DOE Releases Result of Data Coach/Wireless Gen. Survey

http://www.doe.k12.de.us/tleu_files/PLCSurveyReport_2012.pdf

Selected Highlights followed by SKEWED STATS, a C&E Math Game for the Right-brained:

• The Data Coach Project, first piloted and implemented in February 2011, provides professional learning community participants with the opportunity to receive coaching in data analysis concepts and skills related to their students’ performance. Wireless Generation (WG), the State of Delaware’s partner in the statewide Data Coach Project, deployed 29 Data Coaches across the state’s schools during the 2011-2012 school year. The Data Coach Project is implemented in one of two ways: Direct Facilitation, in which the WG coach facilitates each TADa PLC; or Coach-the-Coach (CtC), in which a district or school coach, trained by WG, facilitates the PLC. The implementation of professional learning communities is to be assessed through a variety of measures, including an annual PLC Participant Survey.
• The survey was sent electronically to all teachers in the state of Delaware, totaling 8800 teachers, specialists and administrators.  A total of 4848 surveys were collected from the teachers, specialists, and administrators participating in PLCs. That's a GRAND TOTAL of 53%!
• Survey responses were exported from Survey Monkey (online) into Stata data analysis software for analysis. The data were cleaned (for errors) and recoded (where necessary) in Stata and analyzed according to the survey’s key themes.
• Overall, the assessments of data coaches were positive and at least 70% of the teachers surveyed agreed that their data coach has the appropriate skills to facilitate their PLC, is responsive to the needs of their PLC, and responsive to teachers’ individual needs.
• Feedback indicated that the PLC work often seemed disconnected from the school’s mission or was a poor use of time since the teachers felt they already were skilled at using data to drive instructional practice. See "In Their Own Words" section.
• When teachers were asked what the majority of their PLC time should be focused around, Common Core implementation was included as part of their feedback. The TLEU has responded by training all Data Coaches in Common Core implementation for the 2012-2013 school year.

Let's play SKEWED STATISTICS for the Right-brained, RTTT Edition:

Wireless Generation hired and trained 29 Data Coaches.  50% of teachers responded to the survey via Survey Monkey.  70% of those 50% gave their data coaches high scores.  70% of 50% is 35% of all eligible respondents.  Just sayin'... But, let's keep swimming in the skewed stats. 70% of 29 is 20.3.

Based on skewed stats, Wireless Generation has supplied 8.7 data coaches who are under-performing and under-serving our teachers and students.

DOE contracted with WG for data coaches at a cost of $8.2 million.  Thus each data coach is worth about $282,758.62.

8.7 failing data coaches multiplied by their cost per unit $282,758.62 = approximately a $2.4 million negative ROI. $2.4 million washed down the drain.

And that's SS4RB - Race to the Trough Edition!

Thanks for playing Skewed Stats, a perfectly unscientific way of explaining what's between the lines.

[Continue Reading]

Laugh of the Day! Who Said It:

"This is an example of how a great idea on the district level was shared and expanded to benefit all of our schools across the state," XXXXX said. "We're thankful for the forward-thinking and collaborative nature of our local personnel."

Answer:  Dr. Lillian Lowery.
Anonymous gets the Good Apple Award of the Day!  Thank You, Dr. Lowery for reading C&E 1st. 

1) I wish this was a heartfelt sentiment.  But, I deeply doubt it.

2) Employees of school districts in Delaware are NOT your "personnel."  They don't work for DOE. I realize this continues to be difficult for DOE to understand. But, the truth is they work for Delaware's children. Stop taking credit where none is due to you!

[Continue Reading]

Jeopardy!

[Continue Reading]

Dear Delaware, Your Governor is a Bully and Local Control is Dead

My very deeply personal statement to Christina constituents.  This is my opinion and only mine.

Dear Christina,

Tonight, I ceded to the political coercion thrust upon our district through the media manipulation and propaganda campaign purported by the Governor of Delaware and his Department of Education to cripple our board's good faith action to rectify what I truly believe was the poor implementation of the PZ teacher selection process.

I voted with my fellow board mates to rescind the April 19th board action to retain and retrain our teachers at their current campuses.  There has never been a more tortured dilemma before me.  I continue to believe that the Department of Education failed to promote collaboration when they chose to freeze our funding without expressing their concerns directly to the board and giving us the opportunity to re-evaluate and initiate corrective action.

