On Thursday 04/26/2012, the Howard County Board of Education held a regularly scheduled meeting.  At the beginning of this meeting, we were pleased to unanimously approve and execute the contract with Dr. Renee Foose as our next Superintendent of the Howard County Public School System. It is worth noting the historical significance of her appointment.  Dr. Foose is the first woman ever appointed Superintendent of the Howard County Public School System.  I’m so excited to collaborate with Dr. Foose on important advances in our schools and look forward to helping with her transition.

Last night, the School Board discussed a couple very important issues.  The first is Elementary World Language and our existing pilot of Mandarin Chinese and Spanish at two elementary schools – Laurel Woods and Waverly Elementary schools.  We received a report from staff on the progress of the two-year pilot – after the first semester or 25% of the way into it.  This is a critically important pilot for our students and I completely support offering world language instruction from elementary through high school.  This was a part of my Six Innovations in Four Years Plan (S.I.F.Y.) that I unveiled during my campaign and I am pleased to see the progress we are making.

As I’ve said before, there is an achievement gap for every child – between their current achievement and their potential. On the global stage, the achievement gap between American students and their international counterparts costs the United States $2.3 Trillion in lost productivity.  A major factor in that international achievement gap is the fact that we are educating children who are not multi-lingual.  Foreign language instruction can help narrow this gap. Here is a summary of research supporting this approach.  As part of the discussion last night, we learned about the “enthusiasm” of students, staff, and parents, as well as the “novelty” of this program. However, I shared some concerns that I hope will be addressed.  These are implementation concerns that need to be addressed now, so that we are prepared to scale the program for every elementary school. Currently, we have not created a definition of success.  How will we know the pilot is successful?  No one has an answer. I proposed some things to consider.  It is more than just fluency, which is an ambitious expectation for an elementary school child.  Rather, like fine arts and technology which are similar life skills, world language can have a “halo effect” on other subject areas and cognitive development.  Based on the research, my guess is that we will see higher rates of academic achievement, improved test scores, and increased engagement or motivation to learn from students participating in this program.  I also asked about the intangibles such as providing native speaking students with leadership opportunities and their parents with additional chances for family involvement.  These intangibles should also help address other concerns that we face as a school system, such as the achievement gap of English Language Learners who are principally Hispanic and the cultural proficiency issues that often exclude Asian-American families from involvement in our schools.    In speaking with staff following their presentation, they are going to work on those definitions of success that encompass overall academic achievement which will hopefully justify expansion of this pilot into every elementary school in SY2014.

In a procedural move, the School Board ratified the waiver granted by the State Board so that we will not have to make-up one day on Monday, June 11th. Therefore, the last day of school will remain Friday, June 8th. Hooray!

The next weighty subject of the meeting followed the report of Mr. Lemle from HCEA.  Following Mr. Lemle’s remarks, the Board engaged in a discussion about Performance Evaluation Criteria in the Race to the Top program.  This past week, the Maryland State Board of Education issued the COMAR regulations on the upcoming criteria for teachers and principals.  I can remember back on Monday, February 6th when I was speaking before the PTA Council of Howard County about this matter.  At the time, I had explained that there was going to be a difference between how Howard County would be able to evaluate its teachers and principals, versus the flexibility kept by Montgomery and Frederick counties who opted to not participate in Race to the Top.  Board candidate Ann De Lacey explains the episode in a recent email.  The COMAR regulations and the associated guidelines confirm my concerns and my statements, and stand in contrast to the misinformation being shared by some other Board members.  I am deeply concerned about Race to the Top and I would have voted against it, had I been on the Board at the time.  As I shared last night, following the appointment of the Superintendent, this decision around Performance Evaluation Criteria – how we will measure successful instruction in our classrooms – may likely be one of the most important things we do as a Board.  In learning about this issue, I have worked this past week with Ms. Linda Wise, Chief Academic Officer, and other senior officials in the school system to ensure that staff will develop and present a transparent timeline and process for making this decision that involves teacher input, public input, student input, and Board input as well as approval. I wanted to have this report ASAP, but in talks with Linda, I agree that she should align with our new Superintendent on this timeline before presenting to the Board and so it will come in a couple weeks.  This is critical and I am grateful for Ms. Wise’s willingness to present this report to the Board, following her discussion with Dr. Foose.  Dovetailing on this discussion, I sent out a resolution to my colleagues that I am asking for them to consider.  This resolution is based on a National Resolution Against High Stakes Testing.  It is my hope that we will act on this resolution by the end of this school year.  I have pasted the resolution I introduced below:

“WHEREAS, our nation’s future well-being relies on a high-quality public education system that prepares all students for college, careers, citizenship and lifelong learning, and strengthens the nation’s social and economic well-being; and

WHEREAS, our nation’s school systems have been spending growing amounts of time, money and energy on high-stakes standardized testing, in which student performance on standardized tests is used to make major decisions affecting individual students, educators and schools; and

WHEREAS, the over-reliance on high-stakes standardized testing in state and federal accountability systems is undermining educational quality and equity in U.S. public schools by hampering educators’ efforts to focus on the broad range of learning experiences that promote the innovation, creativity, problem solving, collaboration, communication, critical thinking and deep subject-matter knowledge that will allow students to thrive in a democracy and an increasingly global society and economy; and

