Math, It’s Elementary

By Steve Atwater | Published: May 6, 2011

During the first week of May it was my privilege to take part in the Seward Math Bowl.  This is an annual event that brings together our upper elementary students from around the district.  The teams compete in two half hour exercises.  It is a  great venue for the participating students to showcase their excellent math skills.   I was impressed by the good attitude of the 150 or so students- everyone was in a good mood.   Besides being the largest people in the room, my team that included two board members, did little else to distinguish themselves. 

Putting together an event like this takes an enormous amount of planning and volunteering.  I know that during the year we hold similar type events at several other schools.  Let’s be sure to not take the organizing side of these events for granted.  As the year comes to a close, I send thanks to all our staff who go the extra mile to make these events happen.

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Keeping our Teachers Hungry

By Steve Atwater | Published: April 18, 2011

Last week I was in Anchorage to help our HR department with the hiring process at the state’s annual job fair; meeting prospective teachers is one of my favorite things to do.  We are fortunate that KPBSD is one of the more desired places in Alaska to teach- there were a lot of candidates waiting to share their resumes with us.  The majority of the candidates were first year teachers bubbling with enthusiasm about the prospect of their first teaching job. 

Although a new teacher does not have any formal experience, they bring a refreshing level of enthusiasm to a school.  I’ve noticed that as the routine of teaching sets in, and teachers become more effective and efficient, it is often difficult to maintain this level of enthuisiasm. It is thus incumbent on administrators, and the district  as a whole, to do what it can to help keep teachers hungry to teach.  The easiest and best way to do this is to compliment staff on doing a good job.  So as the year comes to a close, be sure to take time to let our teachers know that they are appreciated and doing a good job.  A teacher or administrator who has been with us for a while needs to, and deserves to hear this.

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Parent Volunteers

By Steve Atwater | Published: April 18, 2011

For the past three months we have been interviewing candidates for our various principal openings.  One of our standard questions asks what they will do to bring parents into the school.  The responses are somewhat predictable and usually center on effective communication.  We ask this question because we know that a school with good parent participation will usually offer our students a better experience.  Parental involvement in school has many forms, but is likely most important at the classroom level.  I know that  a parent who spends time helping students while the teacher works with the rest of the class is invaluable.

Last Wednesday I attended the Kenai Middle School’s volunteer appreciation luncheon.  This is an annual event that the staff puts on to recognize their volunteers.  Seeing the decorations and enough food to feed a small army helped me realize how much the teachers appreciate the parents who spend time helping  in school.  Thanks to all of our volunteers.  If you know someone who is thinking about spending an hour a week in a classroom, then be sure to give them a nudge to do so.  Our students are that much better off because of our volunteers.

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KPBSD Art Alive and Well

By Steve Atwater | Published: April 8, 2011

Yesterday afternoon I spoke to the Homer Rotary and afterwards fielded questions including one that asked about the impact of No Child Left Behind.  I gave my standard answer that the Act was both good and bad.  Good in that it caused educators to become much more analytical about student performance and bad because it unreasonably assumes that a three-day testing window (that we just completed) is an accurate way to grade a school and district.  I also mentioned that the narrowing of the curriculum in response to the pressure of the tests was a bad thing.  It was thus somewhat ironic that twice that day I saw evidence of our students excelling at art.  The first was at McNeil Canyon where their hallways are adorned with wonderful student art projects.  The second was my attendance at the 2011 Visual Feast- The District-wide High School Student Art Show.

Our high school art students send their work to Kenai each April so that it can be displayed in this show.  As I was last year, I was impressed by how good the work was.  When the students received their certificates it was clear that they and their beaming teachers were thrilled- this was a big moment.  There is a plethora of research to support the value of art instruction; we need to do all that we can to ensure that we don’t let our tightening budget dismiss art instruction as an extra.  Thanks to all of our art teachers for their dedication to bringing out the best in our students.  From what I could tell from yesterday, you are having success.

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Paul Banks Students Shine

By Steve Atwater | Published: April 8, 2011

Each year during the first full week of April, our schools suspend their daily routine to provide time for the state-mandated testing.  This week is of course a big deal because so much is made of how the students perform on the tests.  There is one school however, Paul Banks, that does not have any students in the grades 3-10 testing window.  I spent part of Thursday morning at Paul Banks and came away feeling that if these students were included in the testing, they would do just fine. 

It was great to see kindergarten students composing errorless complete sentences and hear second graders flawlessly read their stories to me.  I saw numerous instances of our students with special needs receiving excellent support.  It was good to also see several parent volunteers kneeling next to students to help with the task at hand.  Finally, it was impressive to watch the teachers skillfully corral the swirl of energy in each classroom.  I know that the parents of our Paul Banks students are protective of what they have- it is easy to understand why.

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Nikiski Community Support

By Steve Atwater | Published: March 31, 2011

On Tuesday evening I was at the Nikiski Middle/High School library to meet with staff and community members to explain our process for hiring a new principal.  I was thrilled to see the room jammed with close to 100 people.  Most in the crowd were there to support their assistant principal’s candidacy for this vacancy.  The good turnout indicates a lot about Nikiski.  It showed that folks are paying close attention to their school.  The support for the AP also let me know that the community likes the way the school is being run.   

The more subtle message to come from the meeting is the anxiety of not knowing what may come with a new principal.  I appreciate this and recognize that when things are progressing in the right direction, it is worrisome to consider a change that may slow that progress.  My encouragement to the community is to recognize that yes, things are better than they were before, but that there is still a long way to go.   The community should expect the new principal to help the school continue down the improvement path, and not keep things the way they are. 

A good level of community support is what all our schools want-thanks to the Nikiski folks for showing this.

