Beyond The Familiar Buildings

On Tuesday all of our students will again be back at school to start another school year. As I have done in the past on this first day, I will visit several of our central peninsula schools to say hello to our returning students and staff and to wish them a good year. Whenever I visit a school I am both impressed by the welcoming climate and struck by how familiar each of the buildings is. For in some ways, our buildings are very much like the schools that I attended when I was a child.  But if you look beyond the facility, you will find that our teachers are approaching their jobs in a much different way than did the teachers of my youth.

Our staff recognizes the need to be a part of a learning community by regularly devoting time to collaboration. The outcome of this time working together is implementing improvements that are leading to a greater degree of student learning. Examples of this include our Seward schools ensuring that the K-12 experience is fluid and not a disjointed stop at the three buildings and Homer High School raising the bar a notch by eliminating the letter grade D-you now need a C to pass. It is great to see that each of our schools is using collaboration to free itself of some of the constraints of traditional education. So while our buildings may look similar to schools of forty year ago, what is going on inside is, in many cases, much different.

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Next Generation Skills

One of the basic tenets of education is that it will prepare students for life after school.  Until recently, the future endeavors of our students were somewhat predictable.  But now, due to the off-the-charts rate of technological change, it is likely that more than two-thirds of our elementary students who come to school next week will end up doing work that has not yet been invented.  Once upon a time we used the term 21st Century Skills to describe what was needed to succeed at these unknown jobs, but since we are 11 years into that century, they are now more aptly called Next Generation Skills.  So, what should we be doing to prepare our students for the unknown of tomorrow?

Several of Cathy Davidson’s recommendations in her book Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn,” make a lot of sense to me.  Here are two of them that we can easily support.  The first is a no-brainer that schools need to embrace the digital world in which our students live.  This does not mean teaching Photoshop instead of history.  It does mean teaching a large array of digital skills and then exploiting what the digital world has to offer our classrooms.  For example, student motivation is increased by assignments that are published on-line. A second recommendation is moving away from an over dependence on student assessment that is based on solitary piecework.  All predictions of the future include jobs that have teams (as is the case today) of people working together.  Although collaboration is an over used term in education, it is clearly a necessary piece to educating students for tomorrow. 

One of our goals this year includes embedding next generation learning skills in our instruction.  All of us need to embrace this.  To not do so is an injustice to our students.

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AYP, Only a Part of the Story

About ten years ago the federal Elementary and Secondary Act was reauthorized under the title No Child Left Behind (NCLB).  Much of what was included in this reauthorization was a radical change from the original act that was designed to help educate children living in poverty.  NCLB set a series of bold targets with sanctions for schools that did not meet them.  Included with these was publicly labeling schools as either making or not making adequate yearly progress (AYP).  The ultimate goal of the act is that by 2014 every public school student will be proficient in reading and math on their approved state exam.  In response to this, states created a graduated timeline of proficiency marks that culminated with the prescribed 100% proficiency.  Now that we are close to 2014, schools are finding that the raised bar is beyond their reach.  For example, in New Mexico 87% of their schools did not make AYP last year.  Several states are now looking for ways to opt out of the 100% requirement.

On Friday the state will release the AYP results for Alaska’s schools.  I am pleased that in comparison to elsewhere in the country and state, our schools did fairly well.  We are expecting however, to learn that about 35% of our schools did not make AYP for 2011.  Although it is ironic, that some of these schools may have improved test results from the previous year, but did not quite clear the higher bar.  NCLB also requires schools to report the progress of their subgroups, e.g., students with disabilities, and these groups if large enough, are considered for the AYP calculation.  The vast majority of our schools not making AYP did so because of one of the subgroups not meeting the state set percentage of proficiency.

It is easy to assume that a school that did not make AYP is failing.   Before jumping to this conclusion, take some time to investigate the series of indicators that are considered for AYP and to learn whether the school improved.  AYP is an important designation, it may not however, be a defining one.

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Poverty and Test Scores

Each spring our students take the state’s  Standards Based Assessment (SBA), a test that assesses skill levels in reading, writing and math.  As has been the case in the past, this year, KPBSD students’ SBA results were far better than those of their Alaskan peers.  We should all feel good about this. 

The SBA is a part of the No Child Left Behind accountability requirement that includes disaggregating scores by subgroups.  For example, scores for students with disabilities are reported separately from the whole.  One of our more unpredictable subgroups is our students who are economically disadvantaged.  At some of our schools, these students score as well as their peers while at others, their scores lag behind those of their other classmates.  This raises the issue of how much influence poverty plays on student achievement.

There is no question that poverty affects a student’s schooling experience.  It is clear that the stresses that are placed on students who live in poverty influences their ability to learn.  It is critical then, that we do all that we can to reduce these stresses by making our schools as accommodating as possible.  KPBSD teachers do a great job of making all our students feel welcome at school.  But it is obvious, that we need to do more to examine why some of our students in poverty do just fine while others struggle.

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Personnel, A Moving Target

Early in my career as a school superintendent I received a phone call from a teacher on New Years Day.   She was calling to let me know that she was quitting her job and would not be returning to her village school for the second semester-the Christmas break was scheduled to end two days later.  At the time, I was incensed that she was abandoning her students. But today, I am more resigned to the fact that the staffing of schools is a target that never stops moving.  Knowing that students respond well to stability, each year we hope that a school’s staffing will not change during the year or for the following year.  But, in reality we know that this is unlikely to be the case.

