Tags
Cindy Marten, Dr. Terry Grier, San Diego Unified Board of Education, San Diego Unified School District, San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Cindy Marten, Superintendent Marten
As a follow up to winning the 2014 Green Garner Award described as “the nation’s highest urban education honor recognizing outstanding contributions in urban education”, Dr. Terry Grier, Former SDUSD Superintendent added to his Superintendent credentials when he was named a “Leader To Learn From” as one of one of 16 “forward thinking leaders” from hundreds of nominees by Education Week. Current SDUSD Superintendent Cindy Marten obviously was not mentioned.
District Deeds feels that, using Marten “eduspeak”, this is an “Authentic Learning Opportunity” for the inexperienced Superintendent Cindy Marten who was hired with no Superintendent credentials.
Here is the Education Week article: Former SDUSD Terry Grier Named As 1 of 16 Best
Dr. Grier was “Recognized for Leadership in Educational Technology” for his technology initiative with the Houston Independent School District.
The article notes that:
“That patient approach is why the 215,000-student Houston district is setting the bar for how to manage the digital transformation of a large urban school system.” unlike “… large districts from California to North Carolina have plunged into new initiatives. But in their urgency, many have run into big problems.”
This “patient” approach is an “Authentic” repudiation and in stark contrast to the “Act First with No Collaboration and Think Later” profile of numerous Marten blunders…from removal of ELST’s within 3 days of budget submission (Link: http://wp.me/p4LD0L-i8) to the Marten Fantasy Scholarship (Link: http://wp.me/p4LD0L-bl) to the MRAP Debacle (Link: http://wp.me/p4LD0L-9Y ).
Based on her shallow decision making, apparently “critical thinking skills” is just a nice catch phrase for Marten to say…something that she endlessly preaches but refuses to personally practice in her daily tasks.
The article also emphasizes the effort by Dr. Grier to fuel the Technical initiative in Houston with a “Work Together” approach.
And Marten might learn that, believe it or not, REAL leadership and REAL teamwork instead of warm and fuzzy rhetoric, cronyism and back room deals works with ALL stakeholders…including Teachers!
Despite a lawsuit in Houston with the Teacher Union over Statistical Evaluation methods, the article noted “I don’t think we’ve gotten a single complaint in the past year and a half dealing with the PowerUp program,” said P. Gayle Fallon, the president of the 6,000-member Houston Federation of Teachers.
The article also profiled the many years of Superintendent experience that Dr. Grier had before arriving in Houston.
Unfortunately there is not a “Power Up” program we can administer to Marten to make up for her total lack of Superintendent credentials so rather an a “Leader To Learn From”, we are stuck with just a “Leader Who Needs To Learn”.
Sorry Cindy…we doubt there are any “Authentic” awards for that!
District Deeds 
At last night’s board meeting, Cindy Marten explained her plan for supporting English Learners almost a year after she did away with English Support Teachers. She talks for about 20 minutes. I listened to it last night and today on the sandi.net video and heard no plan.
To view: go to sandi.net, click on: board of education, click on: meetings, click on the Video icon for February 24, scroll to 1:45, one hour and forty-five minutes into the meeting. Lots of SELT and QTEL and ALD and “cluster centric”…but NO plan.
LikeLike
Erin—what you describe is the typical M.O. for the Marten regime…big on fluff and eduspeak with little or no detail or commitment that you can hold them to. The last thing Marten wants is to be held accountable. There is no better way for Marten to avoid it than leaving out any solid milestones for ELL students while droning on and repeating over and over the same untrackable concept until your eyes glaze over.
LikeLike