Imagination
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Community Conversation on EducationThe Citrus County Retired Teachers presented the third in a series of “Conversation on Education”. Kathy Thrumston, former Florida PTA Vice President & Legislative Liaison; Kenny Blocker, Citrus County Schools Assistant Superintendent of Business Services; and I were the panelist at the event. The event provided information on the Citrus Schools Referendum to Maintain the .25 Millage Rate and Proposed State Amendments on the election ballot for Nov. 6th., and information on High Stakes Testing.
Ms. Thrumston discussed information regarding the proposed amendments for this November 6th elections. Appropriately the amendment Ms. Thrumston had the most concern about was Amendment 8, “Religious Freedom”. Perhaps wrongfully named, this proposed amendment would repeal the Florida Constitution’s prohibition on state funding of religious organizations. If it passed it could provide, or even require, that public funds be used for the operation of religious institutions and schools, whether they are Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Wiccan, etc. This has many obvious concerns.
There shall be no law respecting the establishment or prohibition of religion or the penalization of the free exercise thereof. Religious freedom shall not justify practices inconsistent with public morals, peace, or safety. No individual or entity may be discriminated against or barred from receiving funding on the basis of religious identity or belief. No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.
Mr. Blocker shared that prior to 2008, and for decades before, the local required school district millage rates was set by the Florida State Legislation at 2.00 mills and was restricted to capital outlays only. (One mill is 1/10 of a cent and 1/$1,000 of a dollar) Since 2008 the Florida Legislature has played a political “shell game” by passing the responsibility for adequately funding school construction and maintenance to local school boards and then to the local ad valorem tax payers. The State, in 2008, reduced the local required school district millage rate to 1.5 mills with the option for local school boards to restore it to 1.75 mills with voter approval. As you can see this is still .25 mills less than it was in 2008 even with voter approval.
Our district has seen a reduction of approximately $16 million since the 2007-2008 fiscal year, with annual facilities maintenance costs of $10 million and a $47 million renovation project for its very aged Crystal River Primary and Crystal River High School. The Citrus County School Board voted to putt eh .25 millage rant referendum on the ballot for voters to restore/maintain the millage rate to 1.75 in 2010. I supported that decision during my campaign in 2010 as I do today.
The voters in 2010 chose, by over 65%, to improve our schools by approving the referendum. It is my hope that the voters will see the present needs and once again approve to continue this funding.
The essential question I asked the audience was: “IS THERE TOO MUCH TESTING?”
The State of Florida requires that students be in school l80 days each school year. Of those days almost 65 days must be set aside for standardized testing. That also doesn’t include the necessary internal assessments that our educators use to be most effective in their teaching. It also does not include days for SAT or ACT tests. Currently, in a regular school year approximately 60 standardized tests are given to students.
Some have said that we must compete internationally and our test scores are demonstrating that the present system is helping us to better achieve that. I am not sure that I agree with that personally. I believe that what makes America so great is that we educate all of our students in a system that fits each one of them. We measure ALL of our students. Many developing nations separate their students into academic programs or work programs at the elementary age. We believe that any students have the ability to be anything they desire. Since the 1960s America has never been at the very top of the rankings but yet somehow we found a way to put a man on the moon, become one of the most powerful economic nations in the world, beat communism and develop the iPhone 5. Why? Because America has been developing risk takers and entrepreneurs. In our country you have a right to success and a right to failure.
If we must compare our educational system, then lets look at one of the worlds’ finest school systems. The Finland School System, for the past decade, have consistently been at, or near the top of all the nations tested in reading, mathematics, and science. Finnish students are able to get a good education in virtually any school in their nation. That’s equality of educational opportunity, a good public school in every neighborhood.
What makes the Finn school system so amazing is that Finnish students never take a standardized test until their last year of high school, when they take an examination for college admission.
Their own teachers design their tests, so teachers know how their students are doing and what they need. There is a national curriculum with broad guidelines to assure that all students have a full education but it is not prescriptive. Teachers have an extensive responsibility for designing curriculum. Their teachers have a large degree of autonomy, because they are viewed as professionals.
