Earlier this week I spent a couple of hours at Kenai Central visiting classrooms and speaking with students, teachers and the principal. During a passing period I stood in the hallway to watch the students stream by, obviously relieved to be free of class for a moment. It was fun to watch the horseplay of some of the boys, the serious couples saying goodbye at the classroom door and the rest of the students dutifully heading to their next class. What I took away from my visit is that the school had a friendly, upbeat atmosphere. After seeing the different styles of dress and hair, it was clear that the students felt comfortable to be who they wanted to be. While it is difficult to classify students, it was obvious that the school has multiple social groups who get along with one another.
When you consider the most important variables that affect student achievement, you will find that school culture is always close to the top of the list. Although school is primarily designed for learning content and skills, it is also a place to socially grow and learn about different types of people. The trials of adolescence can be exasperated by the social tensions of high school. I was pleased that such tensions at KCHS were not obvious to me. Many of our students have challenging situations at home and unfortunately, some are homeless. School for these students can be a refuge from the stress of their lives. But this can only be the case if the building is safe and welcoming. I know that our staff at all of our schools works hard to make this the case. As we go into our Thanksgiving week, let’s take a moment to thank our teachers, support staff and administrators for creating a positive school culture in their buildings.
New Standards
Each spring our students in grades 3-10 take the state’s required Standards Based Assessment (SBA) in reading, writing and math. The state is now developing a new set of assessments to measure proficiency on the new state standards that are closely tied to the Common Core State Standards. Because these standards are more rigorous than those on which the SBAs are based, there is trepidation by some in KPBSD that fewer of our students will be proficient on the new tests. While in the short term this will likely be true, it is important to note that our KPBSD staff is not sitting around waiting to react; they are working hard to implement the new standards.
Our first step of this implementation was to revise our language arts and math curricula by basing them on the new standards. Despite some bumps with resources and implementation, our students are now receiving instruction in language arts and math that is in line with the state standards. Our next step is to implement quarterly assessments to measure our students’ learning that will in turn, provide another source of data to guide our teachers’ instruction. With the new curricula and internal quarterly assessments in place, our students will be prepared for the state tests. Unfortunately, there is likely not enough time to get all our students up to speed by spring 2015 when the new tests are first administered. In a perfect world a better way to make this transition to the new standards would have been to roll out them out over the course of six years. It would have been ideal if the first two years were for grades K-3’s adoption, next two years for grades 4-8 and grades 9-12 during the final two years. Unfortunately, the need to be in compliance with federal guidelines prevents such a logical approach. The downside is that our district is once again asked to implement change in a hurried manner. The upside is that we are charging ahead to meet the new challenge and have a strong, dedicated staff to make this happen.