Division of labor

When we divided up the evaluation of teachers, I decided to give 20 teachers to each AP and take 40 on my own. My reasoning was that I didn’t want the evaluation process to compromise the safety and security of the building. My 40 teachers are grouped in the math, social studies, fine arts and world language departments. One of the problems with this process is that I now never end up in any other department since I am focused on completing my observations in the departments for which I am responsible. So while I’m having some nice conversations with the teachers I’m evaluating I’m not really talking to the other 70 teachers in the building about what I am observing in the classroom. To be fair, it’s not a fair assumption to say I’d have been having those conversations with all of those teachers before this system but there is a disconnect with those departments that I’m not evaluating.

Writing up the observation

I’ve chosen to provide a narrative for each observation I do, listing the competencies that each paragraph addresses on the RIDE template. Then I paste each paragraph into the document for each competency. It’s somewhat of a messy process but I’m trying to steer the conversations away from the form and towards what is happening in the class meaning the narrative. Still, the conversation always comes back to the boxes because the more evidence that comes from the observation means less evidence that teachers have to produce on their own. While this process is about what’s happening in the classroom its also about making sure the boxes get filled in. When I complete my observations I email it as a draft to the teachers and then when we meet we talk about the class and I ask them to review the RIDE form to see if they think there might have been a box where I could have provided some evidence. How much of something do I need to see in order to note it in the box is one of the struggles I’m having.

One more attempt with a new focus

A few years back, I was inspired enough to post a few blog entries on issues surrounding the school and education in general. But as time passed, those entries slowed from a steady outpouring to an occasional post to a few sporadic communications. It’s just really hard to find the time to reflect on our work even though it’s such a healthy and important process. So I’m not going to re-commit to the same format of longer more structured commentary but I do want to use this tool to try to keep some sort of running record about the new teacher and administrator evaluation system. It is fair to say that it has not only transformed the way I structure my day but it has changed how I’ve prioritized issues at the school (I think teachers would tell you the same has been true for them). Some of that change is a good thing (more time in classrooms, more time talking to teachers about their craft) but I also have concerns about issues that I’ve not paid attention to because of the focus on evaluation.
So the prose may be a little more messy and the thoughts not as coherent as they could be but I am thinking it’s better to record some of my thoughts so they can be used as a tool to assess the effectiveness of the system rather than blunder forward without pause for consideration. My concern is this new system will either collapse under its own weight or continue to move forward as envisioned without any sort of reflection on how to make it better, leaving careers in it’s wake. As I told the faculty, I am doing my best to adhere to the system as it is presently constructed to determine if it plausible and is the right thing to do. I don’t want to judge the system before experiencing it but I also don’t want to blindly follow without reflecting; we do too much of that as it stands.
I hope this might be a way to start some dialogue about how we can make this system change so it does meet the goal of helping our students in a manner that makes sense to all of us. I hope I can stay true to the intent and in the end, we can use at least part of this as a way to honestly reflect on how we can best make evaluation an integral part of every teacher’s and administrator’s profession. We’ll see; this is all easy to say at 5:00 pm on December 31 after a few days off. I hope I can be disciplined enough to reflect on this new initiative - because it deserves consideration - while providing appropriate time for other important responsibilities.

Morocco

This afternoon, 22 SKHS students and two of our teachers will depart for a ten-day trip to Morocco. The excursion is organized through World Challenge Expeditions (WCE), an outfit that has been sending students to different parts of the world for over 20 years. I came across WCE when I worked in East Greenwich. At that time, they were just starting to work with US schools (they are a British-based company) and we sent two different sets of students to Bolivia and then Peru. At that time, the trips departed at the end of the school year and were for four weeks. Adjusting to the economic times, WCE is now offering shorter trips. The philosophy and the format are the same no matter the length of the trip: students and teachers who are interested begin planning a year in advance. They can choose to go virtually anywhere in the world as long as the country is politically stable. Students spend the year fundraising, researching the country where they want to go, and planning the itinerary. All trips must include some sort of trek and a community service project. Our kids will be working in schools teaching English and working on the facility and will be trekking through some of the mountainous regions in Morocco.

