The hardest part about writing this article was coming up with the title. There were so many things I could have named it. Such as “It could have been worse, it could have been rocket ships.” Or “Vermont and Connecticut are really going to hate Delaware soon.” Or “We gotta grow them.” Or “Is it still an embargo if they reveal it at a public meeting?” In any event, I attended part of the State Board of Education retreat today. I arrived at 1:30pm, and I was the ONLY member of the public there. I received some stares. All but two members of the State Board of Education were present. Those that were there were President Dr. Teri Quinn Gray, Vice-President Jorge Melendez, Gregory Coverdale, Pat Heffernan, and Nina Bunting.
When I got there, head of the Teacher/Leader Effectiveness Unit Christopher Ruszkowski was giving a presentation on, what else, teacher effectiveness. There was a slide up which said TEF- 5 charters, TEF- 6 charters, Freire, Colonial, Aspira. If I had to guess, these are schools or “collaboratives” that have or will have their own teacher evaluation system. The Rus Man (sorry, spelling his last name is a huge pain!) said Lake Forest School District believes DPAS-II is more equitable. Rus said “Districts not using the new evaluation methods are not as successful.” He explained how some districts get “caught up in the structure” and “the rules”. He said principals want more high-quality data, and they are having better conversations about Measure B in the DPAS-II system.
This was followed with a presentation by Dr. Shana Ricketts. She explained how that state trained 125 principals over the summer, and there will be training sessions over the next two weeks, and DSEA will be holding workshops over the changes in the DPAS-II. The Rus Man explained how Delaware has the “most decentralized system in the country for teacher evaluations and goals are different across the board.” A question came up about assessments. Discussion was had about reducing assessments even more. “If we standardize chemistry exams why have teacher ones as well,” Rus Man asked. “But some are teacher-created, which is good cause it shows growth.” Dr. Gray responded with “Gotta grow them!” Rus man explained how “teachers need to be empowered”, “our obligation to be world-class is students have to be proficient when they graduate”, and “We are trying to ask the right questions.” Rus man also said “There is not enough rigor.”
At this point, Dr. Penny Schwinn came in, followed shortly by Ryan Reyna, who works under Schwinn. Actually, I should say next to her as they are both easily the two tallest employees at the DOE. While I was distracted, Rus Man said something about “Commitment to proficiency…mindblocks….set the target, work my way back” followed by something about the “culture of the building”. To which board member Pat Heffernan responded with “We can’t put blinders on and have no idea.” Gray responded with “We want growth AND proficiency!” followed by “We don’t set the goal based on average, we set it on growth.” Rus Man responded by saying “We are to be compared to everyone. Not Delaware, not other states, but everyone in the world.” He stated our principals are aware of this. Someone asked if our principals understand this. He explained how the alternative is the “same way we’ve done for 100 years, mastery of standards to grade book…” Gray burst out that “It should be proficiency based!” Board member Nina Bunting thanked Rus Man for the presentation and said “It was very informative.” Heffernan said we need to “encourage principals to encourage good data entry.”
The State Board took about a ten minute break at this point. Dr. Gray asked how I was doing, and I proceeded to tell her all about my hernia and my operation. She explained how her brother had that done. I asked if it was stomach or groin. She said stomach. I told her mine was groin. She just kind of stared at me for a few seconds, unsure of what to say.
At this point the accountability trio of Dr. Penny Schwinn, Ryan Reyna, and Dr. Carolyn Lazar began to give a presentation on Smarter Balanced. I actually asked if this meeting had any embargoed information I shouldn’t know about. Donna Johnson, Executive Director of the State Board of Education, explained this is a public meeting. Most of the information was already on the state DOE website. Lazar explained how 21 states took the field test, and 17 Delaware districts participated. All told, 4 million students took the field test in the USA. Schwinn explained how elementary schools outperformed middle schools and high schools in both math and ELA. Heffernan asked if this included charters on the data they were seeing, but Schwinn explained the charters were on a separate slide. Lazar said there was a 15 point gap between Math and ELA, but the “claim area” was only 10 points. At this point, Dr. Gray asked what the proficiency level was. For the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Lazar explained it is the students who score proficient or above. That is good to know! Next they went over slides showing how close or how far districts were between Math and ELA scores. Donna Johnson commented how Capital School District’s proficiency lines attached which is very unique. Schwinn responded that this “speaks to the rigor of assessment.” Schwinn brought up the student survey and said that 7,000 students self-selected to perform the survey at the end of the test. Dr. Gray said that isn’t statistically normed. Schwinn explained it was not, but the survey will become automatic next year, like how it was on DCAS.
