A Great Response to our Solutions for Cave Creek Unified Schools

There is a fabulous response to our solutions post you need to check out. You can find it here.

http://ccusdwatch.blogspot.com/2008/05/solutions-for-cave-creek-unified-school.html#comments

Great stuff here. Very thought provoking and well though out. We will be responding to it over the next week. First up is a response to the posters comments on our suggested Solutions. Our response in red.

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Everyday Math -- LOVE IT! What great instruction. Teaches the students there is more than one way to solve a problem. Focuses on an understanding of patterns. Has the students learn to WRITE about what they do in math to build even greater comprehension. If I had had this math when I was in elementary school I would have had a MUCH easier time understanding advanced mathematics. Why is something wrong because it is different from the way we learned? Was everyone who studied with us so smart? Also, why have test scores in math improved DRAMATICALLY since the implementation of this program which everyone says is so wrong.

The main problem with Everyday Math is that it does not expect mastery. The many other problems with EM are well documented. I dare you to show me DRAMATICALLY improved math test scores. Take a look at the trend for the math section on the SAT/TerraNova for 9th graders. (AIMS scores are worthless, and with the DPA these aren't much better, but we are just focusing on the trend)

Year Grade9 Percentile Rank
2007 69
2006 67
2005 73
2004 76 .

Not sure where the phonics statement comes from. My children learned with phonics. They did not learn whole language and they studied in CCUSD. They also had differentiated instruction beginning in 4th grade.

The key here is rigorous phonics. To many teachers fall back on books with pictures and books that give clues and context to the words.

The comment about spreading among existing teachers and not using aids makes no sense to me. What are you talking about? Differentiated instruction would require even more teachers than they have now and if you have some simple logical way to implement this I'd love to hear it.

For core subjects, divide the children into classes by skill level. For reading, send the highest performers to teacher A, middle performers to teacher B, low performers to teacher c. Simple and logical.

AR--Our school has gotten away from AR. Only some teachers use it. They use actual literature in the classrooms my children are in. AR does have some positive advantages for kids who really do not like to read. Some find the effort to reach points goals challenging. This is only used as a supplementary program to actual teaching going on in the classroom. Many books (including large full-length novels) have tests available for AR so I'm not sure about the short story comment except that may be what your child has chosen to do.

In our classrooms they use small group instructional learning to study various reading topics such as "voice" or "character" and delve into understanding those ideas. In addition they read "classics" aloud together in class AND have additional reading requirements for books that they do reports on. No one uses just AR as a teaching method. Do you actually spend any time in the classrooms or just sit outside and throw stones.

Glad to hear this but without a defined program the teachers reading choices vary wildly and sometimes they have very low expectations.

Latin and Greek? Okay...those are fine. I'm a musician. I'd rather learn Italian and French (more helpful to me). Though I understand the concept of Latin as a base language. That's great. Now...get the $$ and get the teachers. No suggestions here on how to do that.

Drop/reduce Spanish/Japanese, and work it into the language arts time. Personally we fail to see the merit of SI and what happens when the grants run out?

Spanish Immersion is continuing into the Middle School -- where have you been? They worked extremely hard last year to get the program going and it will be implemented when the 1st Spanis Immersion class enters MIddle School.

Great.

Going back to Latin and Greek. Okay...let's address this on the elementary level a bit. You do realize, do you not, that the schools have continued evaluations they must go through -- yes, we can complain that this is standardized testing by which they are rated and evaluated and though I often hear parents say they do not like standardized testing...they are also the parents who want to see proof that their students are doing well and that they are sending their kids to the BEST schools. So they talk out of both sides of their mouths. We don't like teachers to "teach to the test" but we all want to know where our schools rank compared to each other. I'd love to see a better method for this, but right now it is testing. Principals, administrators, teachers are all evaluated on these tests. They feel extreme pressure to cover all the information that is already being tested in their classroom with the time they have with their students. So, of course, let's add Latin and Spanish (I'm all for a language if the program is better than it was 4 years ago where they graduated elementary school only knowing colors and numbers in Spanish and could learn that from 30 minutes of Sesame Street a day) when they already feel they don't see their students enough. Oh, I imagine since the folks here are pushing the "fundamentals" they would cut P.E. and Art and Music; though I would argue that our kids would be much healthier and smarter with MORE P.E. (I'd love to see a study on the obesity rates in this country related to when they started cutting back on P.E. classes -- also the rate of ADD compared to the cutting back of physical education). Music is integral to math study and helps students understand patterns in a more in-depth way than just facts and figures alone. So...where do you fit Latin in? How do you do it with the budget?

