Why The Milford Public Schools Are Giving Your Children Such a Poor Education

By: Richard Sieron – Milford Independent Party Candidate for School Board for the 5th District

A recent Connecticut Post article headline asked: “Who’s to blame for Milford’s low test scores?” That article quoted former Alderman Jack Fowler: “The poor results on the CAP tests are truly shocking. After 11 years in our system, our students are dead last in math and writing and next to last in science and reading among comparable school systems.” The Milford PTA Council passed out brochures at its recent Board of Education Candidates Forum. In those brochures was found a statement by each of the 10 Republican and 10 Democrat candidates, answering the question: “Why do you want to be on the Board of Education?” Not ONE of them had ONE word to say about the dumbing down of our students, never mind offering a solution to that very serious problem. 

Typical bland answers to the question included sentences like: “To contribute toward continued improvement of Milford’s school system.” At that Forum, the procedure for picking which candidate to answer each question was to provide equal time between the Republicans and Democrats, ( I did get a fair shake there) but the petty politics is outrageous. George Washington, in his farewell speech, warned us to beware of political parties. You can see how it is destroying our public school systems and can also see how it has (past tense) destroyed our federal government.

The tenth amendment to the Constitution specifically reserves powers to the states that are not delegated to the federal government. The Constitution does not delegate any powers whatsoever to the federal government relating to education; therefore the federal government must keep its sticky fingers out of education in Connecticut. We have people right here in Milford that are just as smart as any Washington bureaucrat, if not smarter. Alabama may need “No Child Left Behind, “ but we do not.

While campaigning for election to the school board, I happened to knock on the door of two homes where teachers reside. In both cases they eagerly invited me into their living room and each of them informed me of the same two things. First, they said they spent a huge amount of time teaching to the federally mandated tests, taking much valuable time away from traditional academic subjects. Second, they told me they are not allowed to formally teach the students how to think.

In talking to some school board members, I accidently made an astonishing discovery. There are two layers of administration between the teachers and the school board, namely the school Principals and the Superintendent. As a result, the school board has no way of knowing what problems the teachers have identified in terms of curriculum and teaching methods unless, of course, the Superintendent somehow obtains that information and passes it on, but that does not appear to be happening. However, it is the Board of Education’s responsibility and not the Superintendent’s to be concerned with those issues. See my proposed solution for this problem at the end.

Another matter of importance concerns the use of computers in our Milford schools. The New York Times recently reported that employees of Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Hewlett Packard, Yahoo and Google send their students to schools where no computers are provided for the students. They believe that computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans and I strongly subscribe to that premise and I am an IT professional. I also believe that students should not be allowed to use calculators in the

classroom. They must be taught how to make simple calculations using pen and pencil. It’s rather strange that the bright students who opt for advanced math classes have never been taught how to make simple calculations without using a calculator.

U.S. public education was far better a hundred years ago. One major contributing factor to the decline is the ever growing intrusion of non-academic courses and programs. Educators have pressed for more and more non-academic curriculum materials while laymen have pressed for more “back to basics.” The 3 R's have almost disappeared from the curriculum. A large percentage of our Milford High School seniors do not know that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation;. do not know who Josef Stalin was and cannot locate Great Britain on a world map. I recently gave a cashier at the mall theater a $20 bill and a $1 bill to pay for two $8 tickets. Without any prompting on my part, he informed me that he had never found any student who could make that simple change calculation. I am ashamed when people like that tell me they don’t understand why our students are so ignorant.

Today, there is virtually no chance that any bright student might ask why our Constitution is being violated daily and why so many citizens believe the Congress is so corrupt. Notice the issue is not politics – Republicans vs Democrats, the right vs the left or liberal vs conservative. Our students should be encouraged to ask questions about what has happened to our government, such as: “Why have we heard it said that we have the most corrupt government the world has ever seen?” Do you believe that and similar questions are proper topics for 17 year old high school seniors? Many responsible citizens have told me “Yes, “ The Founding Fathers, headed by Thomas Jefferson, would emphatically have said “Yes.”

Today, there is virtually no chance that any bright student might ask why our Constitution is being violated daily and why so many citizens believe the Congress is so corrupt. Notice the issue is not politics – Republicans vs Democrats, the right vs the left or liberal vs conservative. Our students should be encouraged to ask questions about what has happened to our government, such as: “Why have we heard it said that we have the most corrupt government the world has ever seen?” Do you believe that and similar questions are proper topics for 17 year old high school seniors? Many responsible citizens have told me “Yes, “ The Founding Fathers, headed by Thomas Jefferson, would emphatically have said “Yes.”