Michael Watson, the teacher and learning chief at the DOE, presented next on Smarter Balanced in relation to teaching and instruction. He explained how we need international assessments so we can compare against India and China. He explained how Delaware had “strong positive indicators with National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) trends.” Watson proceeded to show the board a chart showing how Delaware compared to nine other Smarter Balanced Assessment states that released their data. Delaware came ahead for literacy in third to fifth grade, but much lower in ELA for 8th grade. Next, Watson gave a long talk about comparing Delaware to Connecticut with Smarter Balanced results and the two states NAEP results. He found that Delaware trailed behind Connecticut in NAEP, but we were closer to their scores with Smarter Balanced. I wanted to burst out “That’s cause SBAC sucks so I would expect most states to suck equally on it”, but I bit my tongue. But as I thought about it, comparing two different states NAEP scores to SBAC is like comparing a clothing store to Chuck-E-Cheese. There really isn’t a comparison as they are two different entities. In talking about the states Delaware scored near the same as on SBAC, Watson actually said “Either Connecticut and Vermont didn’t take SBAC seriously or we are working harder.” Bunting explained how in Indian River, “when state says jump we say how high!”
**At this point, Watson looked over at me and said the next slide is embargoed information but he presented it anyways. So I can’t write about the embargoed information presented to me at a public meeting about a survey done showing that in Delaware, 88% of Superintendents feel we have implemented Common Core, followed by 87% of principals and 67% of teachers. For some reason, this is top-secret embargoed information that won’t be released until next month or something like that. (**SEE UPDATE ON BOTTOM)
I had to leave to pick up my son from school. I brought him home and checked my email real quick. I did get an email from Yvette Smallwood who works for the state on the Delaware Register of Regulations. She informed me, in response to my request they remove Regulation 103 from their September publication due to issues of non-transparency surrounding it, that they couldn’t remove it but the DOE did agree to extend the public comment period until October 8th, which would be 30 days after Regulation 103 was put on this blog! I drove back to the State Board retreat and as I walked in I heard Dr. Gray talking loudly about parents needing to understand. At which point Reyna pointed to a chair for me to sit in and Dr. Gray stopped talking about whatever parent thing she was talking about.
The infamous “toolkit” has been fully released on the Smarter Balanced website. It includes a link to the DelExcels website, some other “very informative” websites called Great Kids and Be A Learning Hero. The DOE is working with DSEA to get information out for parents to understand the Smarter Balanced results. According to Donna Johnson, many districts are excited to get the information to parents, and are aligning curriculum and professional development in an effort to gain more awareness. The DOE is working with superintendents, principals, social media, and their partners (Rodel). The test results won’t be mailed out from the DOE until Friday, September 18th and Monday, September 21st. Which is probably their way of screwing up my well-designed article from earlier today about education events this week… But I digress. Schwinn said the resutls will come out earlier in future years, but this is a transition year. Johnson said “some districts are excited to dig in” with releasing data. Lazar explained how teachers are getting “claim spreads” which are tied to “anchor data”. At this point, it’s all Greek to me when they start speaking in that language. The DOE is working with journalists (no one asked me, and I had already received embargoed information at a public meeting) to write articles on how to educate parents on “how to read reports and grade spreads”. Because parents don’t know how to do that. I don’t think parents are confused about the data. They will be confused why Johnny is doing awesome with grades but he tanked the SBAC. And no one will be able to present this to them in a way they will clearly understand so hopefully they will come up with the same conclusion as many parents already have: Smarter Balanced sucks!
At this point, Johnson wanted to play one of the new videos, just released Friday in an email blast to anyone the DOE has worked with (which didn’t include me, but I got it forwarded to me on Friday). So here it is, the world premiere (if you haven’t been so blessed to be included in the email blast), of the Delaware DOE Smarter Balanced Guide For Parents Video 2015:
http://www.doe.k12.de.us/cms/lib09/DE01922744/Centricity/Domain/4/DE_REPORT_VIDEO_REVISED_MIX_1.mp4?_=1
*video may not be working, I will work on it…
This won’t be the last time you hear this video, because apparently some districts want to put this on their morning announcement! I kid you not…
This next part is actually somewhat frightening. When asked how many hits the DOE website is getting for this, Johnson was unable to answer, but they can track the hits or work with partners on sites they don’t own to get that information. Tracking plays a LARGE part later on in this retreat…
The final part of the presentation was my whole reason for coming: The Delaware School Success Framework. A slide came up from the State Board of Education agenda for Thursday’s meeting, but it had attachments that said “embargoed”. These links don’t appear on the public agenda. There was a lot of whispering between Penny Schwinn, Shana Young, and Donna Johnson at this point, as if they could be discussing something they didn’t want me to hear. I don’t obviously know this for sure, just a hunch! 😉
She went over the state’s new accountability system called the Delaware School Success Framework (DSSF). I covered most of this last week in my Regulation 103 article and how much of a game-changer this system is, but I found out quite a bit of information on it today. The DSSF will go live next month with what they are calling the “paper framework” until the full online system launches by June 2nd (a must date according to Penny Schwinn). Schwinn said the reason they are including 4, 5, and 6 year graduation rates is because of special education students who may not graduate in four years. She proudly said “Delaware is the first state to have college and career preparation” as part of the state report card (which is what the US DOE calls state accountability systems). When talking about the Accountability Framework Working Group (AFWG), Schwinn stated Ryan Reyna is leading this group. She said there is a lot of opinions in this group, and not everyone is going to agree, which makes it a good group. She said no accountability system is going to have 100% agreement, so it took some compromising.
