Steam Ahead NH

Since the summer of 2014, the Education Resources Consortium has had the pleasure of supporting the birth and development of STEAM-Ahead NH, located at Manchester High School West in New Hampshire’s Queen City. The idea originated when local business owners Jeremy Hitchcock of Dyn and Nick Soggu of SilverTech, both graduates of Manchester schools, were inspired to support the creation of a program focused on the STEM fields.  They were joined by Mayor Ted Gatsas who suggested including the Arts to include the creative thinking aspect often missing in STEM initiatives. The STEAM concept coincided with the arrival of new Manchester West Principal Christopher Motika, who helped to move quickly to fit the pieces together.  According to Motika, community partners around Manchester, including higher education players came together, and “bent the rules just enough” to begin the first cohort of STEAM-Ahead. 

View fullsize

Fabrication Station

Motika says that the vision for West is to grow the program not only as a magnet for all students in the district interested in the STEAM fields, but also as a mechanism for transforming practices within the school.  STEAM Ahead-NH teachers are proving that inter-disciplinary project-based learning, and “un-leveling” classes not only motivates students (nearly 100% daily attendance in the program compared with 87% school-wide), but can improve learning outcomes.  Motika adds, “Our ideas would not have meant much if we didn’t have a solid team of teachers willing to take risks, change their practices, and try new things”. The program which began this year with a ninth grade cohort will expand next year to include new faculty members and a tenth grade. This year’s teaching team consists of Christine Aspinwall, Dan Colburn, Rachel Belmont, Sandra Ratliff, and Robin Henkle. According to Motika, this year’s group of STEAM Ahead teachers has proven to be great collaborators, sharing ideas openly with a constant eye on trying new things.  

One of the key reasons ERC opted to support STEAM Ahead is that unlike many "STEM" programs, STEAM-Ahead NH is open to all students, not just those who "test in" or bring prior high grades. When queried how and why that happened, and what have the results been, Motika responds in animated fashion: “When the collaboration began among community partners, higher education representatives and West HS educators, some people saw STEAM Ahead as a selective program.  But there was a small and persistent group who insisted that the program represent the whole school and the city in terms of its diversity --economic, English Language learners, students with special needs, and varying academic histories. It was also important that it be “un-leveled” because many ideas about students’ abilities are not based in learning science and limit their opportunities to grow. We wanted to show that good learning is possible in the more natural, heterogeneous settings we find in life and work.  Fortunately, many of the grants we applied for required that kind of inclusiveness, and so the program was designed to be open to all interested students. 

“Our results have proven that given the right environment, any student can succeed.  Our attendance rate alone impresses educators, politicians, and community partners –we’re doing something that is getting kids excited about coming to school.  Add a low failure rate, and the fact that students who did not perform well in middle school and were “tracked” into lower level classes have come into STEAM Ahead and now achieve at higher levels, and we have exciting results to bring to the larger faculty and the community. Words cannot express how proud I am of the teacher team and the way they embraced this project of making learning fun, exciting, and engaging for kids.”

STEAM Ahead NH Engineering Lab

Veteran science instructor Christine Aspinwall, herself a graduate of Manchester HS West, was looking for an opportunity to recharge herself and get away from the district’s “leveling” system. Aspinwall says, “Students understood that they had been placed in the ‘low’ levels, which is not helpful or motivating, to say the least, and often the “upper-level” students had an air of superiority that may or may not have been justified, but made for an unhelpful dynamic. I love the heterogeneous grouping, the dynamic is so different. I love the fact that I have seen students that were relatively unsuccessful in middle school, find their voice and grow. With the right learning opportunities, everyone learns and contributes, and everyone feels like part of our community”.

Aspinwall and Principal Motika have been enthusiastic about ERC as a partner due to its commitment to school re-design, not simply working within the boundaries of conventional school ideas and practices. As Aspinwall says, “I love the permission and support in breaking free from traditions that don’t work that well. As a biologist, I have an adapt-or-die outlook, and this fits right in for me.”

As things kicked off last fall, Lucy Weathers, a VISTA volunteer, was a fortunate find for the STEAM Team, working as college and career counselor but also as a development, public relations and community liaison for the program, helping to create real world connections to what the students are learning in STEAM classrooms. Weathers says that in-city partners like Dyn, SilverTech, and Admix have not only contributed financially but also continue to give time, effort, and experience to our students.