Each student, while in the country, will be required to take on some sort of leadership position for a portion of the trip. While teachers and knowledgeable WCE guides are “in charge,” students are expected to largely make decisions collectively. Students will exchange money, book local travel and buy supplies. If a student leader for the day directs the group to get on a train heading north, when they’re supposed to be heading south, as long as it will not ruin the trip, the adults will allow them to board the train and leave until they discover their mistake and remedy it. For any of us who have traveled overseas on our own or with friends, we can relate to the above scenario. The trip is about visiting a foreign land but it’s also about self-confidence and learning to adapt to a different culture and interact with different peoples with different customs and viewpoints. I remember a parent from East Greenwich telling me that they were blown away by the self-confidence and assuredness that all the students seemed to possess after spending four weeks in Bolivia. Like most aspects of life, one can’t experience authentically by reading about a foreign land or learning a language, one has to live it. This experience, both the positive and the struggles, will stay with these kids for the rest of their lives.

Changing the rules in the middle of the game

Some of you may have read recently about the changes the Board of Regents are considering to graduation requirements for all high school students beginning with this year’s juniors, the Class of 2012. The state has always considered that students were required to pass their classes, demonstrate proficiency through two processes to be determined by each local high school (for SKHS, it is a portfolio and comprehensive course assessments), and complete the NECAP, our state-wide assessment which all juniors take in the fall of their junior year in reading, writing and math as well as science in the spring. In the past, students were required to take the NECAP but it was not considered a high stakes test in the sense that one could perform poorly on the NECAP but still demonstrate proficiency through other measures. That has changed in the past four weeks. The Board of Regents and the RI Department of Education (RIDE) is now proposing that kids who earn a 1 (NECAP scores on a 1-4 scale) on the reading or math portions of the test cannot graduate unless they take the test again and earn a 2 or demonstrate improvement from their previous test. If this becomes a requirement, students in South Kingstown will be required to pass a high stakes test and demonstrate proficiency through the portfolio and comprehensive course assessments (CCAs).

We already understood – and communicated to students and parents – that a poor score on the NECAP could impact graduation. We expected that those students who did not perform well would have to demonstrate that they were worthy of a diploma in other ways . They might have had to complete additional portfolio requirements, or earn a passing grade in an Algebra II class or take a class in the summer, but now the NECAP is a separate graduation indicator which students must pass in order to graduate. As this information comes out, we’ll be informing parents about the ramifications of this decision. For example, in Providence, 71% of the students received a “1” on the math NECAP last year, meaning that it is likely that well over half of Providence students will not earn a diploma. In SK, approximately 50 of this year’s seniors received a 1 on the math NECAP and less than a dozen received a 1 on the reading NECAP. We receive the scores for this year’s junior NECAP performance towards the end of January. The Board of Regents will be considering this change over the next few months. They are holding public hearings to get feedback from educators and families but we’ve been told by RIDE that this is pretty much a done deal.

This decision is frustrating to many of us. We have been working for the past six years to create a local assessment system that provides students opportunities to demonstrate proficiency in ways that are not confined to a single test. Unlike other high stakes test states such as Massachusetts and New York, students cannot take the NECAP multiple times. If they receive a 1 during their junior year, they will have only one more opportunity to improve their score. The NECAP was not designed to be a high stakes test since a student can only take it twice. It is also disconcerting that while a student can demonstrate growth and improvement on the NECAP (meaning some kids will earn a low score on the NECAP and will be able to graduate while others who earn a higher score but don’t show as much improvement will not), they are unable to demonstrate that growth through any mechanism except taking the test. Simply put, the rules have changed in the middle of the game.


Presently, I am meeting with teachers, counselors and district administrators to discuss the “growth plan” we will develop for each student who is at risk of not graduating because of their NECAP performance (those supports are already in place for students who are short on credits or lagging on completing their proficiency-based requirements). Our focus will be to a) provide additional supports for students who will need to re-take the NECAP next fall, b) provide those same students additional opportunities to demonstrate growth so if they do choose to appeal to the state, they will have some examples they can utilize to prove that they have demonstrated growth in ways not evidenced by a sit-down test and c) examine ways we can further support students who in the past have struggled in state testing so that they have a better chance for success when they take the NECAP for the first time during their junior year. In other words, we will need to add a component where we literally teach to the test. We have worked hard over the past six years to create an equitable proficiency-based system that is fair and credible. With the Board of Regents impending decision to add a high-stakes test to the mix, we will have to augment that system to support students who now have one more hurdle they must clear before earning a diploma.

