Making Good Schools Better. Together

Did you know that only 47% of Columbia High School 2004 graduates actually graduated from college after 6 years? The classes of 2005 and 2006 did not fare much better.  If you are like me, this news must shock you.  This is an issue across the country. In Ohio, only 4 out of 10 high school graduates were prepared for college.

In New Jersey, the Department of Education has created a task force to “articulate the knowledge and skills that students should master to be "college and career ready," and ensure that New Jersey has the appropriate graduation requirements and high school assessments in place to evaluate the mastery of these readiness standards.”

Middle schools have become a focus of concern for many districts because they are the preparation ground for high school and college success. According to a 2008 report by Styron and Nyman, “middle schools must provide a learning environment that promotes high standards, accompanied by increased individual attention, strong teacher involvement, specialized daily instruction, and parental involvement.”   

In our district, over the last several months, the Superintendent presented a comprehensive set of proposals to prepare more of our students for college success. I supported these efforts and voted with a majority of the Board to adopt these on March 5. The two proposals (the middle school level up/ IB transformation proposal and the high school transformation proposal) address the need to look at college readiness as early as middle school.

Adopting the proposal was just the first step. Effective implementation is key. It involves several factors including: accountability at the district and school level, teacher involvement in and ownership of the implementation process, well designed  teacher training and professional development that includes collaboration (among teachers, supervisors and central office), effective and timely feedback, and ongoing monitoring and measurement, with a defined expectation for student outcomes.

Board-level oversight is an important part of ensuring that implementation is on track. It is important to have Board members who have both subject matter expertise, knowledge of what good teaching looks like and an understanding of the climate and culture in our middle schools.

That is why I have decided to run for re-election and why I decided to team up with Tia Swanson.  We are both committed to ensuring that implementation of the secondary school proposals is comprehensive, transparent, and measurable and, most importantly, leads to improved outcomes for students.

There are several elements to ensuring successful implementation of the secondary school proposals:

• Identify our best teachers to be integrally involved as we adapt our curriculum to IB and the new national Common Core standards.
• Identify, as best practices, the many successful curriculum units that teachers have developed and create a process to share them across the district.
• Make sure that we continue to use the team teaching model to enhance teaching and instruction and make it relevant in the classroom.
• Make sure that all professional development for teachers is effective, relevant and efficient. We need to listen to teachers about what works for them. The two new middle school curriculum specialists will enable us to do more to push professional development into the classroom, rather than always pulling teachers out for training.
• We need to collect feedback on an ongoing basis and make sure that monitoring tells us whether we are making adequate incremental progress as well as identify areas in need of improvement.  The Department of Education’s NJSMART initiative will help in this regard by allowing districts to monitor individual student progress over time.  

If elected, Tia and I will work to ensure that all these critical success factors are addressed on an on-going basis in the administration’s implementation plan. We will insist that there is an adequate feedback loop in the process to provide timely identification of issues that arise, and the ability to adjust accordingly.

We know from several major successful initiatives in recent years that our district leadership team in collaboration with teachers is capable of effective planning and implementation. We implemented full-day kindergarten in the face of space and budget constraints. We introduced step up programs at the high school. Let us not forget the implementation of the 6^th grade level up initiative, where the outcomes continue to be extremely positive. Tia and I know this can work; Amy Higer, whose campaign is closely aligned with ours, also knows that this can work. We will get the current transformation right. We can make our good schools better. Together. We ask for your support at the polls on April 17^th  so that we can lend our expertise to that effort. "If you'd like more information on these and other subjects, please check out our website, payne-parrishandswanson.org, and also that of Amy Higer, Her web address is amyhiger.org. Polls are only open from 2-9 p.m. "