education week's leaders to learn from 2013

7/29/2019 Education Week's Leaders to Learn From 2013

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A Supplement to the February 6, 2013, IssueVol.32No.20 www.edweek.org/go/leaders-report

Lessons From District Leaders

With support from The Wallace Foundation


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INDIANAPOLISMarch 11, 2013

WHITE PLAINSMarch 21, 2013

JOIN STATE AND DISTRICT LEADERS,experts, and colleagues for in-depthdiscussions on the new state standards.

Youll discover strategiesandnew approachesto typicalcommon-core roadblocks:

>> REGISTER TODAY! www.edweekevents.org/roadmaps

How states and districts

plan to turn the newstandards into positiveoutcomes on the comingassessments.

Which routes are beingtaken to choose or designcurricula that truly reflectthe new expectations.

How to ensure teachers are

prepared for the comingchallenges to meet theneeds of a diverse body ofstudents.

And much more!


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| S3LEADERS TO LEARN FROM > www.edweek.org/go/leaders-reportEDUCATION WEEK February 6, 2013

edweek.org

ONLINE EXCLUSIVES

JennAckermanforEducationWeek

Videos

Five leaders featured in this report describe in

interviews their leadership models and the

strategies they use to achieve school- and

district-level goals. The leaders featured

represent districts large and small, urban,

suburban, and rural: St. Paul Minn.; Newcomb,

N.Y.; Jefferson County, Colo.; Columbus, Ohio;

and Pharr-San Juan-Alamo, Texas.

http://www.edweek.org/go/leaders-videos

READ THE DIGITAL EDITION: The interactive version of this reportincludes linked resources and options for sharing content.

www.edweek.org/go/leaders-download

4DROPOUT REDUCTION

Daniel P. King

7ENGLISH-LEARNER EDUCATION

Valeria Silva

8SCHOOL TURNAROUNDS

Mary Ronan

10TRANSPORTATION

Steve A. Simmons III

12

RURAL ENROLLMENT

Clark Hults

15SPECIAL EDUCATION

Judy Sorrell

16DISTRICT-UNION PARTNERSHIP

Cynthia M. Stevenson& Kerrie Dallman

19PARENT ENGAGEMENT

Michele Brooks

20SCHOOL CLIMATE

Patricia A. Ciccone

23COLLEGE READINESS

Austin Obasohan

25DIGITAL ACCESS

Dennis Stockdale

26SOCIAL NETWORKING

Kyle Pace

28STUDENT DISCIPLINE

Jonathan Brice

30SMART GROWTH

Jeffrey K. Platenberg

33STEM EDUCATION

Linda S. Hicks

Lessons From District LeadersIN AN ENVIRONMENT OF TIGHT RESOURCES, tough academic

challenges, and increasingly stiff competition from new education

providers, smart leadership may matter more than ever for the

success of Americas school districts. Against this backdrop,

Education Weekintroduces the first of what will be an annual

Leaders To Learn From reporta way to recognize forward-

thinking education leaders and share their ideas.

The importance of effective educational leadership goes

almost without saying: Some research suggests leadership is

second only to classroom instruction among all the school-

related factors that contribute to student learning. Leaders To

Learn From aims to draw attention to the importance of good

leadership and spread the word on strategies and tactics from

leaders in some of the nations 14,000-plus districts that others

may want to adopt or adapt.

This 2013 report profiles 16 district-level leaders

superintendents, assistant superintendents, and others, including

a union presidentwho seized on creative but practical

approaches and put them to work in their school districts.

To help find these leaders, Education Weekput out a call

to readers for nominees, starting last June. We also sought

nominations from the leaders of administrators groups in most

of the 50 states, as well as from members of the Education

Writers Association, a Washington-based organization

that includes local education reporters around the country.

Education Weeks own reporters identified leaders who are

making a mark within the topical areas they cover. Members

of the editorial staff made the final selections. (To make anomination for the 2014 edition, go to www.edweek.org/

leaders/nominate or send an email to [email protected].)

The leaders featured here include an Ohio superintendent who

drove a successful effort to move 16 low-performing schools out

of academic emergency status; a Minnesota superintendent

who spearheaded a push to more inclusively educate English-

language learners; a technology specialist in Missouri who

helped organize social-networking events to further teachers

professional development; and a district chief from upstate New

York who recruited tuition-paying international students to help

keep his single school afloat.

Urban districts, such as Boston and Baltimore, are

represented. So, too, are Texas Rio Grande Valley; rural

communities like Garrett, Ind., and Duplin County, N.C.; and

Virginias Loudoun County, an upscale outer-ring suburb.While some of the leaders profiled are nationally known for

their accomplishments within their own slices of the education

world, they are not the high-profile superintendents who most

typically make headlines. In fact, only nine are superintendents;

the rest have worked most of their careers just below the public

radar, as directors of special education or transportation, for

example.

One common characteristic among the group is that most of

them have long-standing ties to the communities they serve.

Another connection is that all had a clear vision of how they

wanted to improve their districts or areas of responsibility,

and they followed through on it. As Theodore Hesburgh, the

president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, has said,

The very essence of leadership is you have to have a vision.

Its got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully

on every occasion, he added. You cant blow an uncertaintrumpet.

Within their school systems, these leaders have blown some

strong, clear notes. The Editors

LEADERS TO LEARN FROM was produced with support from The Wallace Foundation. The New York City-based foundation helps

underwrite coverage of leadership, extended and expanded learning time, and arts learning in Education Week.www.wallacefoundation.org/

2013

COVER PHOTOS BY:

Jenn Ackerman; Heather Ainsworth;

Nathan W. Armes; Joshua A. Bickel;

Christopher Capozziello; Sara D. Davis;

Matt Eich; Ryan Henriksen; Lisa Krantz;

Rick Lohore; Charlie Mahoney; Swikar Patel;

Matt Roth; Stephen Voss; Brian Widdis

Valeria Silva, the

superintendent of the

St. Paul, Minn., public

schools, visits with

children at a community-

outreach event in January.


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S4 | LEADERS TO LEARN FROM > www.edweek.org/go/leaders-reportEDUCATION WEEK February 6, 2013

When Daniel P. King took the helm of the32,000-student school district he leads in Texas

Rio Grande Valley in 2007, its three high schools hadjust been singled out as dropout factories in a seminalnational report.

Three school board members and the outgoing super-intendent had recently been indicted in a federal brib-ery case for accepting cash and other gifts in exchangefor awarding contracts. All four were later convicted;two board members served time in federal prison.

Gang-related tensions were running high in the dis-tricts secondary schools, causing violent incidents toflare and attendance to plummet. And 23 high schoolscience teachers had resigned because of a misman-aged school redesign process that had bungled themaster schedule.

The district was in crisis, says King, 59, who grewup in the Rio Grande Valley and has spent his entire

36-year career as an educator in that region. I toldthe board that if they wanted to individually influencedaily operations of the school system, they should nothire me. I needed a lot of leeway.A little more than five years later, the Pharr-San

Juan-Alamo school system, located along the Texasborder with Mexico, stands out as a promising exampleof how to turn around a district where low graduationrates and sluggish academic achievement were thenorm for years. Its also one whose demographics99percent Hispanic, 90 percent poor, and 41 percent inneed of English-language-acquisition servicesaremore commonly linked to dropping out of high schoolthan entering and finishing college.

The starting point: The graduation rate by the endof the 2006-07 school year was 62 percent, far belowTexas statewide average of 77 percent. Nearly 500 stu-dents (out of a total high school enrollment of 8,000)had dropped out of school that year, and nearly half ofthem were seniors who had fallen short by just a fewcredits, hadnt passed an exit exam, or were derailedby a combination of both, King says.

By last June: The dropout rate had been slashed bynearly 90 percent. More than 1,909 seniors earned di-

plomas in four years, bumping the districts graduationrate to 88 percent, roughly 10 percentage points higherthan the rate for all of Texas. And about 25 percentof Pharr-San Juan-Alamos high school students wereenrolled in at least one course that could earn themcredit for college. Enrollment rates in higher educa-tion doubled for the districts graduates between 2007and 2010.

It has been a massive shift in many ways, saysNora Rivas-Garza, the principal of the 2,000-studentPharr-San Juan-Alamo High School, one of five in the

district. But the biggest change is that we went froma system where only the top 10 percent were expectedto go to college to one where all students are expectedto do so. Everyone hears about higher education, andeveryone is pushed, encouraged, and prodded to takethose courses that are going to put them on the pathto college.