WHEREAS, it is widely recognized that standardized testing is an inadequate and often unreliable measure of both student learning and educator effectiveness; and

WHEREAS, the over-emphasis on standardized testing has caused considerable collateral damage in too many schools, including narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, reducing love of learning, pushing students out of school, driving excellent teachers out of the profession, and undermining school climate; and

WHEREAS, high-stakes standardized testing has negative effects for students from all backgrounds, and especially for low-income students, English language learners, children of color, and those with disabilities; and

WHEREAS, the culture and structure of the systems in which students learn must change in order to foster engaging school experiences that promote joy in learning, depth of thought and breadth of knowledge for students;

WHEREAS, many organizations across the country including Race to Nowhere, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the National Education Association, Parents Across America, and others have endorsed this resolution;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Howard County Board of Education calls on the governor, state legislature and state education boards and administrators to reexamine public school accountability systems in this state, and to develop a system based on multiple forms of assessment which does not require extensive standardized testing, more accurately reflects the broad range of student learning, and is used to support students and improve schools; and

RESOLVED, that the Howard County Board of Education calls on the U.S. Congress and Administration to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as the “No Child Left Behind Act,” reduce the testing mandates, promote multiple forms of evidence of student learning and school quality in accountability, and not mandate any fixed role for the use of student test scores in evaluating educators.”

The final important issue that I’d like to highlight at our meeting on 4/26/2012 dealt with Student Mental Health.  At our last meeting, I had raised this issue again – this time after the tragic loss of two of our amazing young people over the past two months.  It is critically important for us to discuss the issue of stress and student mental health issues.  The stress and anxiety facing our students due to excess homework, sleep deprivation, high stakes testing, cyberbullying, and other issues is leading to increased diagnoses of mental health disorders, increased prescriptions of psychotropic medications, increased substance abuse, and unacceptable rates of suicide.  After watching the documentary Race to Nowhere back in November 2011 for the first time and then attending multiple showings thereafter to hear the feedback from parents, I was committed to ending the race.  After a year’s worth of urging, the Board of Education finally had a discussion on this issue last night.  I was proud of the students from River Hill High School who attended the meeting, as a follow-up to their report at our last meeting, and shared their research and data with us.  RHHS is already implementing changes to their program of studies to address these issues of stress through Hawk Time – which is a flex period once a week, and homework-free breaks.  I appreciate the leadership of Mr. Novak and Ms. Mitchell at RHHS to involve students in this process and make changes.  For the past two weeks following our last meeting, I’ve been collaborating with staff to ensure that we had a productive discussion about this matter – instead of the dysfunctional discussions that have ensued following this issue previously.  I proposed a process based on the Six-Sigma methodology of DMADV that was endorsed last night by our central office experts and healthcare professionals that will involve defining the goals and objectives through collaborations with school and community stakeholders, developing measurements to evaluate the performance of our school system to those goals and objectives, a process of analyzing existing programs to determine gaps in addressing those objectives, a collaborative plan to design specific improvements to existing efforts, and then a plan to verify that those new ideas actually work.  It was great to see the endorsement of staff of this plan (pasted below).

PROCESS AND TIMELINE TO ADDRESS STUDENT MENTAL HEALTH

Based on Six-Sigma DMADV methodology for Process Excellence

• DEFINE: The Board should request staff to develop a process to collect internal and external feedback from our stakeholders for the purposes of defining goals and objectives for improving student mental health.  The first step in this process is the discussion on 4/26.  Other groups that should be considered are:  1) town hall meetings with parents, 2) feedback from School Health Council, 3) PTA Council or affiliated PTAs, 4) Community Advisory Council, 5) SECAC, 6) the Health Department, and others.  From these meetings, staff should be able to define goals and objectives from the stakeholders. (Spring 2012)

• MEASURE: Building on school climate surveys and the planned sleep survey, staff should recommend at a future time to the Board specific ways to quantify the needs of these stakeholders and ways to determine if we are successful in meeting those needs. (Late Spring 2012)

• ANALYZE: The Board should request that staff perform an evaluation and gap analysis of existing programs.  The Board should request that staff come to us with a timeline to complete this evaluation.  The result of this evaluation should be a report to the Board with proposed changes. (Summer 2012)

• DESIGN:  With stakeholder goals and objectives defined, measurements determined, and program evaluation complete, the Board should request that staff propose new approaches/processes/programs to improve student mental health.  The Board should request that staff layout a timeline to develop these designs. (Fall 2012)

• VERIFY: The Board should request that staff evaluate existing pilots of efforts initiated in schools in response to Race to Nowhere (homework free breaks and weekends, etc.), as well as conduct pilots of those new designs recommended by staff to verify that they meet stakeholder goals and objectives. (Spring 2013)

Once this process is complete, then staff should provide a report for action by the Board for expanded changes to the HCPSS program, which may involve staffing, curriculum, scheduling, and other adjustments.  (Late Spring 2013)

Last night, the consensus of the Board, with the endorsement of staff, was to have staff take this outline and come back with a report that lays out the timeline and process for addressing this issue.  I was very pleased that Ms. Blackwell was agreeable to this framework and staff suggested a taskforce to prioritize this issue.

You can watch the video here.