We should ask if the testing is addressing accurate information within their testing program? During the 2011-2012 school year, the Florida Department of Education decided to change the interpretation of the scoring of the Florida FCAT Writing Assessment. One might ask why? Well, in 2009/2010 Citrus testing results showed an 80% proficiency and Florida State was 76%. In 2010/2011 Citrus was 88% and the state 82%. In 2011/2012, after the new change, Citrus scored 46% and the state 33%. As you can see this change resulted in a drop in scores of almost 50% statewide. The Florida DOE convened an emergency meeting and modified the passing benchmark to compensate for the dropped scores and changed the bell curve. Was there a problem that required ever needing to change the test? Why did the FL DOE even change the test?
So then, why are we testing? Over the last decade, and longer, Florida has gone from a single, simple evaluation test called The Florida Writes to now an almost unlimited number of high stakes tests. In 2010 the Florida legislation passed, and the governor signed into law SB4, that which stated it would remove FCAT testing from the Florida Educational System. Sounds good, but what most people outside of education did not understand was that this meant, its’ students must take and pass Florida DOE approved standardized tests “End of Course Exams” (known as an EOC) in order to pass high school. It also increased the graduation requirements. Now, beginning with next year’s 9th graders, students will have to pass by 10th grade Reading, FCAT, Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Biology, Chemistry and/or Physics. They also must pass another science course that is equally as rigorous as chemistry or physics. and pass at least one online high school course. But, here is the kicker, none of the students daily work counts towards their passing requirement only the score on the EOC. This is forcing our schools to simply become PASS or FAIL education programs!
In 2011 the Florida legislature passed SB736 known now as the “Student Success Act”. This is what is now the law for FCAT and EOC testing results to also be used in evaluating a teacher’s performance or determining their salary and/or bonuses. This is known as performance based pay. 50% of a teacher’s evaluation is required to be based on student test scores. Now some might say that this is not fair. The state mandated the test but not all subject areas are tested and therefore available to be used for evaluation, ie: PE, Art, music, geometry teacher for 2012 and others, so the reading test will be used.
A recent Vanderbilt University’s National Center for Performance Incentives Study found that after a three-year trial, the researchers concluded that the teachers that had performance based pay did not obtain better student results than those that did not, or those who were not in line to get a bonus. Dr. Diane Ravitch, George Bush’s former educational policy analyst, author of the bestselling “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” says“Merit pay made no difference. Teachers were working as hard as they knew how, whether for a bonus or not”.
Because of these and many more reasons On July 10th, 2012 the Citrus County School Board unanimously passed a resolution opposing overemphasis on high-stakes testing. I was proud to vote in favor of this resolution. The Florida School Board Assoc. also passed nearly the same resolution which I also voted for as a FSBA member.
In our resolution we ask for:
I end with this from Marc S. Tucker’s book, “Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems”.
“No country that leads the world’s education performance has implemented any of the major agenda items that dominate the education reform agenda in the U.S., such as Charter schools and Voucher schools or the support of privatizing educational, neither has student performance data to reward or punish teachers and principals.”
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Elections Over!Okay maybe the national, state and local elections are not over until November 6th but the student’s School Advisory Enhancement Council’s election at Forest Ridge Elementary is!
I had the pleasure of speaking before the 5th grade schools at Forest Ridge Elementary school last week prior to their student candidate speeches and election.
I shared with them about the responsibility of the council members representing all of the students of their school, not just their friends, or their 5th grade class. They must be a part of their school community, be an example, and be willing to share their students concerns and ideas even if they might have a different opinion. I shared with the rest of the 5th grade students, who are the Voters, the responsibility they have to listen to the speeches and not choose the person just because they are their friend or that they simply like, but rather the person that appears to be willing to represent them and their schools’ best interest.
As the students gave their speeches I thoroughly enjoyed the microcosmic of our upcoming schools political elections. Some students spoke how they would work to change the lunch menu, something they would have no power to do unless they were elected. Some said that they would get more free play time, something that the state mandates to schools and not left to the council to decide. Others tried to offer their ideas and their personalities came across as very likeable. One student that stood out to me was this young person that did not have a flashy speech and did not make any promises other than offering a way for students to communicate with him in the form of a box that would be in his classroom. He explained that they could put suggestions and idea in the box for him to bring to SAEC meetings. He said, I will make a commitment that I will always be fair and bring your concerns forward to the SAEC meetings. I think we have an excellent representative in the making there!