The first step in turning the district around, Kingsays, was a triage effort to restore order to the highschools, and a push to build relationships with staffmembers, school board members, parents, and a com-

SUPERINTENDENT

Pharr-San Juan-AlamoIndependent School District, Texas

DanielP. King

DROPOUTREDUCTION

BY LESLI A. MAXWELL

PRESIDENT &EDITOR-IN-CHIEFVirginia B. Edwards

EXECUTIVE EDITORGregory Chronister

MANAGING EDITORSKaren Diegmueller

Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

EXECUTIVE PROJECTEDITOR

Debra Viadero

SENIOR WRITERSLesli A. Maxwell

Christina A. Samuels

DESIGNER, PROJECT LEADLinda Jurkowitz

DESIGN DIRECTORLaura Baker

DEPUTY DESIGN DIRECTORGina Tomko

ASSISTANT DESIGN

DIRECTORVanessa Solis

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSCaralee Adams

Diette Courrg Casey

Michelle R. Davis

Alyson Klein

Michele Molnar

Erik W. Robelen

Stephen Sawchuk

Nirvi Shah

Sarah D. SparksJaclyn Zubrzycki


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Copyright 2013 by Editorial Projects in Education Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this

publication shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means,

electronic or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder. Readers may

make up to five print copies of this publication at no cost for personal, noncommercial use,

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Visit www.edweek.org/go/copiesfor information about additional print photocopies.

LESSON LEARNED

You have to honestlyconfront the problem.When I first got to[Pharr-San Juan-Alamo], no onehad ever told thecommunity just how

bad the dropoutproblem was. I gotblasted some for airingdirty laundry, but untileveryone was honestabout what was goingon, we wouldnt havebeen able to moveforward.

LisaKrantzforEducationWeek

munity still reeling from the fallout of the federalcorruption case.

Stopping the Bleeding

King says that in his first several weeks as super-intendent, he spent hours inside each high school, lis-tening to the frustrations of teachers who had come todeeply distrust the central office, and coming up withconcrete steps to address many of their grievances.

But his most urgent effort in the early weeks of his

superintendency, he says, was stopping the bleedingof dropouts.

That required an initiative that King and his teamcalled Countdown to Zero, a block-by-block, door-to-doorcampaign in the summer of 2007 to bring every studentwhod dropped out the previous school year back intothe district.

In his previous job as the superintendent of thenearby Hidalgo school district, that brand of on-the-ground, intensive effort had paid off, King says. Hebelieved it would work in Pharr-San Juan-Alamo, too,

even though its 10 times the size of Hidalgo.For a few weeks, the district team fanned out in

search of students, and each day, met to tally up whohad been located and who had agreed to come back.

King says he and his team knew they had to offerdropouts something other than a return to thecomprehensive high schools where they had notsucceeded. Foremost in his mind were the more than237 seniors who had come so close to graduating theprevious spring.

We had to give them something that they would see

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHYCharles Borst

PHOTO EDITORChristopher Powers

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COORDINATORCasey Shellenberger

ADVERTISING:For information about print and

online advertising in future special

reports, please contact Senior

Regional Advertising Manager

Sharon Makowka,

at [email protected]

or (815) 436-5149.


6/36


LESSON LEARNED

I believe that

superintendents have

to be courageous on issues

of race and equity, and the

English-learner achievement

gap is one of those issues.The responsibili ty of

English-learners does

not just belong to the

academic department.

It belongs to

everyone.

as a step forward, not a step back, he says.That something was community college courses at a

new school called PSJACollege Career Technology Acad-emy that was separate from the districts comprehensivehigh schools. Those courses, taught largely by facultymembers from South Texas College in nearby McAllen,would put students on a track to earn credits toward anassociate degree or career certificate, King says. The ca-reer academy also provides support to students who needto prepare for and pass the state high school exit examand make up missing high school credits.

King, who already had a strong relationship with thepresident of South Texas College from his time in Hidalgo,drew on that connection to open up the new school forrecovered dropouts in less than two months.

By September 2007, 224 seniors who had left beforegraduation agreed to come to the new school, King says.And three months later, in December, 49 of them hadgraduated. By January 2008, the district, with state fund-ing to support its expansion, opened the program to anydistrict dropout up to the age of 26.

Since the academy opened five years ago, more than1,000 recovered dropouts have returned and graduated,and districts across Texas have replicated the model.One school leader says the results in Pharr-San Juan-Alamo have sent a powerful message to the broadercommunity.

That recovery school has shown that everyone is goingto get an opportunity to have success. Its not just reservedfor those who are going to make it whether Mr. King had

ever come here or not, says Ronnie Cantu, who waselected to the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school board twoyears ago and is now serving as its president. These areyoung people who would have fallen through the cracks inmany other systems but got a second chance here.

Expanding College Access

At the same time that the district was focusing on drop-out recovery, it was also attending to an overhaul of thethree comprehensive high schools that, like the careeracademy, would offer all students the opportunity to en-roll in community college courses and earn at least 12 col-lege credits by the time they graduated from high school.

Parents and some members of the community wereskeptical about the early-college approach at first, Cantusays. Students and their parents had to be convincedthat extending education beyond high school would have

longer-term payoffs than seeking work as soon as theygraduated.King and his team consistently argued that giving

students a head start on earning college credits not onlywould increase their odds of graduating and going on tohigher education, but would also increase their chancesof finishing with a degree. And it would save them money.

In a community with as much poverty as we have here,it can be hard to convince students and their parents tonot go out and get a paying job once you graduate, theveteran superintendent says. But when you show themhow much more they can earn with a degree, and givethem a head start toward earning it in high school whenthey dont have to pay for it, its very effective.

King had established one of the first early-college highschools in the country in Hidalgo a few years earlierduring his first superintendency, using a grant from theSeattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that, asfirst proposed, would have offered the dual-enrollmentopportunity to only half the 800 students in the school.King said he did not want the grant unless the programwould be open to all students, because if its good for kids,shouldnt everyone get a shot? The foundation eventuallyagreed.

That all-or-nothing approach is something King stillinsists on, Principal Rivas-Garza says, which pushes herto keep increasing the numbers of students at her highschool participating in dual enrollment. This school year,she expects at least half her 2,000 students to complete atleast one college-credit-bearing course.Across the district this school year, about 2,000 high

school students are enrolled in at least one communitycollege course, King says. He vows to keep pushing harduntil that number gets closer to 4,000 students. We arestill in the middle of this effort, but I think what weveshown here, he says, is that districts and communitiesin dire situations can come together and do whats best

for kids.n


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Few top-tier school administrators can claim as high a level of inti-macy with the education of English-language learners as ValeriaSilva, the superintendent of the school system in St. Paul, Minn.A native of Chile, Silva, 51,spoke no English when she first came to

Minnesota in the late 1980s to help take care of her sisters children

for a few months. More than 25 years later, the woman who still callsherself a second-language learner and at times consults the dictionaryto look up unfamiliar words has risen to lead the states second-largestdistrict, where 45 percent of the 39,000 students are English-learners.

Her personal background, as a woman, a Latina, and a second-language learner, makes her quite unique in the field, saysVernica Rivera, the executive director of the Association of LatinoAdministrators and Supervisors, orALAS, based in Washington. Thoseare incredible assets for leading a district like St. Paul.As the director of the districts ELL programs from 1998 to 2006,

Silva oversaw one of the most dramatic shake-ups of instruction forEnglish-language learners in any major school system at the time. Shedismantled the districts use ofTESOL (Teaching English to Speakersof Other Languages) centers, where beginning English-learners weretaught separately from their native English-speaking peers for up totwo years, and put ELLs directly into mainstream classrooms.

She got rid of weak teachers, many of whom were clustered in theTESOL centers. And she scrapped the pullout method of instruction

for English-learners; she replaced it with an approach that kept ELLsin their mainstream classrooms with content teachers who closelypartnered with English-as-a-second-language teachers to providesupport to those students still learning the language.

By the end of Silvas eight-year run as the districts ELL director,45 percent of the districts 3rd grade English-learners wereproficient in reading on the state exam, up from 30 percent threeyears before, and higher than the statewide average for 3rd gradeELLs that year, which was 42 percent.

