is more time teaching.

Your statements about parents pressuring teachers has nothing to do with whether AIM will benefit the education process.

Where can we pursue the legality of this product? I want to know if my tax dollars were used in any way to produce it. I want answers to the question of Ms. Desmon's development process. How do I get this information?

In response to Teacher and Concerned Parent; a pilot program doesn't usually involve all members of the community. When this program was initially presented, certain teachers (including me) were asked to identify and monitor a small group of students. Then in December we were told that all must do it for all students. Can't feedback be given by looking at and evaluating the program. Teachers don't need to enter a multitude of "I's" as we were told in order to determine if the program is viable. I was already able to print out the benchmark scores for my kiddos, see what quartiles they were in, identify the VSC's where they were lacking, assign enrichment work on a program, communicate that to parents, and set up tutoring sessions with those that need. What is AIM going to add to that?

APPROVED MINUTES
BOARD OF EDUCATION OF BALTIMORE COUNTY, MARYLAND
Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Report on Articulated Instruction Module (AIM) – Dr. Barbara Dezmon, Assistant Superintendent, Office of Equity and Assurance, shared with Board members AIM, a tool that addresses articulation and alignment of the BCPS curriculum. AIM helps make certain that the written curriculum is taught and assessed with consistency throughout the county and in all schools.
Dr. Dezmon shared with Board members two major components of AIM:
• Curriculum input/output – used to summarize the most important objectives and key skills students must demonstrate in their coursework.
• Progress reporting – will enable teachers, who choose to use it, an opportunity to provide students and parents with concrete information about their children’s knowledge, skills, and abilities.
By using AIM, any student, parent, or educator can go to the BCPS web site to view and download a summary of the key objectives, knowledge, and skill indicators for BCPS courses through grade 12.
Mr. Hayden asked how much time would it take a teacher to enter the information in a given quarter. Dr. Dezmon responded that if a teacher is familiar with his/her students, it would take approximately 1-1/2 hours. Mr. Hayden asked how much time would it take a teacher to enter the information throughout the year. Dr. Dezmon responded ten to twelve hours per year per five classes.
Ms. Harris asked how this tool correlates with the current report card. Dr. Hairston responded that this is the electronic version of scope and sequence.
Ms. Flynn shared the following concerns:
• Accuracy of reporting information to parents.
• Possible inconsistency with grading.
• Apparent disconnect with PDK audit response and curriculum management plan.
Dr. Hairston commented that this tool responds to the audit.

Mr. Hayden expressed concern that teachers could select objectives by student or class. It suggests there could be hundreds of objectives and that the AIM form carries over comments from year to year. Dr. Dezmon stated that teachers choose objectives based on what is taught in the classroom during a particular quarter. There are approximately 20 key objectives per year with five key objectives per quarter. The curriculum office provides teachers with these objectives along with five knowledge and skill indicators.
Dr. Dezmon also invited several staff members and parents to come forward to provide comments on AIM.
Ms. Johnson asked whether the voluntary basis of AIM have any impact on the overall effectiveness of this tool on student achievement. Dr. Hairston stated that there will be a meeting on September 10 exposing principals to this tool. The school system still needs time to get professional development into position to provide support for teachers.
Mr. Janssen asked Dr. Dezmon to elaborate on the “Hawthorne” effect. Dr. Dezmon stated that there are potential effects on student testing and that the school system should not solely rely on testing as the major source of information regarding a student’s achievement.

Thoughts?

I would like to see the board ask more pertinent questions to those "selected" to speak on behalf of AIM. The truth is not being told. I appreciated that a few of the board members cited in the minutes above tried to make sense of what they were being told; however, as you can read, straighforward and complete answers are not given. Both of those board members are gone. They were treated with utter disrespect by none other than...you guessed it! We need some board members who will have the courage to put the children of Baltimore County first.

Liz, I want to express my gratitude for shining a light on an issue that was crying for attention from someone outside the school system. The morale of this system is quite low as a result of the disrespect. The media's interviews made that public. "Those people" "manufactured crisis" "wild imaginations" The dismissive attitude displayed is typical of the treatment on a daily basis. I hope that you will continue to keep an eye on how things develop, as the M.O. has been to frighten everyone back into submission and then do as you please. It will be difficult to get to the truth as jobs are on the line and retribution is sure. I applaud the brave teachers who have taken a stand and were willing to speak truth to power. The students need advocates and it won't be those too afraid to speak or those too consumed with their personal goals. I am so thankful that finally the Sun is doing the kind of reporting that is honest and works for the good of the whole community. Keep on keeping on. We need you.