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We’re BackI promise you I have not been ignoring my blogging duties. Our server got invaded from Russia! Well to be more precise we got hit by a malware attack. It took some time to clean and restore the server but we are now back up and running
It has been a busy couple of weeks. I have much to share. I am working on several stories. Watch soon for stories on some of my school visits, student election speeches, committee updates, proposed state amendments and more
Thanks for your support and patience while we were down.
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Student Internet & Mobile Device PolicyOur history is filled with examples of persons saying, “Oh no if you allow that… this terrible thing will happen…” When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press people feared that oral-tradition would die. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone people feared that people would not visit one another and have one to one conversations. When Henry Ford produced the Model “T” people feared that quiet walks were gone for good. We have survived, lived up to the challenges and arguably excelled those moments in our history. Technology and even more particularly technology in education is another of those moments.
When talking about technology use in the classroom and schools let me begin by again sharing the question, “Are we educating our children from the world we came from or the world they will enter”? If we are preparing them to be successes then I firmly believe we must be doing the latter.
Over the last several years in education this issue has been examined. Around the world, our country, our states and our communities, the issue of student use of individual electronic mobile devices in school has been debated and researched. As an example is a pilot project in 2008 funded by Qualcomm to Project K-Nect, in rural North Carolina. (Click here to read the article.) In the pilot high school students received supplemental algebra problem sets on smartphones. The class using the smartphones consistently achieved significantly higher proficiency rates on their end of course exams. The overall proficiency rates of the students increased by 30 percent. In the best case, one class using the devices had 50 percent more students finishing the year had a higher proficiency than a class learning the same material from the same teacher during the same school year, but without the cell phones. Study after study shows students engagement and students learning gains have significantly increased by the use of individual electronic mobile devices.
It is my belief that over the last 100 years in education, teaching methods by in large have not changed dramatically. I further believe that when history looks back 100 years from now they will point back to the integration of one-to-one individual electronic mobile devices as the time when education of our students successfully changed from an “assembly line” approach to an interactive individualized instruction.
In Walter Isaacson’s book Steve Jobs, Isaacson shares Jobs observation of the educational system. “Jobs also criticized America’s Education System, saying that it was hopelessly antiquated… It was absurd, he added, that American classrooms were still based on teachers standing at a board and using textbooks. All books, learning materials, and assessments should be digital and interactive, tailored to each student and providing feedback in real time.”
Steve Jobs major competitor and colleague was Bill Gates. Gates also has been working to make changes in education through the use of his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Isaacson further shares in his book that during one of Gate’s last meetings with Jobs prior to his death, Jobs and Gates spoke about the educational system together, “They agreed that computers had, so far, made surprisingly little impact on schools—far less than on other realms of society such as media and medicine and law. For that to change, Gates said, computers and mobile devices would have to focus on delivering more personalized lessons and providing motivational feedback.”
I fully support and agree with Jobs and Gates and that of furthering the vast research on the importance of transitioning from print to digital learning.
In the 2011 legislative session Florida Legislators revised the law to require that Florida Statue 1006.29, “State instructional materials” to require a transition from print to a digital curriculum. Florida Statue 1006.29 (1) (c) (3), now requires, “Beginning in the 2015-2016 academic year, all adopted instructional materials for students in kindergarten through grade 12 must be provided in an electronic or digital format.” This statue now requires that by 2016-2017 districts will have to implement in grades K-12 a digital device (One-to-One) such as an iPad to deliver the 2015-2016 adopted instructional materials requirement.
First, it is important for our school system to have a policy that will govern the rules and expectations of our students. With that in mind, Citrus County School Board’s “Student Code of Conduct” policy for “Possession/Use of Cell Phones” changed in June 2011. For the 2011-2012 school year and now for the 2012-2013 school year the code reads, “Cell phones/wireless communication devices may be in a students’ possession; however, they must be turned off and cannot be displayed/utilized during the school day or on the school bus when being transported to or from school without permission from school personnel.” (Prior to the 2011 change the policy read, “Cell phones/wireless communication devices must be turned off and cannot be displayed/utilized during the school day or on the school bus when being transported to or from school.”) The 2011 change provided flexibility for principals and educators as we then began working towards students’ use of electronic devices in school, often referred to as “Bring You Own Technology” (BYOT).
