April 25th Board Meeting - Q&A

I apologize for the delay in getting these items posted. April and May are proving to be busy months for me..... Hopefully, as some activities go on hiatus for the summer, I'll be able to get these in on a more timely basis.

Tim Kassel addressed the Board in the Q&A portion of the meeting. Tim, very graciously, wrote of this and posted to the Partnership for Schools e-mail group. If you are not a member of the e-mail group (and you're missing some of the dialogue about District 3 if you're not!), I'm posting Tim's e-mail here. If you are on the e-mail list, you've (hopefully) already read Tim's comments.

Since I was at the meeting, I'll post my observations in a separate item.

From Tim Kassel:

I addressed the board at the last meeting. In a nutshell, my point
was that I think there's a significant number of kids being left
behind by our school system. I told the story of how my third grade
son has been bringing home report cards for the last 2 years, on
which he has recieved C's and B's in reading, but always with an
annotation that he is reading below grade level. We persued having
him tested by Mrs. Yester to see if there was any indication that he
made need additional help. It took nearly 2 months before the
testing could be done. But when we finally got the results, he had
tested very "average". When my wife discussed the results with his
two thrid grade teachers, they both expressed surprise at how well
he had tested.

We took it to the next level over the Christmas break and had him
tested at Huntington Learning Center. They assessed his reading
ability at the 2.3 grade level(3rd month of the 2nd grade), where he
should have been at 3.5. We have since enrolled him in an extensive
tutoring program and he is showing improvement. My wife and I met
with Dr. Krause and relayed our concern that there may be issues
that need to be addressed at a systemic level to avoid having more
kids fall behind like this. We were cordially thanked for bringing
it to her attention, but we got the impression that nothing further
would come of it.

Well this turn of events peaked my curiousity and I began to wonder
how many students were also seeking outside help just to get caught
up. I did some telephone surveying of our 3rd grader's parents and
found 7 out of 45 people surveyed had their kids enrolled in some
form of outside tutoring. 2 more said they were giving is serious
consideration. That 15.5% and 20% of the sample that are either in
tutoring or considering it, respectively.

I brought these numbers before the board to raise the issue that our
school system may be missing something at the lower performance
levels. The school segregates readers by ability at the lower grade
levels. In these lower groups, the kids can receive passing grades
and move from one grade to the next, all the while, the school does
nothing to address the fact that they're reading below grade level.
We were told in parent teacher conferences that the focus of all of
these lower reading groups was to be caught up to the same level as
the middle reading group by year end. This apparently is not
happening, because most of the same kids end up in the lower group
the following year.

I pointed to the school's testing and teaching methods as a possible
area of improvement to focus on. Of course class size is likely
another factor, and I pointed out that we've apparently got the
resources to teach Spanish to our 7th and 8th graders while 1st -
3rd graders are falling behind on reading, but I did not want to
turn this into another budget discussion. So I asked the board to
direct the administration to carry out a study to better understand
what's happening among our kids that may not be performing that well
and find out how big of a problem is really is.

I also raised one more issue... I went through the board meeting
minutes from the past year and counted how many motions were raised
and what the resulting votes were. 173 motions, 100% of them
passed, 98% of them passed uninimously. A total of 3 "no" votes in
all. I remarked that I couldn't believe that the board members so
rarely had a difference of opinion... or perhaps they haven't been
addressing the "tough issues." I asked them to challenge the
adninistration and challenge themselves.

Dr. Krause was volunteered to lead the reponse discussion. She
began by distributing standardized test score results to those in
attendance and spoke of how well the school is doing relative to the
state and national averages and also presented evidence indicating
year-on-year improvement in average test scores. Mr. Hill chimed in
numerous times exhalting our teachers as highly skilled educators.

Of course, my point had little to do with the grand mean of
standardized test scores, nor did I intent to indict the ability of
our teachers. But I replied by saying that I did not mean to cast
dispersions upon the teaching staff, but they are working within a
system that allows them to award B's and C's and continually advance
students that are reading below grade level.

Gerry Blohm addressed the board voting history by indicating that he
was slightly taken aback by the implication that his vote was a
rubber stamp. He mentioned that someone else had mentioned almost
the same numbers in to him in the last 2 weeks... (I hadn't compiled
my numbers until the day before - so it didn't come from me.) But he
defended his voting record by complimenting the adminstration for
coming to the board meetings with their "homework done." So that by
the time a motion gets to voted on, the issues are usually all
resolved.

Some of the board members made some other comments, indicating (at
least, this was my impression) some willingness to examine the
grading system and possibly the testing system.