Currently operating without an art teacher assigned to the program, the team is help fulfill the “A” (arts) by creating a humanities aspect to all of its engineering projects, and to further the fine arts aspect STEAM has turned to the community for help. They have taken learning voyages to two well-known artistic outlets in Manchester, the Currier Museum of Art and the Palace Theatre. A search is currently under way for Artists-in-Residence -community members, students, and professionals- to get involved in any aspect of the arts; fine arts, dance, theatre, vocal music, etc. to infuse into instructional units. Says Weathers, “We’re excited to have anyone from the community –artists, business people, college students, volunteers- come in and get involved. Please be in touch with us if you have ideas and energy, whatever form that may take. Our commitment is to building and growing without boundaries”.

The Six Myths of Coaching New School Leaders

By Wayne Ogden

Myth # 1: Confidential coaching is the responsibility of the Superintendent

REALITY:  Most Superintendents do not have adequate time to effectively coach their new school leaders. Even if a Superintendent has time, there exists an inherent conflict in the roles of confidential coach and a boss who evaluates a new leader. Principals who are new to a district or new to the role need a dedicated, confidential coach from outside the organization who can be trusted to address a leader’s uncertainties, concerns and challenges in a new, intense and complicated environment.

Myth # 2: Our school district cannot afford to hire external coaches for our new school leaders

REALITY:  A Rand Corporation study reports that 20% of newly hired school leaders leave their position within two years of employment, with urban districts reporting principal “failure rates” of almost 50% within the first five years. Numerous national studies link principal turnover as “very strongly negatively related to student achievement”. (Napthali, Hoff, 2014) In New England, a typical three-year contract for a new school leader with salary and benefits ranges from $300,000 to more than $500,000. A typical one-year contract for an external coach is roughly $10,000, a modest sum to insure the success of a new principal, especially given the cost of a new search process and the impact on to student achievement and school culture.

Myth # 3: My School Board/Committee will never understand or support the idea of spending money on coaches for our new principals.

Reality: Increasingly sophisticated Board members know that from Fortune 500 companies to politics, from professional sports to the fine and performing arts, highly successful leaders use coaches to help them excel at what they do. Seasoned decision-makers make these strategic investments because they understand that organizations with new leaders perform better with high-quality, dedicated coaching.

Myth # 4: We already mentor our new leaders with an experienced principal in our district.  

REALITY:  Although colleague principals are invaluable for sharing the customs, routines & traditions of a district, they have a full time job and, frequently, on-going crisis and dilemmas of their own. Research and experience have also shown that the effectiveness of these relationships wanes because these “mentors” in most cases do not have adequate training to be a “thought partner” for a new building leader, nor the time for reading, analysis, problem-solving and deliberation.

Myth # 5: No new principal has the time to be sitting down regularly for “therapy sessions” with a coach.

REALITY:  High-quality coaching is not therapy nor does having a coach imply that a new principal has flaws or shortcomings. Good coaching provides customized opportunities for principals to think deeply about the many important decisions they must make. It allows time and opportunity for questioning and reflection. Furthermore, a skilled coach provides the opportunity for a new leader to process ideas as they develop and to obtain feedback from a trusted, expert confidant before an idea, initiative or piece of writing goes public. Time for the coaching relationship to prosper comes from time not wasted on mistakes and false starts.

Myth # 6: There is little that a coach who does not know our “system” can do to help a new school principal in our district.

REALITY: An external coach is a trained expert in both leadership and management. They are thought partners for new principals to help them reflect on the regular challenges of the job. While schools and districts may differ in some aspects, the critical requirements of the position are generally similar across all schools. Coaching can be customized to address a new leader’s needs by providing a menu of supports such as:

·      Entry planning

·      Co-observations of teachers

·      Feedback on writing (evaluations, newsletters, correspondence)

·      Learning walks, mini-observations or“rounds” visits

·      Conferencing skills/Having difficult conversations

·      Building leadership capacity for student achievement

·      Strategic goal setting and budget development

·      Facilitating opportunities for student voice

·      Leading successful meetings and teams

·      Community engagement strategies

Teacher at Obama’s childrens’ school critiques his Ed Policies - Paul Horton, University of Chicago Laboratory Schools

http://education-curriculum-reform-government-schools.org/w/2013/07/teacher-at-chicago-school-attended-by-president-obamas-children-attacks-his-education-policies/

Common Core’s Testing Woes

Education Insiders: Common Core’s Testing Woes   

Fawn Johnson, National Journal

The Common Core State Standards for elementary and secondary schools weren't supposed to be controversial. They weren't supposed to incite active protests. They were supposed to be different from the unpopular, exacting tenets of No Child Left Behind. They were deliberately negotiated by consensus and carefully put together to stop the federal government from creeping in to the public school system. They carry with them a worthy goal that everyone can agree with: prepare our kids for real jobs in the real world with real skills.

