The Bangor Daily News just posted this article;
"Only 30 Percent of Maine Schools Show Adequate Yearly Progess."
Follow this link to read it!
Monday, October 3, 2011
Saturday, September 24, 2011
The View From Where I Sit: Linda Nelson's Island School Board News
School has been in session for three weeks and there are some exciting changes at both the K-8 and 9-12 schools, most having to do with new personnel.
As we all know, TEACHERS make the difference for our students, and as a school committee member I am really pleased that this September bears a large island crop not only of apples (truly, our trees are doing great, how are yours?!) but of new teachers. Among these are two experienced, highly-qualified science teachers (Micky Flores K-8, Cindi Eaton Heanssler at the high school); a new math teacher in 6-8 (Josh Frost), and a new complement of young and enthusiastic art, music, and drama teachers K-12 (Shannon Campbell, K-8 art; Eileen York, K-12 music; Morgan Witham, K-12 drama). Because education itself is so much about change, when it comes to student learning these kinds of changes are often GOOD!
Also, the momentum of the PLC's (Professional Learning Communities) of teachers which meet each early-release Friday, to discuss strategies for moving individual students toward and beyond proficiency, is really increasing. If you'd like to know more about the PLC's, just ask me.
An important component of understanding the work of the PLC's is the difference between ASSESSMENTS and TESTS. Assessments are quick, simply measures of immediate proficiency and learning teachers could/should do and record on an almost daily basis. Tests, more familiar to many of us, are the less frequent, larger, sometimes standardized measures of what students have learned over time (MEA's, SAT's, etc.).
Research from around the country shows that schools in which teachers regularly assess student learning and collect, discuss, and analyze this assessment data are the schools that improve--and the PLC's are where this process occurs.
One of the things that is NOT yet happening is a systematic collection and communication of assessment data, so that we as parents and community members can see, at every monthly board meeting, how our students are doing and hear student learning success stories. I am pushing hard for this to be put in place, as I think it is CRITICAL for all of us to be able to see and discuss, on a monthly basis, how each of our grades of students is lining up in relationship to common proficiency standards in multiple subjects. I appreciate your support as I continue to push for this type of regular reporting on assessments.
And of course by now you've all read in the paper how the recent release of the most current SAT scores did not show steady student progress for our kids. I work as a college coach with several students, so am very familiar with the questions on the SAT. Whether or not you believe every student should pursue post-secondary education in one form or another, or whether or not the SAT's are even a measure that should be used to determine student admission to post-secondary institutions, my personal opinion is that we should hope ALL of our students can succeed at this kind of compulsory test--possessing the knowledge, self-esteem, and skills to rise to the challenge of whatever is required by school/society to succeed.
Despite many more efforts around SAT prep at the high school, we still do not have on the island a sequential, systematic K-12 curricula via which the teaching staff can provide the necessary opportunities to develop skills, self-esteem, and knowledge to all of our students consistently. As a result, it becomes far too easy to blame "this class" or "that class" or "that student" for driving down results. In schools where students succeed, however, studies show that good teaching and good schools overcome the factors of poverty, language, etc. that impact individual students. This is known as "educational equity" and is something we should insist on from our school administration.
It is little solace to know our school is not alone in declining SAT scores. You can read multiple analyses of this national trend. From the teachers' viewpoint (Education Week), the decline is merely statistical, caused by an ever-increasing number of students taking the test. The opinion of other educators and education writers is that the language competence of our high school students fell sharply in the 1970s, a casualty of what NYTimes commentator E.D. Hirsch calls "vast curricular changes, especially in the critical early grades," and has never recovered. His essay is of real interest in its discussion of "content rich" curricula (what we had 40 years ago) vs. today's skills-based, test-centered approach. What do you think, and what do you think we should be doing as a district in response to such trends?
The regular monthly school board meeting is the first Tuesday of each month, with the next being Tuesday, October 4. In the meantime, the school board is also holding a series of special meetings, all open to the public, as we begin the revision of the district's strategic plan. This work includes review of the school's mission; setting a new 5-year vision for where we want our schools to be; and establishing measurable goals and strategies for how we are going to get there. You input into this process is needed and most welcome. The first strategic planning meeting is this Tuesday, September 27, from 5-8 pm in the elementary school library.
As always I want to hear from you! Email or call me (348-2669) at any time with your thoughts/questions/concerns regarding island education. And don't forget all the interesting links at the Innovations in Education Facebook page.