Teacher and concerned parent...AIM will not clarify information to parents. Even Dr. Hairston stated at a board meeting that it will not improve instruction. (check the minutes) Teachers are not complaining... they are pleading that you allow them to teach the children entrusted to their care. And, you should know that feedback for this program is not permitted unless you agree with the person holding the copyright. Further, BCPS should not permit any one company (Dezmon, Instructional Strategies LLC) to use our students as guinea pigs, our data, our curricular and technical resources for publicity to further their own interests. It should be about what is best for students. It should be grounded in research and evaluated objectively before consideration for a pilot would even be considered. I found it striking that the print and TV comments from Dr. Hairston never addressed how or why this is a good thing to do. He dismissed the "details" as not his job. The problem is the details were left to the copyright holder. Conflict of interest? It is not about sucking it up to do busy work...it is really about the lack of usefulness to help students or their parents. It is a mess!

To Hmmmm- I have those minutes posted on my bulletin board. Could you copy and paste the BCPS Code of Ethics next? That is an interesting read as well.

Was C-Span there?

Some of the stated purposes and assumptions of AIM are invalid from a testing and data-collecting perspective.

1. It is educationally irresponsible to assume that if a child correctly answers a selected response item on an assessment (the old multiple choice question) that he has "mastered" the reflected content. County and state assessments are based on SR questions for practical scoring reasons. However, anyone who is trained in assessing students knows that group administered paper-pencil tests offer far less validity and reliability than 1:1 individual assessments. AIM is not a reliable, valid assessment of students' individual skills mastery when based on the same kinds of classroom assessments we already utilize. These assessments do reflect general ongoing progress, which is already reported well to parents every five weeks if not sooner (interims and report cards).

2. AIM is NOT useful for the next year's teachers. Even if I taught a student in the previous year (e.g., a level 1 class), I would not assume that he remembered that content when in the next level class. I would assess anew, as all good teachers do on an ongoing basis. Case in point: Students often perform dramatically worse on the October HSAs than they did on the previous May tests.

3. At the high school level, many course objectives do not relate to the previous year's objectives (Algebra vs Geometry; Am Gov vs World History).

4. Micromanaging students does not prepare them for successful college careers. We need to put the onus of responsibility back on students for learning course content and discourage parents, teachers, and administrators from adopting a "helicopter" role.

5. Students who do well on AIM will do well on classroom tests, shortcycles and benchmarks, and vice-versa, except that parents may misunderstand that Kelsey's "A" on AIM does not mean she is doing awesome.

On an ethical note: Several years ago my department could not purchase a text we liked because it was written by the principal's spouse. If BCPS has now abandoned ethical constraints, they owe it parents and teachers to so inform us and we will make new choices about whether to enroll our children or continue to work for a compromised school system.

These issues are critical. Keep talking!

Liz, would you please look into the individuals who will participate in the "streamlining" of AIM. I think that you will find that whoever they are (including area superintendents), they will be powerless. Be clear that ONE person and only ONE makes the decisions with the support of superintendent. The non-inclusive way in which the county does business lately should frighten every citizen of Baltimore County; young, old, teacher, student, parent, grandparent, citizen, taxpayer. Your school system, and it is yours, is not concerned with your input. When will this board stop the bullying, tyrannical practices of this current administration? Please say "Enough" and serve the people that you were selected to serve. The legacy of this superintendent and the board will be one that clearly set their own personal agenda above those of the students, teachers, and citizens that they were supposed to serve. The problem is that there is no way to right this wrong...there are no checks and balances...this appointed board and their chosen superintendent are free to trample upon the concerns and needs of students, teachers, and citizens. My guess is that it will be difficult to find anyone in administrative positions to speak publically about AIM because that is prohibited and will result in retribution. Dr. Hairston and company are fooling themselves if they believe that opposition to AIM is a minority position...however, the saddest part of that story is they simply don't care if the majority have serious concerns that should be well considered! Hairston's proclamation- "I am the superintendent" demonstrates his disbelief that anyone would question this awful decision. When will the board hold leadership accountable for its actions? I simply cannot understand their unwaivering support of unilateral decision making and tyrannical impositions regardless of the people that are supposed to be served-the kids. I find myself shaking my head in disbelief at the behavior of the leader of my school system. I now understand how civilizations ruled through tyranny eventually crumble. This once vibrant and progressive county has many cracks. Something must be done. Sad...so sad. I feel so helpless as I stand by and watch MY school system lose its way.