Those results got the attention of the Washington-based Council of theGreat City Schools, which featured St. Pauls efforts in a 2009 report,Succeeding With English-Language Learners: Lessons Learned Fromthe Great City Schools. The work by Silva on ELL issues catapulted herto the job of chief academic officer for the district, and then, in 2010, tothe superintendency.

We were one of the first districts in the nation to put brand-newEnglish-learners in the mainstream classes, Silva says. We knew wehad to put a stop to this whole deficit model of teaching these studentsEnglish first and content later. Too many of them were never getting tothe content.

Rivera credits Silva with helping to change the national conversationabout second-language learners.

Because of what she has demonstrated in her work in St. Paul and inher own personal story, many more educators are recognizing that beingbilingual is an asset and a skill set to build from, not to tear down,Rivera says.

Welcoming Newcomers

St. Paul not only has a large ELLpopulation, it also has one of the moredistinctive English-learner communities in any American school system.Students who speak Hmong as their first language are the largest groupof English-learners; Spanish-speakers rank second.

During the 1980s and 90s, St. Paul became one of the largestresettlement communities for Hmong immigrants, many of whom hadbeen driven from their homes in the highlands of Laos in Southeast Asiato refugee camps in Thailand after the Vietnam War.

Then, during Silvas years as ELLdirector, a more recent wave of 3,000Hmong children who had been born and raised in a makeshift Thai

refugee camp arrived in St. Paul. Several months before they came,Silva and other district representatives visited the camp to meet withfamilies and help prepare them for the transition to formal schooling inthe United States.A few months later, two of Silvas staff members went back to the

camp for a couple of weeks just before the refugees immediate arrivalin St. Paul to do outreach, learn more about their culture, and startteaching some English-language basics.

It was important to establish some kind of connection betweenthese families and the schools their children would attend, says Silva.For me, I needed to have perspective on how these families and theirchildren would think about their experience in our schools, and how wewould serve them.

Making Waves

Silva, a former teacher and elementary principal who also foundedMinnesotas first Spanish-immersion program, says her years as ELLdirector inform her superintendency every day. Shes taken other steps,as well, to hone her leadership ability, including participating in the Eliand Edythe Broad Foundations urban-superintendents academy.

But it was as ELL director, she says, that she learned to accountaggressively for funding intended to support instruction and services

for ELLs and discovered it was often being diverted at the school levelto other priorities. Tackling that challenge set the stage for Silvas nextphase of change: establishing an instructional strategy for English-learners that would keep them in mainstream classrooms, where theywould learn academic content at the same time they were learningthe language, rather than letting them continue to fall behind in theirsubject-matter learning.At the heart of the effort was something the district dubbed the

Language Academy, a model that focused on a strong partnershipbetween the academic-content teachers and the teachers whospecialized in working with English-learners.

The ELL specialist usually works across two general educationclassrooms. To build a true partnership between content teachersand ELL teachers, Silva and her team developed joint professional-development sessions to help both types of teachers learn newinstructional techniques, as well as specific strategies on how to worktogether in the classroom. Specialists were also assigned to eachschool to closely monitor, coach, and advise teachers as they moved tothe collaborative model.Another hallmark of Silvas overhaul was her insistence on

removing weak teachers, especially those who worked with ELLstudents.Over three or four years, says Silva, she removed close to 80low-performing teachers and replaced them with more than 100 newELL teachers. She did so without much pushback from the teachersunion, thanks largely to the clearly explained criteria for what ELLteachers would have to do to keep their jobs under the new approach.New teachers were screened before hiring to ensure they would be onboard with the model.

One of the key things I did to make sure this was successful was tofind those strong teachers who also believed in this approach, Silvasays.

Silva says she plans to spend her career in St. Paul, a city that 27years ago she found difficult to embrace with her lack of Englishskills and the regions harsh winter climate. Shes reminded of thatexperience often, she says, as the district continues to enroll waves ofnew immigrant students, most recently from Burma.

I dont make any decision without thinking about being the parent of

one of these newcomers, she says. The responsibility for these studentsbelongs to all of us.n

SUPERINTENDENT

St. Paul Public Schools, Minn.Valeria Silva

ENGLISH-LEARNER EDUCATION

BY LESLI A. MAXWELL

JennAckermanforEducationWeek


8/36


The first order of business for Mary Ronan as theacting superintendent of the Cincinnati schoolsystem four years ago was making big changes at morethan a dozen of the citys lowest-performing elementaryschools. Many of them had been plagued by stagnantstudent achievement for more than a quarter-century.

Four years later, none of the 16 schools that Ronanand her team targeted for special interventions is stuckin academic emergencythe lowest rung of the Ohioaccountability system, and the label most of themshared before the turnaround. A dozen of those schoolshave reached the level of continuous improvementthe midlevel ratingand others have gone on to berated effective or even excellent.

The first year [of the effort] was really hard, Ronanrecalls. We were asking our teachers to do a lot of extrawork; we got a lot of pushback. There were folkswho said we should call it off. But at the end of thatyear, some half-dozen of the 16 targeted schools madeadequate yearly progress, or AYP, under the federalNo Child Left Behind Act, something they had neverachieved before.

That was really the turning point, Ronan says now.That was when the other schoolsand the rest of the

community in this midsize city along the banks of theOhio Riverrealized what was possible, she says.

The schools in what became known as theelementary initiative in Cincinnati first had toembrace some major instructional shifts. Each wasrequired to offer 90-minute blocks each of reading andmathematicsas opposed to the scattershot schedulingthat some had been using. Instead of whole-classinstruction, teachers were shown how to divide theirstudents up into smaller groups based on their abilitiesand needs.And school officials created data folders to keep

track of the academic progress of each student.Teachers were tasked with reviewing the data withtheir students every couple of weeks.

That gave principals a tool to see how every childwas doing, Ronan explains. Youre not just teaching tothe middle anymore.

The schools leaders, likewise, were given an extraboost of intensive training. Using money provided underthe federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,Ronan sent the principals of the elementary-initiative

schoolsalong with teacher leadersto the Universityof Virginias educational leadership training program.

SUPERINTENDENT

Cincinnati Public Schools

Mary Ronan

SCHOOLTURNAROUNDS

BY ALYSON KLEIN

LESSON LEARNED

When it comes to

turning around low-

performing schools,

outreach to the

community is vital.

[Community members]give you that extra

push you need when

youre ready to

give up.


9/36


She chose the University of Virginia program because itpromised results, telling Cincinnati that it would be ableto help schools makeAYPor gain at least 10 percentagepoints within two years.

You dont get too many guarantees like that out there,Ronan says.

Training for Principals

As part of that partnership, which began in late 2009,principals learned to set goals, draw up 90-day plans foracademic improvement, motivate teachers, and single outand develop leaders from within their existing staffs. Thosestrategies merged well with the new focus on data thatwas already at play in the district, Ronan says. Universityofficials followed up several times, visiting the districtthroughout the school year. The 34,000-student districtparticipated in the University of Virginia program for twoyears, then incorporated many aspects of its training intoCincinnatis own professional development for leaders.

The training was enormously helpful, says RutheniaJackson, the principal of Carson Elementary School, a K-8

school, which was part of the elementary initiative. Expertsfrom the university encouraged her to think outside the

box, she says, and use the resources already under hercontrol to greater effect.

With those lessons in mind, Jackson decided to test outsome new strategies at Carson, including grouping 7thand 8th graders into single-gender classes. Disciplineincidentslike office referrals and suspensionsdeclinedsignificantly, she says. The idea worked so well that othersin the district are planning to try single-gender classes inthose grades next year. And the school, which had been inacademic emergency, has now been rated effectivethesecond-highest ranking.

To help oversee the turnaround process, Ronan tappedLaura Mitchell, herself a former turnaround principal,to serve as the deputy superintendent in charge of theinitiative.

Not every aspect of the turnaround plan has been easy,Mitchell says. Ronan gave her significant political coverwhen the city teachers union pushed back on pieces of theturnaround effort, including staffing changes at four of thetargeted schools that replaced nearly everyoneeven, insome cases, secretarial workers and custodians.

There were grievances filed by teachers that came in

with her name on them, Mitchell says. She took the heat.Ronan continues to stand by those personnel decisions.

The culture was a culture of failure, she says. We just didntthink we could transform a school without radically changingthe culture.