The Rebel Way

Every ten years, NEASC (New England Association of School and Colleges), requires each public high school to complete a self study and host a 4 day visit to maintain accreditation. We are in the process of completing our self study, where we are required to analyze our effectiveness in seven different domains ranging from instruction to leadership & organization to community resources. Our visit will take place in September 2011. You can get more information about the standards and accreditation process at http://cpss.neasc.org/getting_started/2011_explanation_of_standards/

Our first task this summer was to review our mission statement and reframe it so that it expressed a belief statement, core values and student learning expectations. We’ve been regularly reviewing our student learning expectations since they serve as the organizing structure for our graduation portfolio. But this summer marked the first time in my tenure (6th year) that we had embarked upon a formal process of reviewing our mission. A group of school and district administrators, teachers, parents, students and community leaders, who were facilitated by Portsmouth High School Principal, Bob Littlefield, spent two days transforming our mission into a belief statement and set of core values that we believed represented who we are as a school and what we want to become. After creating the statement, we vetted it with teachers, our student body and Parent Teacher Group (PTG). The results of that process created the Rebel Way:

The Rebel Way

South Kingstown High School is proud to be a safe and respectful community of learners that recognizes and encourages the talents and potential of every student. We are committed to a rigorous curriculum that fosters and develops identified academic, civic and social skills. The 21st century Rebel is an independent, critical thinker who effectively participates in our diverse community.

We believe students learn best, first and foremost, when they assume responsibility for their own learning. It is incumbent upon the learning community to support them by providing the following:
-clearly communicated expectations
-varied support structures for all learners
-authentic learning opportunities both in and out of school
- Instruction that meets all students’ needs
-21st century learning tools
-opportunities to employ critical thinking skills
-timely and constructive feedback
-teachers who are knowledgeable in content and method
-a positive, safe and supportive environment
-multiple opportunities to engage parents

What I like about the change in format to a Belief Statement and Set of Core Values is how much more measurable they are compared to a generic mission statement. As we complete our self study, we can use these core values as an indicator of how true we are to realizing those values. The process of defining or re-defining our values as an institution is one of the benefits of the accreditation self-study since we rarely find time to reflect given the hectic reality of our day-to-day responsibilities. The process has facilitated conversations that will help us move forward as a school and as importantly, has included voices from all of our stakeholders.

Improving instructional practice

One of the struggles for any large school is to continually provide support and feedback to teachers and/or departments regarding instructional practice. I’m not referring to evaluations which are – at least for now – relatively infrequent and well, evaluative. I’m referring to information taken from classrooms without mention of teacher name that we can collect to provide us insight into trends we’re observing across the school or a department. When we are visited next year by NEASC or as we were five years ago by a School Accountability for Learning and Teaching (SALT) visit, teams of educators from the outside spend a few days in classrooms and provide observations and feedback regarding trends they observe. Are students engaged? Is the level of conversation rigorous? Are teachers differentiating their instruction? Do students understand what they are learning and why? But those observations are for all intents and purposes evaluative, and isolated. Recently, we’ve taken advantage of a resource provided by the RI Department of Education called the Dana Center. The Dana Center is an organization that works with schools, districts and states on the alignment of standards-based curriculum and the instruction to support those curricular goals. SKHS department chairs were provided training on how to utilize a data collection tool created by the Dana Center where an educator records what they observe over a five minutes time period. Part of the protocol is to, whenever possible, ask students what they are doing to see if the learning objective is evident to students. Observers also observe other indicators such as instructor practices (coaching, lecture, discussion, etc.), student actions (such as reading, writing, working with hands-on materials), rigor of student work (comprehension, application, synthesis) and classroom engagement (highly engaged, well managed, disengaged). Department chairs and administrators have been conducting at least ten of these visits each week. Through internal discussion and professional support from trainers, our department chairs have become comfortable with using the data collection tool. The data is aggregated each week to get a big picture sense of what is happening in classrooms. Recently, department chairs have started sharing the data, using a protocol, with their departments. The early feedback from both department chairs and teachers has been positive. By having these discussions in a non-evaluative milieu, the conversation can be more focused on instructional practice in many classrooms and less about the performance of one teacher. We expect that the continued conversations will provide all of us with a better sense of what we do well and what we need to do to provide a more vibrant and supportive learning environment for SKHS students.