Latin at the elementary/middle school would be a 2/3 days a week program and certainly could be worked into the language arts time. How about cutting library and computer time (do they really need to spend 45 minutes in the library when they already spend 2 hours on reading, spelling, and language arts and the computer instruction is worthless). Let’s focus on the core.

AP and IB...student interest...teachers who are trained. IB JUST started at the high school and was a very time consuming, in-depth process to get it started (took 2 years if I recall). I believe they are working on the middle school program. Doesn't happen overnight. Maybe you should offer to help get it started...

If they are working on it great!

Better use of testing to get good teachers. Hmmm...interesting...don't seem to like standardized testing for our kids, but want it for our teachers. Okay...

The point here was to identify teachers who are doing a good job and assign/reward them accordingly.

Well, again, don't know where your kids went to school, but our principal did an excellent job finding good teachers. Set a high standards goal when coming to the school. Had teachers leave that did not want to meet those standards. Drew quality teachers to the staff. Would visit schools and do site visits on teachers before hiring. Investigated extensively. Treats teachers as professionals. Uses half days (NO THESE ARE NOT A WASTE OF TIME AT OUR SCHOOL) to allow teachers to work on things that help them become better teachers. Implemented lesson study at the school where teachers work together on a lesson. Take turns observing each other teaching it and critique it after each session. The end result a high quality lesson all teachers in the group can use year after year. Implemented vertical horizontal curricular alignment (something they worked on during those wasted half days) to ensure curriculum expectations are clearly reached both within grade levels and in grades above and grades below. Encouraged professional development. This school has more tha 15 teachers with Master's Degrees, 3 Doctorates, 3 National Board Certified Teachers (and more in process). These students have high quality teachers. I support and stand by the half day as these times are important to these teachers working together to further develop their teaching skills and ensures that my students have better quality teachers in front of them in the classroom. When folks in a regular business need to collaborate, they just walk next door and talk to the other staff person. We all know that collaboration makes for stronger outcomes. But teachers cannot just leave their classroom and walk next door to talk to another teacher when they need advice or support.

Our teachers love these half days--though some do find their own childcare a challenge. These half days also may not be the best approach for all levels. Middle and high school teachers may not have the same collaborative working situation so maybe these times are not as effective for them. Maybe the program needs to be tweaked to better support their teaching needs.

If this has such value, then just make them full days.

Classroom discipline is fine. However, we do have some parents who refuse to believe their child is the issue. Blame the teachers seems to be the mantra in this district. Teachers are at fault if your child misbehaves. Oh...interesting. We've had some kids leave our school because our principal did not do enough for their little angels who were so perfect. But..interestingly enough, they have hte same issues at other schools. Hmmm...wonder why. Perhaps it is the child/parent, not the teacher that is the issue and the parents choose not to recognize it. Our school discipline program works well. We have one particularly challenging grade at our school. For some reason there are many students with behavioural issues in that grade level, but since 1st grade there have been many interventions offered to help those students...even a completely different discipline model introduced on that grade level to help stem teh issue before they get into higher grades where it becomes worse. I think the school has taken dramatic steps to support discipline. Unfortunately it is not a private school so the principal cannot just kick out the parents/children that are difficult. That is not legal.

Great points!

