District Administration - September 2011 - (Page 56)

The Road to Rigor eight of the district’s 26 high schools among the top 500 in the country. Along the way, Weast adds, the district has received an inflow of students who had previously attended private schools. Getting Outside Help Whereas the rigor-raising efforts in Montgomery Country are largely homegrown, a number of districts nationwide have tapped outside organizations for expertise and training. In Texas, the Dallas Independent School District has worked since 2005 on a curriculum overhaul in all core subjects with the Institute of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. That collaboration involves multiple training sessions every year for Dallas curriculum developers and lead teachers held in Pittsburgh as well as Institute of Learning-led trainings held in Dallas. Camille Malone, the district’s math coordinator, says that the newfound rigor in math classes is not built on more memorization and harder tests but around “practicing the habit of thinking as a mathematician, seeing data, making conjectures and drawing conclusions.” She adds, “The rigor actually comes not from giving students more work or more difficult work, but from having them think, dialogue with one another, and know what needs to be done.” Over the past three years, the Dallas district has rolled out new algebra I (using Texas Instruments), algebra II and geometry courses—and redesigned its middle school math—to stress problemsolving and hands-on activities. Several times a month, students in each math class undertake a project—from building launchers out of PVC pipe to studying the parabolas of missiles to measuring the acceleration of toy racing cars in hallways. Malone has spent stimulus funds to buy equipment such as weight gauges and motion detectors and has provided train56 September 2011 Raising the Bar for the Learning Disabled in Florida AlmoSt All of the 15 percent of floriDA’S public School StuDentS iDentifieD as having learning disabilities are not exempt from the state’s push for rigor. up until now, these students were eligible for classes using standard curriculum “with modifications,” which, according to the florida Department of education, were adapted to individual learning disabled students, and were usually less complex than general education courses. florida eliminated that designation over the past year for elementary students and for middle school students this year, with high school students to follow in 2012-2013. All will still receive the services and accommodations specified in their individual education plans, says bambi lockman, who heads the florida Doe’s bureau of exceptional education and Student Services. lockman says that the push to raise standards for students with learning disabilities follows a decade-long commitment. “We’ve worked very hard to get many students back in the arena of general education, and they’ve been doing very well on our state assessment exams,” she says. “We’ve been finding out that these students are able to demonstrate cognitive abilities at a higher level than people had thought.” Ryan, an eighth-grader at Palm Pointe Educaover the past decade, the percentage tional Research School at Tradition in Port St. of florida’s K12 students with learning Lucie, is among Florida’s students who follows disabilities who take general education the state’s standard curriculum. He has Hunter’s courses has grown from 48 percent to Syndrome, a rare condition in which he suffers from joint stiffness and immobility. 67 percent. the percentage receiving a standard diploma in four years has risen from 30 percent to 50 percent, according to the florida Doe. And by 2013, many more high school students with learning disabilities will be taking the same advanced courses in science and math mandated by florida’s new law upgrading the high school curriculum in the state’s public schools. the course material will be challenging, but lockman says, “i think it may be easier for students with learning disabilities to handle the end-of-course exams because they will have just focused successfully [on what’s covered] in the classroom.” At the same time, teachers will have to extend the differentiated instruction, learning strategies and interventions they have been using with learning disabled students in recent years, lockman says. ing for teachers on using them for particular projects. “We got pushback from principals who thought that we should be teaching to the test,” Malone recalls. “Teachers would say, ‘What was wrong with the textbook?’ We were out in the hall measuring acceleration in feet per second, and the students did well on the state test, having developed the concept behind the problems.” Malone notes that in the 2008-2009 school year, the first year of the new algebra I course, Dallas students gained a whopping 29 points on the state math exam over the previous year. Across the country, there’s also a growing push for rigor in the English curriculum, says author and consultant Carol Jago, who recently published the second edition of With Rigor for All: Teaching the Classics to Contemporary Students. Jago, also a former educator, reports that at the International Reading Association conference last May, “speaker after speaker talked about how the difficulty of texts has plummeted over the past 15 years. 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