Parents showed up to the recent budget meeting in Merrimack to ask the committee to reconsider what the school administrators are proposing. The school budget, and spending, has climbed by an alarming rate over the last few years –$5M per year since 2021. This is in addition to all of the ESSER (federal) funds Merrimack received during COVID.
Parents spoke about the poor quality of education their children have been receiving, to the point where they felt they had to remove their children from the public school. In addition, those parents are reporting that their children are doing better in those alternative schools.
After reviewing some of the curriculum used in the Merrimack school district, I’m not surprised parents and taxpayers, are fed up with the inflated budgets, and the poor quality of education students receive. The Budget Committee was told by Superintendent Olsen to give it another five years, and we’ll see how the students are performing. That sounds like more experimenting on children. By then who will take responsibility, and who will be on to another district to implement the latest education fads?
There was a great deal of “administrator talk” on aligning the curriculum to the state standards. Merrimack even has an Assistant Superintendent on staff that does that work for them. You’d think that this would guarantee quality education programs for your school. And while no program will be perfect, there can be big differences between a poor quality science program ,and a good one.
SCIENCE
To start, Merrimack parents sent me this screen shot from the OpenSciEd Science program they are using in Merrimack. As you can see, your child will get a dose of Critical Race Theory propaganda in their science class:
The school administrators were asked about this antiracist statement during the budget meeting. The Budget Committee members were assured that this science program was very good, and that they weren’t looking to incorporate any political viewpoints into the science program. So what did they pay for?
This science program (OpenSciEd) is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. The Superintendent mentioned how the science curriculum should be aligned to the state science standards, but he didn’t mention how the state standards (NGSS) are some of the worst in the country.
State officials will tell you that it’s up to school personnel to improve their curriculum, and that the standards are considered to be “the bottom.” So why is Amy, the Assistant Superintendent in Merrimack, aligning the science curriculum with what is considered “the bottom,” for their students? Why are school administrators not aligning the science program with the best academic standards? How much are they paying Amy to align curriculum to the bottom? How much are they paying the Superintendent to sell this to the Budget Committee, and community?
You can see who had the best science standards here. I guess that’s not a priority in Merrimack, in spite of what the Superintendent was selling, I mean telling the Budget Committee.
New Hampshire continues to use the dummed-down Common Core Standards for Math and English. The prior State Board of Education members made things worse when they decided to then adopt the Next Generation Science Standards. (NGSS) The NGSS are actually worse than Common Core. You can read about how bad the NGSS are here. Included in that post is testimony I presented to the State Board of Education on the NGSS. I detailed all of the problems with the science standards, and how some of the science standards have a political bias. This is what Merrimack top administrators are saying will improve the quality of education for their students.
In this marketing video the Science Vendor is trying to sell the viewer on a different way of teaching students science using OpenSciEd. You will hear the teacher describe how they moved away from the traditional classroom. (FIRST MISTAKE) Then she explains how the classroom is now “chaotic.” (SECOND MISTAKE) What she doesn’t tell you is that this idea that kids should be taken away from teacher-centered instruction, and put in a chaotic classroom, has been debunked. Science Daily explains why a more structured environment leads to better academic outcomes. The same is true for learning mathematics. They will sell you on chaos, but never tell you how structured, teacher led instruction leads to better academic outcomes.
If you watch the video, they make it sound like this new way of learning will transform public education, but where’s the proof? I know this, it forces a lot of families out of the public schools in search of a school where the teacher teaches the students.
Teachers certainly want to engage students in learning, but when the classroom becomes chaotic, students end up learning from each other. When this occurs day after day, there is a loss of learning that takes place, among other problems that arise.
The chaotic classroom also leads to additional behavior problems from students who use this time to socialize or misbehave. Remember, after COVID, teachers began reporting an increase in behavior problems among the student population. Education reformers use those behavior issues to usher in Social and Emotional Learning. (SEL) They created a problem in the class, and taxpayers are now spending more money on SEL to try to deal with these behavior problems. No wonder their budget is out of control, SEL vendors are making huge profits.
Consider what this does to a student with ADD or ADHD. Consider what this does to a student who wants to learn the content but now must collaborate with their peers to meet some competency. Imagine the misinformation that will be shared among their peer group that could confuse students when it’s time to test them. Will they remember the correct information, or the misinformation floating around the group? I have tutored children in math, and I don’t present any information that is not correct. That could be confusing to children, even if I mix in the correct way to complete a math problem.
This is a way to marginalize the role of the teacher in the classroom. It’s all explained here in Education Reimagined. Turn to page 10 where the role of the teacher is eliminated, and replaced by a facilitator. If the students are teaching each other, why is there a need for a teacher in the classroom? They will replace the teacher by sitting students in front of a computer so you don’t need a teacher to deliver any of the content. Students can watch someone on screen, or AI can deliver the content. A facilitator will be the babysitter in the room, and teachers become obsolete. Go to the last page to see who signed off on all of this.
During the meeting in Merrimack, one of the parents brought up how this isn’t working well for her children. She wants a teacher teaching her children instead of her kids watching presentations on the 1:1 digital device. Of course she does, a highly qualified teacher in the classroom can never be replaced with this nonsense. This is why schools hire Interventionists. The poor quality of the curriculum, and the poor teaching methods will require schools to hire more staff to try to deal with the problems they created. On the flip side, ed tech vendors and tech companies are making a killing in profits, off of the taxpayers.
There isn’t a lot of learning going on. Students go off topic when they are “collaborating”, the smart students end up teaching some content to their peers, and many students become angry that the teachers aren’t teaching them . Students who have behavior problems thrive because they can fool around during class. Test scores suffer, and now they have to spend more money to fix the problems they created when Amy thought all of this was good for Merrimack. (At this point, I’d be calling for some resignations at the SAU level)
Remember, it was Amy, the Assistant Superintendent, who chose this science program for the students. OpenSciEd is aligned to poor quality science standards that requires faulty teaching methods in the classroom.
Part 2: We will look more at SEL and their push for the CRT / anti-racist narrative in the classroom.
Part 3 We will look how Merrimack bought three expensive English Language Arts Programs. One of which is being challenged in court by parents in Tennessee.