The spirit of collaboration is now dead.  There is no "kinder, gentler DOE," as representatives have so publicly proclaimed.  There is no desire to learn and share best practices.  There is only their way or the highway. Christina, for my naiveté, I am deeply sorry.  I will not rest well tonight.  The weight of this failure weighs much too heavily in my heart. While I am committed to continue the reforms that our community has supported, I will forever know that my vote on April 19th was right, appropriate, fair, and in the best interest of our students. 

The vote I cast tonight, Christina, was for you, to walk the path delineated by the Department of Education, if Christina is ever to reclaim the $11 million stolen from our children.  The future is in their hands.  Apparently, it always has been. 

Jack Markell for President, he'll be right at home in Washington D.C.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth

[Continue Reading]

State Announces Partnership Zone Schools

Stubbs, Glasgow among the first four of the 10 promised in Delaware's RTTT application...

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100831/NEWS03/100831022/State-targets-four-struggling-schools

[Continue Reading]

The Turnaround Scramble: Schools stripped of stability with unrealistic timeline

Since late spring, Mr. Look has been overseeing a dramatic shakeup at Shawnee that is meant to turn around years of anemic academic achievement at the school and help fulfill U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s $3.5 billion mandate to fix the nation’s most chronically underperforming schools over the next three years. If Mr. Look doesn’t produce improved academic results in the school year that commences Aug. 17, he will lose his job at Shawnee.

“Some days, I’m feeling like I need performance-enhancing drugs to make the kinds of changes that people say will take at least three years to do,” said Mr. Look, a Louisville native who has led Shawnee since August 2008. “Well, I have one year.”

Mr. Look’s superiors in the 98,000-student Jefferson County school district—which includes the city of Louisville—have similar misgivings about what, realistically, can be delivered, especially on such a compressed timeline and using what many educators argue are unproven strategies. Six of the city’s schools, including Shawnee, are undergoing the turnaround interventions.

“We don’t disagree that something has to happen in these schools and that we’ve got a great opportunity with more urgency, funding, and potentially more-focused support,” said Joseph C. Burks Jr., an assistant superintendent who oversees the 21 high schools in the district. He is Mr. Look’s boss.

“But why not give people more than a year to start?” Mr. Burks said. “Very few people, if any, know how to turn a school around dramatically in one year. We are in desperate need of good training on how to do this.”

The most disruptive change—replacing half of Shawnee’s teaching staff—took place last spring, though those teachers who aren’t returning to the school were not fired, and most transferred to another campus in the district. The turnover in faculty was required by the federal rules of the “turnaround” model that Shawnee is using as its method for school improvement. Mr. Look recruited nearly all of the 25 teachers who will be new to Shawnee this fall. Most of them are experienced instructors. He still has few openings left to fill, though, including an instructional assistant and someone to run the school’s ROTC program.

With the teaching team mostly assembled, Mr. Look planned a retreat for them late last month to lay out the school’s priorities for the next 10 months and get the teachers fired up for the high-stakes year that awaits them. But first, they have to learn one another’s names. The entire social studies department is new to Shawnee. Five of six English teachers are new.

Roderick Pack, 28, is Shawnee’s new chairman of the social studies department... “The amount of intensity in how all of us at Shawnee care about the students and what’s at stake is really amazing and has me very optimistic about the school’s prospects,” Mr. Pack said. “At the same time, we can’t just get caught up in the monitoring that will be going on and worrying constantly about what the test scores are. That won’t work. We’ve got to really teach these students and have expectations for them beyond a score on a state test.”

MORE HERE:  http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/08/04/37kyturnaround_ep.h29.html?tkn=RSWFfDulozUJnCIQKknmKX10UKBkA1x%2F3vhu&cmp=clp-edweek

[Continue Reading]

Mass Insight on the Partnership Zone

In the earlier part of January, I blogged my suspicions of Delaware's plan to pilot Mass Insight's Turnaround Challenge Program in Delaware schools.  The release of Delaware's Race to the Top Application confirmed my concerns. 

Before we get started, here are my early questions:
1) Will School Board Members, as LEA leaders, be invited to participate in the Partnership Zone Institute?
2) Who has Mass Insight and DOE identified to Potential Operational Partners?
3) Will participants in the Partnership Zone Institute be invited to participate in the series of visits to schools nationwide that have been successfully reformed?  And at who's cost?

The following excerpts are from different sections of the application, arrange here to provide ease of reading.
Here we go --

According to Delaware's RttT Application:

The State’s Turnaround Office will provide a range of supports to LEAs as they turn around lowest-achieving schools, from the point of entry into the Partnership Zone, to the planning process, to recruitment of leaders and staff, and finally, to the launch and operations of the turnaround school ... The State has established a partnership with Mass Insight to support its turnaround efforts, making it one of a handful of states selected for partnership with this national leader in school reform...