The Citrus County School System made an important commitment by its approach to meeting this digital instructional materials mandate by its use of the “Race to the Top” (RttT) grant funds. The district’s plan first was to install a wall-to-wall wireless student internet access at all middle and high schools in Citrus County using the grant funds. This was completed in May 2012. Next, Citrus County Schools set aside $150,000 to fund a One-to-One school pilot initiative in which students would take home a one-to-one device. In April of 2012, after a comprehensive and competitive submission process, Citrus Springs Middle School (CSMS) was selected as the school to receive the One-to-One pilot program.
As Citrus and the rest of school districts in Florida work towards meeting the 2015-2016 “all digital” requirement it is critical that educators and students begin transitioning curriculum and learning now. Until districts implement the “all digital” requirement BYOT allows students to use devices they currently have and teachers to begin developing curriculum which can, but not require, the use of technology.
In order to properly allow students to use the student wireless internet access with their BYOT it was imperative to develop new policies for students’ use of the internet and BYOT. After a great deal of development the currently proposed “Student Internet Use Policy” has been developed. (Click here to read the original proposed but that is being revised.)
I am encouraged about this exciting time regarding the use of instructional technology and I encourage you to contact me with any thoughts and/or questions you may have.
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Thursday I attended one of my newest School Advisory Enhancement Council (SAEC) school assignments which is held at the Cypress Creek Academy. Cypress Creek Academy (CCA) is a maximum-risk, residential male juvenile detention facility in Lecanto. The anticipated length of stay is 18 to 36 months. Yes, that is correct, we have a SAEC at the “teen jail”. Not many SAEC meetings begin with entering through a razor wire- topped security fence gate and passing through a metal detector, only to then be escorted in by staff through two more sets of security gates before you reach the chapel where the meetings are held.
Cypress Creek detention facility is managed by G4S Youth Services and is overseen by both the Florida Department of Corrections for the detention and Citrus County School Board for the educational aspects.
During the SAEC meeting some very positive success stories of the students were shared. Currently the CCA has 7 students that are taking college courses. This past month 5 out of 8 students that took the General Education Diploma (G.E.D.) passed the test. What is important to understand is that a person who earns his high school diploma or G.E.D. is 70% less likely to re-offend; of those that do not, 70% will re-enter prison for reoffenses. All of those serving at CCA are required by law, regardless of their age, to be enrolled in school. Since the students at CCA have been sentenced to 18 to 36 months, it is conceivable that the majority of students will be at the facility during their entire high school career. If the students do not work diligently on their schooling they are demonstrating that they are not being successful in their sentence and, if that occurs, the maximum time may be required. This consequence helps to keep students motivated.
One of the programs that was explained during the meeting was CCA’s own “Boys to Men” (later renamed “Team of One”) Peer Mentoring Program. This program selects positive peer leaders from the student body to be trained in peer mentoring to help and support other students at CCA. As the coordinator of the program shared, if he was to tell the students to, “tuck in your shirt, watch your language, or be respectful”, they would listen but it doesn’t have as strong an effect as it does if one of the other peer- mentoring students tells their peers the same thing. During the first mentor graduation they had 8 students graduate from the training program to become mentors. Through donations those graduates received a new pair of dress pants, a white collared shirt and neck tie to wear to the graduation, and a dinner from Applebee’s. For many of these young men this might be the nicest outfit they have ever owned and it represents a new beginning for many of them.
In attendance at the SAEC meeting were three students from the peer mentoring program. These young men were impressive. Two of the students were inaugural graduates of the “Boys to Men” Mentoring Program and one of the students had just been chosen to begin mentoring training to become a mentor. If someone introduced you to these three boys outside of this location and asked you which educational program you thought they attended, you would likely think they were from our gifted program or from one of our other high academically- achieving programs. These young men were smart, determined, articulate and well-groomed. I told these boys before I left that I was most impressed by them and I encouraged them to keep up the positive work they were doing.
The next “Boys to Men” graduation is quickly approaching. They are in need of donations to outfit this next graduating class for their upcoming graduation. If you are interested in donating, please contact the Program Accounting Manager at (352) 527-3091 x104 or by email at Sharon.facto@us.securicor.com
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