The U.S. Department of Education made similar staffingshake-ups a key component of the School Improvement

Grant program, the Obama administrations prescription forturnarounds.Ronan also used economic-stimulus dollars to extend the

school year, adding what she calls a fifth quarter in someof the districts most academically challenged schools. Theprogram eventually added a month to the school year forschools taking part in the elementary initiative, and usedthe added time to pair academics with enrichment programs,such as art and music classes and field trips offered bycommunity organizations in partnership with the district.

Ronan is hoping that community partners will help thedistrict continue to offer the services now that the extrafederal funding has dried up.

Ronan has also put substantial energy behind an initiativealready under way in the district: community schooling.Nearly all the schools in the elementary initiativeand manyothersnow house a range of outside players, from tutoringproviders to dentists to social service organizations forchildren and families. Mitchell and Ronan helped incorporate

those groups into the schools overall goals and worked toensure that the services went to the students who neededthem most.

The districts population includes a number of groups thathave traditionally struggled to close the achievement gap.Seventy-three percent of the Cincinnati school systemsstudents qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and nearly70 percent are African-American.

Ronan also increased the number of resource coordinators,whose job it is to make sure the community groupscomplement the schools efforts, from just nine to 34 acrossthe district. A resource coordinator might ensure thatvolunteer tutors focus on a particular students areas ofacademic weakness, for example.

Longevity Pays Off

Ronan, 59, has spent her entire career in Cincinnati. She

began in 1976 as a middle school math and science teacher,and later moved to a high school. In 1996, she became theprincipal of the Kilgour School, an elementary school inthe district, which received a National Blue Ribbon Awardfor Excellence in the 2001-02 school year. She then took onleadership roles with the district, serving as an assistantsuperintendent, and then director of schools, overseeing thedistricts principals.

By the time she was named acting superintendent in2008she officially took over the top job the next yearshehad served more than 30 years in the Queen City and knewit inside and out.

I think it has made me more effective. You understandyour community, you understand the politics, Ronan says.Ive developed relationships over the years. I knew towhom to speak when I needed something. I wasnt gropingaround to figure out who the power brokers were.

Ronan has been able to enlist allies among everyonefrom outside donorsshes brought at least $30 millionin additional grant funding to the district, according toJanet Walsh, a spokeswoman for the districtto classroomteachers.

She probably knows more teachers than anysuperintendent, says Julie Sellers, the president of theCincinnati Federation of Teachers, a 2,400-member affiliateof the American Federation of Teachers. I think it has beenbeneficial for her to get buy-in. Teachers feel comfortabletalking to her.

Sellers acknowledges that she and Ronan have had theirdifferences. But when it comes to parts of the elementaryinitiative, including what Sellers sees as the prescriptivenature of classroom instruction in the turnaround schools,they are always able to come to a resolution, she says. Andshe praises the superintendent for trying out a range ofstrategiesfrom instructional changes to wraparoundservicesto improve the citys schools.

Theres nothing we dont do in Cincinnati, Sellers says.

These are the best urban, high-poverty schools in thecountry. n

RickLohoreforEducationWeek


10/36


LESSON LEARNED

If you needhelp, you need tocall your peers.People try tofix problemsthemselves, whentheres probably a

thousand peoplewho have fixed itbefore.

I n 2010, the 51,000-student Colum-bus, Ohio, school district consideredcutting busing of high school studentsas a money-saving measure, just asmost of the other large districts in thestate had done.

But the states biggest district man-aged to come up with a creative so-lution: Instead of doing away withbusing for older students altogether,Columbus eliminated most neighbor-hood bus stops and used neighbor-hood schools as centralized stops forolder students. The change cut thenumber of high school bus stops from

nearly 1,500 to 230 and pared about$2 million from the districts $50 mil-

lion-a-year transportation budget.Doing away with the service is

doing a disservice to our students,says Steve A. Simmons III, who cameup with the idea. The director oftransportation for the past six years,Simmons, 56, has spent 30 years withthe district, where he started as a busmechanic and worked his way up.

His longevity gives him a certainamount of leeway with the schoolboard, he saysthough he jokes thathe is a loudmouth.

Im very vocal, he says, becauseIve come up through the system.

John Stanford, the deputy super-intendent in charge of operations,

lauds Simmons creativity in manag-ing district money. Hes constantlyreviewing the industry for best-prac-tice ideas and consulting with his col-leagues, Stanford says.

Getting students to school is a dis-tinct challenge in Ohios capital city.The district has no set feeder pat-terns, because students can enroll inany school that has space for themas part of an intradistrict-choiceprogram. State law requires the dis-trict to provide bus transportation tocharter and private school studentsin kindergarten through 8th grade

who live within district boundariesbut more than two miles from their

schools of choice. That means some ofthe bus routes serve schools outsidethe city.

Transporting more than 30,000 stu-dents daily, the school district main-tains 750 routes and can end up mak-ing more than 200 modifications aday, as students enter, leave, or movewithin the district, Simmons says.

Keeping Track

Columbus has implemented someinnovative programs under Simmonswatch: For example, a global-position-ing tracking system, installed in Jan-uary 2008, allows the district to mon-itor every vehicle in i ts fleet. ZonarSystems, the Seattle-based providerof the technology, says the system of-fers benefits such as a wireless devicethat drivers can use for their pre- andpost-trip inspection reports and amonitoring system school principalscan use to track bus arrivals. Thedistrict was an early adopter of thetechnology, Simmons says.

This school year, the district has ex-panded its technology use through astudent tracking tag that goes on stu-dents backpacks. The credit-card-sizetag, called ZPass, is read by a deviceinside the bus and can keep track ofwhen students board and exit.

Using the device, well be able tolook up and see that little Stevies on

DIRECTOR OF TRANSPORTATION Columbus Public Schools, Ohio

Steve A. Simmons III

TRANSPORTATION

BY CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS


11/36


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bus 255, but he hasnt gotten offyet, Simmons says.

Faced with static or shrinkingresources, Simmons sometimeshas to make unpopular choices,like doing away with courtesystops that picked up childrenwho technically lived within atwo-mile radius of their schools.The new routes may be more ef-ficient, he says, but that meansthe bus doesnt go by some housesanymore. The parents dont neces-sarily want to hear that.

Simmons, who is the currentpresident of the Ohio Associationfor Pupil Transportation, sug-gests that transportation direc-tors could help each other withdifficult issues if they workedtogether. Professionally, hes ex-panded his reach beyond the dis-trict, serving as a board memberof the National Association ofPupil Transportation in Albany,N.Y., and the chairman of theColumbus Transportation andPedestrian Commission, whichreviews transit proposals beforethey go to the city council.

If you need help, you need tocall your peers, Simmons says.People try to fix problems them-selves, when theres probably a

thousand people who have fixed itbefore. n

Jo

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12/36


LESSON LEARNED

[W]hen you change

the culture, you have

to go slow, you have

to educate, and you

have to explain what

youre doing and for

what reasons.

We started slow,

and it became

a cultural norm.

S

chool Superintendent and Principal Clark Skip Hults

knew something had to change in 2006, when enrollmentin his upstate New York school district dropped by two students.That meant only 55 students remained in Newcomb Central

School, the remote districts sole prekindergarten-through-12th-grade school, and the schools continued existence might be injeopardy.

Another school might have considered consolidation. But thatwasnt a good option for Newcomb, nestled as it is in the heartof the Adirondack Mountains, where winters are harsh andmountain roads can be dangerous for school buses.

Hults, 57, came up with a different idea after talking withhis brother, who lives in Australia: What if he recruitedinternational high school students to his district? That was amajor industry in Australia and other countries. Why wouldntit work in his rural school?

Since that epiphany, Hults has transformed the school, nearlydoubling its enrollment to 105 and hosting 60 students overfive years from 25 countries, including Serbia, China, Brazil,and Zimbabwe.

Recruiting tuition-paying international students has savedthe school by bolstering its finances and population, and itschanged its culture by exposing Newcomb students to diverseheritages and languages. Its also redefined the meaningof family to the many residents who have hosted visitinginternational students.

I believe this has the potential to become a rural norm,Hults says. Its a win-win.

How It Works

A former elementary school teacher and principal, Hultsfound his calling in education after working as a loanoperations officer and a nonprofit business administrator.After spending 15 years in Arizona, Florida, and California,he and his wife returned in 2003 to the Adirondacks, wherethe school administrators family ties reach back threegenerations.

