May Board of Ed: Educational Vision

 Johnston: what outcomes are envisioned as a result?

"Our vision is that as a result of their public education in Massachusetts, students will attain academic knowledge and skills, understand and value self and others, and engage with the world"

On the new ELA elementary curriculum

 Among the big things that happened at Thursday’s meeting of the Worcester School Committee was the adoption of a new ELA curriculum for elementary school, as discussed at Monday's subcommittee meeting. As I have noted here before, the curriculum that our prior administration was absolutely stuck on was just what research, data, and the ongoing news of the “reading wars” was noting we should NOT be doing. 

We heard from many teachers, coaches, parents and others on this one (and for years, let me stress). 

I never taught elementary school, but as someone whose roots will always go back to my English classroom, this has been one that has struck me to my core. I thus wrote up specifically what I was going to say ahead of time. This is what I said:

As we will note later this evening, our role in curriculum approval is very high level. Broadly speaking, it is up to the Committee to determine if curricula supports our district goals and aligns with state standards.

Speaking as a former teacher, I know that teachers pour their hearts into the classroom. There are few things more disheartening than to be directed to do something that you know is actively harmful or simply not helpful to your students. I know that, having been there.

That is the position which we have placed our elementary teachers in these past years regarding ELA. Despite repeated attempts by several members of this Committee to set it straight, the previous administration was absolutely committed to a curriculum that we knew and was ongoingly reported to be, not what was needed in the classroom. 

To the teachers, principals, coaches and so forth who have fought for years for us to do better, I want to thank you for your faithfulness, and if you quietly closed the door and ensured your students had what was actually needed, good for you. 

This Committee has a responsibility to depend on the professionals who work in curriculum and work with students to give us the feedback when we make these decisions. And we owe them professional respect in doing so, and some of that has been lacking in the public process. We need to be better to our staff--our employees--than that. 

I also want to note: we are required to set aside 20% of our ESSER III spending—about $18M—for what the federal government refers to as learning loss. The funding for this curriculum not only falls into this category for reporting purposes; it also repairs what we know has been a cause of less learning for our students. This is not only an allowed, it is a strongly supported use of federal spending  

We thus will be repairing two issues from prior leadership, while giving our students and our teachers a curriculum about which we know them to be enthusiastic, which not only meets state standards but is green rated, and which will actually support students learning to read.

I support moving forward with the administration’s recommendation immediately.

I was also glad to make the motion for reconsideration that evening, allowing administration to move forward immediately with the purchase of CKLA.

Updates from the Worcester Public Schools

 compiled in part, though not entirely, from the weekly updates, Dr. Monárrez sends the Committee

First up, ones that I've been worrying over: starting May 1

• Richard Ikonen will be serving as Director of Facilities. He's coming from Minuteman Regional, where he was Assistant Superintendent of Operations and Facilities.
  
  
• Ryan Hacker will be serving as Assistant Director of Facilities, focusing (I think I have this right) on capital projects. Ryan comes from UMass Med, BUT he last appeared here for his testimony during the hearing on the WCACS, as he's president of ArtsWorcester, AND he's a Burncoat High grad (yup, Burncoat!). 

I haven't met Rich as yet; I know Ryan. I'm looking forward to this.

The Auditor's office did meet with the WPS administration before vacation. That, plus our full delegation backing our call for investigations, is heartening that our concerns over OSV's management of the charter schools are being taken seriously. 

There's an executive session of the full Committee tomorrow (Monday) on negotiations with units A&B (and as it's negotiations, that's all I can say).

As I mentioned in my last post, the administration is recommending--much to the relief of many!--a new ELA curriculum for elementary students. This is of course in response to the many, many concerns from all kinds of places over the Fountas and Pinnell curriculum that the previous administration was very committed to. Major curricular changes need to go through the School Committee, so the recommendation is going to TLSS for a (virtual only) meeting tomorrow at 4:30 before coming to the full committee Thursday. This timeline has been an attempt to balance as much time for a pilot as possible, while still giving time to order materials and get them and PD to teachers before school is out.

