Our SK series teachers

Next Tuesday, approximately 160 seniors will present their graduation portfolios to a group of teachers and proud parents. The portfolio represents both a collection of “proficient” work that the student has completed in a variety of courses and reflections about both specific pieces of work and a summative reflection on their high school experience and what lies ahead. Much of the organization and decision-making about the portfolio occurs in the SK series classes. Each year, every student has a quarter class primarily devoted to the portfolio (SK 101 for freshmen, SK 102 for sophomores, etc). The seniors take their SK 104 class in the second quarter, so they can be ready to present their portfolios in early February. Much of the guidance, hectoring and cajoling comes from the SK series teachers. These teachers are charged with facilitating the process of student preparation for the portfolio. They do not have an enviable task as most students view the portfolio, to be polite, as burdensome. I have had seniors in my advisory for the past two years and they speak of the SK teachers as many adolescents do of their mother: they don’t understand why they’re always on their case, and why they take this portfolio so seriously. Many students openly wonder why the SK teachers won’t just leave them alone. SK teachers require some essential but often unappreciated skills to be successful. They have to be able to critique reflective writing, keep meticulous records (more so than in a regular classroom) and be able to communicate clearly with students and parents. The past week has been particularly hectic for the SK series teachers as many students put it into high gear to get their portfolios completed. From the hubbub of the week before senior portfolio presentations, SK teachers then immediately transition to the SK 102 class with sophomores for third quarter. While the requirements remain the same, the sense of urgency on the part of the sophomores is less so. Much of the first few weeks of the quarter is spent reminding students, who still see high school graduation as a lifetime away, of the requirements and how to access and input proficient work into Richer Picture, our web-based portfolio system. SK teachers also help sophomores to organize and identify portfolio-worthy work, and to start writing reflections on those pieces. While many students chafe at the required SK classes, most students would struggle mightily without the support of the SK series teachers.

Supporting struggling readers

One of the interventions that we’ve established for entering freshmen is a program that aims to have all students reading at grade level by the time they exit high school. Based on data reviewed from the 8th grade year, students who are reading below grade level are required to take a literacy enhancement class. The class focuses on strategies to increase decoding, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. As the Program of Studies describes, literacy teachers Angela Christina and Shannon Stanton help kids increase their comprehension of a variety of materials of varying length and complexity, analyze and interpret what they read in the process of becoming critical readers, and help them learn to write effectively in a variety of formats for a language according to current standards of correctness. You can check out more details about the program at http://hs.skschools.net/LiteracyEnhancement/ This is the fifth year Angela and Shannon have been working together and their results have been impressive. They recently completed assessing their students (mostly ninth and tenth graders) whom they test in the middle and at the end of the year. 94% of the 10th grade students increased their comprehension from the beginning of the year (I don’t have the ninth grade stats as of this posting). Close to half are reading at the ninth grade level which indicates they will be on grade level by June. One of the reasons we’ve seen a steady increase in our reading scores on the NECAP with kids who move from 2s (partially proficient) to 3s (proficient) or 1s (substantially below proficiency) to 2s is due to the work of Angela and Shannon. Our Assistant Superintendent, Mary Kelley, has also been instrumental in developing our capacity as a high school to support struggling readers. In addition to the direct reading intervention support, Diane Kern from URI, has been working with our social studies department for the past calendar year, providing best practice teaching strategies to our social studies teachers and working intensively with a few of them. One of the challenges in high schools is creating structures to provide targeted interventions for students such as literacy enhancement while at the same time attempting to provide meaningful professional development for content-area teachers in these same areas so they can incorporate or reinforce the skill-building within the content, specifically in literacy, writing, numeracy and problem solving for all students. We know if kids can read, write and problem solve, they can be successful in any content-area and job field.

Meeting with the Commish

Just before the holidays, the new Commissioner of Education, Deborah Gist, met with high school principals to discuss her strategic plan and recent initiatives that will impact educators and families across the state. For those of you who don’t know, the Commissioner has made a number of decisions which could have far-reaching implications for how schools are structured, including ending seniority as the determining factor for open positions in a district, mandating a revised evaluation system where teachers are evaluated by administrators annually and an adoption of national standards in math and English. All of these components are part of her Race to the Top application, President Obama’s educational initiative which will provide millions of federal dollars to forward thinking states. There have been many articles over the past month about the Commissioner’s vision for Rhode Island and the Race to the Top application.

When principals met with Commissioner Gist, we asked her questions which touched on the future and her support for existing initiatives like:

· What supports will RIDE provide to principals and district leadership in regards to implementation of the Educator Evaluation System Standards and RI Educator Code of Responsibility?
· What is the feasibility of funding for schools for deepening the secondary reform efforts?
· What can principals expect in the January letters regarding the Commissioner’s Review Visits? Will schools be approved or not approved? What will come next?
· What is the feasibility of funding for schools for performance incentives for teachers and administrators?

In answering questions on a variety of topics, it became clear that Commissioner Gist expects to set out a general direction for districts and then to have each district work it out in the way they best see fit, similar to the way we have developed our diploma systems. Commissioner Gist’s theory of action makes sense but I wonder about capacity to take on more (re-aligning to national standards, continuing the development and student-supports of our PBGR system, an evaluation system where three or four administrators must evaluate every teacher every year), all in the face of the fiscal reality which will necessitate cuts to staff at all levels. This is in addition to the (lengthy) negotiations that will have to take place between the unions and districts on these new systems and their impact on contracts. Don’t get me wrong, much of what the Commissioner is proposing is needed and will provide benefits to kids K -12. But at the heart of most school reform initiatives is a somewhat flawed assumption that educators can do more within the same time and resource constraints. I’m not talking about pay but the notion that we continue to operate under the same institutional structures that were created a century ago for different educational ends. That ancient structure does not facilitate the types of changes we need to make in education today. If we’re going to blow up our current system, fine, but the student and teacher school day as we know it, needs to change as well.