It has been proven that the correlation between financial inputs and education outputs is very weak and shaky Milford is one of the more affluent Connecticut cities and yet, as the Connecticut Post pointed out, the quality of education in our schools is at the bottom of the heap.

If elected, here are some specific goals I would urge upon the board of education:

(1) Totally eliminate Federal mandated exams. Obama has promised not to withhold federal funds to those so doing and we could accept those funds on an interim basis

(2) Make major revisions to the curriculum. Purchase text books from vendors that do not craft them based on the specs of the biggest buyers, which practice results in the same text books supplied to `most every public school in the country. I highly recommend a web site named: “What do textbooks teach?” - Velocity Press (enter those exact words into Google, including the quotation marks)

(3) Completely remove computers from student access. Do not allow them to bring calculators to class.

(4) Introduce course material that teaches the students how to think and how to ask probing questions. Challenge the teachers to challenge the students .

(5) Appoint an ombudsman to interface directly between the teachers and the school board, providing safeguards to protect the teachers from recrimination.


Cast your vote on Tuesday, November 8 at Harborside Middle School.


Unaffiliated voters are strongly encouraged to get out and vote. Don’t leave the administration of our city government and particularly our schools strictly to party loyals.


Vote for the Milford Independent Party

Our candidates, include myself, John Grant (Planning and Zoning) and Rocco Frank, running for Mayor.


Sincerely,

Richard Sieron

Tel 203-878-2396

Milford Board Of Education Candidates Debate

The following video was filmed the night of the Milford Board of Education Debate at the Jonathan Law High School Auditorium right here in town.

On stage are members of three political parties spread across all five districts. The video was provided courtesy of Steve Borer who is also an Independent Candidate for First District Board of Alderman.


CLICK LINK FOR VIDEO

www.mycomputerfox.com/MDB/MBOE.wmv

Partial Candidate List:

Republicans: (District 1) James Tranquilli Jr., Mark Stapleton (District 2) James Puvogel, Greg Oliver, (District 3) Jack O'Connel, Bob White (District 4) Diane Kuger Carroll, Allan Cegan (District 5) Sue DiBiase, Joe Jukic

Independents: (District 1) Rocco J. Frank Jr., (District 2) Ronald Funaro (District 3) N/A (District 4) N/A (District 5) Richard Sieron

Democrats: (District 1) Ralph Mastriana (District 2) N/A (District 3) N/A (District 4)David Hourigan, David Amendola (Distric 5)Laura Pinciaro

Educational Thoughts From Dick Sieron

There is a crisis in public education in our country today. It is often referred to as "The Dumbing Down of America" and in spite of our comparative prosperity in Milford, it is running rampant here. I recently button holed a few students leaving our Milford high schools at the end of the school day and asked them a couple of questions. I discovered that NO student (only a slight exaggeration) in our Milford schools knows how to divide 51 by three without using a calculator. Most of them do not know how to make change without the aid of a cash register. I also found that only approximately half of our high school students can point to Great Britain on a world map.

Public education has deteriorated severely in the last 50 years. Our grandparents were far better educated than the present generation. Way back in 1957, Admiral Rickover declared that the U.S. Standards of Education were unacceptably low We can only imagine what he would say if he were to come back today. Yes, there are some good students in our Milford public schools, but there will always be some achievers. I would estimate that half our Milford students that enter high school will learn almost nothing in those four years that can help them later in in life. Those students learned how to read and write in grammar school and that was the end of significance for them. A large number of students are dropping out of school. That number was far less 50 years ago.

Milford's education budget today is $110 Million (including state grants). We are certainly not getting our money's worth. We must rid ourselves of what I call the money mentality. That is the practice of throwing money after every problem. The little one room school house of a hundred years ago produced better education then our present multimillion dollar facilities.

Now let me address an incredible situation with our current Board of Education. If you look up the names of the members of the Board of Education on the city website, you will find one member listed as the "Chairman of the Majority Party" and another listed as "Chairman of the Minority Party." You will also find these same titles referred to in newspaper articles.

It is a fact that Board of Ed members vote strictly along party lines. All members of the Democrat party vote one way and the members of the Republican Party vote the other way. Politics, practiced at the school board level is moronic (I tried hard to think of a kinder word than moronic, but it's the only one that seems to be appropriate.) These people appear to be incapable of critical thinking. As a member of the Milford Independent Party, I pledge to cast my vote based on the issues and not based on politics.

I have talked to a number of teachers and they are virtually unanimous advising me that they spend all their time teaching to the state mandated "no Child Left Behind" (NCLB) testing program and have no time for anything else. A stop must be put to that and that will not be easy to do. If Milford stops testing, it will lose millions of dollars from the state and guess where the state gets that money from? Big Brother (the Federal Government), the Fed's are prohibited by the US Constitution from being involved in education. That is the province of the State and local governments. So how do they get around it? They give grants to the states which they in turn pass on to the local governments. I am told that Milford cannot refuse to administer the NCLB tests, without losing ALL state educational grants. That is outrageous.

