School-of-Thought

After a year and a half of work, our school district’s teacher evaluation and professional growth tool is ready for primetime. It will be presented to the school board for review at our upcoming meeting on Monday.  In reviewing the pre-meeting material, I’m pretty excited about what I see. Developed from scratch through a collaborative effort between our teacher’s union and administration, the tool lays out clear and demanding standards for our teachers – and establishes a process for professional growth and development unlike anything we’ve ever had before.

According to Education Secretary Duncan, teacher evaluations are something that’s broken in our country:

“The truth is that students and teachers don’t live in mythic Lake Wobegon, where According toeveryone is above average. Yet we have an evaluation system today that pretends otherwise. As a result, great teachers don’t get recognized, don’t get rewarded, and don’t help their peers grow. The teachers in the middle of the skills spectrum don’t get the support they need to improve. And the teachers at the bottom don’t get the support they need either, and if they do and still don’t improve, they need to be counseled out of the profession.”

It seems to me our new instrument will go along way in addressing his concerns, and will help us continue to strive toward our ultimate goal of improving student achievement. 

The tool establishes a “professional growth rubric” based upon seven area of a teacher’s job performance. These seven areas are:

• Planning and preparing for learning
• Delivery of instruction
• Building relationships with students
• Classroom management
• Monitoring, assessment and follow-up
• Family and community outreach
• Professional responsibilities

The rubrics are designed to give teachers an assessment of where they stand in all performance areas along with detailed guidance on what’s expected to improve. To have enough knowledge to make decisions about the rubric areas, principals will observe teachers in their classrooms frequently throughout the school year – up to 10-12 times per year!

The intent is to establish a four-year staggered evaluation cycle, with about one-quarter of the teachers starting into the cycle during any given year. Year one calls for ten to twelve walk-through visits by the principal with feedback provided through reflection questioning. The teachers will also respond to the questions. The second year is goal setting for the teacher. The third year will have the teacher select two of the seven components of the rubric to have the principal review during the walk-through visits (five to seven). The fourth year is another year of goal setting for the teacher.

The rubric classifies teachers in each of the seven areas of evaluation as:

(1) Distinguished – “reserved for truly outstanding teachers as described by the demanding criteria of the area;”

(2) Proficient – describing “solid professional performance;”

(3) Professional Support Needed – indicating that “performance has deficiencies” that must be corrected; and

(4) Does Not Meet Standard – an “unacceptable level of performance that must be remediated immediately.”

If the assessment finds areas of ineffective teaching practice, the plans calls for the teacher to be put on a plan of improvement with specific goals and resources provided the teacher to remediate the problem. Once remediation occurs, the plan calls for the teacher to be returned to the normal evaluation cycle. If the problem is not remediated, the plan calls for teacher termination.

What excites me about the plan is that it establishes a system to provide real opportunities for teachers to improve their performance, but also weeds out those who ultimately can’t meet the district’s standards.

There’s no question in my mind that good teachers know what it takes to be highly professional and effective in the classroom. This tool sets out a process to help them get even better.  And that’s good news.

Thoughts?

According to what I heard this past week in Washington, the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind will do more than leave behind the name (they’re going back to the old name of Elementary and Secondary Education ACT – ESEA), it will also leave behind the measurement of Adequate Yearly Progress. In its place will be new measurements of accountability that Duncan says will more fairly assess a schools’ academic progress, including:

1. Measurements of student growth.
2. Measurements of student achievement gaps
3. Measurements of high school graduation rates
4. Measurements post-secondary enrollment rates

All the South Dakota legislators we spoke with said they are getting mixed messages if there will be action this year or next, but what’s clear is that momentum is building to address reauthorization, especially in light of the president’s recent budget request which provides for an increase of $3.5 billion in discretionary spending for the Department of Education in FY 2011 – including $1.3 billion to finance a third round of competitive Race to the Top school grants.

Also on tap is the ability for indiviual school districts to apply directly to the federal goverment in the competitve program — something only the states can currently do. For a small state like South Dakota, that’s good news for us.

Some of my Facebook friends were giving me a little grief about how grumpy I look in a picture taken at the School Board FRN convention. It just so happens a moment after the first picture was taken, EdSec Duncan and I exchanged a few laughs that were captured by the same photographer.

So, the guy can smile too  . . .

(Picture is courtesy of the National School Boards Association).

The visits to our legislators are over.  I’m sitting at the airport in Washington, reflecting on the experience.  What did we accomplish?  Was it worth the time to take four days out of my life?

The most honest answer I can give is, I think so – at least, I hope so.  It’s hard to judge how effective our message is – how much weight it will carry, if any.  One thing I’m sure about is that the visit is just a beginning – to be truly effective in communicating our message, each of us needs to continue to communicate and foster relationships with our Congressmen.

What was the message we left behind?  First, that No Child has been extremely successful in focusing attention on accountability in education – a good thing in my opinion – but flawed in its one-size-fits-all application, and in its unrealistic and punitive nature. 