Goals

As noted above, Delaware expects to turn around at least 10 lowest-achieving schools by 2014, with each school reaching AYP within two years of launch. The State will initiate three interventions in the 2011-12 school year, and will initiate seven more for the 2012-13 school year...

While the process to identify PLA schools is quantitative and objective, the process to select PLA schools to enter the Partnership Zone will include qualitative components Partnership Zone schools will be selected at the discretion of The Delaware Secretary of Education...

The State’s planned timeline for implementation is as follows: In March 2010 (using 2009 data), the State will identify an initial list of PLA schools. By September 2010, the State will select at least three schools from this list to enter into the Partnership Zone and begin preparations to implement one of the four intervention models in the 2011-2012 school year. By the end of July 2011, the State will again identify a list of PLA schools, and in August of that year, the State will select at least seven more schools to enter into the Partnership Zone. These schools will immediately begin preparations to implement one of the four intervention models in the 2012-13 school year. In this way, Delaware will launch interventions in 10 schools by the 2012-13 school year. These 10 schools will represent nearly 5% of all schools in the State, and more than 25% of all schools currently in school improvement, corrective action, or restructuring. The identification process will repeat annually in July based on accountability assessment results, with additional schools selected for the Partnership Zone as determined by The Delaware Secretary of Education...

Delaware recognizes the challenge faced by LEAs in turning around the State’s lowest performing schools. With a long history of failure, these schools require radical reform to achieve sufficient academic progress among students. To this end, Delaware has established strict requirements for the four intervention models required by State law (which are equivalent to the turnaround, closure, restart, and transformation options described in the Race to the Top guidelines). In addition, Delaware expects rapid progress – schools in the Partnership Zone will need to achieve AYP in just two years...

To meet this need, a newly-formed State Turnaround Office will provide a range of services to LEAs, beginning when a school is selected for the Partnership Zone. The Turnaround Office will bring the nation’s best thinking on, and experience with, school intervention to Delaware, by working with Mass Insight...

Below are the details of the State’s implementation plan for its first cohort of three Partnership Zone schools:
1. Run a “Partnership Zone Institute” to inform LEAs selection of an intervention model and provide access to a network of potential operational partners: By July 2010, the State will host a “Partnership Zone Institute,” for LEA leaders. The Institute will provide a short, intense education process to ensure that local leaders are knowledgeable about the full range of available school intervention models, best practices, and potential operational partners. The Institute will begin with a one-day conference, providing in-depth reviews of the turnaround, closure, restart, and transformation models, including presentations by school intervention experts and support organizations. For example, the State and Mass Insight might run a workshop to share early results and experience from other turnaround states within the Mass Insight network. Next, the Institute will host a series of visits to schools nationwide that have been successfully reformed.  Finally, as LEAs may choose to outsource management of Partnership Zone schools to a third party operating partner (10) the State will facilitate introductions to potential partners that have a proven track record and an interest in expanding to Delaware (this may require a second one-day conference). As planning and implementation continue, the Turnaround Office will provide additional assistance with recruiting partners, should LEAs be interested.

(10) One model for outsourcing management of schools in turnaround is known as the “lead partner” model. These partners are granted operating freedom (e.g., authority to recruit and manage personnel) in exchange for accepting accountability for performance. Lead partners provide all academic and non-academic services at the school, actively develop a new school culture, and establish a full-time presence on site in the school...

3. Assist with recruiting, selecting, and training school leaders, teachers, and other staff: As soon as a school is selected for the Partnership Zone, LEAs should begin their search for a school leader (or a partner that will then provide a school leader). Ideally, the leader will be involved in the design of the reform model and implementation plan, and in the negotiation of staffing and operating flexibility. However, it may also be difficult to secure a leader until the LEA can assure that leader that he or she will have sufficient flexibility to manage the school (i.e., after negotiations with the union are complete).
Regardless of the timing, the Turnaround Office will support LEAs in recruiting, selecting, and training school leaders (and eventually other staff), by acting on behalf of the State to build a pool of potential leaders for all turnaround schools. This will include working with high-quality alternative certification and training programs (as described in section (D)(1)), leveraging the networks of Mass Insight, and assisting LEAs with recruiting local operating partners that have their own leader pipelines...

School leaders for the first cohort of Partnership Zone schools should be in place no later than February 2011.

5. Provide supplemental funding: The Turnaround Office will ensure that Partnership Zone schools receive the maximum funds from School Improvement Grants under section 1003(g) of the ESEA (approximately $500,000 per school), and will provide additional funding of $200,000 to each Partnership Zone school for its first three years of operations.

