District Administration - September 2011 - (Page 54)

The Road to Rigor Last fall, Rossi also launched the Freshman Academy for the 700 incoming ninthgraders. The academy has its own principal as well as seven teaching teams, each of which covers all the subjects. Besides dealing only with those students throughout the year, the teaching teams meet for an entire period four days a week and once a week with others teaching the same subject. Rossi reports that the academy’s first year made a positive difference for at-risk students, despite Danbury High’s new course requirements. Whereas 49 percent of the students received an F on their eighth-grade report card and 24 percent had multiple F’s, Rossi reports that those numbers dropped to 24 percent and 13 percent, respectively, during their freshman year at Danbury High. Raising the Bar in Montgomery County Weast pursued a larger-scale and longerrunning overhaul, and with some impressive results, at the 145,000-student Montgomery County district, which has a “majority minority” population and 48,000 students in free and reduced-price lunch programs. A decade ago, he used National Student Clearinghouse data to track 34,000 former Montgomery County students who had recently graduated college, with an eye to discovering how they had performed in their K12 careers. Weast found that everything from achieving certain reading scores in second grade, to taking algebra in freshman year, to earning a score of 3 or better on AP exams correlated strongly with the college success of those students. He went about making improvements with those guideposts in mind. “That meant a whole new set of curricular materials, a whole new set of met- algebra and geometry courses they would face in high school. What followed was a battery of face-toface and Web-based trainings to develop the necessary skill sets in math for teachers. “We reconfigured the budget and repurposed money for math coaches,” Weast remembers, adding that faculty in all subject areas have bought into the changes, literally. “Our employees have voted to give up raises to keep these programs going. That’s where engagement pays off.” There are plenty of other indications that the district’s attempts to increase rigor are paying off. While students must take “Our employees have voted to give up raises to keep these programs going. That’s where engagement pays off.” —Jerry Weast, superintendent, Montgomery County (Md.) Public School District rics to measure success, and a whole new culture of expectations for teachers and administrators,” Weast says, noting that when it came to setting the bar higher in his district, “It wasn’t with state or federal standards. We’ve gone way beyond. We’ve adopted a much harder curriculum and a higher level of standards than even the Common Core.” “Our entire math department had to change, and that called for a massive retraining of our workforce and a redesign of the math curriculum,” Weast continues, adding that students needed to understand math concepts better in elementary and middle school to perform well in the algebra by freshman year (many take it in eighth grade), the number successfully completing the course has jumped from 71 percent in 2001 to 79 percent in the ninth grade in 2011, and rose from 43 percent to 68 percent in the eighth. Whereas in 2003, 60 percent of the district’s ninth-graders went on to graduate, that number steadily increased to 86 percent last year, the highest among the largest school districts in the country, says Weast. College scholarships for those graduates, meanwhile, have risen over the past four years from a total of $150 million to $264 million. In June, Newsweek magazine ranked Teachers at the Southfield (Mich.) Public Schools take part in professional learning on differentiated instruction, as part of the district’s focus on rigorous learning. Federal stimulus funds have helped turn five of the district’s teachers into full-time coaches who offer feedback and guidance on how teachers can better reach all of their students. 54 September 2011 District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - September 2011

District Administration - September 2011
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Tech Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Conversations
They Work Hard for the Money
The Road to Rigor
District-Charter Collaborations on the Rise
Designing Safe Facilities
Tony Smith Tackles Oakland
Product Focus
New Products
Research Center
Crisis Response
Going Mobile
Professional Opinion
Student Counsel

District Administration - September 2011

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