Monthly Archives: July 2012

A Kindergarten Teacher Influences a Superintendent

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This is an incredible week for me. Not only do I have access to Joanne Picone-Zocchia and Giselle Martin-Kniep who are willing to conference with me individually answering my questions and helping to guide my work, but there’s a wonderful group of educators here too. My work with them is making me a better leader. Why? Because we’re having rich conversations about the changes in our field and their honest insights  help me to see other points of view.

Jane and Kathy, both retired educators and continuing to work in the field, bring a thoughtful, caring and professional view to the work that we share with experiences in the ARCS and protocols of Communities for Learning that have helped me understand the structures of this community. The entire East Syracuse Minoa team has helped me with examples of best practice, ideas for communicating vision, wonderful peer review from Kathy, and Donna, a superintendent whom I wish I had worked with at some point in my career.

And then there’s Alex, a caring, creative, vibrant Kindergarten teacher who reminds me so much of our own RCS Kindergarten teachers that she could seamlessly fit in at RCS tomorrow. She’s been the teacher voice in my head all week. The clearly hard working, dedicated, caring professional who is saying, “okay, I’ll follow all of the mandates, I’ll teach new things in new ways but I’m really wondering what’s happening to our children?” I KNOW that we have teachers feeling that same way and so the power of what Alex is saying is that it reminds me that teaching and learning and this business of school is incredibly complex and there are a million important skills and things that we’ve always done that are still important for their development that must continue. I won’t forget that, I promise.

But I want it all. And I know we have the faculty, administrators and staff to get there. I want all of the fun, creative, developmentally appropriate activities and learning that have taken place all along right next to better student achievement in Math and ELA. I still want to dress up and participate in the PARP plays (maybe without the goose get-up next year please) and go on field trips and read stories for pleasure and play outside and do Science experiments and eat foods from foreign places in our SS studies units. I just want our Math and ELA curriculum aligned and rigorous at the same time. And our teachers are fantastic, so why can’t we have that? I know if anyone else can do it, then we certainly can. Why do I know this? Because our teachers—-YOU—-are incredibly gifted, dedicated, caring and capable and I trust you to figure it out with us.

Is it Just About Test Scores?

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Remember the telephone game from when you were a kid? Someone whispers a sentence into the first kid’s ear and it gets repeated through a group of students with the final student stating out loud what he heard. Remember how the final sentence was never the same as the first?

So it’s not just about test scores but I’m aware that it’s how I may sound at times.

I’m thinking a lot about our focus on the common core standards and improving academic success PK-12. We’ve focused on school improvement with our many changes last year and we will continue to focus on what our students are learning again this year. And we rocked it in MANY GRADE LEVELS! It’s important that we remember that paying attention to what we teach our students in Math at each grade level is MOST about making sure that all kids have access to the same content and high expectations as they move to each subsequent grade—so that by the time they’re in 7th grade, we don’t have a 7th grade Math teacher finding so many students who can’t do fractions or who can’t multiply in their heads. Why is that important? Because if they can’t manage the basic skills quickly and easily, they struggle to tackle more complex mathematics. Then they’re at a disadvantage and that’s the last thing we want. It’s also about making sure our students are prepared as well as or better than students in neighboring school districts and across NYS with whom they will be competing for college entrance or jobs. I want our Randolph students to come out on top in college and career readiness.

So as we continue to focus on school improvement, know that it isn’t just about test scores. It’s about our curriculum and how we make sure we’re all teaching what’s expected at our grade level with high expectations for all students, so that every child can maximize her success in the subsequent year because last year’s teacher made sure she learned all she needed to succeed. We’ve prepared our kids so well in a zillion other ways for many, many years—which we will continue to do—and now we’re maximizing learning in those common core areas as well.

Keeping our eye on that continuum of aligned curriculum and self reflecting about what each of us can do better.

 

Alignment, Representation, Culture, Sustainability

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We are talking about the ARCS framework, Alignment, Representation, Culture and Sustainability in a school system. And as you would expect, I’m making lots of connections to what we do at Randolph Central. The ARCS framework is embedded in the MPPR, or principal evaluation rubric, and it will help us to think about our own leadership as administrators but is also making me think a lot this week about distributed leadership.

The idea I’m learning and thinking so much about is this idea of a community that lasts. How do we strengthen our teacher leaders, our teachers and ultimately our students so that the changes we’re implementing in school improvement are aligned and sustained well after a single leader leaves? As I analyze this, I realize that if I was hit by a bus tomorrow, our BOE and Admin teams could clearly articulate our school improvement efforts and plans to my replacement. I don’t think our teachers and students could do so as clearly and I know it would be different depending upon who’s having the conversation. Room for improvement for me and my leadership? Check. Working on it.

