Author Archives: Steve Atwater

New standards will help us improve

By Steve Atwater | Published: September 2, 2013
The new Alaska standards in language arts and math are the foundation of our curriculum development in these two content areas.  These standards that are tightly aligned with the Common Core raise the bar of K-12 instruction by placing a greater emphasis on those skills needed for college or the workplace.  Recently, I’ve encountered a […]
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Rewards for expected behavior

By Steve Atwater | Published: August 25, 2013
One of the challenges of raising children is helping them develop a level of intrinsic motivation that will help guide their behavior.  In a perfect world all children would eat their vegetables and get straight As.  But as we know, these two behaviors are often only met after offering dessert or in some extreme cases, […]
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First day of school

By Steve Atwater | Published: August 21, 2013
Yesterday was the first day of school for most of our schools; it is my favorite day of the school year.  I started the day at one of our elementary schools and as always, was impressed by the good energy of the staff and by how well the influx of students and hovering parents were […]
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New school rating system

By Steve Atwater | Published: August 3, 2013
Earlier this week the state released the preliminary results of the Alaska School Performance Index (ASPI) data.  This is a new rating system that considers a series of data points for each school and then summarizes them by giving a star rating.  Five stars is the best a school can do, while one star is […]
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Student Attendance

By Steve Atwater | Published: July 18, 2013
During the past month I have spent a lot of time looking at our students’ scores on last year’s state standardized tests.  In an effort to identify what may contribute to some students not scoring proficient, I have looked at the scores from several angles.  One of these angles is student attendance.  Not surprisingly, those […]
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Bring your own device

By Steve Atwater | Published: June 28, 2013
Alaska Communications, the company that provides most of our bandwidth, is interested in showcasing KPBSD in one of its television ads.  As a way to get them thinking in terms of what they want to include, we spent time with them on the phone yesterday discussing our use of technology.  One of their questions was […]
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Summer School

By Steve Atwater | Published: June 17, 2013
Now that school is closed for the summer break, I am once again hearing that being out of school for 90 days from the end of May until mid-August is too long. This familiar concern that assumes that students lose key academic skills during these months is likely valid but may not be as significant […]
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Our Graduates

By Steve Atwater | Published: May 27, 2013
At four O’clock on Friday afternoon the District’s final graduation ceremony of the 2012-13 school year took place.  What began on May 1 at Marathon School ended in Port Graham with one senior receiving his diploma.  I was fortunate to attend 8 of the 20 graduations and came away impressed by how polished the ceremonies […]
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Assessing Schools

By Steve Atwater | Published: May 18, 2013
For the past several years there has been a push to make schools more accountable.  Some, driven by a sense of fiscal responsibility, want to ensure a good return on the investment of public dollars.  Others, driven by a desire to see our students outperform their peers from across the globe are raising the bar, […]
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Welcoming schools

By Steve Atwater | Published: May 12, 2013
I like to brag that KPBSD is the best school district in Alaska.  While much of this opinion is based on emotion, I do feel that we have lots of data to help support this claim.  Nevertheless, we do experience our fair share of bumps in the road.  It is not uncommon for a parent […]
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