Sitting Down for Tea with Peyton Robb

I had a chance to have current Edina School Board Member Peyton Robb over for a cup of tea a couple of weeks ago. He is my back fence neighbor, and the tea set is a gift from my mother-in-law that I haven't had an occaision to use in a couple of years. The blue thistle flowers painted on the side are the most masculine motif she could find.

I like Peyton, and we had a good talk. He has served on the board 12 years and feels that it's time to make way for new perspectives. I have to respect that.

We had a good talk about current issues with the school, what it's like to serve as a board member. Some of his main concerns have been facilities and testing. He has overseen a major expansion in the buildings during his tenure.

I was most interested to hear what he had to say about testing. We have some teachers in my family who are pretty exasperated about No Child Left Behind, "teaching to the test" and so forth. I think they understand that there has to be some objective standard by which teacher performance is measured, but how that's done can be very contentious.

Overall, Peyton seemed mostly in favor of testing if it's done carefully. I think his main objection was to testing math in the 11th grade, as it's usually too late to do anything substantive about it and it just ends up hurting graduation rates.

Peyton has also served on the board of District 287, which was carved out to provide services to special needs kids up to age 21. These are billed back to all public schools on an hourly service basis. It's always a little confusing when meeting with our daughter's teachers, paras, and therapists, as some of them work for District 287 and others for District 273. He was able to clarify how this is broken out.