I agree that it’s not important. Certainly school boards all over the USA and Canada operate without expertise in education - they’re suppose to. I was only responding to concern that my statement about BOD background may have been wrong.
I also agree that the concern appears to be BOD micromanagement. If you’re going to micromanage a school, you had better know something about schools. Otherwise, leave it up to professionals.
My point is that the board should stay out of management altogether. Management is the job of the administrative team. The board’s job is to decide about school policies.
When the board and administration share a common vision with the other stake holders of the school and learn to cooperate in the interest of the children it is called “Good Governance”. And that is what they are supposed to work out so that the school gets its full WASC accreditation back.
Hopefully they will work that out during their common retreat this weekend together with a consultant.
nitpicking perhaps, but they do have full accreditation now, if you do a search on the wasc website database you will find “accredited”. they did however recieve only 2 year accreditation, instead of what i believe is the normal 3, extendable to 3 years if a visiting team at the end of the second year recommends it.
Tempo Gain wrote:
Sorry for not using more precise language: By “full accreditation” we mean accreditation for the full review period of six years. That’s what TAS had in the past. If there are serious problems with a school, accreditation is not given for the full period but only for three or two years. We had hope for at least three years. Limiting accreditation to two years only is a serious wake-up call.
Dr C. Have kids dropped out of the school, or are there just no new parents? Do people really know there are problems at TAS or is this suddenly a recruitment issue? Have you clearly identified the source? Otherwise we seem to be going round in circles now.
[quote=“TomHill”]Dr C. Have kids dropped out of the school, or are there just no new parents? Do people really know there are problems at TAS or is this suddenly a recruitment issue? Have you clearly identified the source? Otherwise we seem to be going round in circles now.[/quote]Well, the retention rate (percentage of students coming back) is at the low end of the expected range. One board member resigned and moved his kid to teh European school even before the WASC report came out. He had insider information.
It is hard to tell what people really know. I did identify my sources but I am not going to mention names unless I get permission from the source.
Are we still going around in circles?
No, thats useful.
So there are in-house problems causing significant numbers of parents of children from the younger year groups enough concern to remove their kids. But the problems aren’t clear.
Would it be useful to ask those parents why they have removed their children?
[quote=“TomHill”]No, thats useful.
So there are in-house problems causing significant numbers of parents of children from the younger year groups enough concern to remove their kids. But the problems aren’t clear.
Would it be useful to ask those parents why they have removed their children?[/quote]Well, I tried to provide some stats that I heard from “usually well informed and reliable sources”. The interpretation that you draw from those need not be compelling.
I don’t think it would be appropriate for outsiders to do systematic exit interviews with parents who leave. I am pretty sure that the school administration has done so and will use that information to try to increase the retention rate.
To be perfectly honest, I haven’t found any of the recent comments from Dr. C or anyone else to be illuminating. I wrote my initial post about TAS because someone asked what I knew about the situation. Right now, I am probably more informed than many people about what’s happening at TAS but because I’m not a parent or teacher at the school, a lot of facts are difficult to understand.
More to the point, I have yet to see anything that goes beyond fighting between parents and the BOD. No one has posted on my site claiming to be a dissatisfied parent. There seems to be no comments on the blog of Dr. Godfried Mayer that claim to be dissatisfied parents. No one has posted here saying they are a dissatisfied parent except for Dr. C. While I am not discounting that many parents are dissatisfied or that teachers are leaving the school, at this point, all I have is one person’s opinion. And don’t even begin to cite the Wikipedia entry; it’s about as much trash as trash can be.
I have been written by parents of TAS students who have told me they haven’t noticed anything strange going on in their children’s classroom. I have been told of impressions that students attrition have more to do with business opportunities leaving Taiwan for Shanghai. This position was also stated by a person identifying themselves as a TAS student in comments on the Wikipedia site and by an anonymous parent on Dr. Mayer’s blog. So I can say that I have counter evidence, which like Dr. C, I can not share with anyone here, but then, I’m not making any claims.
