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.

Press Release from 4.21.2010

May is a big month for our juniors!
In Deer Isle-Stonington, May is about the junior prom. Distinct from the same archetypal event in many other locations, our island prom is a joyous community-wide event supported and attended by young and old alike; one that celebrates our juniors and their connections to family and community as well as their “coming of age.” Even as I write this, student advisors, mentors, and parents are spending long hours at school painting and building, preparing the gym (and themselves) for this annual event.
And on Saturday May 1, a week before the prom, our juniors are expected to attend an event of equal importance to their futures: the Scholastic Aptitude Tests, or SATs. Because this is a relatively new event without the long communal connections of the prom, our students may not receive the same amount of active, visible encouragement and support for this event as they need to succeed.
While the SATs themselves are not new, their importance for all students—and maybe especially for those who think they may not be pursuing additional education after high school—is.
In the past only a select group of students were expected to graduate from high school with “college ready” educations, defined as the ability to successfully solve language and math problems at a certain level of proficiency. In today’s economy and job market, here on the island as much as off, ALL high school graduates need these skills: and the SATs are an important measure of how well our schools are providing students with the education they deserve to succeed after high school.
Additionally, high school students thinking they may not attend college often discover further education at a 2- or 4-year college, community college, or technical school is required to make a decent living in today’s job market. Given the impact of global economic forces on our lobster fishery, and our hopes to continually strengthen opportunities in our year-round community for our young people, we could be encouraging all of our students to aspire to some sort of further education.
And so this May, let’s be “loud and proud” in celebrating and supporting not one but TWO milestone events for our high school juniors: on May 1 the SATs, and on May 8 the prom.
Sincerely,
Linda Nelson

Community Leadership Team Updates & SAT

Good morning,

Community Leadership Team Update, Specific Need Request
See general notes on formation of this, and possible May launch, below. HOWEVER: the most immediate need Todd has identified is to have us help to get students to, and to get them to take seriously, the SAT tests Saturday May 1. This would require a very quick “community pride” and perhaps car pool and phone call types of efforts. I have a query in to Todd to see whether he is able and willing to provide us with a list of all students required to take this test, so we can divide it up into call lists; and if he can highlight (or not) the most “at risk” students. He reported to me there are 3-5 students a year who just don’t show up to take the test; and another 25% (estimated) who do not take it seriously once they get there. I have also asked him if he can write a letter to the paper saying why the tests ARE important, and noting that they ARE aligned with the Maine Learning Results—to try to offset the negative press these tests have gotten over the last few weeks. What do you think? Ideas? Can we get some real effort behind this this quickly? We can’t necessarily improve, at this late date, the results of those who do take it seriously; that is part of the broader, longer term academic effort. But we might be able to get a few kids to take it more seriously, and to help get kids there. Unfortunately, I will be out of town April 15 through May 1, so will not be able to provide hands-on assistance. Let us all hear from each other!

Community Leadership Team Update, General
I’ve got messages in to contacts with which Todd provided me regarding launching a Community Leadership Team for education using the Jackman, ME model. It appears that their CLT was driven originally by a combination of business people, parents, and concerned citizens. When the Stonington Economic Development Committee held a Business-Education breakfast in January we got an unexpectedly large turnout of local business people, who voiced both passion and concern for the quality of the education with which our graduates were emerging from the high school. This looks as if it might be a perfect structure to merge their desire for a Business-School Partnership with wider community concern—we will see.

It seems part of the success of the model is to host short monthly meetings in the early evening, say from 6-7:30 p.m., and to hold these NOT at the school but at a local restaurant—to create a climate of “out-of-the-box” thinking and sociability. The goal would be to engage in serious conversations with school administrators and teachers regarding what is happening in the schools; student learning results (for those of you who left the school board meeting Tuesday after the vote, the new MEA/NECAP test scores for 3rd and 8th graders were made available); community educational needs; etc. I’m interested in what you all think of this type of model.

Todd is interested in launching this as early as May and we have several dates available on his calendar. But the more immediate priority is the SAT drive described above, so . . . Looking forward to your thoughts.

-Linda Nelson