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 Summary Report Pages 3 and 4. Click on an image to enlarge it.
Promoting the quality and accountability of the Iredell Statesville Schools
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.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.
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.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.
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.
The principal survey included all of the above items except High Yield Instructional Strategies and it also included the following items.
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.I attended the Advisory Meeting at West Iredell High School last night and I must say that I think that this one was much better than the one at Statesville High. The procedure was the same but the presentation was a little clearer. Of course, the presenters have now had the opportunity to go through the process several times and I had gone through it once before.
However, I think the biggest change was in the group of participants. At the first meeting, my wife was probably the only teacher in attendance and there were a significant number of Central Office administrators present. At this meeting that ratio seemed to be reversed. I did not know most of the people in attendance but from the comments of those present there did seem to be a significant number of teachers at this meeting. The comments seemed to be more related to students, teachers, and classrooms.
There were two School Board members in attendance as well. John Rogers was there and he told me that he had been to all of the advisory meetings except one. Charles Kelly was also there. He told me that he had attended a couple of the other Advisory Meetings.
At the end of the meeting Mr. Johnson stated that they hoped to have the reports from all of the meetings posted on the school web site in a few days. I am looking forward to seeing the overall report. Click on the link below to access the I-SS web site.
Much fanfare has been associated with I-SS winning the 2008 Baldrige Award and much has been said about the costs associated with the process of implementing the Baldrige award and the costs of applying for the award. Now let’s talk about the award itself. I will describe some of what I have been able to learn about those processes by examining the feedback reports that I-SS received from the Baldrige Program.
The Baldrige National Quality Program (BNQP) uses a given set of criteria to evaluate those institutions that apply for the award. That set of criteria is available to institutions before they prepare their materials to submit to the BNQP. Apparently the bulk of the application is a narrative in which the institution itemizes its achievements related to each criteria item. In 2007, I-SS submitted a 58-page narrative and in 2008, I-SS submitted a 51-page narrative.
Each member of the BNQP Board of Examiners evaluates the narrative and assigns a percentage score to each category. The examiners then perform what is called a Consensus Review during which the team reaches a consensus on the score for the applicant. That review and score is then used to determine if the applicant warrants a site visit.
Site visits are conducted for the highest-scoring applicants to clarify any uncertainty or confusion the Examiners may have regarding the written application and to verify that the information in the application is correct. Based on the site visit the percentage scores for each criteria item may change. The final individual item scores, along with a weighted value for each category item, are used to determine overall score called the Band Score. The Band Score ranges from 1 to 8 with 8 being the best score.
Listed below are the I-SS scores for each category in 2007 and 2008. The scores are given as a percentage range rather than a specific percentage value. The percentage range is based on the Scoring Guidelines, which describe the characteristics typically associated with specific percentage ranges. The given scores are the final scores after any adjustments based on the site visits.
Baldrige Education Criteria
Category | Value | I-SS Score ‘07 | I-SS Score ‘08 |
1 Leadership | | | |
1.1Senior Leadership: How do your senior leaders lead? | 70 Points | 70 – 85% | 70 – 85% |
1.2Governance and Social Responsibilities: How do you govern and address your social responsibilities? | 50 Points | 70 – 85% | 50 – 65% |
2 Strategic Planning | | | |
2.1Strategy Development: How do you develop your strategy? | 40 Points | 70 – 85% | 50 – 65% |
2.2 Strategy Deployment: How do you deploy your strategy? | 45 Points | 50 – 65% | 30 – 45% |
3 Student, Stakeholder, and Market Focus | | | |
3.1 Student, Stakeholder, and Market Knowledge: How do you obtain and use student, stakeholder, and market knowledge? | 40 Points | 70 – 85% | 50 – 65% |
3.2 Student and Stakeholder Relationships and Satisfaction: How do you build relationships and grow student and stakeholder satisfaction and loyalty? | 45 Points | 70 – 85% | 50 – 65% |
4 Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management | | | |
4.1 Measurement, Analysis, and Improvement of Organizational Performance: How do you measure, analyze, and then improve organizational performance? | 45 Points | 50 – 65% | 50 – 65% |
4.2 Management of Information, Information Technology, and Knowledge: How do you manage your information, information technology, and organizational knowledge? | 45 Points | 50 – 65% | 30 – 45% |
5 Workforce Focus | | | |
5.1 Workforce Engagement: How do you engage your workforce to achieve organizational and personal success? | 45 Points | 70 – 85% | 50 – 65% |
5.2 Workforce Environment: How do you build an effective and supportive workforce environment? | 40 Points | 50 – 65% | 70 – 85% |
6 Process Management | | | |
6.1 Work Systems Design: How do you design your work systems? | 35 Points | 50 – 65% | 50 – 65% |
6.2 Work Process Management and Improvement: How do you manage and improve your key organizational work processes? | 50 Points | 50 – 65% | 50 – 65% |
7 Results | | | |
7.1 Student Learning Outcomes: What are your student learning results? | 100 Points | 30 – 45% | 50 – 65% |
7.2 Student- and Stakeholder-Focused Outcomes: What are your student- and stakeholder-focused performance results? | 70 Points | 30 – 45% | 30 – 45% |
7.3 Budgetary, Financial, and Market Outcomes: What are your budgetary, financial, and market performance results? | 70 Points | 50 – 65% | 30 – 45% |
7.4 Workforce-Focused Outcomes: What are your workforce-focused performance results? | 70 Points | 50 – 65% | 50 – 65% |
7.5 Process Effectiveness Outcomes: What are your process effectiveness results? | 70 Points | 50 – 65% | 30 – 45% |
7.6 Leadership Outcomes: What are your leadership results? | 70 Points | 50 – 65% | 30 – 45% |
As mentioned before, these scores are used to determine an overall score called the Band Score. In 2007, I-SS received a Band Score of 5 out of a possible 8. The descriptors for the 2007 Band Scores of 1, 5, and 8 are given below.
