Area Advisory Summary Report

I received a hard copy of Paul Hultberg’s summary report of the Area Advisory Meetings in the mail Friday. In addition there was a short note from Mr. Johnson stating that the notes would be posted on the I-SS web site. However, they have not yet been posted, so I am going to include a copy at the end of this post.

I hope that the School Board takes a good look at this summary report as well as the notes from the individual Area Advisory meetings. Mr. Johnson has already stated that he will use the common themes from each of the reports to direct his work. The Board needs to assist Mr. Johnson in this endeavor.

The summary report includes four observations as well as a listing of what seems to be the highest-ranking suggestions from the various meetings. The first of the four observations deals with Baldrige/Continuous improvement. It states that there were diverse opinions on this issue. This is verified in the listing of the various suggestions with many participants indicating that the Baldrige model should be eliminated and others saying it should be continued. It will be interesting to see the results of the Teacher’s survey in this area.

The second observation is titled: Light turnout for parents. However if you look at the total number of participants, you can see that there was a light turnout across the spectrum of all stakeholders. The School Board and administration must do a much better job of connecting with parents and other citizens. Citizens needed to be invited and encouraged to participate in all school activities and they need to know that their suggestions will be taken seriously.

The third observation deals with Technology and states that the participants indicated that technology issues were presented as an important means of accomplishing goals. I know that I-SS has increased the use of computers, smart boards, and other technologies but there is a lack of significant technologies in many of the schools. I-SS seems more interested in having Baldrige ‘wallpaper’ on classroom walls than they are of having technology in the hands of students. Perhaps I-SS should look at what Mooresville Graded School District is doing right in this area such as providing students with laptop computers and integrating the use of these computers in the classroom. Check out the information and video at the link below.

Mooresville Schools: Digital Conversion

The fourth observation is simply the sentence: These sessions document a desire for a more collaborative as opposed to authoritative approach to leadership. There has certainly been a change in this direction with the change in superintendents, but there is still a lot a baggage left over from the past administration that needs to thrown out the window. The emphasis must be on what is best for the students and not on winning some award.

The last two pages of the report list the characteristics and strengths desired in the new superintendent. I do think that Mr. Johnson possesses many of these characteristics and that he is capable of leading the school system. That does not mean we can let our guard down. There is still a lot of work to be done to change the course of the system away from the mistakes of the previous administration.


Update (Monday, Nov. 23): The summary report is now available via the I-SS web site. Click on the link below to access the report.

Advisory Reports

Advisory Summary Report Pages 1 and 2. Click on an image to enlarge it.

      

Advisory Summary Report Pages 3 and 4. Click on an image to enlarge it.

      

Area Advisory Notes

On Tuesday I received an e-mail from Dawn Creason that included Paul Hultberg’s notes from the Area Advisory meetings. They are listed as notes not as reports. The notes first list the issues posted on the Plus/Delta chart that was created at the end of the meeting.
Following this is the list of the participant’s suggestions given when asked to identify the pressing issues for the superintendent to address. After the various suggestions were sorted by category and summarized each participant was given four sticky dots to vote for what they felt were the most important suggestions. This list also includes the tally of the points or votes for each item.

The last part of the notes includes the suggestions for the strengths and characteristics that the new superintendent should possess. The participants were also given four sticky dots to vote in each of these categories and those tallies are included.

In an e-mail reply to Dawn Creason, I asked if there was going to be an overall report and if these notes are going to be posted on the I-SS web site. I have not yet received a reply to those questions.

I also received an e-mail from Mr. Johnson stating that he shared the feedback from the advisory meetings with certified and classified staff advisory groups last week. I assume that these advisory notes are the feedback to which he was referring.


UPDATE: The area advisory notes are now available on the I-SS web site. You can access the notes on the I-SS web site by clicking on the link below or you can click on the images below to see an enlarged image of the individual Pages.


I-SS Web Page: Area Advisory Notes

The links to an image of the individual Area Advisory note pages are included below. Click on the image of a page to enlarge it.