“Delaware has the most aggressive rate in the country for growth,” Schwinn said. This was her explanation for the VERY high portion of the DSSF which has growth. She said it “feels more appropriate with Smarter Balanced to set the bar high.” She acknowledged they are “pushing it with US DOE” but feels they will be approved. How this all works with the DSSF is this. There is a Part A, which counts toward a school’s accountability rating, and Part B which will show on the DOE website and is informative in nature but has no weight on a school’s grade. Part A includes proficiency (multiplied by the school’s participation rate on SBAC), growth to proficiency, college and career prep (for high schools), average daily attendance, and so forth. The numbers have changed somewhat since I last reported on the weights of each category. For elementary and middle schools, 30% of the weight will be proficiency, and high schools will be 25%. For growth, in elementary and middle schools this will be 45%, and high schools 40%. So in essence, 75% of a school’s accountability rating will be based on the Smarter Balanced Assessment in elementary and middle schools, and 65% for high schools. The bulk of the rating system that will determine reward, recognition, action, focus, focus plus and priority status will be based on the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Schwinn said this is very aggressive and is “not comfortable backing down on it.” Not one word was said about the participation rate or Regulation 103 during this presentation. The categories were presented for the ESEA Flex Waiver last March but the weights have to be submitted to the US DOE by 10/31/15. So the State Board has to make a decision on it by their 10/15 meeting.
Reyna talked about proficiency and growth with some scatter graphs. “We’re really valuing schools that are showing growth with students” he said out of thin air. Schwinn talked about the school survey parents will receive (school report card). They are going with the “5 Essentials Survey” for the non-accountability rated Part B. The DOE is creating a survey working group which will start next month and will include the “usual stakeholders”. They sent emails to all the superintendents to participate, just like they did with the AFWG. The state is holding itself accountable as well, but there was no discussion about what they are measuring themselves against. Schwinn explained that on the survey last fall, parents liked the idea of letter grades on the school report and teachers hated it. So they won’t have that on the report. In news I know many will like, THERE WILL BE NO ROCKET SHIPS, TRAFFIC LIGHTS OR TROPHIES on the Delaware School Success Report sent to parents. There was a lot of discussion about design and different ideas. Heffernan said DOE can tell parents “It could have been worse, it could have been rocket ships.”
Schwinn explained on the online report, parents will be able to map and graph data. As an example, Dr. Gray said if a parent is looking for a school that has choir, they will be able to find that, to which Schwinn agreed. Schwinn said “accountability is intended to be a judgment on a school. But we want to make sure parents see other data as well.” Schwinn said they WILL TRACK THE INFORMATION PARENTS SEARCH FOR ON SCHOOLS to see if they can let schools or districts know about needs in their area. Or at least that’s what she said.
Schwinn had to leave to “feed her family” and Reyna took over. They are resetting assessment targets for the state and each subgroup which must be done by 1/31/16. At this point, the next slide Reyna presented had embargoed information at a public meeting (just love saying that!). So I cannot, by threat of force or violence, tell you that the overall state proficiency for SBAC was a little over 51% and for the overall subgroups, it was 38.8% for SBAC. But here is the real kicker. Delaware has to pick their choice to hold the state accountable. With a six year plan, the state must close the proficiency gap between the overall sub-groups (including low-income, students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and minorities) by 50% in six years. This is what Delaware DOE wants. Other choices were all schools are 100% proficient by 2019-2020, or “any other method proposed by state that is educationally sound and results in ambitious but achievable Annual Measurable Objectives for all schools and subgroups.”
Pat Heffernan was not a fan of DOE’s choice because of the impact on students with disabilities. He even made a comment about how they won’t reach this goal either. It was discussed how ALL students will be included in this state accountability rating. The infamous “n” number won’t apply (when students are below 15 at a school in a sub-group, they are NOT counted towards the individual school’s accountability) on this state system since ALL students that are in a sub-group will be included in the state’s rating. But students will not be double-counted. So for example, an African-American student with disabilities will only count towards one of those sub-groups. The DOE must increase the 38.8% for the sub-groups to 45% in six years to meet the state rating with the US DOE.
And with that, the meeting ended since they had already run over time for the meeting, and they used a room at the Duncan Center in Dover.
UPDATED, 9/17/15, 9:34pm: Michael Watson from the Delaware DOE spoke with me at the State Board of Education meeting during a break. He informed me the slide he presented to me at the State Board Retreat was NOT embargoed information, but the name of the upcoming report is. Since I didn’t remember it, it’s a non-issue but I do appreciate him letting me know. As for Ryan Reyna, that’s another story.
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