Hults was named Newcombs school superintendent inJuly 2006, and he realized shortly thereafter that the district

SUPERINTENDENT

Newcomb Central School District, N.Y.

Clark HultsRURAL ENROLLMENT

BY DIETTE COURRG CASEY

Heath

erAinsworthforEducationWeek


13/36



14/36


couldnt continue to lose students.A maj ori ty of the commun ityagreed something had to be done,and Hults had few critics whenhe proposed the international-student program, accordingto Ed LaCourse, whos taughtmathematics for about 15 yearsat Newcomb Central.

Skip could probably sell a lawn-mower to someone in Antarctica,

LaCourse says. Hes a very opti-mistic person, and he really soldthe program well as far as all ofthe positive aspects.

Its not uncommon for highschools to host one or even a fewinternational students, but Hultshas taken that idea and done it enmasse.

In its high school grades, theschool has about 40 students; 18are from other countries. Thats asignificant number, given that thetown has only about 200 families.

Weve gotten to the point wherewere turning students away,Hults says.

Over the years, Hults haslearned the differences between

various types of visas, and he saysthe type of visa the district nowrequires enables it to receive tu-ition and accept host-family livingexpenses.

Newcomb has earned a goodreputation among internationalstudents, and it sells itself withits location in the heart of a 6-

million-acre park and its strongacademics, Hults says.

Hults also has established re-lationships with more than 10agencies that help find foreignstudents who want to come to hisdistrict.

Students Benefits

The district requires students

to have a conversational levelof English-speaking proficiencyto ensure they can succeed. Anylesser ability would negativelyaffect the classroom experiencefor local students, Hults says.

If it werent benefiting ourstudents, I wouldnt do this pro-gram, Hults explains. It trulydoes benefit our students. It hasopened their eyes. It has giventhem broad exposure to theworld, and for the kids who comehere, they remain a part of ourcommunity. I think they will for-ever.

International students pay$4,500 annual tuition to attendthe school, as well as a $4,500

housing allowance to the localfamilies who host them. Districtofficials receive applicationp a ck e ts wi th p h o tos a n dinformation about prospectivestudents, and they choose whomthey want.

Hults estimates the programwill bring in about $250,000 in

revenue this year, and that coversits expenses while contributingextra dollars to the districts $3.9million general operating budget.

Money aside, the program hasaddressed what Hults describesas a complete and total lack ofdiversity in the school, wheremost students are white andmiddle-class.

Attracting FamiliesSue Goodspeed, her husband,

and their two sons lived in a townabout 25 miles away, and the in-ternational-student program isone of the reasons theyve sincemoved to Newcomb.

Its the best thing we couldever have done for either ofthem, she says of her children.

She thought it would be good forher younger son, who is adoptedfrom South Korea, to attend aschool with more diversity, andthe program would give both ofher children the chance to meetstudents from across the world,she says.

The family has hosted fourinternational students, twoof whom are living with themnow. One of the students theypreviously hosted planned toreturn for a Christmas visit lastyear.

It has redefined and expandedour family, Goodspeed says.

I love all the ones weve had;theyre like extended family.

Hults effort to create theinternational-student programhas earned him statewideand national recognition. Hesworking with more than a dozenNew York and Vermont schooldistricts that want to replicateNewcombs program, and hesspeaking at the National School

Boards Association conference inApril.Hes also been a key advocate

for changing a federal law thatprohibits international studentsfrom staying in American publichigh schools for more than oneyear; such students are allowedto stay in private schools as manyyears as they want.

Hults has teamed up with U.S.Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.,and David Little, the director ofgovernmental relations for theNew York State School BoardsAssoc iat ion, to lobby on tha tissue.

Global Competition

Were in an era where wereexpecting our students to be ableto compete on an internationalbasis, and at the same time, ourfinances are minimizing theiropportunities to accomplish thisgoal, Little says. This programhas the unique ability to address

both sides of that.The international-recruitment

program is not Hults sole innova-tive idea.

Hults is unique in that hesnot just looking to see what helpsNewcomb, but hes got these ideasthat, if extrapolated, could helpschools throughout the UnitedStates, Little says.

Hults constantly thinks about

ways to keep his school afloatand to grow the community so itbecomes home to more people,he adds.

The school chief also has lookedat the possibility of building adormitory and recruiting urbanstudents to the district, Littlesays. City students would havea different experience and thechance to, for example, competeon every sports team if theywantedsomething that mightbe harder to do in a larger school.

Hults truly believes in thevalue of this rural communityand this rural experience that hiskids get, Little says.

LaCourse says Hults also has

developed a program that willenable the districts high schoolstudents to graduate with atwo-year associate degree. Thatprogram has helped Hults attractnearby students to the school andincrease enrollment, according toLaCourse.

Hes a visionary squared.n


15/36


When Judy Sorrell was a child, she knewshe would devote her life to working with

children with disabilities.As a 5th grader, well before the Individualswith Disabilities Education Act existed,requiring public schools to educate studentswith disabilities in the least restrictiveenvironment possible, Sorrell was alreadyindignant over the way a younger cousin withDown syndrome was being treated in school.Though her cousin attended school on the samecampus, Sorrell wasnt allowed to talk to her orsee her all day.

Now 59, Sorrell has drawn on that sense ofindignation when necessary to bring the mostup-to-date services and professionals to herstudents in Virginias Shenandoah Valley, where

DIRECTOR

Shenandoah Valley Regional

Program for Special Education,

Fishersville, Va.

Judy Sorrell

SPECIAL EDUCATION

BY NIRVI SHAH

Building local

capacity, thats

just real ly cri tical

for me. I think its

been a lifesaver

for our localschool divisions.

MattE

ichforEducationWeek

LESSON LEARNED


16/36


As anyone who has ever sat at either sideof a bargaining table can attest, the labor-management relationship is already challengingenough in flush times. And its an order ofmagnitude tougher when budgets are tight andtalk turns to paring things back. But as oneColorado district shows, it is not impossible fordistrict and union leaders to work together tomake tough decisions.

When the states Jefferson County school dis-trict faced a budget crunch in 2011, officials ofthe district and its teachers union purposefullydecided to take a chance and collaborate, ratherthan engage in the common alternative: posturing,internal squabbling, an impasse, and, ultimately,layoffs.

Superintendent Cynthia M. Stevenson and KerrieDallman, then the president of the Jefferson CountyEducation Association, hosted an employee sum-mit at which representatives from the district, theunion, and other employee groups outlined budgetfundamentals, agreed on areas to cut, and thencarried the details into their respective bargainedcontracts.

The accord kept employees on the rolls, mini-mized class-size increases, and preserved electives.And it has been generally (though not uniformly)praised in the 85,000-student district, located westof Denver.

The new approach to budgeting in JeffersonCounty, the states largest district, is notable partlybecause the administration and the union, while notsworn enemies, had had their fair share of uneasymoments. Contract talks had stalemated before,both over wages and over policy issues, such as the

process for dismissing probationary teachers.But the budget situation, Stevenson says,

demanded a different way of interacting.We are just like every other place in the country:

changing, she says. And in a changing environ-ment, in times of declining resources and increasedexpectations, you have to operate differently.

Put to the Test

Stevenson, who has been the superintendent for11 years, understands change in the district betterthan most. She grew up in Jefferson County andattended school there.

Dallman only recently left the local union to as-sume the presidency of the states National Edu-cation Association chapter; her biography on thestate affiliates website lists her collaborative workon the summit among her top accomplishments.

The idea for the summit grew out of a 2011 na-tional conference on labor-management coopera-tion sponsored by the U.S. Department of Educa-tion. That convening, in Denver, brought togethersome 150 teams, each consisting of a districts su-perintendent, school board president, and teachersunion leader, to try to identify new ways of workingtogether.

For a good number of the attendees, the notionof collaboration never went further than a groupphoto with the U.S. secretary of education. But forJefferson Countys leaders, the ideal would be putimmediately to the test.

Midway through the conference, team members re-ceived word that the state portion of K-12 aid wouldbe cut by nearly 10 percent. Jefferson Countys rev-

SUPERINTENDENT

Jefferson County Public Schools, Colo.