Statesville High School: (3 Pages)

 

North Iredell High School: (4 Pages)

South Iredell High School: (4 Pages)

Lake Norman High School: (3 Pages)

West Iredell High School: (7 Pages)

Baldrige Award Ceremony

At the Board of Education meeting last Monday, Mr. Johnson announced that I-SS will be officially receiving the Baldrige National Quality Award in Washington DC on Wednesday, December 2nd. Mr. Johnson also mentioned that President Obama will be presenting the award.

Click on the link below to access the list of I-SS attendees.

BNQP Ceremony Attendees List

Missing: Area Advisory Meeting Reports

As I stated in my previous post, the School Board’s selection of Mr. Johnson as superintendent was made before the report of the various area advisory meetings was publicized. Wednesday, I sent Dawn Creason, I-SS Director of Public Relations, an e-mail asking to inspect the final report as well as any intermediate reports of the various Area Advisory Meetings that began on Oct. 1, 2009. I also requested to inspect the reports of any other advisory meetings, including the one with certified personnel, that were held relating to the selection of the new superintendent. I received the following reply.

Mr. Klaene-

I have checked, and the minutes posted online are the reports of the advisory meetings. There were no intermediate reports. Additionally, there have been no meetings with certified personnel relating to the selection of the new superintendent.

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I have read the minutes of the advisory meetings and they are not the reports that were promised. As a matter of fact, each of the minutes includes the following statement.

All information gathered at this and all Area Advisory Meetings will be presented back to the community in the form of a report from Mr. Hultberg and Ms. Masiello.

Additionally, at the last of the area advisory meetings, Mr. Johnson stated that the advisory meeting report would be posted on the I-SS web site within a few days. Why is there no report? Why was no advisory meeting held with the teachers as promised? Why was there no public survey as promised?

As part of his comments at the Board meeting, Dr. Cash said: “we reviewed recommendations made through the district advisory meeting process and the data obtained from formal and informal surveys throughout the education and civic community.” How could they review the recommendations if there was no report? What formal and informal surveys was he referring to? Perhaps the Board members simply talked to their friends, relatives, and close associates.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know that Mr. Johnson is a capable and dedicated man. I certainly think that he will do a good job as superintendent. However, the Board promised that they would use a particular process in the selection of the new superintendent. Yet, in the end, they chose to abruptly stop that process and go behind closed doors to make their decision. This casts a dark cloud over the whole process and even worse; it casts a dark cloud over Mr. Johnson. Once again, the School Board has shown a lack of respect for students, parents, teachers, other I-SS employees, and the citizens of Iredell County.

New Superintendent Update

Update: Audio clips have been added.

As I stated in my previous post Mr. Johnson was named New I-SS superintendent at the Board of Education meeting on Monday evening. Dr. Cash, Board Chairman, said that the decision was made at a previous meeting. I assume that it was made done during the closed session after the Committee of the Whole meeting last Monday. Click on the link below to access the official announcement on the I-SS web site.

Board Selects Johnson

Click on the link below to access the announcement on the Record and Landmark web site.

Johnson named I-SS superintendent

Prior to naming the new superintendent, Dr. Cash made a number of comments some of which are not included in those announcements. Some of Dr. Cash's comments are listed below.

“One of the most, if not the most, important responsibilities of a Board is to ensure the placement of a leader or CEO who shares the vision of the institution and is able to capably and responsibly nurture the institution in carrying out its mission. As the Board of I-SS began to consider who would be chosen to become our next superintendent,

we reviewed our vision to improve student learning by igniting a passion for learning and began to contemplate what leadership skills could help us all be excited about our focus on learning,

we thought about our mission …

we considered personal attributes and characteristics of a leader …

we reviewed recommendations made through the district advisory meeting process and the data obtained from formal and informal surveys throughout the education and civic community.

Resulting from this process, several common themes, skills, attributes, characteristics of our next desirable leader emerged.”

You may now listen to Dr. Cash's comments and announcement.

