Our Public Education System - Part I

Recently, I attended three education-related events/workshops reinforcing my firm belief that our quest for a quality 21st century education for "all students" will be a journey of possibility littered with misconceptions, assumptions, data comparisons, and myriad of reform strategies. The three events and their dates were the Arizona School Board Association/Arizona School Administrator Annual Conference (12/15-16), Lexile Reading Standards and the Common Core Standards (12/12) and the Morrison's Institute "State of the State" Conference (11/30). These events neither fully judged our current public school education system as failing our students, nor honored it as the best in the world. What these events did point out is that as Americans we "own" and created our current system of education; we "control" the future of the system that our students will compete within the global, Information Age; and we can "restructure" the system as needed for all students. Below is the first of three blogs.
System Factor #1 - "System Ownership"

Our system is one of independence, societal lag (failure to adapt/change), activities, and growing choice contradicting itself at every turn. As Americans we still offer and created one of the best environments for an education. This is despite the system originally created and still systemically structured as a student "sorting" system and not a system created for 21st century "success for all." It is a system that has seen its lexile levels for national textbooks drop dramatically from the 1960s and now has a system lacking strong K-12 informational text and strong core, literacy practices. It is a system envied by many, but now seen falling behind to a world community.  A world community changing through technology and communication that now provides a lifestyle opportunity never seen before through education.

We currently have and own the most children in poverty for any industrialized nation in the world and know that our so-called "achievement gap" is created from many of our children spending time in literacy poor homes. Driven by low socio-economic factors, the long school summer break based on a long ago outdated agrarian calendar, further complicates and deprives many from overcoming their lack of core literacy skills. The State of Arizona has 50% of their one million school age children eligible for federal freed and reduced school lunch programs. 25% of all Arizona children live at or under the current federal poverty level. It is a system that has taken over the past 4 years over $1 billion away from its K-20 school systems and will further reduce educational funds by not replacing the previously supplanted state education dollars for federal K-12 EduJobs dollars ($35 million) ending this school year.

On the other hand we own this system with students that create, experiment, innovate and think independently for themselves due to a society that generates education through various school and societal platforms anchored by a national public school system. It is all ours with other nations sending their students here to live in the success of our country's university and college system that builds upon academia with social skills and emotional intelligence that cannot occur through standardized or criterion-referenced international assessments. Its success is measured and is developed through many factors (music, art, athletics, community activities, diversity) that cannot be seen in its entirely through international comparisons.

Confused About AZ Education Accountability? So Are the Schools

With Senate Bill 1286, the Arizona State Legislature established a new accountability system for Arizona public schools.  Modeled after "parts" of well-funded school initiatives in Florida and Colorado, it will maintain the current school labels (Excelling, Highly Performing, Performing Plus, Under Performing, Failing) and add school grades (A, B, C, D, and F).  Using current Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) data, both the labels and new grades will be generated from this single, student assessment score.

The confusion in the new system comes with how AIMS data is used by each of these school accountability measures.  The labels measure the percentage of students meeting or exceeding the grade level state standards in addition to graduation, dropout rates and other value related data.  The new school grades will place a major emphasis on weighted measures including student growth with the lowest performing students weighted twice.  An "expected growth" calculation will also occur as well as a "cut-off" point system that will make about 30% of all schools in Arizona "D" schools compared to 10% for the labels "underperforming" schools.  These school grades have twice been delayed due to the outcry from the obvious disconnect between the two systems.  "Excelling" schools in the labels format are being seen as "C" schools in the grade format as the grade system utilizes fewer, meaningful school success measures into account.

It is unfortunate the Arizona Department of Education continues to take a single snapshot of data in time and not fully design an accountability system with many data points of student achievement.  School labels and school grades are just one piece of the education system that should recognize that "learning is a constant, but time is the variable."  Many indicators of school success exist that would meet the accountability need as well as truly and fairly assessing our students' social, emotional and learning levels.

A more proactive and well thought out variety of researched success measures would better serve our shared goal of school improvement rather than a simplistic letter grade created at a single point in time during each school year.  All of us should be concerned about systemic school improvement not creating shortsighted, internal system obstacles.