Cynthia M. Stevenson

FORMER PRESIDENT

Jefferson County Education Association

Kerrie Dallman

DISTRICT-UNION PARTNERSHIP

BY STEPHEN SAWCHUK

she coordinates special education services forstudents with low-incidence disabilities for sixschool districts.

Over 33 years in that job, her curiosity andpassion have led to changes locally and statewidein how educational interpreters are certified, howchildren with autism are educated, and, mostrecently, how children with traumatic brain injuryare taught.And shes done so while answering to the six

separate school boards, special education directors,and superintendents that pay into the Shenandoah

Valley Regional Program for Special Education, thequasi-governmental program that she directs.Over the years, her responsibilities have grown

from 48 students across the six rural districts and abudget of $1.5 million to 350 students and $10 mil-lion in funding support. Her only staff is a secretary.Among the work Sorrell is most lauded for is in

the autism arena. More than a decade ago, shesaw that parents across Virginia were suing schooldistricts because the schools werent meeting theneeds of their children with autism. Many districtsstruggled or failed altogether to provide the rightkind of therapy and education to such students,namely in the form of applied behavior analysis.ABAis a specific approach to working with childrenand adults with autism that is designed to changebehavior.

I didnt think that was wrong, Sorrell says of theparents legal action. The school divisions did not

have the knowledge or capability with respect tobehavior analysis to work with these children. Themore I read, the more I knew we needed to move inthat direction.

Doing It Proactively

Without any in-house expertise, Sorrell part-nered with Commonwealth Autism Services, aRichmond, Va.-based organization that providestraining for school districts by embedding itsstaff in districts, where they model techniques forteachers and therapists.

Other people have been involved in lawsuitsand litigation about this kind of therapy and comein after the fact to provide it, says Jessica Philips,the organizations vice president and chief oper-ating officer. Judy did it proactively, she says,

noting that Virginia only began requiring healthinsurers to coverABAtherapy in 2012.She really, really wants the program that she

runs to be top-notch quality. She believes that par-ents should be able to get services in their publicschool. If those kids are academically and sociallymore on track, they are more likely contributingmembers of society, Philips says. At the gut of itall for her was, Whats good for kids?

Sorrells work was mentioned in a state legisla-tive committees report assessing autism servicesin Virginia as an example of a successful collabo-ration.

The six districts began in 2004 with one embed-ded behavioral analyst. Now there are 10, includ-ing some who were teachers in the districts andhave since become certified in the approachwhich Sorrell found money in her budget to payfor.

Building local capacity, thats just really criticalfor me, Sorrell says. I think its been a lifesaverfor our local school divisions.

That building of local capacity sometimes in-cludes herself.

Earlier this school year, Sorrell studied to be-come a brain-injury specialist. Traumatic braininjury can affect cognitive function, motor skills,the senses, and emotions.

You have to have a way to meet the needs ofthose kids, says Sorrell, who remembers hearingsabout the precursor to the Individuals with Dis-abilities Education Act held at Madison College,now James Madison University in Harrisonburg,Va., when she was a student there in the 1970s.

We dont make 100 percent [of parents] happy,she says, but we have the responsibility to makesure were providing an appropriate program.n


17/36


LESSON LEARNED

One of the dangers

of being a superintendent

is that you can really start

thinking youre important.

You really have to work

against that. In thesummit, when youre all

equal players, suddenly

what you say has no

more impact than what

everyone else says, and

that can be difficult.

Cynthia M. Stevenson, left,

with Kerrie Dallman

NathanW.

ArmesforEducationWeek


18/36


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enue, like that of other school dis-tricts in the state, had dependedincreasingly on the state money.

Fresh from attending a sessionin which Montgomery County,Md., officials made a presentationon a financial process drawing oninput from employee associations,Dallman floated the idea withStevenson and with David Thomas,then the chairman of the JeffersonCounty school board. Back in

Colorado, the three leaders wonboard approval to pursue a similarapproach.

The way wed done bargainingin the past really pitted groupsagainst each other, Dallman says.This was a way we could come tothe table around common values.And the common value chiefly wasstudent achievement.

Two representatives each fromthe district, the teachers union,the school board, and groups foradministrators and classified staffmembers attended the two-daysummit.According to Jane Barnes, a

school board member from 2003to 2011 who sat in on the proceed-

ings, negotiators discussed cuts ineverything from transportation toacademic programs to compensa-tion to athletics.

Budget Details

The final agreement cut some$40 million from the 2011-12budget, which was approved

at $932 million. Among otherprovisions, it: Cut some 200 positions, mainly

through attrition; Instituted two furlough days

and eliminated four profes-sional-development days forteachers;

Set a 3 percent wage reductionfor teachers to match theshorter year;

Closed two schools; and

Imposed new transportationfees for parents.As painful as those reductions

were, Jefferson Countys educationleaders say the alternatives mighthave been worse, resulting in theelimination of counselors jobs,higher class sizes even in earlygrades, and the decimation of artsand music programs that wouldhave taken the heart and soulout of our schools, in Stevensonswords.

Barnes says the process alsodemonstrated unity in the face ofadversity.

We didnt go into nasty board-union negotiations or air ourdirty laundry in public, she

continues. We came out of therewith a much deeper respect forone another, and were able tosay collectively that this was thebest for the children of JeffersonCounty. ... It was a great solutionto the situation we had at thetime.

The process was used again in2012, with several of the previous

decisions carried over, includingthe furloughs.

The agreements helped solidifyother areas of accord between thedistrict and the union, such asworking to support a property-taxincrease, which voters narrowlyapproved this past November.An d they re al so uni ted in

pressing for changes in the stateK-12 funding process.

Right PlayersThe summit process itself was

not necessarily easy, though. Boththe superintendent and the unionleader say they faced internalconstituents who were uneasyabout the new approach.

Describing the negotiations,Stevenson draws a parallelbetween letting go of favoredinitiatives and giving up a degreeof control shed been accustomedto in her position.

One of the dangers of beinga superintendent is that youcan really start thinking youreimportant. You really have towork against that, she says. In

the summit, when youre all equalplayers, suddenly what you sayhas no more impact than whateveryone else says, and that canbe difficult.

Both she and Dallman praisea mediator brought in from theWashington-based Federal Medi-ation and Conciliation Service tohelp with the discussion.

Asked what advice shed giveother administrators interestedin the process, Stevenson citeshaving a working relationshipwith local employee associationsfirst. She meets with unionleaders at least once formally andonce informally each month.

And she recommends beingprepared to give up sacred cowsduring negotiations, and havinga mediator on hand to help guide

discussions.We had the right players, theright relationships, the rightmediators, the right sharedvalues, she says.

Moving Forward

As of Dec ember, the bud getcycle in the district was just be-ginning again, and it was not yetclear whether the summit processwould continue. Despite the newrevenue from the tax increase, of-ficials anticipate more cuts.

Not everyone shares the opin-ion that the summits have been asuccessful approach. Laura Boggs,the only school board member to

vote against entering into thesummit process in 2011 and 2012,feels that since the conveningswerent formally part of bargain-ing, they should have been opento the public.And their results didnt neces-

sarily reflect community wishes,she contends. In 2012, commu-nity members put furloughs last

on a list of cost-saving strategiesin surveys commissioned by theschool board, yet they were con-tinued into a second year, shesays.

Its a fantastic concept; any-thing you can do to take the ad-versarial [nature] out of collec-tive bargaining should be a goodthing, Boggs says. The dilemmacomes when you put these peoplewho are so like-minded in the

same room, and the result is stu-dents are in school for fewer days.How is that focused on academ-ics?

She would like the district toconsider longer-term structuralchanges to the teacher-salaryschedule and pension plan.

Barnes, the former school boardmember, acknowledges that mostof the committees fixes have beenshort-term. But she says that waspartly a function of the need tomake immediate budget reduc-tions.

Ultimately, she believes that thesummit delivered the right re-sults at a critical time, and that itwill be up to Stevenson, the school

board, and Dallmans successor atthe JCEA to determine whether itcontinues to be the appropriateway to budget in tough times.

I think communities are readyfor different processes at differenttimes, Barnes says. You need tokeep bringing new folks in, andthey may be ready for a differentprocess. Who knows? n


19/36


The day Michele Brooks lost it as the frustrated motherof a Boston high school student became a moment thattransformed her life forever.