He then went on to make additional comments and stated some of the reasons behind the Board’s decision before making the actual announcement.

While I think that Brady Johnson is a good man and was an excellent choice for Interim Superintendent, I think that naming him Superintendent was a very premature choice. The reports of the area advisory meetings have not yet been publicized, the advisory meeting with certified personnel has not yet even been held, and there has been no public survey. The board made certain commitments regarding the selection of the superintendent that have now been totally discarded.

The Board is again stating that they really don’t care about students, teachers, parents, and the public. They made this decision on their own without the full input of the I-SS stakeholders. That is not a good for anyone but the Board. They were not properly carrying out the duties of their elected positions. Quite simply, they took the easy way out.

You may now listen to Mr. Johnson's comments.

New Superintendent Named

At tonight's Board of Education meeting Dr. Cash stated that Brady Johnson had been selected to be the new superintendent. Before making the announcement, Dr. Cash read a number of recommendations that were made at the various advisory meetings and stated that the Board had made their decision based on those recommendations.

Congratulations to Mr. Brady Johnson!

In a subsequent post I will give more information and some comments.

Teacher's Survey Update

Note: I entered the following as a comment to the original post about the teacher's survey but I decided to enter it as a separate post as well.

I met with Mr. Johnson Thursday afternoon. We spent most of the time speaking about the teacher’s survey. Mr. Johnson said that he did not put abandon as one of the choices because he was afraid that teachers would mark abandon and not explain why. As for only listing 15 items, while the principals had 34 items on their survey, Mr. Johnson said that he knew some of the items on the principal survey did not relate to teachers and that he wanted to select those items that he felt were the ones that were the most critical to teachers. He also said that he wanted to keep the survey more manageable. Mr. Johnson said that he probably should have structured the survey differently but that he is interested in hearing from the teachers.

Mr. Johnson said that a number of the surveys have already been returned and that he has looked over some of them. He also showed me a few of them. I noticed that there were many items marked as needing to be tweaked. Mr. Johnson indicated that he was pleased that there were also many written suggestions. Some of the suggestions were quite lengthy.

Mr. Johnson said that they would probably have to have someone come in and tally the results. He mentioned a name but I will not say who it is because the person has not yet been contacted. Mr. Johnson said that he does want teachers to complete the survey, that they will get a report of the findings, and that he will act on the responses.

Mr. Johnson said that one of the things that he is hearing is that teachers want more flexibility. He said that for the last two years I-SS was doing everything strictly ‘by the book’ so they could win the Baldrige Award. Mr. Johnson added that I-SS cannot maintain that pace and things have to change. He said that there is still some resistance to that change among some administrators. Mr. Johnson said that some principals were still very committed to the way things have been done and even told him that he should not give teachers the opportunity to take the survey. Mr. Johnson said that he has heard from some teachers that things have been better this year, but he also admitted that for others things have not changed.

Creativity vs. Standardization

There is an interesting article available on CNN.com titled How Schools Stifle Creativity by Sir Ken Robinson Ph.D. It also includes a video of a talk Sir Robinson gave at the 2006 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference. Sir Robinson speaks of how educational institutions often stifle the creativity of students. The following are some statements that Sir Robinson makes in the article.

“What is the argument? In a nutshell, it's that we're all born with immense natural talents but our institutions, especially education, tend to stifle many of them and as a result we are fomenting a human and an economic disaster.”

“In education, this vast waste of talent involves a combination of factors. They include a narrow emphasis on certain sorts of academic work; the exile of arts, humanities and physical education programs from schools; arid approaches to teaching math and sciences; an obsessive culture of standardized testing and tight financial pressures to teach to the tests.”

“It happens in part because the dominant systems of education are rooted in the values and demands of industrialism: they are linear, mechanistic and focused on conformity and standardization. Nowadays, they're buttressed by major commercial interests in mass testing and by the indiscriminate use of prescription drugs that keep students' minds from wandering to things they naturally find more interesting.”

“There's a wealth of talent that lies in all of us. All of us, including those who work in schools, must nurture creativity systematically and not kill it unwittingly.”