We are just about finished with our hiring process for the coming year.  In August the district will have 62 new teachers, 9 new principals and 6 new specialists.  This level of turnover (about 12%) is about average for what we experience each year.  On the support side the percent change of staff will be even lower.  When we hire a new teacher or support person, our hope is that they will be KPBSD employees for a long time.  I send thanks to all of our staff who are retiring or moving on.  Let’s do all that we can to welcome their replacements in a way that will help them to think in terms of staying with KPBSD for a while.

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Getting Smarter with Smart Phones

One of our on-going challenges is figuring out how to effectively use personal computing devices in our classrooms. I know that some of our teachers struggle with how to make use of the smart phones that rest in many of our students’ pockets. There is little question that the phones can be a distraction to the lesson at hand. There is also ample evidence to show that the phones are an asset to the learning process.

The more pressing question for me however, is not should we allow them in school (I think we should), but how to help steer students away from the limitations of becoming self-obsessed with social networking. It appears that many of our students are consumed by the immediate reward of what lies on, for example, Facebook, and as a result, are not inclined to spend a sustained period of time being on-line without checking this social medium. I don’t want to dismiss social media- they are powerful learning tools-but do want us to think in terms of moving our students away from being preoccupied with sites that can be little more than a place for mindless self-aggrandizing. All of us need to help our students recognize that some of what lies in on-line social media does little to help prepare them for life after school.

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Supporting our Graduates

The last week of school is one of those stretches of time when there is so much going on that things quickly blur into an endless series of events.  In the late afternoons and evenings of this week, high schools hold their graduation ceremonies, the culminating events of the year.  This week, I was fortunate to attend six of these.  Each of the ceremonies, ranging from the more formal pomp and circumstance at Kenai Central to the unique event at Spring Creek Correctional Center, was inspiring to me.  I am thrilled that close to 600 of our students accepted their diplomas this week.  The myriad of commencement speakers encouraged the graduates to follow their dreams, be their own person and not let mistakes slow them down.  While these words are true and predictable, they are often difficult to follow.

I know that all of us at KPBSD wish our graduates the very best.  As the blur of the week fades into the long weekend and we soon lose ourselves in the swirl of summer, let’s not lose sight of the 600 graduates still needing our support.  A graduate’s walk across the stage symbolizes a significant step into adulthood; it should not however, mean that he or she is on their own.

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Keeping Things Half-Full

Earlier this week I listened to public comment taken on the borough assembly’s ordinance to raise the salary of our borough mayor.  Those who spoke against the ordinance referenced the peninsula’s poor economy stating that it was not fair for this position to receive such an increase while many residents were economically suffering.  On the other side were those who claimed that the raise was justified and that the economy of the borough is perhaps not as bad as people think.  One person stated that the borough’s unemployment rate is lower than in previous years and that the pending influx of money from the new oil rig in the Inlet and the bonanza of capital projects for the Peninsula will make things even better.  In sum, things are looking up. Without dwelling on which side is more accurate, I was struck by what could be described as those who view things as half-full and those who use the half-empty lens.  Both views are at times appropriate, but in education it is a mistake to let the half-empty perspective become pervasive.

Educating our children requires a workforce that is energized and optimistic.  A despondent teacher who shuffles through the workday will not help our students nearly as much as one who is in good spirits.  Fortunately, when I visit our schools and classrooms I rarely sense a half-empty atmosphere.  Never the less, we need to do all that we can to keep things on the half-full side of the equation.  The easiest way to do this is to show appreciation for our school employees. When you can, tell them that they are doing a good job.

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BP Teachers of Excellence Applying What is Learned

A basic strategy of good teaching is applying the taught concept in a local context.  An example of this when teaching the sine wave, is to have students graph our ever changing amount of daylight; it graphs to an almost perfect shape of this wave.  Last night we held our annual BP Teacher of Excellence Awards dinner.  The brief summaries of each of the 5 teachers’ nominations included how the they provide their students application opportunities as a part of their instruction.  The recognition of our 5 teachers is a great way to end the year.  Because they work among many other excellent teachers, I know that each of them was humbled to be recognized in this way.  As we continue to refine our instructional practices,  let’s take some time to recognize the many instances of excellent (application filled) teaching in our classrooms.

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Teacher Unions Not To Blame

One of the more interesting developments from the nation’s mid-term elections is the labeling of organized labor as a reason for the country’s economic downturn.  As I am sure you have seen, teacher unions are at the top of this list of those to blame.  While I am not always in agreement with all of our teacher unions’ ideals, I feel that to blame them for the economic malaise is a mistake.

Educating our children is the most important social service that our country can offer.  Using teachers as a scapegoat for the recession, while perhaps politically savvy, may ironically cause the quality of this service to be diminished.  The teaching profession needs to attract the best candidates that it can, politically fueled teacher bashing may cause the opposite.

In the coming five years our district will likely lose (to retirement) more than a quarter of our teachers.  We will need to recruit the best and the brightest to replace these folks.  A public appreciation of our teachers will help us to attract and then keep these new hires.  Let’s not cut off the nose to spite the face.

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