"Hey, This is Hard Work"

Fountain Hills USD continues to seek learning for all students. Working with education author/consultant ("Focus" and "Results: How Can We Achieve Unprecedented Improvements in Teaching and Learning"), Mike Schmoker, our Four Peaks ES and Fountain Hills MS administrators and teachers will meet throughout the 2011-12 school year. Their goal is one that every school district and building in the U.S. must answer during this major national era of school restructuring. How do we create a learning system that meets the new Common Core Standards, that meets the increased high stakes assessment needs of our students and that systemically meets our educational mission of "learning for all students?"

Despite the ongoing loss of state Arizona public school funding ($1.4+ billion) and some 6700 teachers lost statewide (U.S. Census Bureau), FHUSD will continue to build on our "school system's capacity" to meet this challenge:

1. Identification of the Common Core Language and Mathematics "Power or Anchor" Standards are key.

Current state standards across our nation would take more than a 300+-day school year and over a 12-year school career would take up to 23 years to complete (Marzano). We are aggressively working to deconstruct the CCS to identify coverage with depth without creating learning gaps.

2. Implementation of student enrichment and intervention programs that create "multiple opportunities" for student learning success. These include technology tools (iTouches web tools, and iPads), enrichment software (SuccessMaker and Waterford), Response to Intervention (RTI), co-teaching models and school site intervention courses.

3. Professional development for faculty that includes the use of the PD360 online resource that will allow for individual, group, building and district wide improvement resources. Professional Learning Communities have also been formed.

4. A continuation of the current classroom walkthrough system with an emphasis on a few specific teaching behaviors and checks for understanding that will provide building data and staff reflection on classroom instructional practices.

5. Finally, a renewed effort on the part of building principals to take "leading indicator" data to have regular and ongoing discussions on needed "second order" teaching behaviors. This will require a continuous discussion on building data walls both at the elementary grade level and secondary department level.

This is the real work of education and it is hard work with little time provided in the current educational system that suffers from "institutional lag." and time constraints. Our ability to create capacity to consistently and to continuously "do the work" will ultimately determine our learning systems success and the success of our students.

2011 N. Scottsdale Lock-Up: Dr. Bill Myhr

2011 N. Scottsdale Lock-Up: Dr. Bill Myhr

Meeting Challenges to Attain Student Achievement

As the new 2011-12 school year opens on August 8th, FHUSD again seeks to strengthen system capacity to meet our student mission. This year will see a number of changes as the district seeks to consolidate buildings in order to protect instructional programs, low elementary class sizes and staff salaries. This district capacity building will specifically be seen in several key areas:

• New mathematics curriculum aligning the district to the National Common Core Standards will be in place for 2011-12. Textbooks will be in hardback and digital versions to offer students and families flexibility in accessing this curriculum. The 7th grade will see new health textbooks and curriculum.


• McDowell Mountain Elementary School will implement Waterford software enrichment program in grades pre-school-grade 2 to partner with SuccessMaker software implemented last year in grades 3-8. This digital platform will strengthen student learning engagement opportunities as well as regularly assessing their core reading and mathematics knowledge and skills.


• FHUSD faculty members will access PD360 online support to strengthen their content knowledge, instructional strategies and classroom tools. This system will be available 24/7 to provide support for district-wide, building-wide, small group and individual improvement initiatives. This program will also offer building administrators and teacher leaders enhanced academic walkthrough support for classroom data gathering and support for classroom instructional improvement.


• Additional programs will be seen in the Fountain Hills HS Career Technical Education for Nursing and Computer Aided Drawing (CAD), 5th grade band, 4th-5th grade Spanish, additional middle school electives and additional technology (iTouches, iPads, building computer labs and SMARTBoards).


• All campuses will be wireless for the new school year as we move toward a more supportive and flexible digital platform with an emphasis on mobile technology. High school students will be allowed during the school year to bring their personal technology devices to school for flexibility and use, when appropriate, within the classroom.


• With the closure of Four Peaks Elementary School, building consolidation on the FH Middle School campus will strengthen programs by creating grades 4-8 for a Four Peaks ES (grades 4-5) and Fountain Hills Middle School (grades 6-8). Grade 3 will stay on the McDowell Mountain ES campus strengthening the upcoming need for all 3rd graders to meet high stakes state reading assessment. This will enhance our vertical and horizontal curriculum and instructional articulation for the new Common Core Standards and current State of Arizona Standards.