Teachers tell me that they are forced to teach the students what to think and how to think. A prominent school book publishing executive advises that because they must meet the standards set by each state, the text books, in general, are becoming more alike and the content is specifically associated with the outcome of the NCLB tests. All books are being produced to the same standards, which means that creativity and creative curriculum are lost.

I do not believe that Washington bureaucrats are any smarter than many good citizens here in Milford and we are perfectly capable of finding good textbooks that are not produced using a "cookie cutter." I would like to see textbooks used that explore the thinking of the Founding Fathers and challenge students to ask thoughtful questions.

If elected to the school board, I would advocate giving the Superintendent the broad based guidelines for running the schools on a daily basis and then step back and let him do his job without micromanagement. I do not advocate the same policy for the curriculum. I will be intensely interested in making major changes in that area. There are a number of schools across the country which have made dramatic improvements. We should be examining their methods.

Richard Sieron
District 5, Candidate Board of Education
Milford Independent Party

Anyone voting at Harborside Middle School can vote for Richard Sieron

Dick Sieron Board Of Education Candidate District 5 Comments

Recently I knocked on a number of doors, introducing myself as a candidate for the Milford board of education, I was amazed at the response. Nine out of every 10 persons I talked to were fed up with our schools and eagerly invited me into their homes for discussion. The one out of ten who refused to talk to me did so because, when they found out I was a member of the Milford Independent Party, they said that they were either a Democrat or a Republican and would not vote for me. Isn’t it astonishing that the Milford government web site board of education page lists one school board member as the “Chairman of the Majority Party” and another member as the “Chairman of the Minority Party.” Newspaper articles also refer to those certain school board members by those same titles.

I submit that the practice of politics in our school board is outrageous. The Republicans and Democrats are incapable of thinking beyond party politics. George Washington, (in his farewell speech,) said to beware of political parties because they represent the will of those parties and not the will of the people. When there is disagreement among school board members, voting is often along party lines, as though no one is capable of critical thinking.

The Milford Independent Party is offering candidates based on their abilities, not party patronage, and will not base any decisions along party lines.

I have talked to a number of Milford school teachers and every one I have talked to so far has been angry with what goes on in our schools. It is amazing that their anger is not reported in the media. At one home that I was invited into, a teacher did not even give me a chance to speak first. He informed me that they were forced to teach their students WHAT to think and not HOW to think. He said they were forced to spend all their time giving the students the “No Child Left Behind” tests and over-teaching those tests, leaving them no time to teach anything else.

Our schools will lose millions of dollars from the state if they do not give the NCLB tests. The State of Connecticut gets those millions of dollars from the Federal government. The federal government is forbidden by the Constitution from having anything to do with education at the state and local level. That is the sole province of the States. And so, big brother gets his nose in the tent through the back door. The dollars are paid by the taxpayers in the first place and everyone knows that the closer you get to the local level, the more wisely the dollars are spent. The federal government has no monopoly on brains and common sense. The only monopoly they have is on corruption.

Tax wise, we are one of the wealthier towns in Connecticut. The mall and all the commercial businesses on the Post Road and other business centers bring in large tax revenues. We spend well over a hundred million dollars each year on our public schools, what do we get for that money?

Statewide, Milford’s highest ranked (CAP tests) elementary school in 142nd place and the lowest ranks 285th (among 544 elementary schools). Foran High School ranks 94th in the state (CAPT tests) and Jonathan Law ranks 119th (among 171 high schools). One of our elementary schools recently dropped 48 ranking positions from 2008 and another school an incredible 85 ranking positions. Foran dropped 15 ranking positions and Law dropped 10. Our school board should be in “crisis mode,” but nobody seems to be awake or aware.

We pay our superintendent of schools Apx. $185,000.00 p/y and all he seems to be able to do is find himself mentioned in a scandal appearing on the front pages of the newspapers. Incidentally, school Superintendents should not be close friends with members of the school board. A board member cannot make objective decisions about the performance of a close friend of the Superintendant.

I have nothing to fear making the above statements. I have lived in Milford for 15 years and raised a family elsewhere. I am not a member of any union, nor do I own a business. Education in our country is in an incredible state of decay. Our grandparents were far better educated then today’s younger people.

If elected to the Milford school board, I promise the following;

I will ask tough questions and demand major reform.
I will report regularly to the press as to what happens at board meetings and how the board members vote.

Dick Sieron
Independent Candidate For Board of Education
District 5