So what's the problem? And why now? The answer to both questions is testing. Now that it's time for states to actually measure how their students are doing, it's a lot harder to gloss over the problems with feel-good talking points. Some states are going ahead with their first tests assessing how well students are learning under the new curriculum. Other states have dropped out of the testing, citing concerns about cost and effectiveness. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are questioning the Common Core, as this recent take from New Jersey illustrates. The tea party is mobilizing against it. Some parents are even pulling their kids from all standardized testing.

The backlash shouldn't be a surprise if you take a step back and think about it. Coming to agreement on the basic skills kids should learn is hard enough. Measuring the outcome in a meaningful way is even harder. No one wants to be the guinea pig. No one wants to be blamed for poor results.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been unapologetic about pushing for Common Core. "Yes, it's going to be a hard and sometimes rocky or bumpy transition to higher standards," he said in a recent interview with USA Today's Susan Page on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show. "I think I speak for most parents that, you know, you want more for your children, not less. And I tell you the one thing I absolutely don't want is I don't want to be lied to. I don't want people to tell me my children are ready for success when they're not in the game."

The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute's Richard Rothstein was also a guest on the show that day (as was I and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's Mike Petrilli). Rothstein's criticism of Common Core, as with all student assessments, is that they tend to narrow the teaching. "Teachers have had incentives to narrow the curriculum to the things that are tested. Students have been trained to take tests rather than to learn the underlying curriculum," he said.

Petrilli, a conservative and a staunch advocate of Common Core, noted that the administration's enthusiasm for the standards can dampen conservatives' abilities to promote it on their end. But he also agrees with Duncan. "The goal with this effort is to dramatically raise the bar and say, look, if you really want to be on track for college or career, it's a very high standard. And unfortunately right now, we're giving parents the false impression that everything is fine when it's not."

So what's the final score? Now that most of the country has adopted the standards, is Common Core failing on its second lap around the field? Will we ever be able to test how our kids are doing? Will there be consensus on whether testing is worthwhile at all? How can the tests be crafted such that they are more like Advanced Placement exams rather than fill-in-the-bubble tests? Should parents have the right to yank their kids from these tests? How do we muddle through this mess?

Fawn Johnson is a correspondent for National Journal, covering a range of issues including immigration, transportation and education. Johnson is a long-time student of Washington policymaking, previously reporting for Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal where she covered financial regulation and telecommunications. She is an alumnus of CongressDaily, where she covered health care, labor, and immigration. Johnson first covered Congress at BNA Inc., where she covered labor, welfare, immigration, and asbestos liability. She has an M.A. from the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. from Bates College.

Performance Assessment Network kicks off Pilot, linking schools for smarter accountability

New Mexico Performance Assessment Network Kicks Off Pilot Study

There is no standardized test for music performance, but that doesn’t prevent listeners from knowing a quality performance when they hear one. Music performance is a frequently used analogy among a group of New Mexico educators who are working to find new ways to assess  academic learning.

Their work is part of a growing national movement called “performance-based assessment,” centered on the idea that student learning can be systematically measured on the basis of what students can do, not what they can demonstrate on a standardized written test.The educators from the New Mexico Performance Assessment Network(PAN) say their work is important because so many reforms – teacher evaluations and school grades, for example – rely heavily on standardized tests to measure what students learn.

What it looks like

Principal Gabriella Duran Blakey offered an example of how performance-based assessment will look at Health Leadership High School in Albuquerque, which has a focus on health professions. She said students might do a unit of study on “food deserts,” or areas where healthy, affordable food is difficult to obtain. Based on demographic and other research, students might decide an area needed a new grocery store, and then would have to explain and justify where they would locate it, how they would advertise for it and develop a business plan for how they would operate it. They would simulate its construction plan, decide which products to stock and what to charge. Students would then defend their work to a panel of professionals, which might include store owners, nutritionists and doctors who work with diabetes patients. The panel would then assess the students, deciding the extent to which each student demonstrated mastery of particular skill levels and curriculum standards.

Their aim is to build a better test. Tori Stephens-Shauger, Principal of ACE Leadership High School and Founder and Facilitator  of the PAN, says that the Network is not starting from scratch. Its efforts are based in part on the work of 28 schools called the New York Performance Standards Consortium. These schools only take one (English Language Arts) of New York’s many Regents standardized tests for graduation and have been assessing their students based on performance since 1997. Several dozen schools await membership in the Consortium, which cites lower dropout rates and higher rates of college acceptance than the overall rates for New York City.