Wit & Wisdom and Core Knowledge Language Arts are what was piloted in 21 or 22 classrooms each; page 13 of the presentation gives where. The rest of the presentation is based on feedback from the teachers and others involved in implementation. 
I won't say more on this here, as this is subject to deliberation and vote, but we'd of course welcome feedback (beyond "good bye F&P," which we've heard loud and clear!).

Finance and Operates meets this week on Wednesday at 5:30 ; you'll see that agenda tomorrow, but it will include the third quarter budget report, as well as the monthly transportation report. Also, for those who have been interested in the district streaming sports events, we'll be taking up that item as well. 

And speaking of budget: 

The budget's coming! The FY24 budget will be released on Friday, May 12 (start clicking refresh about 4, though sometimes it arrives earlier!).
There will be the statutorily required budget hearing on Wednesday, May 24 at 6; this is all of the Committee, gathered for no reason other than to hear from members of the public on the proposed budget. 
The School Committee deliberates and passes the budget, cost center by cost center, on Thursday, June 1 and Thursday, June 15. We start at 4 pm.

The one thing this doesn't include--because I don't know it yet--is the date on which the Worcester City Council hears the WPS budget. As a reminder, the Council approves only the bottom line of the Worcester Public Schools; they have no authority over cost centers. The Council also, under Plan E, cannot move funds or add funds to the budget; they can only cut. As the schools are generally funded at their statutory required level plus transportation and no more, one might argue that they cannot do that, either. 

That's what I have at this point. As always, if you have questions, send them along.

Why did you vote no on the ELA curriculum?

 because "why did you vote no" is a headline I've used before...

Among the roles of the School Committee in Massachusetts is approving curriculum under MGL Ch. 71 sec.50 (aside: it requires a two-thirds vote). Due to the vote to open the year remotely for the district, there was administrative concern over lack of high school English materials, so we were asked to have a special meeting Thursday evening just to review and approve a proposed curriculum for this year: StudySync from McGraw-Hill. You can read the Telegram & Gazette coverage here.
The request was for a single year of this curriculum at a cost of $256,500.

We received access to the materials Wednesday night for Thursday's meeting. This presentation was given at the meeting.

While it was nineteen years ago this past spring that I taught my last high school English class, if you hand me high school English curriculum, I'm going to approach it as a high school English teacher, as it's what I was trained as. My first question, likewise, was how high school English teachers were involved in the selection of this "modified pilot." They...weren't, is the upshot. The district did pilot three curricula last year in the middle school, and the equivalent curriculum from McGraw-Hill was selected for that, so, it was explained at the meeting, the district decided to use the parallel high school curriculum for this year. 

From my perspective--and this is my perspective--anthologies are there as a resource; they're where the literature is. I strove (did not always succeed, but I tried) not to be the "read the chapter, answer the questions" kind of teacher; you have a short story or a poem, and you read it, and you discuss it, and students write about it. Vocabulary lists and end of chapter assessments and such...they're not the main reason we have the anthology.
Again, that's my perspective.
The first thing I ask, then, is what's here? What's the actual written material that's in the anthology? Does it give the breadth and depth needed for getting students reading and giving them access to good writing and thus get them engaged in why we read and write at all?
And the answer for me is that...this could be better. If you review the presentation, you'll see that there's a chart that measures out how many authors in total, how many are women, and how many are authors of color. At least the question is asked. What I continued to run into as I reviewed, though, was whose voices are emphasized; if long works are still mostly the white men of the classic Western canon, have we made any change? 
There also continue to be works included that trouble me. This does not, please note, mean that I think we bar or ban these books or works. Works, though, need to earn their space in the classroom. When we measure the limited time in a classroom, and the limited dollars we have to get works into the classroom, and we consider what it means to have a work taught, what does it mean that we give time and space to writers of British colonialism, when our seats are filled with children whose family history bore the worst of its exercise of power? Or when the stories of Native Americans or Black families continue to be told through white eyes? There are better uses of the time, space, money, and emphasis.

Don't get me wrong: there is writing from across the spectrum here, and these are not the anthologies they would have been twenty years ago. Part of the job of the Committee, though, as it makes purchases and sends those to the classroom, is to ask given the resources available, if this is the best decision. Can we push harder on this (and, given Worcester's buying power, on the vendors)? 