That was 20 years ago, and today Brooks works inside the Bostonschool system as the assistant superintendent in charge of thedistricts office of family and student engagement.

Brooks is credited with strategically aligning Bostons parent-engagement efforts with the districts academic goals, which movedthe work of her office from a peripheral activity to one that is centralto the needs of the districts 57,000 students and their families.

When I first started in this role, I could say I was the only one

who would bring up, So, what about the families? Now, whetherIm at the table or not, the conversation is about the families, says

Brooks, who has been leading the office for the past four years.One of her high-profile efforts over that time has been launching

and overseeing Parent Universitya program that has educatedparents on their roles as teachers, advocates, leaders, and learnersthemselves. Her staff collaborates with the other offices in thedistrict, coordinates outreach and training, creates publications, andimplements programs to advance the districts vision: Every schoolwill welcome every family and every student, actively engagingthem as partners in student learning and school improvement.

None of that was in Brooks scope as the disgruntled motherof a 9th grade daughter two decades ago. Brooks, 59, had moved

her family from Tennessee back to Boston so her three childrencould benefit from the outstanding education she herself had

ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT

Office of Family and Student Engagement, Boston Public Schools

Michele Brooks

Im always looking

for connections.

Thats the key. When

the district lays out its

priorities, every single

one of my colleagues

has a piece of that

work, including me.

I do an analysis:

How can I support

their work and connect

our work?

BY MICHELE MOLNAR

PARENTENGAGEMENT

LESSON LEARNED

CharlieMahoney/P

rimeforEducationWeek


20/36


BY JACLYN ZUBRZYCKI

PatriciaA. Ciccone

SCHOOL CLIMATE

received in public schools there.But things went south fast. When her

daughter received an A on a slapdash essay,and defiantly conveyed a guidance counselorscomment that not everyone is cut out forcollege, Brookswho worked in informationtechnology thencame to the school to talkwith the principal. His secretary first ignored,then insulted her, Brooks says.

I was livid, Brooks recalls. The principalrespectfully asked Brooks why she was so

upset, saying, I work for you. How can wemake this right? He explained his challengeswith the teaching staff and enlisted Brookshelp, asking that she demand better, and bepresent at the school.

Brooks volunteered the following day, thenthe nextquickly deciding to leave her full-time job so she could devote even more timeto the schools.

Brooks has never looked back. She starteda family center in her daughters high schoolwhere parents can meet to network and seekresources. She also helped organize parentswhen the school lost accreditation and, fouryears later, shared in the pride as the schoolgraduated an entire class of students. Everysingle one had a college-admission letter or wasgoing into the [military] service, she says.

Organizing Parents

She went on to become the founding direc-tor of the Boston Parents Organizing Network,which began as a community-based group ad-vocating to avert school budget cuts and estab-lish a strong office of family and communityengagement. Brooks spent five years in thenetwork and later was appointed to the schoolboard. Superintendent Carol Johnson recruitedBrooks for her current position in 2008.

As an organizerthats how I do this work.Im always looking for connections. Thats thekey. When the district lays out its priorities,every single one of my colleagues has a pieceof that work, including me, says Brooks. I doan analysis: How can I support their work andconnect our work?

For example, this year the districts prior-ity is literacy. Her office conducted a parentand child writing club, which turned out tobe a successful pilot, with 15 families meet-ing to improve their 3rd, 4th, and 5th gradersperformance as writers on open-response as-signments. Over eight sessions, parents andchildren worked on projects together. Eventu-ally, parents became writing coaches for theirchildren.

This laser focus on broader districtwidegoals means Boston has avoided the pitfallsof similar family-related offices in many otherdistricts, where schools become caught up inwhat experts call random acts of family en-gagement, says Karen L. Mapp, a lecturer atthe Harvard Graduate School of Education andthe director of its education policy and manage-ment program. In Boston public schools, wereally see that family engagement is a strategytoward whole-school improvement, Mapp says.

Brooks first step when taking her positionwas to define family and student engagementas the work of everybody in the district: admin-istrators, teachers, support staff, custodians,and bus drivers.

The school system adopted the National PTAssix standards for family-school partnerships,and measures schools and teachers againstthem. We measure ourselves to those stan-dards, too, Brooks explains.

Early on, Brooks confronted another issue.We know the folks in the district really believefamily and student engagement is critically im-portant. One of the assumptions you make isthat, if you believe in it, youll go out and do it.That was wrong, she says.

So Brooks began to focus on a new area: ca-pacity building. For her shrinking staff, that

meant training them to do morewith less, deepen their knowledgebase, focus on strategies rather thanevents, and leverage instructionalshifts to influence educational prac-tice. For parents, she says, the goalwas to build confidence in their ownability to navigate the school system,advocate for their children, partnerwith their teachers to support stu-dent learninghelping them to

become what Rudy Crew, a formerschools chief in the New York Cityand Miami-Dade County, Fla., dis-tricts, calls demand parents.

Saturday Universities

One way Brooks office attemptsto do that is through Parent Univer-sity, launched in her first year on thejob. Parents choose classes in threeintensive Saturday universitiesthroughout the year. Topics includewhat children should know at differ-ent grade levels, their brain develop-ment, how to deal with adolescents,how to navigate the school system toadvocate for your child, healthy cook-ing, and how to use a computer. Those

programs have more than doubled inattendance since they began. In ad-dition, parents attend satellite ses-sions in a range of subject areas, fromEnglish-as-a-second-language instruc-tion to completing their own high schooleducation or getting a GED. Funding forParent University primarily comes fromthe districts Title I funds.

In her second year, Brooks team createdgrade-level guides for student learning inconjunction with the curriculum and in-struction office. The guides instruct parentsabout what their students should be learn-ing as they progress through school. Alignedwith the Common Core State Standards, thoseguides have been translated into a number oflanguages.

In 2011, Brooks office launched professionaldevelopment to help educators think aboutfamily engagement in new ways. Plans are alsoin the works to award Family Friendly SchoolCertification to schools that excel or progressin their efforts to engage families.A backdrop to the accompl ishments of

Brooks and her office are the budget cuts thatcaused the size of her staff to drop from 23when she was hired in 2008 to 13 today, andshrank her budget to its current level of $2.9million.

They were a curse because were limited inwhat we can do, and a blessing because [they]really forced us to focus and prioritize, shesays.

Brooks work has gained a national repu-tation, partially thanks to her position asa founding member of the District LeadersNetwork on Family and Community Engage-ment, a 50-member peer network that bringstogether district leaders from across the coun-try to meet in Washington at the Institute forEducational Leadership.

Michael Sarbanes, the executive directorof the office of engagement for the Baltimorepublic schools, is one of the district leaders whohave worked closely with Brooks through thenetwork. What I think has been extraordinaryabout how Michele has come at the work is acombination of her deep experience workingwith parents, coupled with an understandingof the leverage points around academic achieve-ment within the school system, and then how tolink those up, he says.

Brooks ultimate goal is to create sufficientcapacity so that her office will be unnecessary.

If weve done our job right, we will not have ajob, she says.n

RETIRED SUPERINTENDENT

Connecticut Technical High School System

LESSON LEARNED

Listen, the best

teaching strategy

for leveling out bad

behaviors is having

really engaged

classrooms. If youre

really excited about

what youre doing in a

classroom, youre not

getting into trouble.


21/36


As an administrator at ManchesterCommunity College, in Manchester,Conn., Patricia A. Ciccone wondered whyso many of her students were not finishingtheir degrees. What was the goal? she re-members asking. How do we help studentsmake those decisions?

Seeking the answer to that questionled Ciccone, to consider the transitionsstudents make between primary and sec-ondary school, from secondary school tocollege, and from college to career. Hersearch eventually drew her to the Con-necticut Technical High School System,a state-run district where students fromacross the state can get a grounding inreal-world work skills while acquiringthe academic credits they need to gradu-ate from high school.

I believe this [vocational education] isthe answer, says Ciccone, 60, who servedas the superintendent of the 11,000-stu-dent technical high school system from2003 until retiring in December 2012.Even if they choose not to work in theirchosen field, they have such significantexposure that they can make informedchoices, she says. Students leave the dis-trict with a high school diploma and a cer-tificate in a chosen trade.

But even in the technical schools, Cic-cone found herself frustrated by how much

of her time and her students time was lostto discipline issues. She perceived that stu-dents were getting lost along the waythesame problem she had seen in communitycolleges.