Stephens-Shauger adds, “The benefit from having a network that is focused on doing high quality performance assessment is that we can build capacity within our state to do this kind of evaluation of student learning. The PAN is made up of schools with different missions, methods of teaching and basis for curriculum but sharing a core belief that students should be assessed in the way that they learn best. Though there are expectations for network schools around some specific commitments such as the practice of performance assessment and the professional development required to do it well, standardizing the schools is not one of them.  Schools like Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School uses a rhetoric-based program called Paideia to prepare their high school students for college. The Native American Community Academy emphasizes the importance of the community, including Native leaders, to prepare middle and high school students for college. Media Arts Collaborative Charter School uses their emphases on media arts as a tool to not only build skills within the content areas but also prepare middle and high school students for careers in the media arts industry. Mountain Mahogany Community School is an elementary school that focuses on emotional intelligence and infusing learning with movement, art and the natural world. This richness in expertise and perspective enhances the PAN’s opportunity to think critically about what learning looks like through performance assessment at all grade levelsand  in different contexts.”

 “It’s more important that when kids go to college or when they go into the workforce, that they have  skills that go beyond conventional classroom learning,” said Duran Blakey. To ensure this, for example, the “test” at the end of a unit of study might be a group presentation of a research project and model that the students created. Duran Blakey is part of the PAN’s piloting of performance-based assessment in their schools this year. Their students will still be required to take New Mexico’s standardized tests and their schools will still be evaluated in conventional ways by state authorities. But the PAN schools, including Health Leadership and ACE Leadership charters, also will experiment with other ways to assess learning.

Tony Monfiletto, who was involved in founding ACE and Health Leadership High Schools, said he hopes the findings can eventually be incorporated into New Mexico’s current education initiatives.“The long-term idea is that performance assessment [would] be seen as an evaluation process of equal if not greater value than the standardized tests, so that schools can  choose to use performance assessment  as a valid indicator of their quality” he said.

The New Mexico Public Education Department (PED) expressed cautious support for the group’s efforts.“We have had preliminary exposure to their work and it is intriguing, but questions concerning validity are currently unanswered in the state,” PED spokesman Larry Behrens said in an email. “After a fair amount of research and stakeholder input, we will always be open to discussing valid and reliable measures and possibly adding them into our reforms.”

The PAN schools, in partnership with a University of New Mexico (UNM) professor, Vanessa Svihla, will study whether their assessments hold up under scrutiny. Svihla, has a grant to study performance-based assessment at Health Leadership and other charter schools. Her aim is to help the schools develop consistent measures, and to study whether and how they are valid and reliable. In other words, she is studying whether the assessments are viable in determining whether students learned what they were supposed to and whether the scoring system is clear enough that a variety of judges would come to similar conclusions about the same performance.

Svihla used the music analogy to explain assessment reliability.“If eight people look at a musical performance and all agree that it was a really great performance, that’s how we often evaluate music,” she said.

Duran Blakey said the schools will work with UNM to develop guidelines for teachers about what makes a good assessment.“You can’t just have it be that any teacher can make any assessment and that counts,” she said. Svihla said she plans to carefully study and document a few schools that share common leadership, cultures, and philosophies.“We’re taking a very careful look at a few schools,” she said. “These are schools that have experimented with doing this kind of assessment previously. They’re not taking this on as a completely new practice.”

Both Health Leadership and ACE Leadership High Schools are founded largely on partnerships with businesses seeking an educated workforce in particular areas, like health, architecture and construction. Several employers said they are excited about the effort because it will assess the skills they need from workers in ways a standardized test cannot.

Maria Guy, vice president of J.B. Henderson Construction, said test scores don’t show her important skills like teamwork and communication.“It’s not necessarily that we want to eliminate any of the current things, but a student has more to offer than just a test score,” Guy said. “From an employer’s perspective, I have different needs from my employees. From some of them I need someone who can really work with a team … someone who’s a problem solver, a good communicator and just has that ability to bring a lot of folks together on an issue. How could a standardized test ever measure anything like that?”

Guy added that there are multiple ways to measure a student’s skills and knowledge, and standardized tests are just the easiest way.“That would be to say the only way to measure something is to weigh it. But what about the length, the volume?” she said. “We’ve chosen the way that is the easiest for us.”Guy also acknowledged that measuring learning through performance is difficult, calling it “messy,” but said she believes it is worthwhile.“I think it’s worth wrestling with, and I recognize that it’s hard,” she said.

New Health Leadership high School opens in Albuquerque, featured by KASA TV

http://www.kasa.com/nm-style/health-leadership-high-school