I don’t feel like I know much more about what’s going than before, even though I know a lot of facts. I am certain that parents interested in TAS aren’t coming out of this feeling any more informed. What I would like to see is evidence that goes beyond rumour that the current BOD is not capable of handling the problems brought up in the WASC Report. For example,
Ultimately, the real concern I have is some demonstration there really is a problem that goes beyond personal differences of the people involved. Are students and teachers flocking from the school? Are there reams of dissatisfied parents? I don’t doubt this is possible. I have read the WASC Report and it isn’t a pretty picture. Equally, I think claims that imply widespread dissatisfaction need something more to substantiate them than just the statements of one person.
Hey Scott, a big 
I think you’re dead on here. I went through this thread and your blog entry and Dr. Mayer’s blog entry and some of the Wiki discussion (ick), and I do not see any direct connection between student vacancies and problems with the board of directors. What evidence is there linking the two? After all, the school is still accredited (even if it’s only for two years – that’s two years to clean up their act), and the quality of education there is still said to be quite high.
Maybe it’s time to pull out Occam’s Razor and give this thread a nice clean shave.
Ay, there’s the rub! Far fewer expat families are coming to Taiwan on business assignments. A very simple explanation. Here’s another. Dr. C, you mentioned first-time-ever sudden vacancies in “grades 1, 3, 4, 5” instead of former 200+ wait lists. Earlier this evening, I posted [url=Taiwan's falling birth rate - #38 by smell_the_glove about the effects of Taiwan’s falling birth rate on elementary schools (I’d thought at first to put the info here, but decided it was more appropriate over there since it’s more general). The point is that the situation you described is hardly unique to TAS. In short, far fewer local parents are having kids (this includes plane hopping to the US), and even the wealthy are rethinking the private school price tag. Aren’t the vast majority of TAS parents local? If so, doesn’t it stand to reason that TAS would also be affected? To assume otherwise strikes me as being out of touch with reality and smacks of arrogance – might even buttress the common notion of elitism at the school.
Don’t get me wrong - there may well have been parents who, because of all the shenanigans, either left TAS for greener athletic fields or decided not to send their kids there in the first place. You mentioned at least one. But I’m skeptical that internal problems alone are necessarily the major factor in sudden TAS vacancies. Schools inevitably have problems, school board meetings are notorious for high passions and infighting, staff and teachers and parents leave (sometimes even all at once in a big wave). I’m just following Scott’s lead in suggesting that there are simpler explanations. Besides, I sure don’t want to get dragged into personal bickering and administrative problems and internal politics at TAS, especially when none of it appears to relate to the central question posed by the OP. Or parenting.
So back to the OP. And parenting. I’d like to ask for a little more clarification from Dr. C.
You say TAS is looking for English-speaking kids, but what exactly do you mean by “English-speaking” (especially since later, you referred to “native English speaking kids” and “American cultural background”)? You’ve established the passport prerequisite, but the “false foreigner” workaround is well known (parents are Taiwanese, kid is born in US and gets American passport and may or may not speak a word of English). If by “native” you mean children whose parents are both native English-speaking passport holders here on an expat business package, I hate to say it, but you probably already have most of them, and I doubt you’ll find many more. The numbers, after all, are dwindling.
If on the other hand you mean “mixed kids” (i.e. one Taiwanese, one native English speaking parent, kid has passport), well hell, there are plenty of them. Do they speak English better than local kids? Probably. Do they speak it as well as kids in a native English speaking country? Probably not. In fact, they may well speak more Mandarin (yeah, even in the hallways). A casual glance at the language-related threads in this forum will show you that the question of a mixed kid’s “native language” is not exactly cut and dried – instead, you’re usually looking at different degrees of bilingualism. Same goes for “cultural background.”