Now this report is based on my recollection of what was said - not
always the most reliable source - because I was involved in the
discussion, not taking notes. A more accurate source (and one
without the embedded editoial) may be the meeting minutes as posted
on the District 3 website, but they won't be up until after the next
board meeting so check that out if you're intrigued by the subject
matter.

Finally, I gathered my thoughts on the feedback I heard and composed
an email to the board members with cc to the administration. I've
included it below - note that it specifically requests a couple of
items be placed on the agenda for this month. If there's no mention
of these when the next agenda is posted, I'll be addressing the
board again. Keep an eye out for the agenda - more community
support of this issue could help. Read below to see specifically
what I've asked for.
____________________________________________
District 3 Board Members,

I want to thank you for the thoughtful discussion that took place
Monday night in response the issues I brought up. I have a few
thoughts I'd like to share with you now that I've had an opportunity
to digest the feedback.

My impression is the board and the administration appear reluctant
to accept the validity of the number of students seeking outside
tutoring as an indicator of the effectiveness of our school system's
ability to keep students from falling behind. I think some valid
points were made as to some of the other possible motivations some
parents may have for pursuing tutoring for their children.
Personally, I don't really think that's what's going on at our lower
grade levels, but I'll accept the argument as valid nonetheless.

As an alternative approach, I'd like to propose a study of the
school's own report card records. Particularly, how many of our
students are being scored as Reading Below Grade Level (RBGL), and
what have been their corresponding letter grades? There are several
telling metrics that can be pursued with this data:

· # of students RBGL in the 1st grading period vs. # of
students RBGL in the 4th grading period

· # of students RBGL in 1st grade vs. # of students RBGL in
2nd grade of the following year, and so on, up to 4th grade. I'd
like to see this data tracked over the last 5 to 7 years for trend
analysis

· letter grade progression of RBGL students though the
school year vs. progression from RBGL to Reading At Grade Level

Similar data for math scores would be useful, but there does not
appear to be a line item on the report cards for performance at or
below grade level in math. However, the math classes are separated
by ability in the lower grade levels. Tracking the size of the
lower group as the kids progress through the grades could also serve
as an indicator.

Through my profession I have obtained a Six Sigma Black Belt,
meaning that I have been trained in, and have successfully applied,
advanced methods of statistical analysis for process improvements.
Often times you can make an incorrect conclusion about two sets data
of being different from one another by just looking at their
averages. You have to look at the spread of the data and how they
overlap to determine if there is a statistically significant
difference. I have the tools and skills to do this and would like
to volunteer my services to analyze this data.

As Dr. Krause pointed out, our standardized test scores as compared
to state and national averages are good (I agree), and using my
tutoring numbers as an example, she asked, "What about the other 80%
that aren't experiencing a problem?" Focusing on averages and the
majority can make it easy to miss what's happening at the extremes
of the population. I would suspect the reading labs and other
changes implemented in the last few years that were mentioned by Mr.
Hill and Dr. Krause were architected with the general population in
mind as well. The study I am proposing is obviously not focused on
the kids that are doing well in our current system. The intent is
to take a closer look at what's happening with children that may be
underperforming, determine how large or small of an issue it really
is, and possibly make some focused changes to better protect, what
may be a significant number of kids, from falling behind.

I am formally requesting that the pursuit of this study be placed on
the agenda for the next board meeting.

Finally, I would like to clarify an apparent misunderstanding that
was relayed by Mr. Hill on Monday night with regard to the seating
arrangement in reading circles. My comments to Dr. Krause were not
related to reading circles. I expressed concern over the everyday
arrangement of the desks in the classroom. The desks are arranged
in patterns where the children are grouped together, primarily
facing one another. Some children are more easily distracted than
others and I know my son is one of them. But I also know, through
my experience as a rec-council coach, he's not the only one.
Sometimes it's hard to hold the attention of a group of 9-year-olds
for 3 minutes – even with a referee's whistle – and that's just a
ten-person soccer team. Now, place a more easily distracted child
who is reading below grade level in a classroom of 25-30 students,
and have him face one of his buddies instead of the front of the
class, where the teacher is, and what do you expect the results will
be? As I said Monday, my wife, Cynthia, volunteers in the
classrooms a lot and has seen this environment first hand, and has
commented to me on how often she sees children talking amongst
themselves when they should be paying attention to the teacher.
Perhaps the board members could take some time to see this for
themselves as well. Maybe 80% of our kids can thrive in an
environment like this, but I can't help thinking that it's
contributes negatively to the progress of the others. What if we
could turn 80% to 85% or more just by rearranging the seats?

Again, I appreciate your thoughtful consideration on these issues
and look forward to hearing this addressed at the next board
meeting. Feel free to contact me at home (847-639-0285) or via
email with any comments or questions.

Regards,
Tim Kassel