2007 Scoring Band Descriptors
Band Number | Descriptor |
1 | The organization demonstrates the early stages of developing and implementing approaches to Item requirements, with deployment lagging and inhibiting progress. Improvement efforts focus on problem solving. A few important results are reported, but they generally lack trend and comparative data. |
5 I-SS Score | The organization demonstrates effective, systematic, well-deployed approaches responsive to the overall requirements of the Items. The organization demonstrates a fact-based, systematic evaluation and improvement process and organizational learning that result in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of key processes. Results address most key customer/stakeholder, market, and process requirements, and they demonstrate areas of strength against relevant comparisons and/or benchmarks. Improvement trends and/or good performance are reported for most areas of importance to the organization’s key requirements. |
8 | The organization demonstrates outstanding approaches focused on innovation, full deployment, and excellent, sustained performance results. There is excellent integration of approaches with organizational needs. Organizational analysis, learning, and sharing of best practices are pervasive. National and world leadership is demonstrated in results that fully address key customer/stakeholder, market, process, and action plan requirements. |
In 2008, the BNQP used a system of two Band Scores one for Processes and the other for Results. I-SS received a Band Score of 5 for Processes and a Band Score of 4 for Results. Again, that is out of a possible 8. That yields an overall percentage score of 62.5% for processes and 50% for results. The descriptors for the 2008 Process Band Scores of 1, 5, and 8, and for the 2008 Process Band Scores of 1, 4, and 8 are given below.
2008 Scoring Band Descriptors
Band Number | Process Descriptor |
1 | The organization demonstrates early stages of developing and implementing approaches to the basic Criteria requirements, with deployment lagging and inhibiting progress. Improvement efforts are a combination of problem solving and an early general improvement orientation. |
5 I-SS Score | The organization demonstrates effective, systematic, well-deployed approaches responsive to the overall requirements of most Criteria Items. The organization demonstrates a fact-based, systematic evaluation and improvement process and organizational learning, including innovation, that result in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of key processes. |
8 | The organization demonstrates outstanding approaches focused on innovation. Approaches are fully deployed and demonstrate excellent, sustained use of measures. There is excellent integration of approaches with organizational needs. Organizational analysis, learning through innovation, and sharing of best practices are pervasive. |
Band Number | Results Descriptor |
1 | Results are reported for a few areas of importance to the accomplishment of the organization’s mission, but they generally lack trend and comparative data. |
4 I-SS Score | Results address some key customer/stakeholder, market, and process requirements, and they demonstrate good relative performance against relevant comparisons. There are no patterns of adverse trends or poor performance in areas of importance to the Criteria requirements and the accomplishment of the organization’s mission. |
8 | Results fully address key customer/stakeholder, market, process, and action plan requirements and include projections of future performance. Results demonstrate excellent organizational performance levels, as well as national and world leadership. Results demonstrate sustained beneficial trends in all areas of importance to the Criteria requirements and the accomplishment of the organization’s mission. |
The BNQP does not give a percentage based on the Band Score but the I-SS score of 5 out of 8 yields an overall percentage score for 2007 of 62.5%. And for 2008, I-SS received a Process Band Score of 5 out of 8, which is another 62.5% and a Results Band Score of 4 out of 8, which yields a percentage score of 50%. Weighting these scores equally, I-SS received an overall score of 56.25% for 2008 and that is the year they received the Baldrige Award. The scores for the individual categories verify this lower score for 2008. I-SS scores went down in 10 categories from ’07 to ’08 and only went up in 2 categories from ’07 to ’08.
What does all of this prove? It proves that, as many have thought, the whole Baldrige Award is a sham. How is it that I-SS had such terrible scores and still received the award? Did the BNQP committee just figure that it was I-SS’s turn to get the award? What would I-SS administrators say if they found out that students in a given class were receiving A’s while averaging 50% to 62.5%? Do you think that a high school student would be selected valedictorian or salutatorian with these averages? I don’t think so. It would be interesting to know how many man-hours and how much money was wasted pursuing this award.
Click on the link below to access the I-SS 2008 Baldrige Application, the I-SS 2007 Feedback Report and the I-SS 2008 Baldrige Feedback Report. I-SS provided me with a digital copy of the 2007 Baldrige Application, as it is not available on the school web site. I recommend that you look at these documents. They certainly provide some interesting reading material.