[Continue Reading]

Everything You Could Ever Want to Know About the Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System

All Text from the Delaware Race to the Top Application
Note:  Nearly every paragraph is a snippet from a different part of the application.  I have organized them in most chronological order I can provide in order for flow of reading.  I have highlighted some sections in bold for emphasis.

Happy Reading:

While DSTP is rigorous when compared to NAEP and other state assessments, it could be more comprehensive, cover a wider range of subject areas, and include multiple formative assessments to help teachers hit progress goals. For this reason, in 2009 the Delaware General Assembly mandated the implementation of a new computer-adaptive test (the Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System – DCAS), including formative and summative assessments, by the 2010-11 school year. Delaware is on track to meet this mandate, with a signed contract with an assessment vendor in hand.


Since Delaware’s new assessment will align with the common core standards (pending review and adoption), address college-readiness requirements, and be operational a full five ears before a common assessment is expected, the State intends to make its assessment available to the multi-state consortium as a model for the common assessment. When the common assessment is ready, Delaware will transition from DCAS to the new assessment.

DCAS: Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System. Delaware’s new statewide test of student achievement, which will be computer-adaptive and include multiple formative assessments. For every student, DCAS will provide up to three computer-adaptive formative assessments and one summative assessment per year, including end-of-course exams in high school, making Delaware one of the few states able to measure student growth in a valid and reliable way. DCAS will be fully implemented in the 2010-11 school year including benchmark and summative assessments for grades 2-10 in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies and end-of-course exams for high school courses (e.g. Algebra II)



To measure learning against these standards, Delaware is dedicating nearly $13 million in local, state and federal funding to develop the Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System (DCAS) – a series of new computer adaptive, flexible formative assessments that will be used to inform instruction and measure ongoing student learning. This investment, which shifts funding from an older summative testing system to one that is flexible and aligned with reform, includes $5.0 million of LEA funds, $4.1 million of State funds, and $3.6 million of federal No Child Left Behind funds.


Data from DCAS will flow into Delaware’s existing longitudinal data system, which already allows the State to know how every LEA, every school, every teacher, and every student is performing and improving.


As a computer-adaptive system, DCAS will improve testing by allowing all test takers, including students with disabilities, to take the same exam and have testing items adjusted to their level of knowledge. In this way, this single assessment will focus questions at the upper limit of a student’s knowledge, providing a nuanced assessment of aptitude and content knowledge.

Assessments:
In December 2009, the State signed a contract with an assessments vendor to develop DCAS (described in section (B)(2)), a set of statewide formative and summative assessments that will align with the common core standards. The vendor will make the DCAS tests for English language arts, mathematics, social studies and science available by August 2010, and the test will launch in the 2010-11 school year.

DCAS will be piloted during the spring semester of the 2009-10 school year. During the development of DCAS, the State will host a DCAS standard-setting event involving K-12 educators, higher education content experts and assessment experts to ensure that DCAS performance level cut scores represent college- and career-ready status for Delaware high schools. Once the development of DCAS is complete, the State will submit its revised State Accountability Workbook for USDOE peer review and approval.

In August 2010, the DCAS vendor will provide initial training for teachers and administrators on the new assessment. The State will augment this training with a manual and webinars to ensure that all teachers understand the importance of formative and benchmark assessments in improving instruction. Finally, in June 2010, the State will compete, as part of a consortium of states, for federal common assessments grants.


(B)(2)(i) Developing the Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System. DCAS, Delaware’s own computer-adaptive assessment system, will be used to administer up to three formative and summative assessments per year per student in core subjects, and will include formative and end-of-course exams in most other subject areas. In developing DCAS, Delaware will use a combination of local expertise, outside vendors, and participation in consortia that will develop and share testing items (see above) to gain access to high-quality testing items at the best possible value. As a computer-adaptive system, DCAS will improve testing by allowing all test takers, including students with disabilities, to take the same exam and have testing items adjusted to their level of knowledge. In this way, this single assessment will focus questions at the upper limit of a student’s knowledge, providing a nuanced assessment of aptitude and content knowledge.
DCAS will also be able to synchronize with the State’s data system, yielding immediate results that a teacher will use to improve instruction. For educators, DCAS will provide a more accurate measure of student growth and more timely and detailed information that will be used for planning and improving educational programs at the school, LEA and state levels. The State will provide data coaches to aid in the use of assessment data to improve instruction (see section (C)(3) for more information on using data to inform instruction). In addition, DCAS will provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate proficiency and will provide academic achievement information to students and parents, including a measure of fall-to-spring and year-to-year individual student growth. The robust student data created from this assessment system will form the foundation for a data driven approach to education and evaluation that will affect all of education in Delaware.