assessTrax and AIM...sounds like a business merger more than a marriage, but let's go with the marriage analogy...Does assessTrax know that they will receive this proposal? Do they know what a mess AIM really is? Why would they need AIM to provide a parent report (they already provide one linked to BCPS assessments) that makes a whole lot more sense and gives better information to parents. BCPS doesn't use it because then AIM's redundancy would be more obvious. I hope that assessTrax refuses to be linked with Dezmon Educational Strategiess, LLC because that will certainly tarnish their image. THE PLAIN TRUTH; AIM is not representative of progress in educational reporting...it represents personal promotion of someone's product. Ms. Bowie, please investigate who is on the committee to "streamline" and how they were chosen. Are they free to research and do what is best for children or will they simply be told to repackage and promote AIM once again? A bad product is a bad product. It is not the responsibility of BCPS to fix it or further invest their resources. In this time of budget crunching..AIM should be off the table. Who will advocate for the students of BCPS? In the schools forced to used AIM, have the teachers been paid for their time? Just wondering. But, back to the main concern...this is not useful for promoting student achievement.

I wonder why, after Hairstons recent disrespectful comments on TV, more people are not asking for his immediate removal. Fire Berger was popular when I was in school I say its time for FIRE HAIRSTON!

I was reading the post by hmmmm from 1/8, at 5:19 PM, and was really saddened to see the minutes from the board meeting. AIM does sound good in the presentation. The problem is, the information presented is just not accurate. Here are a few examples:

"Curriculum input/output – used to summarize the most important objectives and key skills students must demonstrate in their coursework."

This is not the case in my subject area. On AIM, there are none of our indicators that could not be "assessed." They're still an important part of our subject, but they can't really be measured, so they weren't included. Will teachers stop teaching those concepts/skills because they feel so driven by AIM? I think so. Also, there are many, many indicators in our AIM report that I would certainly not say are "the most important." Sure, they're part of what we teach, but they're not hugely important.

"Dr. Dezmon responded that if a teacher is familiar with his/her students, it would take approximately 1-1/2 hours. Mr. Hayden asked how much time would it take a teacher to enter the information throughout the year. Dr. Dezmon responded ten to twelve hours per year per five classes."

First, I don't like the implication that, if it takes longer than 1 1/2 hours, the teacher is unfamiliar with his/her students. Hopefully, it wasn't meant that way, but could certainly be taken that way. Second, that is poor math. I'd rank that an "A." Not an "A" on the report card, but an "A" for Absolutely needs Acceleration! One and a half hours times four quarters is six hours, not ten to twelve hours. And, the reality is, it takes WAY longer than that to enter the grades.

"Dr. Dezmon stated that teachers choose objectives based on what is taught in the classroom during a particular quarter. There are approximately 20 key objectives per year with five key objectives per quarter."

This one sounds very good - twenty key objectives per year, focusing on only five per quarter. Unfortunately, that is far from reality. I am an elementary special area teacher. I have 47 objectives for Kindergarten, alone. Then, there are between 37 and 42 indicators for each of the other five grade levels I teach. Since I teach about 600 students, that works out to 24,000 marks! What about the indicators that are addressed in several quarters? How about the indicators that were marked "I" in the first quarter, but were mastered in the second? They'll have to be marked again when the student reaches mastery, or when the teacher fills out the report in the fourth quarter and indicates "M" for everything.

It seems to me that AIM has ended up being a much more expansive program than it was originally intended to be. So, the idea of going back and "streamlining" it is probably a good one. I think the idea of allowing our parents to see what skills are intended to be addressed in a year is probably good. Let them have the list! Just don't make me click a bunch of buttons for hours on end, just to tell them that their child is moving right along.

Quote from Teacher and Concerned Parent from January 7, 11:07.

"For being teachers you have Negative outlooks on EVERYTHING put out before you. Why are you so critical before you have even given this a chance. This is the"pilot" for this program and no one is making big Bucks off of this, this is free to our state so suck it up and try it out then you can put out your feed back ...your educated feedback not your irrational complaining."