The ARCS framework described above will give us a common language for developing and discussing a common vision and shared leadership. This conference is helping me improve my own leadership and will help me to strengthen our leadership teams as well. Bet you all can’t wait for me to return? 😉

What Inspires You?

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At the evening session of Communities for Learning, the question of “What Inspires You?” was posed. I sat listening as educators shared personal passions like photography and nature and Art and thinking that what inspires me is my work. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been really good at in my lifetime. The chance to make a difference for children? What could possibly be more inspiring?

School was an incredible experience for me as a child. Teachers are the people who took care of me in the sixth grade when my father was seriously injured in a coal mining cave-in and my mother was consumed with caring for him through rehab. Teachers are the people, along with my mom and my grandparents, who encouraged me to try everything from leadership roles in clubs to acting in the Sr. Class Play to competing in DECA. My father was very strict and not at all “inspiring”, I wasn’t permitted to date or to go anywhere but he allowed me to do anything that was school related. So I joined everything! School was the place where I began to learn what I was good at and what I was better off leaving to others with more ability and talent. I’m grateful for those experiences and I am compelled to recreate them for our students. It’s the reason we’ll be supporting two musicals next year, not just one for HS, but one for ES too. Look at the huge number of students who are touched by that experience!

I’m most inspired by those experiences that we create that touch students who aren’t connected to us through academic or athletic success. For those of you who will remember, it’s why I started the Randolph Rumble in 2002-03—to showcase the talents of an amazing group of young men who were disenfranchised in our system. In talking to them because they wouldn’t participate in gym class or for disciplinary reasons, I learned that they had a band called Post Mortem. At that point I asked them to perform at the Randolph Rumble–a culminating activity originally designed as a school wide behavior management program to improve attendance and school climate. They rocked that auditorium and from that day forward those boys were somebody in our school, they had an identity and a voice. And every one of them graduated and continues to be successful today. It’s one of the moments in my career that most inspired me and of which I’m most proud.

Another is Joe Tyler. When I arrived at Gowanda, Joe was in the 9th grade and his dad saw me in the hall one evening. At that point it didn’t look like Joe was headed for much academic success. His dad told me, “I need that boy to go to BOCES and learn a trade so he can get work some day”. Because Joe was technically a 9th grader and BOCES occurs in 11th-12th grade, it wasn’t typical to send him. I said, “I’ll send him to BOCES for a trade!” and handing Joe Tyler his HS diploma was one of the best moments of my whole life. He found what worked for him and graduated from HS.

Our kids and helping them find success and happiness, that’s what inspires me. Every time one of our students walks through my door to talk to me about something, that what fuels me. How about you?

Communities for Learning, C4L

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As I’ve been writing on this blog since 2006 (wow!), I’ve used the space for several purposes. Originally, it was primarily a space for me to get my thinking about all of the issues in my principalship out of my head. I could process my ideas and best of all, solicit the thinking of others. Since that time, I’ve used the blog to share my thinking, listen to others, disseminate information, celebrate success, think out loud about family and life situations, and communicate with our school community.

This week, I’m in Connecticut at Communities for Learning, where I’ve taken on a fellowship. My goals are ambitious and in service to our school district. I’m hoping to study my own leadership, our team leadership and our school improvement efforts. I’m planning to do precisely what we’re asking our teachers to do: to create an intentional plan for school improvement in the same way that they have to intentionally plan their curricular units and instruction around the common core curriculum. We saw significant improvement and success in some areas this past year—I want to know how to help teachers identify why. I also have a publishing requirement with the fellowship. Why does that matter? Because when we get to where we’re going, from #202 as an elementary school to #102, it will be helpful to the field of education if we’ve documented how we got there. Too often we can’t pinpoint what programs or changes made the difference–I’m setting out to write about and document our efforts.

Why do I need to come to Connecticut to do this work? Because within this Communities for Learning fellowship, I am working with colleagues from across the State who come with a variety of expertise—teachers, principals and other administrators, along with Giselle Martin-Kniep, Joanne Picone-Zocchia and Jennifer Borgioli  from LCI. Also, I’m here with other fellows who will share their own ideas about school improvement, who will listen to our RCS plans and initiatives, and who will then give guidance and feedback about our development of an intentional and cohesive plan for school improvement.

What do I most hope to learn over this week and then continued work with the Community throughout my fellowship this school year? How do I have meaningful conversations with our administrators and teachers in which we can examine our past practices, determine what’s made a significant difference in our student learning and achievement, and replicate those efforts throughout our system? How do I help teachers continue and improve their work in data inquiry and sharing best practices? How do I help them to do so without judgment and without jumping to conclusions about why they or others saw greater success this past year? How do I make connections so that every member of our school community sees their inter connectedness and how valuable is their role in the bigger system? And how do I best lead so that everyone feels valued and understands the importance of aligning curriculum and instruction so that OUR STUDENTS have a consistent, rigorous path through our system in which all students maximize their learning and therefore, their academic success?