BTW, the issue of exit outcomes Stateside (including the ubiquitous testing that has resulted from NCLB) is a very divisive one that has pitted many boards, parents, and teachers against each other. Getting the issues out into the open means turbulence and flared tempers. That’s the nature of the beast. It’s what you do with the dialogue that counts. 
Thanks for bringing the discussion back to the OP. As we can tell from Mr Sommer’s last post, there are many questions that can be asked about a complex school like TAS, and one can be sure that misunderstandings and false conclusions will be generated.
Let me just say that I don’t want to be labeled a “dissatisfied parent”. My daughter is quite happy at TAS and for me TAS being in crisis is a challenge to help figuring out how to overcome the crisis. That was the reason for the original posting.
Secondly, I said before that any single “explanation” of the teacher/student retention ratio is bound to be flawed; for a complex situation like this. there is always a multitude of causes; several of which have been mentioned in the recent postings.
Well, TAS has two categories of students in the admission process (holding a foreign passport is precondition for any TAS student): ESL and non-ESL. There is a little interview as part of the admissions process in which it is determined if the child’s English language skills are sufficient of if ESL classes are needed. TAS policies limit the number of ESL students in a class. That is why typically there are longer waiting lists for ESL students.
That is the basic admission criterion. I could imagine that a scholarship would be competitive, i.e. English language skills and perhaps knowledge and/or experience of American culture could be decision criteria.
But you are right: it probably is better not to refer to “native English” speakers but just consider the language skills as such.
Well that is helpful to know. It might be good to get an idea about the number of potential applicants to give the TAS board a better impression of how much demand there would be for such a scholarship. It would be embarrassing if too few students would apply, and they might not even give it any consideration unless a strong demand can be shown.
Now I feel like we’re getting somewhere.
How much of this struggle between some parents and the BOD is about how to handle the issue of a dwindling number of - let’s call them something different - high-level users of English? It’s apparent for reasons unrelated to the WASC Report that the number of students in the school is dropping. The minutes of the meeting for the TAS board of directors dated April 26, 2006 discusses the proposed construction of a satellite campus and a boarding school. Is this one of the suggestions of how to handle the problem? Is this a proposal in conflict with the idea of attracting less qualified ‘false foreign’ students from other international schools? But certainly this would affect the quality of the school and perhaps its reputation, even its accreditation. Is one of the competing proposals based on the idea that there are many qualified and deserving students already in Taiwan whose parents can’t afford the school’s tuition - unless they are granted scholarships?
It’s only my imagination, but if this is true, it may be one of those gray areas where educators think this is an educational decision because it affects how they will have to teach, but the BOD thinks it’s a business decision. Certainly this would explain why most parents continue to express satisfaction with TAS but another group, including some teachers, feels their professional autonomy is being taken from them.
Perhaps Dr. C can address the problem I’m having. Am I far from the truth?
Well don’t thank me too much – in point of fact, you were the one who said the vacancies were due to “a number of problems,” then pointed the way to Dr. Mayer’s blog - the thread just followed its natural course from that. Any discussion of TAS is bound to raise a few eyebrows in the foreign community. While I don’t object to a more general discussion of what’s going on at TAS (lots of people have aired dirty laundry at Forumosa, haha), I’m not sure that it’s germane to parenting. We don’t have an “education” forum, and many parents have inquired about schools here, so perhaps it is. At the very least, I want to try to keep this thread centered on TAS looking for English-speaking kids, and avoid taking the discussion off into hearsay and backroom shenanigans. The other option would be to start a general “Taipei American School” thread (it’s kind of surprising we don’t have one).
That clarifies things immensely, and it frames the problem in a better light. In light of dwindling enrollments (and we know for certain things are only going to get worse in coming years – on the part of both those who are coming here and those who are already here), TAS may have to either amend its policies to accept more ESL students or scramble for more non-ESL students. They may not get the latter. If there’s still a ready supply of the former (few if any schools are so lucky right now), then financial pressures will inevitably be brought to bear. And if those pressures are resisted, TAS will be looking at a significant downsizing in the near future. It looks like Scott has come to the same conclusions. Are we correct in assuming that this is the real crux of the problem?