Come now, did you do this just to see if you could make someone really mad? Are you really a teacher? Because if you were, you'd know that teachers have implemented MANY new programs over the years, some of which work well and some of which are really poor - AssessTrax, Benchmarks, MSA, HSA, new texts every few years, new curriculum guides every few years, changing grade levels in elementary school, Dibels, new report cards, new technology pieces, new approaches to discipline, and the list goes on and on and on. So, it might be a stretch to say people "have negative outlooks on EVERYTHING."

Many teachers have already "given this a chance." Did you know that many (if not most) schools were asked (required, perhaps?) to select a group of students to follow and evaluate, using AIM, this year? So, they probably do have a pretty good idea of how the program works or doesn't work. I think it's fair to take the information they have provided on times and accuracy of the program and apply that to my situation.

Like someone else said, a pilot of a program typically is not mandated, county-wide. It's usually a few schools or a few teachers who are asked to test something out and give honest feedback. In fact, AIM did have a pilot already. I guess you didn't know. It wasn't considered to be a success, another reason why there is so much outcry.

So, telling people to "suck it up" and quit their "irrational complaining," based on the information you provided us is, to use your own words, "negative, critical, irrational, and uneducated."

"Teachers aren't asked to do anything teachers don't already do." Then why are we being asked to do something at all? If teachers are already doing the recording and data collecting, there is no reason at all to introduce something that is more time consuming and totally useless in gathering information that is already available in a variety of different forms.

Please investigate who wil be represented on this team that will streamline. Dezmon, Instructional Strategies, LLC should not be involved. It would seem that her conflict of interest would prohibit her advancement of her own product. I certainly hope the board and Joe Hairston are listening to how this representative of the superintendent spoke regarding the system. This is unacceptable behavior. The board has an employee running amok. Apparently, there are no limits to this employee's power. I just can't understand it...WHY????? Stop this now.

To the Kool-Aid drinkers of AIM:

I have been teaching thirty years. Yes, I have seen change; some of which was good for the students. But change is not automatically beneficial to students. Many of these new programs are the brainchild of some wanna be who needs to publish or copyright some module to impress another wanna be.

By the way, "Oh Dear" (a commentator on this site), if you too drink the Kool Aid of every idea that comes down the educational highway and accept that it must be good, I have some swamp land in Florida for sale you probably would want to buy. And I too am a parent of a BCPS child. I do not need to read one hundred or so discreet sentences per class per term about her; I need to talk to her teachers and look at her grades. I find out a lot by participating in her education.

Bureaucracy is a funny thing. When you become a part of it, you lose site of our purpose: educating and helping children. You talk yourself into wanting to help children but all you really want is to manage adults. And this adult will NOT be taking part in AIM. It clearly missed the target!

To M. Kate Rigby,

Huh???? This is "Oh Dear," signing on again. How in the world did you get the idea that I thought "every idea that comes down the educational highway" is good? Was it when I said the AIM presentation to the board gave inaccurate information? Or, when I said AIM takes way too much time to complete? Or, when I said parents could certainly have access to the list of indicators, but I didn't want to fill out the reports? Or, that the AIM pilot was unsuccessful?

Either you're talking to someone else or you need to re-read. I've scrolled through to see if there was anyone else logged on as "Oh Dear" and didn't see anyone.

This adult also "will NOT be taking part in AIM." I guess we're on the same team!

Liz, are you aware that a former BCPS teacher of the year and current president of the TEACHER'S union was turned away from the meeting of the committee to "streamline" AIM? The superintendent has demonstrated his unwilliingness to be inclusive. His refusal to allow Ms. Bost into the dialogue reflects his fear of including an honest, knowledgeable representative who will not respond to fear and intimidation. I am incredulous of the rampant and openly dimissive and disrespectful attitude of a superintendent toward those he would like to lead. Leadership is not the same as tyranny. We deserve a leader. Let's begin the search. I encourage all citizens of Baltimore County to put in a plea for ethical and responsive leadership in our system. This way of doing business is simply unfair to our students. This behavior is not worthy of a superintendent of schools.

Now, he is beginning to back out on his word....the committee members are not known, a former BCPS Teacher of the Year and current president of the Teacher's Association was rejected admission to the discussion, there are more participants involved who must do the superintendent's bidding (and we all know what he will bid on behalf of his assistant)...no transparency, no inclusion, no objectivity, no difference, the superintendent acts as always, without regard to those he is supposed to serve. I hope the public is not misled by his diversions. The truth about what is happening in BCPS would confuse and disappoint every citizen, taxpayer, and parent. Please, board of education...be brave and do what is right.