And Communities for Learning—Giselle and Joanne who I mentioned earlier? That’s also the organization who developed the MPPR, our rubric for evaluating our principals—so another goal of my fellowship is to learn how to use the MPPR to increase the capacity of our entire administrative team. If we improve our leadership, everyone benefits.

So you may or may not be interested in my writing this week. . . but I’ll be back to using this space to get my thinking out of my head, to solicit your feedback, and to learn how to be a better leader for our school district. Please chime in if you read something here that gets you thinking about something you want me to think about too!

School Improvement at RCS

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On Tuesday, the 3-8 Math and ELA scores for 2011-12 were released from the State. Today’s Jamestown Post-Journal printed an article about the release entitled “Falling Behind”. In the article they list the State “Meeting Standard” percentages and the Chautauqua County “Meeting Standards” percentages. A 3 or a 4 as referenced in this blog post is what the Post Journal article references when they say “Meeting Standard”. It’s a four point scale on all 3-8 Math and ELA tests, a 4 being the best. On the twelve measures referenced in the article, Randolph Central exceeds the State “Meeting Standard” levels on seven of them.

I’m excited to report our results in detail, especially given the memo that accompanied the State results from Commissioner King and Chancellor Tisch. They reported that there was incremental improvement across the state, that 55.1% (52.8% last year) of grade 3-8 students across the State met or exceeded the ELA proficiency standard (a 3 or a 4) and that 64.8 % (63.3% last year) met or exceeded the standard in math (a 3 or a 4).

You will see below that we have seen much more than incremental gains in most areas. I know we’re not as far as we’d like to be, but we’re taking the right steps—as evidenced by the improvements here–to get there.

Our results in Grade 3, ELA and Math, were very strong with 62.2% in ELA and 79.6% in Math achieving a 3 or a 4.   This was one of our strongest grade levels last year and continues to be this year. In fact, in my analysis of 20 Catt and Chautauqua county districts, Grade 3 Math achieved the highest mean scale score of any other school!

Grade 4 made HUGE gains, with 64.9% at a 3 or 4 in ELA, up from 35% last year and 70.2% in Math, up from 52%.

Grade 5 also showed significant improvement with 51.6% of our students at a 3 or a 4 in ELA, up from 37% last year, and 58.1% in Math, up from last year’s 52%.

Grade 6 continues to need work. They showed little to no gains through the year on our iReady diagnostic assessments and their state results have 46.5% at a 3 or a 4 in ELA, down from 66% last year and Math at 39.4%, down from 62%. HOWEVER, please note that this same group was only at 37% in ELA last year and at 52% last year–thus this group of students DID grow from last year. 

Grade 7: we need improvement here. They are at 57% for ELA and 57.7% for Math, down from 67% and 65% respectively. Our entire system needs to improve in the area of Math and you can see above that we’re getting there at the youngest grades, but that leaves a transition period for those in the middle. As one of our BOE members, Julie Milliman, often says, “it’s great that we’re improving for our youngest students but we have to make sure we’re taking care of the students caught in the middle between NYS’s old standards and the new, more rigorous common core curriculum.” She’s right. That’s why we’ve added Math support through 1.5 new Academic support teachers at grades 5-8, so that they can focus on the individual gaps our neediest students have while classroom teachers continue to help students through the more rigorous common core curriculum.

Grade 8 did very well— with 71.2% of students at 3 or 4, up from 43% in ELA and 72.9% in Math, up from 50%. SIGNIFICANT gains!

This isn’t a single class or teacher problem or success. It’s a systemic issue–one which absolutely requires us to work closely as a District, making solid, data based decisions that improve learning for our students. Every decision we make has to be centered on what’s best for learning—how will it affect our students and their achievement?

We have much analysis left to be done, including by student and teacher. Our admin team is busy at work asking questions like which teachers saw the greatest gains, where and why? If any students are at a level 1 and they aren’t SPED, what’s happening there? And then the analysis of what did we do that had a significant impact? Where did our teachers most fully align to the common core curriculum and what was the result? How did iReady diagnostic and interim testing affect our results? What about the other programs we’ve implemented? What did teachers do differently, or not, and how did it impact scores?

Couple the gains on these assessments with our 8 point gains in HS and MS rankings for Business First this last year and I’d say we are truly starting to see the fruits of our labor. Remember that Business First includes four years of data and other schools are trying to improve too, so an 8 point gain in the ranking is significant.

I’m really pleased and proud of everyone who contributed, thank you so much for your hard work. We’re going to get there!! Our faculty, staff and administration have always worked hard. I love that we’re all working hard with focus on the same goal of an aligned, rigorous curriculum. And the end result? College and career ready students who leave Randolph with every advantage because we’ve maximized their learning all along the way. WAY TO GO RCS!