It's all about the children

When I came to Greene County, I knew that we had a lot of work to do with the children in this county.  One of the ways “choice” emerges is because people want “another” way.  In the case of school systems, people want choice in educational opportunities.  This is not a new phenomenon; it began with magnet schools and magnet programs.

Yes, we do have a lot of work to do in the school district; students not being able to read was not new, we just did not know how far behind they were.  How did they get there?  Good question, but we do know that we must stop moving students forward if they cannot do the work.  This issue was more magnified when the AYP bar was raised to a higher level last school year.  (And will be raised again for the 2011-12 school year.)  However, NCLB and AYP forced our school system to become more transparent and staff in the schools became more accountable.  Believe it or not, some people still do not understand what all of this means.

Since early 2009, we have:

• Put the International Baccalaureate Program in place in our middle school; we have raised the rigor of learning and students are responding; not all but in far greater numbers than before; this meant a re-training of teachers in strategies that would motivate and engage student learning – it's working and the students who will have been in this program for three full years will be in high school next year!
• Developed and added a violin program beginning in kindergarten; these students outscore all students in their grade level on the CRCT test scores in proficiency and exceeding in reading & math; - this program is working; I believe it is because the parents are so involved; and now we have over 100 students participating.
• Last year, we purchased a tool for measuring student outcomes, the NWEA test; this is a nationally normed test that lets us know precisely where all of our students were on grade level as compared to other students in the nation; surprise, many of our students were behind, more than 50 percent in our high school reading at very low grade levels; did the teachers know this, yes, they did – they just did not know how far behind the students were.
• Last spring, we applied for a grant to help us begin the work that needed to be done with the high school; a grant that would provide for staff needed and programs that might engage students and get their commitment for learning; this grant provides more than 4 million dollars over a three-year period to “shake things up” and get us on the right track for student academic achievement.
• Year two of this grant provides for more structured parent involvement in the learning process – we will go out into the community to talk to parents, since they are not coming into the schools.

Further, this year the following directives have been given to principals and staff -

• Kindergarten students must know the 200 site words by the end of the school year; this is one of the expectations that needs to be fulfilled in order for students to be reading on grade level.
• Third grade students must learn their times tables by the end of the first semester; parents must assist them in this effort.
• Parents must come and pick up the report cards of the first and third marking periods and meet with their child's teacher; failure to do so will mean an appointment with the principal and the teacher to discuss student progress; the Board of Education created a policy on this last year at the request of the superintendent.
• We will identify all students in the 2012 graduation class and monitor their classroom performance to ensure completion and high school graduation; which will be difficult assuming that some of these students may be reading at less than a 9th grade level.  Moreover, several more of these students have not achieved the number of course credits necessary for graduation.
• Students will speak in complete sentences in responding to questions in classrooms.

This is a continuation of work that has begun.  We do know that our students have made progress; our students have made gains – just not enough to make the annually increasing bar that they must surpass.  We have the numbers, we have the data.  We hope the community will begin to understand what the challenges are and have been.

Perhaps it was not noticed before, as the bar was low enough for even lagging students to pass. However, AYP requires that states have annual measurable objectives (AMO's) that increase every year – this means the bar gets higher and higher.  We can catch a kid up one year or more and sometimes two years – this is difficult work and I applaud our teachers for getting the job done. However, as the bar goes up to 100 and next year we are required to get to 95 percent and students are at 87 percent - you can see the difficulty.

I hope this begins to answer some of the questions our Community and Friends have.  You have heard this before, but it “does take the Queen Mary a while to make the 180 degree turn.” We are in the process of turning and it will take a few more years to approach the 180 mark!  Continue to support our work; we do it because it is all about the children.