We continue to ask for your support in creating a successful learning environment plagued by hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding cuts the past four years. Through the partnerships developed with our parents, Fountain Hills service clubs, the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, the Golden Eagle Education Foundation, the Fountain Hills Parent-Teacher Organization, booster clubs and Town of Fountain Hills; our students our positioned to meet their future educational needs. Follow our accomplishments on Facebook "Fountain Hills Unified School District", Twitter @bfmyhr5454, and our school district website www.fhusd.org. Let us all aspire to enhance our students' future lives.

"Are We (FHUSD) Getting Better"

As the students and staff leave for summer vacation, it is time to ask the annual question. "Are we (FHUSD) getting better?" It will be a question asked several times to all our district directors and to our building principals during the end-of-the-year evaluations. It would be an easy answer to look back saying we have suffered from continuous Legislative cutbacks and a slow district enrollment decline. But then most Arizona districts could fall back on these well publicized factors.

No, the bottom line is all about FHUSD "getting better" and in doing so meeting our student learning mission. Let me share some summary reflections in key areas.

Instruction
1. Our FHUSD Staff has received intensive training in "Response to Intervention" (RTI) strengthening our ability to meet the needs of all students individually.
2. Our Special Education staff with regular education faculty have received ongoing training on the "co-teaching model"
3. Our FHUSD faculty have received specific packets and resources on the new National Core Standards set for implementation in 2012-2013 - next year with team and administrative leaders will be involved in continuous training.
4. We continue with administrative walkthroughs to gather data on student learning with an option to evolve it further next year through PD360 tools.

Technology
1. Our grades 2-5 classrooms have added Apple iTouches to promote a new learning platform and student engagement with mobile technology.
2. Our SPED Dept. has implemented the use of iPads to enhance student learning activities with
students having special needs.
3. FHUSD has implemented Pearson's "Success Maker" software for grades 3-8 to strengthen student learning opportunities before, during and after school.
4. Next year our preschool through grade 3 will have the "Success Maker" companion called "Waterford" to enrich and gain learning opportunities.
5. Our elementary grades have implemented document cameras as a classroom tool enhancing and engaging students.
6. Next year all FHUSD campuses will be wireless to allow for mobile connectivity
7. Next year FHHS students will have the ability to bring personal technology devices to school to utilize and move toward a 24/7 learning opportunity.

Student Achievement Data
1. Our McDowell Mountain ES, grades pre-2, utilized student "data walls" this year for mathematics, reading, atendance and behavior. Next year grades 3-8 will also utilize this procedure to raise all students to standard and above with the belief that each teacher is responsible for all students in that schoolhouse.
2. Next year will be our third year utilizing ATI Galileo benchmark assessment system. It has provided our teaching teams with very specific data on teaching and curriculum gaps for their "real curriculum" taught in the classroom.

Character Training
1. We have expanded the use of Youth Frontiers to our high school campus to provide ongoing reinforcement of anti-bullying strategies as well as need for teamism and collaboration. These programs are now seen on all our campuses. Our campuses with the newly found support of the Fountain Hills Coalition continues efforts on educating students and parents on the dangers of the Internet, alchohol and the use of drugs.

Curriculum and Program
For 2011-12 FHUSD will see new mathematics curriculum to meet not only Arizona standards but the national Common Core Standards. We will also see new Health textbooks, a Career Technical Nursing program and the return of Computer Assisted Drawing. Our 5th graders will now have access to both Band and Spanish a year earlier. As we speak, our staff led by Dr. McElligott, is working on a STEM Center "School within a School" for FHUSD to become a science, technology, engineering and mathematics destination.

Are we better? It really can only be answered by how we meet the needs of each and every student. Regardless of programs and initiatives our true sense of improvement must be seen with how our students produce in and out of the classroom. That is the big constant that we must continue to strive for FHUSD to truly "get better."