So, in 2006, she worked with the schoolsprincipals and Jo Ann Freiberg, a school cli-mate consultant for the states departmentof education, to create a survey of studentsand staff members at all 16 schools in thesystem. The aim was to gauge if studentsfelt safe in school, and if they and the stafffelt the school was a good place to learninshort, to measure the schools climate.

The survey revealed that many studentsfelt connected to an adult in the schoolbutnot all did. Some didnt even feel safe fromphysical harm.Analyzing the survey results helped

schools in the system set tangible goals forimproving their school climates, the formersuperintendent says.

The next step was to address the concernsthe survey revealed. Teachers and admin-istrators in the district receive state-runtraining on school climate, Ciccone says, andshe was present at each session. It can behard to get busy administrators to feel com-fortable leaving their buildings for training,Ciccone says, but she made sure that the fi-

nancial and staff support was available forthat to happen.

In the drive to improve school climate,Ciccone supported an approach to disciplinebased on restorative justice that encouragedstudents to find their way back to schooleven after offenses. And each school inthe district has three data-driven goals tostrive for each year: one each in reading,math, and school climate. Whether be-cause of the emphasis on school climate ornot, students in the technical-high-schoolsystem are sticking around: Its gradua-tion rate in 2010-11, at 91.6 percent, was10 points higher than the states averageof 81.8 percent.

Leading the Way

Last year, the state of Connecticut fol-lowed suit, mandating that all 180 of its dis-tricts use a survey modeled on the one thetechnical district pioneered.

The survey has helped administrators tar-get issues and students in need.

We more actively address concerns thatwe may not have had before because of thework on climate and recognition of a specificneed, says Robert Sartoris, in his fourthyear as the principal at Howell CheneyTechnical High School, a school in Hartfordand part of the system Ciccone led. But so-

lutions need to be tailored to the school com-munity, Ciccone says.

She is wary of boxed school climate pro-grams.

Kids need to be connected to adults andother students in the schools, she says. Ifyou have a program that says, When thisperson says this, you do thatthat script-ing can mean you wont take the responsi-bility to form relationships with the kids; youre going to hide behind it and so arethey.

She also believes that the increased focus

on bullying nationally has prevented someadults from seeing the difference betweennormal conflict between young adults andpathological behavior.

Instead, she encouraged school leadersto set targeted, manageable goalsfor in-stance, increasing the percentage of stu-dents who report feeling that there is anadult at school they can talk to, or increas-ing the number of positive responses on theschool climate survey.

A lot has to do with adult behavior, so theresponsibility is on us, says Nivea Torres,the systems interim superintendent. Itsabout developing positive relationships,adult to adult and adult to student.

Preparing Citizens

Schools in the technical district also havethe taskunique in Connecticut, whereevery other school district is formed arounda town or a cityof building tolerance anda sense of community among studentsfrom many different locations. The schoolat which Sartoris is principal, for instance,draws from 27 towns and close to 50 middleschools, some in affluent suburbs and othersin less-well-off city centers.

To help prepare students for their tradeschools and build connections in suchdiverse settings, N.F. Kaynor TechnicalHigh School, in Waterbury, has a leadershipcourse for freshmen that was recentlyextended to sophomores, says KathrynPatrick, who teaches leadership at theschool. Students learn to greet each other

and teachers with a handshake, and focuson skills like anger management andempathy in monthly lessons from a PeacefulSchool Climate Committee made up ofstudents and teachers. The course also hasa community-service component.

Both Ciccone and Sartoris say the schoolstask, besides imparting academic and voca-tional skills, is to help prepare students tobecome citizens.

Absolutely, we want children to leaveus with demonstrated growth in academicareas and their trade areas, Sartoris says,but were also preparing students to bemembers of their communities. It goes handin hand.

The technical schools programstudentsspend half their time on trade instructionand half the time on more standard aca-demic farecan foster engagement, but italso means behavior problems could havebigger consequences.

Youre standing right next to boilingwater, hot grease, and flame, notes Ciccone,who is currently the interim schools super-intendent in Westbrook, Conn.

But the schools focus on helping stu-dents be prepared for and make informedchoices about college and career encouragesstudents to invest in school, says Ivette Me-lendez, 18, a senior at Kaynor Tech who isstudying hairdressing and plans to use hertrade to support herself while studying ma-rine biology in college. At Kaynor, we havemore responsibility because we have tofocus not only on our trades but on our aca-demics. ... Its challenging, but it prepares us

really well, she says. Im really glad I gotthe experience to come here. n

ChristopherCapo

zzielloforEducationWeek


22/36


LESSON LEARNED

Having a shared vision

from the beginning is very

important, rather than

to come in and say,

This is what I think is

a great idea. ... It wasntone persons initiative.

It was our initiative,

as a district.

SaraD.Da

visforEducationWeek


23/36


After Austin Obasohan visitedDuplin Early College HighSchool on the campus of JamesSprunt Community College in Ke-nansville, N.C., he was inspired.

The academic expectationsfor students were high there,and nearly all students weregraduating from high schoolmost with an associate degree.The then-new superintendent ofthe 9,375-student Duplin Countyschools said to himself: If this isworking, why not offer it to allstudents?

We want a unified commitmentto give every child the same oppor-

tunity, says Obasohan, who cameon the job in July 2010. We can nolonger afford pockets of excellence.We want to make sure that every,every, every child in Duplin Countyexperiences what early-college stu-dents are experiencing.

Thats why we decided to scaleup, he says. Because we think itwould be an injustice to depriveany child.

Determined to start childrenthinking about college as early asprekindergarten, Obasohan beganto call for a districtwide early-col-lege system.

With the model, students in allfive district high schools have achance to earn college credit. And,to prepare students for more-rigorous courses, elementary andmiddle schools plant the seeds ofpostsecondary aspiration and fos-ter a college-going culture.

Now, Duplin County is the onlyschool system in North Carolinaand one of two in the nation to im-plement districtwide early college.(The other is the Hidalgo schooldistrict in Texas.)

The seamless education modelwas adopted by the Duplin Countyschool board in 2011, a year afterObasohan became schools chief.

Meanwhile, the high schoolgraduation rate in the county hasrisen, growing from 71 percent in

2009-10 to 80.7 percent in 2011-12,and some local educators trace thatimprovement to the expansion of

the early-college model and otherinitiatives begun by Obasohan.

Located in the rural southeastpart of the state, the districtis made up of roughly equalpercentages of white, Hispanic,and African-American students.About 70 percent qualify for freeor reduced-price lunch. Among thecountys adults, 80 percent haveno postsecondary credential.

Raising Expectations

A transpla nt fro m Nig eri a,the 53-year-old Obasohan has amarketing degree from Sussex

College of Technology in Englandand earned his doctorate ineducational leadership fromAppalachian State University inBoone, N.C. In his 30-year careerin education, he has worked withpublic schools in Alabama, Virginia,and North Carolina.

When Dana Diesel Wallace firstmet Obasohan two years ago, shewas struck by the clarity of his vi-sion of preparing all students forsuccess early. Wallace is the vicepresident for school and districtsupport at North Carolina NewSchools, in Raleigh, a public-privateadvocacy organization for innova-tion in education, and works withDuplin County on strategies toexpand the early college and trainteachers.

They have done incredible out-reach to every entity in their com-munity, to business, faith-basedorganizations. It really is growinga communitywide vision, saysWallace. Im unaware of any otherdistrict that has taken as deep ofa dive as Austin has taken his dis-trict.

Obasohan started by listening.He formed advisory groups forteachers, parents, and studentseach of which meets monthly. Hesays he heard a yearning for inno-vation and change. I sensed a verybold cry for preparing our children

for careers and college.Tarla Smith, the executive direc-

tor of career/technical education

AustinObasohan

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ErikW. RobelenOklahomaCity

As a groupofOklahoma principals touredMillwoodArtsAcademyon a recent morn-ing, theysnapped photosofstudent workdisplayed in hallways, stepped brieflyintoclassrooms,queried the schools leader, andcompared notes.

Theywere gathered here toobserve first-hand a publicmagnet school thats seen as aleadingexample ofthe educationala pproachespoused bythe OklahomaA+ Schools net-work, which has grown from 14 schools a de-cade agot on early70 today.Akeyingredient, and perhaps

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