Saying “language skills” is an improvement, but not a panacea. Everything, after all, hinges on how ESL and non-ESL are differentiated. If the TAS interview is designed to measure native fluency, that may well dump a significant percentage of “mixed” kids into ESL. Do you see where I’m going with this? I for one would want to know more about the interview process before I’d consider applying – but that information may not be intended for public consumption.
Pardon the metaphor, but that’s like a dog chasing his tail: say how many want it, then maybe offer it, but most won’t consider it until they hear a detailed offer. Please keep in mind Forumosa’s demographic. Parents still make up a fairly small percentage of registered posters here (as opposed to, say, parentpages.net) - and I know a great many foreigners who don’t spend any time here at all. And let me make this personal. I have two kids. One is four and the other is almost two months. Based on where I live at the moment and the exorbitant cost of TAS tuition (I’m not on a package), there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell I would ever consider TAS. If a scholarship were available and I thought my kids could pass the interview? Sure I’d give it a shot – but I’d also have to think about moving and a number of other (complex) factors. I believe there are a good number of people in a similar situation, but I’d be hard pressed to give you hard numbers. After all, we’re not demanding it – demand comes from the expat business community and, of course, from all those false foreigners.
I think that would be unfortunate… that a school as good academically and as well reputed as TAS would worry about such embarrassment. I think that so long as TAS maintains its academic excellence, it need not worry about the number of children who apply for such scholarships.
But, that’s just me thinking.
I thought of something else last night about parents’ differing goals. I would venture a guess that expat parents here on assignment put their kids in TAS because they want their children to have something similar to what they’d have back home – and they won’t get held back when they go back. That would imply that these students are short-term - maybe 1-3 years or so (how many actually go K-12 then graduate?) - and if less are coming to Taiwan, it’s going to seem like a lot less. I’ll bet local fake foreigner parents, on the other hand, are in it for the whole shebang - they see it as a fast track into the American college and university system as well as a chance for their kids to learn a little English while hobnobbing with the other upper class twit of the year kids.
[quote=“Tigerman”]I think that would be unfortunate… that a school as good academically and as well reputed as TAS would worry about such embarrassment. I think that so long as TAS maintains its academic excellence, it need not worry about the number of children who apply for such scholarships.
But, that’s just me thinking.[/quote]
I couldn’t agree more. How many schools offer scholarships based on demand assessments and marketing surveys? 
If they’re going to do it, they should just do it. Otherwise,
dog
chase
tail
when my daughter passed the interview a few years back I wouldn’t say she had native fluency, probably like 75% of it though.
there’s a considerable group of primarily Chinese speaking families at TAS that have actually immigrated to the US or Canada for significant periods and are here for business reasons. One of the priority criteria for admission is that a significant amount of time has been spent overseas by parents. This group is likely to be affected by business related factors as well.
my gut feeling is that they won’t be going on a scholarship route. in a sense there already is as students requiring ESL help pay considerable extra fees. maybe that differential will be increased somewhat.
Before we go on discussing future enrollment questions and scholarship programs, I need to correct a wrong conclusion that Mr Summers arrived at in his post on 8/21:
Please note that not a single board member is not also a TAS parent at the same time. That is a requirement. Every parent can vote or become a board member and thereby control the BOD. The power struggle is certainly not between these two groups, but that is another topic…
Just to clarify… only parents of children/a child at TAS are eligible to serve as board members… right?
Just to clarify… only parents of children/a child at TAS are eligible to serve as board members… right?[/quote]… that’s right.
Since the title of this thread has been changed in order to allow for a more general discussion of TAS, feel free to elaborate. If you like. And I really hope others will weigh in.