Finally, as prescribed by the Delaware General Assembly, DCAS is to be developed in a cost-effective manner and, to the fullest extent possible, developed in collaboration with other states.

Delaware’s goal is to adopt new standards by June 2010 and to train the approximately 7000 teachers affected by the new standards by the start of the 2010-11 school year. The State expects the curriculum refinement process to be 50% complete by the end of the 2010-11 school year, and 100% complete by the end of the 2011-12 school year. By the end of the 2010-11 school year, the State expects that 100% of DCAS tests will be in place, which will include at least three formative assessments. To support college-readiness, the State expects that 100% of students will be taking the SAT by the end of the 2010-11 school year.

[Continue Reading]

"DDOE's Unnecessary Current Positions"

From Delaware's Race to the Top Application:

(A)(2)(i)(e) Using the fiscal, political, and human capital resources of the State to continue after the period of funding has ended


In order to continue providing fiscal support to the reforms initiated through the Race to the Top application, the State will pursue a tiered strategy, including:


1. Continuing the overarching Statewide commitment to reform as outlined above
2. Implementing a consolidated purchasing program among LEAs for select categories of goods and services – this may include a central bidding process for instructional materials
3. Coordinating with the General Assembly to realign existing funding in the Public Education budget for reform efforts
4. Providing greater flexibility to LEAs in the administration of their state funding in order to promote autonomy, innovation and reform. This effort began in the last Delaware General Assembly, specifically with House Bill 119.

Combined, these activities will support reform and promote autonomy, efficiency and innovation in education spending throughout the State. Continued funding coordination and repurposing will involve fiscal responsibility and political will as the DDOE works with the General Assembly to ensure that State and federal education funding is distributed fairly and effectively.


Human capital resources dedicated to reform will also continue after the period of the grant. The Project Management Office and the 9 positions therein will remain in place following the period of the grant. The PMO represents a fundamental reorganization and reorientation of the DDOE to create a culture focused on performance and results. Initially these positions will be funded by Race to the Top, jump-started in the “New DDOE,” but over time the DDOE will reallocate fiscal and human resources from unnecessary current positions to these new offices on a permanent basis. The existing resources of the DDOE will be repurposed to support reform without growing the overall size of the Delaware DOE in the long term.

My biggest objection to Race to the Top, aside from the fact that the reform models are not proven, was the committment required by LEAs to continue funding for successful reforms after the seed money has been depleted. 

This section of the grant application begins to address these post-mortem requirements.  DDOE has committed to "Coordinating with the General Assembly to realign existing funding in the Public Education budget for reform efforts." Well it's about time!  (sarcasm) Shame it took the incentive of $75 Million to get everyone on the same page. 

"The Project Management Office and the 9 positions therein will remain in place following the period of the grant. "  Oh, so much for smaller class sizes, more teachers, and text books ...  We're going to use RttT to create a New DDOE  and eliminate "unnecessary current positions."  Well, let me say it -- IF WE HAVE UNNECESSARY CURRENT POSITIONS IN DDOE, THEY NEED TO BE ELIMINATED NOW!  Why are we wasting money paying for unnecessary human capital?  To ensure that the body count stays the same in Dover?  To prevent the attrition of a position to the Consolidation of State Government? Come on!  I have waivers to permit my schools to operate outside the maximum class size regulations, and DOE has unnecessary current positions.  Down-size now and send me a teacher!

The existing resources of the DDOE will be repurposed to support reform without growing the overall size of the Delaware DOE in the long term.  Oh, I get it, now!  We are going to use RttT to re-train the same people who have stood by while our public school system floundered and failed. It would be my guess, based upon the Delaware Way, that DDOE has a tank of employees who have filled their positions for decades and are within arms reach of retirement and pension.  Let's keep them in place long enough to get them to their full pension because that is certainly the smartest and best way to use our education dollars.

Since taking this unpaid job, I find myself slamming my head into the wall more and more.  What's broken in our schools didn't start in our schools.  It started in the beauracracy crafted around our schools.  RttT leads me to believe that the state thinks we need millions of dollars to undo that before we can begin reaching our failing students.  We have to stop investing in the latest reform, trend, and curriculum and get back to the basics.  Education needs to be about our children, not the adults.  And right now, the conversation really seems to be about the adults. 

[Continue Reading]