Please feel free to forward this to others who may be interested and encourage them to sign up to receive this email. The better informed more of us are, the more we can work together to encourage, provoke, and support our schools' successes.
And please remember the opinions expressed in this post are solely my own and in no way represent an official position or statements from the CSD School Committee.
As we all know, TEACHERS make the difference for our students, and as a school committee member I am really pleased that this September bears a large island crop not only of apples (truly, our trees are doing great, how are yours?!) but of new teachers. Among these are two experienced, highly-qualified science teachers (Micky Flores K-8, Cindi Eaton Heanssler at the high school); a new math teacher in 6-8 (Josh Frost), and a new complement of young and enthusiastic art, music, and drama teachers K-12 (Shannon Campbell, K-8 art; Eileen York, K-12 music; Morgan Witham, K-12 drama). Because education itself is so much about change, when it comes to student learning these kinds of changes are often GOOD!
Also, the momentum of the PLC's (Professional Learning Communities) of teachers which meet each early-release Friday, to discuss strategies for moving individual students toward and beyond proficiency, is really increasing. If you'd like to know more about the PLC's, just ask me.
An important component of understanding the work of the PLC's is the difference between ASSESSMENTS and TESTS. Assessments are quick, simply measures of immediate proficiency and learning teachers could/should do and record on an almost daily basis. Tests, more familiar to many of us, are the less frequent, larger, sometimes standardized measures of what students have learned over time (MEA's, SAT's, etc.).
Research from around the country shows that schools in which teachers regularly assess student learning and collect, discuss, and analyze this assessment data are the schools that improve--and the PLC's are where this process occurs.
One of the things that is NOT yet happening is a systematic collection and communication of assessment data, so that we as parents and community members can see, at every monthly board meeting, how our students are doing and hear student learning success stories. I am pushing hard for this to be put in place, as I think it is CRITICAL for all of us to be able to see and discuss, on a monthly basis, how each of our grades of students is lining up in relationship to common proficiency standards in multiple subjects. I appreciate your support as I continue to push for this type of regular reporting on assessments.
And of course by now you've all read in the paper how the recent release of the most current SAT scores did not show steady student progress for our kids. I work as a college coach with several students, so am very familiar with the questions on the SAT. Whether or not you believe every student should pursue post-secondary education in one form or another, or whether or not the SAT's are even a measure that should be used to determine student admission to post-secondary institutions, my personal opinion is that we should hope ALL of our students can succeed at this kind of compulsory test--possessing the knowledge, self-esteem, and skills to rise to the challenge of whatever is required by school/society to succeed.
Despite many more efforts around SAT prep at the high school, we still do not have on the island a sequential, systematic K-12 curricula via which the teaching staff can provide the necessary opportunities to develop skills, self-esteem, and knowledge to all of our students consistently. As a result, it becomes far too easy to blame "this class" or "that class" or "that student" for driving down results. In schools where students succeed, however, studies show that good teaching and good schools overcome the factors of poverty, language, etc. that impact individual students. This is known as "educational equity" and is something we should insist on from our school administration.
It is little solace to know our school is not alone in declining SAT scores. You can read multiple analyses of this national trend. From the teachers' viewpoint (Education Week), the decline is merely statistical, caused by an ever-increasing number of students taking the test. The opinion of other educators and education writers is that the language competence of our high school students fell sharply in the 1970s, a casualty of what NYTimes commentator E.D. Hirsch calls "vast curricular changes, especially in the critical early grades," and has never recovered. His essay is of real interest in its discussion of "content rich" curricula (what we had 40 years ago) vs. today's skills-based, test-centered approach. What do you think, and what do you think we should be doing as a district in response to such trends?
The regular monthly school board meeting is the first Tuesday of each month, with the next being Tuesday, October 4. In the meantime, the school board is also holding a series of special meetings, all open to the public, as we begin the revision of the district's strategic plan. This work includes review of the school's mission; setting a new 5-year vision for where we want our schools to be; and establishing measurable goals and strategies for how we are going to get there. You input into this process is needed and most welcome. The first strategic planning meeting is this Tuesday, September 27, from 5-8 pm in the elementary school library.
As always I want to hear from you! Email or call me (348-2669) at any time with your thoughts/questions/concerns regarding island education. And don't forget all the interesting links at the Innovations in Education Facebook page.
Please feel free to forward this to others who may be interested and encourage them to sign up to receive this email. The better informed more of us are, the more we can work together to encourage, provoke, and support our schools' successes.
And please remember the opinions expressed in this post are solely my own and in no way represent an official position or statements from the CSD School Committee.
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