School-of-Thought

Of the many  educational blogs I read, the ones most meaningful to me are those written by superintendents like Kim Moritz from New York, or from school board members  like Brian Wheeler from Virginia, or Jim Woods from Oregon.

Though I’ve never met any of these folks in person, we all share a common bond – improving educational opportunities in our respective communities.  What’s especially helpful in my role as a school board member is when education leaders like the folks I mentioned above write about their local efforts.  Good school boards constantly seek and plan new ways to refine, strengthen, modify, correct, and/or eliminate existing programs and practices to get better results.  

By sharing information and insights, we help each other — and that’s the purpose today’s post — to share what we’re doing in Watertown.

HOW ARE WE DOING?   

At tomorrow’s monthly school board meeting, the administration will report on the progress of one of the goals we’ve been working on — that All Students will Graduate High School on Time and be Post-Secondary Prepared.

Two of the performance indicators we’re watching are:

A. The drop-out rate.  Our goal is to continue to see the drop-out rate decrease each year.  This semester, 12 students dropped out.  While that’s 12 too many, the trend is good. Comparing apples-to-apples, 24 students dropping out the first semester last year, 23 during the same time frame in 2007-08, and 29 in 2006-07.

B. The number of students with failing grades.  Again, the number are moving in the right direction. Comparing the percentage of students with failing grade from any first quarter class this year to last year, shows:

• 4.8% of ninth graders received a failing grade in one of their classes this year compared to 7.7% last year;
• 15.6% of 10th graders received a failing grade this year compared to 17.8% last year;
• 9.2% of 11th graders received a failing grade this year compared to 12.3% last year;
• and 6.6% of 12th graders received a failing grade this year compared to 7.2% last year.

HOW ARE WE DOING IT?

We’re moving in the right direction, but like any school district we have our challenges.  The following are a few of our strategies:

1. Academic Resource Center (ARC)/Credit Recovery is offered daily from 7:30-5PM during the school year to provide struggling students additional opportunities to recover credits.

2. Summer Bridge Academy for at-risk 8th graders transitioning to the high school.  Each year, up to 30 8th graders are selected to participate in a two week, 8AM – 5PM pre-high school program designed to acclimate them to high school and allow them to see purpose in their classes as they plan for their future. 

3. After-School Study Hall is available to any student.  Academic help is provided by certified teachers.

4. Night School is offered in two hour session twice per week for students that are off grade level or for students that have dropped out and wish to return to school.

5. Coordinated Truancy Reduction.  This year an additional component of the joint community-school plan was added.  This consists of preventative educational work provided to parents who need some help with the attendance of their children.  Year to date we’ve seen a 1% increase in attendance compared to last year.

6. Supplemental Education Services in reading and math from state-approved providers are offered to all our high school’s economically disadvantaged students. 

7. Summer School Offering to aide students who continue to struggle in math and English or reading, or to aide students in credit recovery, or to help students get back to grade level in any core content area so they can stay in school and graduate on time.

8. Knowing our Kids. More of a philosophy than a program, our administration does it’s best to know every student by name.  Each student is assigned a homeroom advisor that sticks with the student through all four years of high school, get to know him or her, follows the student’s personal learning plan and so on.   The goal is to develop a relationship, and to make high school relevant.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Hit me up with feedback.  If you’re an out-of-town reader, what are you doing in your school district to make a difference?  And whether your a local reader or an out-of-towner, as always, if you have questions or suggestions, drop me a note. 

Until next time!

Do you ever just take time to just ponder about things?  You know, sit in a chair, rest your head on a hand, and just reflect about big-picture type questions?  This morning I’m pondering a few education questions, like: 

1. What  do I value about education?
2. What more do I want from our schools? – and what can we do better?
3. What does a really, really good school look and feel like?
4. What’s the best way to educate our next generation? 

Do you ever think about questions like this?  Have any answers you care to share?  I’d love to hear from ya!

Until next time — just think of me as  . . . pondering in South Dakota . . .

I’m back!  I hope, dear reader, you’ll forgive me for my absence.  Life just got too busy — what else can I tell you?

But my passion for education never dimmed, and so, I’m back, ready to recommitt to blogging, and to share with you about the educational issues that confront our district, state and nation — and all from the perspective of a local South Dakota School Board Member.

What are some of the issues we’ll look at?  As an overview, at the national level we’ll look at the debate over national standards, merit pay and teacher training.  We’ll look at the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and I’ll share my thoughts about what the future might hold.  We’ll discuss how federal legislation dealing with school accountability, strategies for effective teaching, and data systems to monitor student achievement and teacher effectiveness might affect us locally. 

At the state level, we’ll of course focus on funding.  Second, we’ll examine the adequacy lawsuit.  So far, some two-thirds of the state’s school districts have joined the lawsuitover the legislature’s funding of education.  Watertown hasn’t.  Next, we’ll look at what’s happening with our state’s 2010 education innitiative, and the job of our new Education Secretary.  Finally, we’ll take a look at the education proposals from each of the gubernatorial candidates.