"It's Only 3.2%"

Our Arizona Legislative leaders during their most recent $179 million cut to K12 public education stated: “It is only 3.2%.” This is a fact, but this is the 4th straight year of cuts costing the state K12 system over $850 million—adding up to 14.7%. In doing this “it is only a 3.2% cut,” they completely dishonor the Proposition 100 one cent sales tax with a 63% statewide majority vote, more than double the cuts proposed by Governor Brewer’s state education budget and ignore pleas from state business leaders that includes the Arizona Business and Education Coalition (ABEC) and the former Intel CEO that jobs won’t follow to a state with underfunded schools. However, the Legislature has continued to protect and increase the state prison budget failing to see the connection between putting money into early childhood success and educational systems. As one Arizona paper recently printed. “Prisons and jails have been a growth industry in a state that has few other growth industries.” Instead, they have added only a high stakes 3rd grade reading test. This reading test will take place without the support systems and millions of dollars infused into the Florida K12 system by Governor Jeb Bush’s model the Arizona Legislature copied. Instead, our Legislature choses to pay a much higher cost to society by enabling a growing prison population and budget filled with increasingly uneducated, school dropouts that research shows costs over $20,000 a year to house. The research also shows these inmates are produced from social economic factors including drug use, poverty, unemployment and single parent homes. Horace Mann stated, “Education is the great equalizer” but does an Arizona educational system equally exist for “all” students to turn around from society’s dysfunctions? I served on a Washington State Prison Community Board for a new prison (Stafford Creek, built 2000) costing $450 million dollars to build with state-of-art medical, dental, kitchen and library facilities that most schools would view with envy. For the almost 2000 inmates – over 80% school dropouts - it took almost 1000 employees to meet their daily needs 24/7. Now add to this a shrinking list of Arizona K12 school support systems – nurses, librarians, Fine Arts specialists, unfunded preschool, half day funded kindergarten, increased class sizes and loss of programs throughout the entire K12 system. Maybe, the Texas prison reform legislation that saved that state almost $1 billion, that ABEC has shared with our Legislative leaders, should be studied rather than the unfunded Florida education plan. This may not be at the level described as the “Fog of War” but it has certainly created another fog -- a “Fog of Despair” that will produce students during this Great Recession that will lose hope with no school safety supports available. Instead, they will attend stress factories with endless standardized testing to include 8 year-old held back with their self-efficacy battered. But then again, “it’s only a 3.2%.” FHUSD is truly blessed to be in Fountain Hills with a community that values and honors the right for all students to learn. This is regularly demonstrated through their ongoing support of override votes and community service for a dedicated teaching and support staff. We are now in the midst of our latest rounds of budget cuts involving $600,000. But then, we shouldn’t worry. After all, “it is only 3.2%.”

Time is Now for Voice on AZ Public Education

As the Arizona Legislature determines their final budget cuts for the 2011 budget, it is time for the "voice" of the people to be heard without respite on protecting public school education. What voice? The same voice that overwhelmingly passed Proposition 100, the 1-cent sales tax to protect our public school systems. The same voice that recognizes that companies and organizations will not flock to Arizona with new jobs, if their families cannot receive a quality, local education. And a unified voice that demands the Legislature finds the political will and the political courage to adequately find a sustainable funding source to protect our state's children and their future. The time is now for our voices to be heard above the political games, the gamesmanship and ongoing valueless rhetoric that neither supports our children nor our state's future to be a leader in industry and commerce. Be heard, be heard, be heard - loud, clear, and long - that our schools' future holds our state's future.

"All Means All"

In his State of the Union speech, President spoke directly to all of us on the powerful need of education for ALL students -

“Think about it. Over the next 10 years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school education. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school. The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to ninth in the proportion of young people with a college degree. And so the question is whether all of us –- as citizens, and as parents –- are willing to do what’s necessary to give every child a chance to succeed."

As the Fountain Hills community and as a nation our perseverance and willingness to take on systemic change and "move forward" in a repressive economy and attacks on public school funding will determine our collective future. It can't just be about school staff but all stakeholder groups from parents, town leaders, community activists, legislators, volunteers, students and service groups must all play a role in propelling our young learners forward in achieving a future not yet created. Our doors and our hearts must open up to meeting the emotional, physical and intellectual needs of students with less resources but with global opportunities.

Let us resolve that education must and will be foundationally provided for all young people knowing that a lifetime of learning is a reality in an ever changing world. Within this resolve must come access to flexible learning systems that offer our students different learning platforms, interaction with technologies and informational support systems allowing for a constant, consistent ability to achieve new knowledge and skills.

Educators must set aside the realities of the past with the realities of the future that will demand flexibility and efficiencies or face being cast aside by more progressive learning pathways. Here at Fountain Hills Unified we speak to evolving into a 24/7 system that offers learners not only multiple opportunities to achieve; but also hope created to guarantee their success through collective student-centered stakeholders. "Learning for all means all" - let us not stray from that important mission.