As an example, I’ll share the story about Watertown that I shared with our legislators. Most folks in South Dakota recognize that Watertown is a pretty darn good school.  There are lots of ways we measure our success, including the graduation rate.  Each year we’ve seen our rate improve over the prior year, and the current graduation rate (calculated from 9^th through 12^th grade) now sits at a little over 98%.   Most schools would do back-flips for that high a rate, and most folks would have a hard time considering a school with a 98% graduation rate “in need of improvement.”  Yet that’s just how the feds classify us. 

Why?  Because the NCLB accountability framework doesn’t fairly assess student, school, or school district performance.  There’s lots of reason why a school can unfairly be classified by the government as “in need of improvement.” In our case, it’s because of the unrealistic requirements of special education.  NCLB requires special education students to perform at grade level.  Well, one of the reasons our precious special education students are placed in special education is because they may not be able to function at their biological age.  For example, some sixth grade special education students may only be capable of functioning at the third grade level or the first grade level or whatever.  The point is, NCLB requires them to function at their biological grade level – and those requirements simply aren’t always reasonable. 

So today we discussed with our legislators our wish list for NCLB:

• Reauthorize and reform NCLB – now.  It was supposed to be reauthorized in 2008.  Each passing week that schools have to deal with the current form of NCLB hurts our children.
• Ensure high-quality, reliable and valid assessments for all students, especially for students with disabilities and for English language learners.
• Provide states and school districts greater flexibility to make educationally sound decisions, and be free of mandates that unnecessarily or counterproductively hinder schools from achieving their goals.  One of the criticisms of NCLB has been the one-size –fits-all approach.  Clearly, a rural state like South Dakota has very different needs than states with large urban populations.
• Use multiple measures of academic achievement that will more accurately reflect students’ knowledge and performance in the development of a well rounded education that necessary for success in a 21^st Century economy (as opposed to judging success on a single annual test).
• Permit the use of growth models (assessing how much a student grows academically over a period of time) and other measures of student achievement to more accurately reflect student and school performance.
• Facilitate strategic interventions and incentives that are designed at the local or state level and are targets at students most in need.
• Understand that it’s Congress’ job to support local school boards, not be a national school board.

At our conference, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said “President Obama’s education goal is to create a nation where every child enters kindergarten ready to learn.”  He also said his education department has two overriding goals for American education – “to raise the bar, and to close the gap.” 

How could any school board member not agree with those goals?  They sound good to me – yet like everything in life, the details are what’s most important.  What I’m waiting for is more than rhetoric.

One of the highlight of the school board conference in Washington was a presentation by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.  It seems to me he touched on the concerns of just about every school board member from across the country, including the concerns of school board members from rural states. 

 What are those rural concerns?  Well, there’s many. But primarily, it’s about money and fairness.  With federal dollars moving away from “formula funding,” in other words, funding based on the number of children that qualify for a particular federal program all across the country, to instead moving toward funding that’s “competitive” between the states, where dollars are no longer received on behalf of “all” American children, there’s concern that rural states like South Dakota will be at a competitive disadvantage when lined up against states with more money to spend on fancy educatonal grant writers, as well as the concern that the needs and challanges a rural state faces in educating it’s children will not be viewed as importantly by the Feds.

 Today Duncan addressed that.  He said, “the president wants to give rural schools a competitive advantage because he understands they problems they face.”

 Hmmm. Rhetoric, or is there a plan? 

 I decided to ask. 

 When Duncan finished his talk, I moved to the microphone to pose the question. 

 His response?

 He said funding for the special needs of rural states will be addressed in three ways:

1. Matching funds for technology.
2. Set-aside money for rural states.
3. Relationships will be developed with corporations to drive private money to rural areas.

 As with everything in education, the devil’s in the detail.  Forgive me for being skeptical; after all, we’re dealing with the federal government.  The rhetoric sounds good.  Now let’s see what happens.

I’ve reproduced one of the more impressive charts from today’s Washington school board conference.  The chart shows the US unemployment rate broken down by educational attainment.

I think it’s a pretty graphic reference about the value of an education, especially in today’s economy. 

The source for this data, as well as additional information can be found here.  

School Board Members are hearing that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) will undergo significant changes under proposed changes that are being considered by the Obama administration.

Under the current plan, the goal is for all American children to be proficient by 2014. What we’re hearing is that the new law will shift the focus away from proficiency in 2014 and will instead focus on a new goal that “America will have the highest proportion of college graduates of any country by 2020. We’re also hearing that many of the foundational elements of NCLB — like punitive measures for schools not achieving adequate yearly progress will be done away with. The new law will instead reportedly focus on measures to document academic progress (growth), along with some type of funding incentives for states or districts that demonstrate desired growth.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will speak on the budget and ESEA reauthorization at our Federal Relations Network Conference later this afternoon. I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say.  (Picture courtesy of  NSBA.  Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) addressing us during lunch).