Locally, we’ll look at the ongoing efforts to improve education, and examine our district’s cutting-edge reforms.  We’ll talk about how we’re incorporating 21st century skills like technology, problem solving and innovation into the curriculum, and what we’re doing to improve teacher retention and development.  And to round off the local review, we’ll spend plenty of time looking at LATI – our steady enrollment growth, our building projects, the seemingly never-ending issue of who can best govern LATI, and more.

So stay tuned and fasten your seatbelts.  And as I said above, I would love to hear your feedback, either by posting on this site for everyone to see, or feell free to email me at freddeutsch@wat.midco.net,

After last night’s blizzard-abbreviated budget work session and a quick call to my worried wife, we decided it was safer to spend a few bucks on a room in town rather than try to drive home in near-zero visibility and 40 mph wind gusts (I live in the country, outside of town).  So after a quick stop to the office to pick up my newest book, David Warlick’s Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century, I headed over to the hotel, propped up some pillows on the bed and cracked open Warlick’s book. 

This morning I’m kicking-back at my computer, sipping on my Creme Brulee-flavored coffee, and thinking about Warlick’s words. 

The guy inspires me.  The man is a visionary . . . a futurist of sorts.  And he calls on educators everywhere to take up the mantle do the same.

Here is a favorite paragraph from his introduction that I meditated on and read repeatedly while tucked in my cozy little hotel room last night:

Our job, as  educators, is to prepare our students for their futures.  This job today is especially challenging, because, for the first time in history, we cannot clearly describe the future for which we are preparing our children.  Our world and the information that describes it are changing too quickly.  The very nature of information is changing: how you find it, what it looks like, the way it behaves, where it comes from, what you do with it, and how we, as authors, create it.

What I like about Warlick’s statement is that it’s a really big picture idea that applies not only to educators, but also to administrators, school boards, and essentially to all of society.  It’s a statement about a vision for the future, but also provides a backdrop for the natural tension that exists as we grapple as a society about where we want to go with education. Clearly, not everyone believes Mr. Warlick.  Some in our communities believe that if 20th Century literacies were good enough for them, it should be good enough for their children.  And if sitting in classrooms with desks arranged in straight rows, attentively listening to their teacher lecture, adequately prepared them and the generations before them to function and compete in the world, why consider changing?  These are the issues that school board members face everyday as we deliberate community values about the vision and direction of education in our school districts.  

Warlick’s book is a great read — one that I’ll be adding to my sidebar of Sweet-16 Recommended Books for School Board Members.  It provides us a window to look through, and provides food for thought about how we’ll prepare our children for the world to come.    

This story from the March 5th edition of Education Week further confirms what both Thune and Johnson told me about the chances of NCLB being reauthorized this year:

House members aren’t making progress on their pledge to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act this year, according to a leading Republican lawmaker.

“We’re in a climate where it doesn’t look very favorable to get the reauthorization done,” Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., told a meeting of the Education Industry Association last week.

Rep. McKeon, who is the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, said he hasn’t met with Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the committee’s chairman, to discuss the NCLB law since October.

In that meeting, Rep. McKeon said, the two still hadn’t agreed on more than a dozen significant issues, such as the measures to be used for school accountability and how students qualify for tutoring under the law.

My take is that NCLB reauthorization is some two years away — but only if a Republican wins the White House.  If a Democrat wins, I look for NCLB to become history, and some other form of federal funding and accountability legislation to replace it.

To read more from the article, click here. 

While educational issues will likely always be a political hotbed, I continue to be an optimist about our future.  Below is a letter I emailed to this morning to Senator Thune about our Watertown boys basketball team, our plans for a new local Pre-K program, and a request for his support on federal Pre-K bills.  Following my letter is the initial response from his Communications Director.  Oh, by-the-way, the above picture shows school board members from South Dakota during during a lobbying visit with Senator Thune.

Dear Senator John:

I enjoyed meeting with you again during our school board visit to Washington.  Our Arrows Boys Basketball team continues to cruise, despite the difficult challenges experienced earlier in the season.  Tomorrow night the play against Pierre in the first round of the state AA championships.  Go Arrows!

OK, now that I’ve got that out of my system, let me tell you about Watertown’s plans for a new Pre-K program and ask for your support of federal Pre-K legislation.

Beginning the fall, the Watertown School District will be providing more lower-income parents the opportunity to send their children to Pre-K.  Currently, we’ve identified 39 students in the district who are between poverty level and 125% of poverty that can’t get into Head Start due to insufficient federal funding, and another 35 that meet criteria based on academic need or special circumstance (income, limited English proficiency, disabilities, etc.).  We plan to remove the financial barriers for the parents of  any of these children that would like to send them to Pre-K.

We believe this strategy will help us close the achievement gap between low-income children and their more affluent peers — a main goal of No Child Left Behind —  and will allow us to take a longer-term preventative strategy to academically engage more children and increase high school graduation rates.  We’re also working to establish relationships with private and faith-based Pre-K schools, and helping with a community funding initiative that would allow the parents of 4-year-olds the opportunity to send their children to any type of Pre-K school of their choice.