I think we can, so I voted no. 

If you want to see what I said at the meeting, I'm posted the video below, cued to my questions

October Board of Ed: strengthening instructional materials

Riley: I've seen a lot of variation in what curriculum are being used and some aren't aligned with state standards
CURATE assesses degree of alignment
Ron Noble: teacher access to high quality instructional materials
began as teachers who needed to source their own materials
spoke with educators about the best role of the department
"they and we are compelled by the emerging research" that curricular materials matters
need support with professional development
ensuring that all students have access to high quality materials
CURATE: "cut through the noise" in the marketplace in ELA, math, and, "to a lesser extent" science
quality and useablity of materials
in some cases, there isn't much to consider
"dearth of high quality science materials"
use Ed Reports as an initial line
then further review conducted "by Massachusetts teacher leaders"
review process is on a card that the Board has but isn't in the presentation
test quality and organization; classroom tasks and instruction; usability; impact on learning
standards alignment, classroom application, overall rating
if they qualify for an overall meets expectations qualifies for a statewide contract
give publisher a chance to response
quotes by teachers
overview of subratings for productes reviewed
I am finding this SUPER hard to follow...I'm going to remind you that School Committees adopt curriculum
there was also a question there that I missed
West: no one documents what curricula are in use
have made usch progress in tracking student learning but don't track what may matter in student learner
"curriculum heat maps" to track what is being used where and make that data available
Fernández: curriculum design by teachers that are in use and being used now: how is that captured in your process?
Noble: CURATE doesn't address that as built
'we are doing other things to try to capture home-grown curriculum"
14 districts meeting with researchers from Johns Hopkins in places where they rely on teacher home-grown materials; way to start the conversation
Riley: think teachers should have to start with purchased curriculum
then "sharing teacher created tasks"
I don't think I agree with that
use additional resources wisely
OpenSciEd science: need for additional materials
through guiding design of open-source curriculum K-12
in year 2 of piloting middle school materials
one unit per grade level publicly released
2 units piloted each year before being released
professional learning resources being released alongside
Boston teacher: "the students are doing the heavy lifting here"
student: "it was more student guided than teacher guided"
student: "opens a door to what we need to study about"
Peske: What are we trying to get done: if schools and districts have the information they need and professional learning then experiences and outcomes will improve
"this board has had decades of work in building the standards...and the assessments"
haven't done a lot of work around the assessment of those standards
were asked "to send a signal about quality"

Mills: do you expect all districts in the state in users of this or participants in this? Or which districts do you think will or won't use it?
Science: storyline instructional model is not unique to OpenSciEd
"my hope is that every student is getting to learn science through this instructional model" by student questioning and engagement
a way to get it quickly into classrooms
Noble: at least want every district to go to the site and use it
want districts that self-build to use rubrics to review their own produced curriculum
hoping cost isn't an object
Stewart: raises for me some issues around integration with other efforts
mentions site council and school committee efforts
Peske: an effort to ensure that all of the students in our state have access to high quality materials
"all of this work is districts choosing to use the resources provided"
"we did this work because the field said to us 'we need help here'"
and it would feel like a spot here to note that among the end users should be school committees...and again, not mentioend

AHA! Riley "as they begin to make some of these decisions at the school committees..." using this as a resource
Rouhanifard: how many districts are using ELA and math curriculua that meet expectations?
Quite low
have information from only about a third of districts
"have a lot of work to do"

Fernández: adaptability of curriculua
A; "think it will be more of a question as they start to develop into the high school"
because it is open source will be easier to adapt over time
West: history, social studies area
imagine there's a need to support districts and educators
develop curriculum from scratch in 8th grade
effort going on like OpenSciEd
Peske:agreed, more parallel
"very specific to Massachusetts"
in process of building out a project plan "to build our own curriculum"
interviewed with districts
"emphasized need for upper elementary grades"
guidance in response to law that requires completion of civics tasks

March Board of Ed: MCAS scoring for 10th grade

Vote here is on setting of descriptors of 10th grade ELA and math MCAS
plan, as with other grades, is to tie scores statistically to like scores of prior years