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Collaboration and Pay

By Steve Atwater | Published: March 23, 2011

An on-going conversation that recently gathered steam is the issue of how best to compensate teachers.  The current method used by KPBSD (and most school districts) considers years of teaching experience and level of education as the determinant for how much a teacher is paid.  There is however,  a growing sentiment that this method is flawed since the annual raise may or may not be in response to an  increase in performance.  There are some who propose that a fairer way to calculate teacher pay is to base it on merit.   That is, the more deserving you are, the more you get paid. 

The premise of merit pay is that if there is more money to be had, teachers will work harder and get better results.  Unfortunately, there is a growing body of research that disputes this when the gain is limited to individual performance.  The findings of this reserarch show that a group working together will be more easily motivated to improve than will an individual.  So, the idea of offering more to a teacher if her fourth graders pass the SBAs is, according to this group, not a guarantee that this will happen.   A more effective way to motivate teachers to improve is to have a team or the whole school work together to achieve a goal- people that are a part of a team generally are more likely to try harder than when working alone.   My take is that trying to incentivise teachers with individual merit pay will probably not work, and more importantly will lead to a fractured staff .

Collaboration when done well is a difficult endeavor.  It is however, well worth the effort when it causes an increase in student learning .   Conversations on merit pay should avoid the reward of the individual and instead focus on the whole staff.

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Retaining 3rd Graders

By Steve Atwater | Published: March 12, 2011

This year, one of the Governor’s main education goals is to stop the social promoti0n of students from 3rd grade.  I assume that the  premise for this is the understanding  that failure to be on track at the end of this grade will likely doom a student to being behind his peers for the remainder of  his schooling.  Although there is plenty of research to support that this is true,  research also shows that retaining students will rarely have the desired effect.  Students wh0 are held back usually fail to catch up, are more likely to drop out and more importantly, are often scarred with the label of failure.  What then, should we do do with a student who, at the end of 3rd grade, is behind his peers?

The easy answer is to not let them fall behind.  We have an elaborate system of recognizing students’  learning deficits and apply a series of  interventions to help them overcome these. We expend a lot of energy helping students catch up.  We also now devote federal Title I funds to early childhood education and our findings suggest that our students who attend preschool will do better than those who do not.  I feel that we are doing a good job with proactively helping our primary students who are not making the necessary gains.

The more difficult answer includes rethinking how we structure our students within our school system.  Is strict  division of students by age the best way to go?  Should we expect that a class of 25 kindergartners will all be at the same academic place four years later at the end of 3rd grade? Yes, we aspire to this, but no, realistically we know that this is unlikely. 

Rather than make a student repeat 3rd grade, we should be able to structure the learning environment in a way that allows a school to address areas where students are not making the necessary gains.  A retained student returns to school in August and sees last year’s peers move on to a new classroom while he stays put with a new group of younger students.  There may be times when it is necessary to do this, but I don’t feel that we should have a rigid system that uses the results of a test in April of 3rd grade to determine whether a student can advance.  The results of this test should be used to inform instruction, not cause a repeat of what occurred the previous year. 

As we struggle to identify the priorities for funding, it seems that money for early childhood education should come at the top of the list.  A quality early childhood experience will cause the retention conversation to fade away.

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Making the most of funding

By Steve Atwater | Published: March 3, 2011

One of the pieces of legislation that is currently working its way through the state’s legislature is a bill that will fund the Governor’s Performance Scholarship Program.  If funded, the program will provide post-secondary support for students who take a prescribed number of courses while earning a good grade point average.  The goal of the program is two-fold. The first is to provide an incentive to students to keep their foot on the academic gas pedal and the second is to bolster the number of students staying in Alaska to attend a college or training school.  The scholarship is only good for Alaska institutions.  Ironically, the move to add money for the scholarship comes at a time when our school district will likely not receive enough revenue to maintain our current level of service.  Is helping students to pay for college more important than spending money on their K-12 education?  Probably not, but there is a reservation by many that the money devoted to K-12 is not having the desired effect.  So the question that begs to be answered is, is KPBSD making good use of its public funds?

From my perspective, the answer is yes.  We can point to small, but steady improvements in a variety of tangible areas, e.g., test scores or graduation rate and also to the more subtle indicators such as number of incidences of poor student behavior and increased level of staff collaboration as evidence that the funding of our schools is well spent.  It is important that our stakeholders share my opinion and if you don’t, then let your principal or teacher or one of us at the district office know where you feel that we are not holding up our end of the funding bargain.

On Tuesday night our assembly passed a resolution to fund our schools (for next year) at the same level as they did this year.  While this does not make us whole, it does, during these tight times, indicate that there is a basic confidence in what we are doing for our students each day.  I am appreciative of the timing of the resolution because it allows us to move forward with the issuance of contracts.  I encourage everyone who has a stake in this conversation to have an answer to the question, are we making good use of our public funds?

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Children in Poverty

By Steve Atwater | Published: February 24, 2011

At Monday’s board worksession, Senator Murkowski spent 45 minutes speaking about where things are headed with education at the federal level.  I shared that we are concerned that federal money for children in poverty is losing some of its entitlement status and is instead being divvied up through competitive grants.  I feel that this is a mistake and Senator Murkowski concurs. 

One of the greatest predictors of student success at school is socioeconomic status (SES).  That is, students with a higher SES tend to do better at school.  It is incumbent on all of us then, to do all that we can to counter the negative effects of poverty that work to limit our students’ schooling experience.  The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was designed to begin to level the school playing field for impoverished youngsters.  There is little question that entitlement money from ESEA has been a benefit for KPBSD’s less fortunate students.  This year our Title I money is serving 635 students.

While I agree with others that federal spending needs to be reduced, I feel that it is a mistake to not provide extra resources for our children in poverty.  After all, these children played no part in landing in this plight.

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