Funding for the school district’s program would come from Title I, Special Education and our General Fund — but more needs to be done.  A number of Pre-K bills have been introduced in this Congress that set a course for expanded federal investment in Pre-K.  These include the “Providing Resources Early for Kids Act of 2007″ (HR 3289) by Rep Mazie Hirono of Hawaii; the “Universal Pre-kindergarten Act” (HR 4060) by Rep Dennis Kucinich of Ohio; and the “Prepare All Kids Act of 2007″ (HR 2859) by Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York.

I would appreciate hearing from you about federal funding for Pre-K.  Could you support any of these bills to assist local school districts in developing and expanding quality Pre-K programs?  We could definately use additional federal funding in Watertown.

Thanks you for your support of public education.  I hope we can find a few minutes to visit the next time you’re in the Watertown area.

Sincerely,

Fred Deutsch,

Watertown School Board Member

 And here is just a brief response I received from Andi Fouberg, in testimony of Senator Thune’s continued interest in basketball:

Fred,  I will pass this along.  Senator Thune and I were just talking about the AA brackets today and how Watertown is on a good run now.  The Budget is on the floor right now, but he is hoping to get to Rapid City for the games Friday night.

Andi L. Fouberg

Deputy Communications Director

US Senator John Thune (R-SD) 

Since starting this blog last month all my posts have focused on education topics.  Today’s will be personal.

I write this from seat 6C.  The pilot just announced we’re at cruising altitude somewhere over the east coast.

 I’ve been thoughtful today.  The weekend was spent in Hartford, Connecticut with a committee of brilliant people.  We were writing healthcare policy for an insurance company.  After the meeting concluded I shared a ride to the airport with one of the committee people.  He told me how miserable the home life is of a highly respected colleague, author, and international lecturer — a man at the very top of his professional game.  I couldn’t help but reflect upon my wonderful marriage of 25 years to Kathleen, the love of my life and very best friend.

It was just a poignant reminder to me about what’s really important in life.  You can have all the respect of colleagues and other people in the world, all the money, all the fame, all the everything, but without love, it’s all for nothing.

 During a recent trip to Washington Dc, Senator Thune shared that he’s not sure No Child Left Behind will be reauthorized this year due to developing opposition from both sides of the aisle: opposition from some dems over funding shortages, and opposition from some repubs due to program concerns. 

Now comes this account from the Principal’s Policy Blog about Education Secretary Margaret Spellings scolding from both sides:

In one of her last appearance before the House Appropriations Committee, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings faced scolding from both sides of the aisle for the 47 programs that would be eliminated and several other programs proposed for flat funding or cuts under the administration’s FY 2009 education budget, with much of the discussion focusing on the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

“I feel snookered” said Rep. David Obey (D-WI), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. “I voted for it [NCLB] with the assumption that the administration would support near the authorized level.” However, “you [the administration] have walked away from your own program…The driving force behind the criticism is the lack of adequate funding.”

Read it all here.

What do you think? Submit your thoughts and comments, and start a discussion!

Seems my words stirred the pot.  After a verbal dressing down last night by fellow South Dakota blogger Cory I-wanna-be-a-school-board-member Heidelberger, I responded on his blog that I regretted my words .  You can read his rant and my response here.

I hope this puts an end to my post-that-never-should-have-been-written, and serves as a catalyst for more people to share ideas about increasing state funding to South Dakota educators. 

This is really GREAT STUFF from Ian Jukes’ site.  I’m quoting the first few paragraphs of ”21st Century Fluency Skills.” 

The primary task of the educational system must be to give learners the right tools and provide them with a critical mind, so that they can ask the right questions and make the right connections.  The problem is that the world is not the stable, static place it once was.  The world has changed and continues to change.  Today as Thomas Friedman notes in The World is Flat we are preparing students for jobs that don’t exist, using technologies that haven’t been in vented, to solve problems we haven’t begun to think about.  As a result, the definition of what it means to be educated in the light of the modern world has changed and continues to change.

In his book The Third Wave futurist Alvin Toffler noted that, “the illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

In the information age, citizens will need to work with information in all forms to fashion content products that have value, that entertain and teach.

But if all learners do is learn the traditional literacies — to read, write, speak. and calculate — they may be literate by 20th Century standards but certainly not by 21st Century standards.

Thanks Ian, for the great message. 

There are so many pundits, politicians, and experts in the field of education – each with their own focus or philosophy. In this new blog, my focus will be to share my ideas, dreams, concerns, musings, goals, love and passion about issues relating to education in our great community and school district in Watertown, South Dakota, as well as discuss the ramifications of state and federal educational issues on us at the local level. This will all be provided from my perspective as a Watertown School Board Member. Input from parents, community members, educators, legislators, other policy makers, or “anyone” is welcome.

More to come . . .