These photos are going to be terrible; apologies in advance.
Plan is to link scoring, so pic.twitter.com/f100IoXBm2

— Tracy O'Connell Novick (@TracyNovick) March 26, 2019

 Only such levels will be set this summer NOT NEW GRADUATION STANDARD
Passes

November Board of Ed: standards updates

History and social studies
ELA and math implementation
also coming: arts and health

Wulfson: update on review of history and social sciences curriculum framework
getting field involved "has been very much a part of this process"
"this team has really provided for a lot of public input"

Peske: appreciate educators who have served with us; panel review process
what is a standard? What a student should do and be able to do, and should be measureable
curriculum? content standards and other materials to support instruction

what teachers should teach and students should learn

Buchanan: multiphase process
public survey, "one of the strongest responses we've seen...there's a lot of interest in this"
convene review panel: six meetings
drafting and reviewing proposed revisions
plan is to present draft of revision to Board to vote to invite public comment in January
Board to vote new standards in June

Priorities were to emphasize civics education and to deepen understanding
improve also rigor, clarity, and coherence
"major concern by demographic group" and engagement

New full year civics course proposed for grade 8: "centerpiece around which we drew a through line"
civics standards integrated into every grade
"middle school is a place where the first really deep look" into our system of government happens
revised U.S. Gov and Politics standards for grade 12
emphasis in supporting sections: introduction: "A Renewed Mission: Education for Civic Life in a Democracy"
guiding principles: studying current events, data analysis, media literacy skills
history and social science practice, prek-12
research, process, analysis, evaluation of credibility of sources
sample guiding and supporting questions

Grade 8 to include: philosophical foundations of US political system; institutions of US government; rights & responsibilities of citizens; Constitution, amendments, SCOTUS decisions; state and local government

"8th grade seen as a launch pad for the work they'll do in US History in high school"

Q from Fernandez on integration of social emotional learning
A from Susan Wheltle of the guiding principles, also overlap in curriculum with early grades in what is required
in older grades shifts into how institutions are formed
democracy in the classroom: "every day democracy...then democracy within every larger groups of society"
comes with discussion of how we're always wrestling with interpretations of history
Buchanan: having students do more independent research
students be reviewing primary source documents
"investigating these questions actively"
"What historical interpretation involves"

(this in response to Moriarty) grade 12 course designed to be leading students to what they'll be doing in college
research, digging into practices, what they're learning on the national stage can be applied locally
maintaining content from 2003 framework in revised document

Peyser: "it's more like a Rubik's Cube than a stone in a pond" to revise the standards while retaining the core of 2003 standards
"we obviously haven't seen it all yet, so let's not get ahead of ourselves"

Sagan: what are your thoughts on what we'll measure?
"I am reluctant to talk more assessments"
Wulfson: we know there's a question of assessment before us; we've just started to do some thinking on what a history and social science assessment would look like
chance to integrate some new models, perhaps some project based
Sagan: don't want to do it serially
Wulfson: hope to have some resources in FY19 to flesh that out

McKenna; applaud all of you getting to this point
all students will have civics
having it integrated, students with more resources would get it and others would not

Sagan: have draft education from Legislature, which is unusual
Wulfson: at this point, have not filed a formal bill
some things that would be helpful for us, some things that we suggest might be a pilot
"we are providing..."
Sagan: "but they wrote to us, not to you, so we as a Board need to respond"
McKenna: suggest sending them the draft standards in January
"I think the nervousness has been that DESE won't move this ahead"
Sagan will respond with plan and schedule

arts and health standards haven't been revised since 1999
arts: group to be created in January; back to Board with final revision by spring 2019
health a few months behind that

and adjourned! 

March Board of Ed: revision of ELA and math

back up is here
Chester: don't want to run right past this moment in time
Massachusetts history of setting strong standards, "envy of most of the nation"
anchoring a state educational system that has succeed in way that no other state has
industry practice to periodically review and revise standards
lots of commentary, lots of discussion of what's working well, what can afford to be clarified
Very "robust process"
standards "are the Commonwealth's own"