ELQIS design committee November meeting

I spent the day watching the ELQIS design subcommittee, and I'm spent, too. In general, although there were disputes about this and that, I didn't see the stark divides I saw in the workforce committee. There wasn't by any means uniformity of opinion, but the differences were relatively minor, at least as far as I could hear.

There was a presentation about PARS, PITC's program assessment rating scale, which sometimes seemed to be a cross between ECERS and CLASS (I'm assuming if you're reading a blog post about the ELQIS design subcommittee that you know what ECERS and CLASS are; if not, email me, and I'll start putting in more explanatory links), but sometimes the presenter (I didn't catch her name but she was definitely not Peter Mangioni, who the agenda said would present) indicated that PARS was just to fill holes that other assessment tools didn't cover. I wonder if they're thinking of it as a way not to have to pay Thelma Harms. I'd vote for that.

They still hadn't fixed the errors in toddler ratios and group sizes in their PowerPoint. I know for a fact that people on that committee know Title 22, so it's not from ignorance of licensing ratios on the committee, but the PowerPoints are still wrong, and it's frustrating for people to have to keep correcting them. Both San Diego and the Sacramento ratios group got after them for not getting that basic stuff right. (But then the Sacramento speaker proposed a 10:1 ratio and a group size of 24 for some tier (it was hard to hear her). That's 2.4 teachers per classroom. I think you need either two or three; they don't come in point fours.)

In general, I was pleased with the way things went. In the workforce committee, I see K-12 pushing elementary school down one grade, but the design committee is run by ECE people instead of K-12 people, so the arguments were pretty much all about details, and where along a continuum to put down tier divides, rather than co-constructivists versus curriculumists, ECE vs elementary school. Design was much less frustrating than workforce, and it's less likely to end up recommending something I hate.