I-SS must follow State and Federal regulations, but in the last several years the administration has put in place a ‘one size fits all’ application of the Baldrige plan. This has forced teachers to comply with an I-SS mandated standardized mechanism of PAs, PDSAs, formative assessments, PLCs, IF lead meetings, plus/deltas, and the like. Teachers are left with little time or energy to truly promote student creativity.

At Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting, two teachers gave enthusiastic presentations of how they use Predictive Assessments in their classrooms. I am glad that these teachers have been able to integrate this mechanism in their classrooms and use it to enable their students to succeed. The problem is that the Board members and the administrators see these presentations and think that since this instructional method is working in these classrooms, then it should work in all classrooms. Educational studies have shown that teachers need the freedom to use whatever instructional methods best suit the strengths and talents of their students. These two teachers were invited to speak at the Committee of the Whole meeting. There are many I-SS teachers who successfully use other instructional approaches to inspire their students to learn. Why doesn’t the administration invite them to speak at School Board meetings?

Click on the link below to access Sir Robinson’s article and video.

How schools stifle creativity

Teacher's Survey

As has been mentioned in several comments to a previous post, I-SS teachers are now being given the opportunity to take a version of the survey that the Principals took back in August. Pam Schiffman, Associate Superintendent of Accountability and Technology, sent the survey, via e-mail, with the subject line: I-SS Learning initiatives Opinion Activity – FOR TEACHERS. The survey lists a number of I-SS initiatives/processes and asks for input about each one.

Both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Rogers told me some time ago that the teachers would be given the same survey that was given to principals. However that did not happen. First of all, principals were given the option of listing most items as OK as is, tweak, or abandon while teachers are not given the option to directly mark abandon for any of the items. It was mentioned in one of the blog comments that teachers could write abandon in the Suggestions For Improvement section, but teachers should have been specifically given a column to mark abandon for individual items.

Next, the principals were given 34 items on their survey while teachers were only given 15 items. The following items were on the teacher’s survey.

1. Baseline Assessments (BA)
2. Common Formative Assessments (CFA)
3. Predictive Assessments (PAs)
4. School Improvement Planning
5. Data Warehouse/Reports
6. Early Release Professional Development
7. High Yield Instructional Strategies (HYIS)
8. Instructional Facilitator Model (IF)
9. L to J (Lee Jenkins Resources)
10. PDSA
11. Classroom Walkthroughs (CWTs)
12. Professional Learning Communities (PLC)
13. Virtual PLCs
14. Curriculum Guides
15. Teamwork Matrix

The principal survey included all of the above items except High Yield Instructional Strategies and it also included the following items.

1. Budgeting Process
2. Hiring Process
3. Response to Intervention
4. Teacher Evaluation System
5. Corrective Reading
6. Read 180
7. Positive Behavior Support
8. The ISS Triangle Models: Raising Achievement and Closing the Gaps & Effective and Efficient Operations
9. School Improvement Plan Coaching
10. Leadership Academy Week
11. Quality Fair/RACG Day
12. Leadership Academy for Novice Principals
13. Leveled Principal’s Meetings
14. Mid and End of Year Review
15. Instructional Facilitator/Principal Meetings
16. Boot Camps
17. Curriculum Review Week
18. Assistant Principal Meetings
19. Quarterly Principal Coaching Sessions
20. Whole Group Principal Meeting

Granted, some of these additional items on the principal’s survey such as Assistant Principal Meetings and Whole Group Principal Meeting do not apply directly to teachers and would not need to be included on the teacher survey. However, a number of them do apply directly to teachers. For example, Teacher Evaluation System, Response to Intervention, The ISS Triangle Models, and Corrective Reading all have direct teacher involvement. Teachers should have been given the opportunity to rate these items as well.

I think that Mr. Johnson needs to have Pam Schiffman restructure the survey or at least give a valid explanation of why these items were not included on the teacher’s survey and why teachers were not given the direct opportunity to mark any items as needing to be abandoned.