The last comment by the superintendent leaves me stunned. What kind of reaction is this from a leader of the school system? This reaction really sums up the superintendent's last two years in his position...can't be bothered. These details have been left to his assistant and she has seized the opportunity to designate herself the pseudo superintendent. Who will stop her? This board needs to begin a national search for a suitable superintendent who will concern him or herself with details that affect student progress and instruction. He finds time for photo opportunities - require him to find time to know what his assistant is doing...complete chaos...morale is in the pits...and we have become a mystery to educators outside the system. How could such a top system fall so far, so fast? Wake up, board of education. Rome is burning while you fiddle.

Dr.Hairston stood before over 200 educators and a number of elected officials last Saturday and said that teachers would be an integral part of the AIM review committee. He also said that collaboration has to be the model for the future. Then he refused to take phone calls from our elected union president and leader and had his staff (which comprised the so-called AIM committee) refuse to allow her to attend and represent us. This clearly shows that he is a petty dictator who has forgotten the goals in his own "Blueprint for Progress" and that he has removed himself from any chance of a viable dialogue,
It seems that self-aggrandizement is his only interest. Let him go on the lecture circuit and let's get a LEADER in Baltimore County. And by the way--it is the teachers and paraeducators in the classrooms who are achieving the accolades for our public schools--not the talking heads at Greenwood. Hey, Board of Education members--wake up and smell the coffee!

Refused admission on the teacher's behalf! That's all I have to say. Do you really want to hear from us? Do you really want collaboration? The answers are quite obvious by the actions. Lack of trust...low morale.

How appalling that Superintendent Hairston banned Cheryl Bost from the AIM committee. His blatant disrespect for the teachers that have elevated BCPS into a top performer nationwide is criminal! It is time for the Legislators of BC to examine whether or not this is the man they want to lead BCPS. Dr. Hairston needs to examine why he feels so threatened by Ms. Bost. It is making him appear petty and weak in the public's eye. Shame on him!

Who does Hairston think he is? He can not decide who represents teachers. By not allowing our union leader in to the committee meeting on streamlining AIM he has shown his arrogance and disdain for the teachers of Baltimore County. It is time for him to go. Liz, please report on Cheryl Bost being kicked out of the meeting. We need to show the county the real Joe Hairston.

Liz, please report on the story of Cheryl Bost being kicked out of the committee meeting on streamlining AIM because h
Hairston didn't want her there. What remarkable arrogance it takes to think he can determine whom will represent the teachers. The county needs to know who the "real" Joe Hairston is!

I just finished watching the BCPS Board Report and I am thankful for the speakers' words in support of stopping the mandate to impose AIM on the parents, teachers, and children of BCPS. All of this chaos so that the superintendent and his assistant can continue on a path to personal goals instead of focusing on the needs of the system and what will move it forward. Taxpayers should be outraged by the superintendent's priorities. It is clear that BCPS has a void of leadership, real leadership. It is currently a mess! This board needs to wake up and smell the coffee and SOON, please!

The fact the Hairston has shut out the teachers association says a great deal about his view of the professional staff in the schools. You can't meet with the leader of the largest employee group once a year and seriously say you're open to hear what needs to be heard. The teachers are not the enemy, Dr. Hairston. They know what our students need and are working daily to meet the needs of our children. Stop putting boulders in the path and let them do their jobs! Teach!
I couldn't agree more with your comment on photo ops. The BCPS homepage is about the system? No, just look.

The real Joe Hairston is making himself known to the public. More and more teachers and staff in the system have witnessed his controlling style of pseudo-leadership in recent years. For instance, when he addressed the good news ambassadors (reps from each school) at a meeting earlier this year, Hairston bragged about how he gives speeches around the world and he lambasted those who are the naysayers about anything happening in BC (i.e., anyone who takes issue with anything he says or does). Hairston projected an uncomfortable, repressive feel for those in attendance, He has lost the respect and support of many, and we are not the minority.

You are right...the mask is coming off to everyone. The recent article by Liz Bowie addressing ethics and AIM exposed a very ugly picture of what is happening in BCPS. It's easy to give speeches...it's hard to lead. BCPS needs a leader. Actions speak louder than words.