Technology integrated into the curriculum. Hmmm...sure no one in the district ever thought of this one. Let's see...technology bond in 2000 FAILED. Last technology bond FAILED...oh yes, our parents really support this. Computers in the classroom of our school 15+ years old. Barely even turn on most of the time. Can't run the new software district has purchased for more integrated technology learning. When bonds come up, the arguing in the press second guessing what the district technology committee has developed as a technology plan (yes, there was a plan for this last bond, a good one -- did anyone here read it?). The committee consisted of community members (many with strong technology and education backgrounds), teachers, administrators, etc. But, like all district committees, as soon as the recommendations came out. Those who like to sit back and complain could find all sorts of problems wiht the recommendations. Of course, they couldn't take the time to actually sit on the committees themselves, they just wanted to rant and rave afterward. Really, one big reason why I don't know why ANYONE would want to work in this community for the schools/district. The board is the worst offender. "Let's form a committee to investigate something and then let's second guess and undermine all the committee's recommendations."

If you looked at the technology the plan, the plan was just to buy stuff for the sake of buying it (or leasing it) with little to no money for teacher training or curriculum integration. Just setting these things in the classroom does not improve student achievement. Next we could argue whether technology even improves achievement at all.

Smartboards do not even exist in the majority of middle school and high school classrooms where they should be. One elementary shcool has them in all classrooms because the principal there included them in the building budget. Another has them in EVERY classroom because the PTO raised the funds to get them implemented. One school has now resorted to begging for old computers from offices that are closing, etc. They have almost completely replaced all their 15+ year old computers. The computers are not new; but they are newer than what htey had and they work. I often read on sites like this the question of "why don't they apply for grants for this?" Well, I asked that question myself and instead of sitting back and whining about it, I decided to research grants. Know what I found out? We don't qualify for 90% of them. State technology grants have as a primary requirement a certain percentage of students on free or reduced lunch and that percentage is much higher than the 2-5% we have in this district. The state funds the schools with the assumption that those schools in wealthier districts (like ours) will be able to go out for bonds, etc. for higher funding. They don't take into considration districts like ours where the folks seem to not want to support the schools. Perhaps they assume the higher income area automatically means the schools get more $$. They don't. The school is funded the same as every other school in the state. They get X amount of dollars (approximately $4200) per student based on the number of students in class on the 100th day of school. That is how the M&O budget (the one that pays for teachers, etc.) is calculated. Then the district is allowed to go out for an override (limited to 10% of the overall M&O budget) to get any budget increase. So in poorer areas you see better technology and better maintained schools and programs we don't have because they qualify for a lot more funding than we do. We have to rely on our parents and our parents don't vote. Did you know that in the last M&O override there were more "YES" votes out of Carefree than voted in total in Tatum Ranch? That means those "retired" folks who supposedly don't support the schools...do! More than our own parents. Many parents choose to read these blogs and stories in the Sonoran News and sit on the sidelines and complain. It is much easier to do that than actually spend time in teh schools seeing what is going on or actively trying to fix the "problems" they may see.

Agreed that Smartboards would be much better served in the higher grades. As far as the PTO splurging this was the biggest waste of PTO dollars ever. Their children would be much better off paying for aides but it is the teachers and principles that push for them.

Back to the list...take up the underperforming teachers issue with the CCEA. That is a teacher union issue. Believe me, the principals I know would like nothing better than to get rid of teachers they do not think are effective. The good principals find creative ways to do so.

But principals have the power to assign the teachers where they can do the least damage but rarely do.

Okay..gifted. Let's not even go there. They "saved" the gifted program with emergency funds so when the air conditioning totally goes at Desert Arroyo (and it is on its last leg), we can be happy that we have a gifted program while 900 kids swelter in the heat. In addition we can be happy the program was saved in its current self-contained structure at the expense of classroom aids. These aids not only support the teachers in the lower grades, but also have important school running functions such as lunch duty. Now on the surface, this may not seem important, but those aids allow the teachers to take a 30-minute lunch and get the students back into the classroom more quickly. Without aids, lunches will now need to be one hour so that teachers may eat and then break each other on lunch duty. So for the 2% or less of students in the district that actually qualify for "gifted" learning, we now have taken 30 minutes of classtime from the other 98%. That's fair, don't you think? Of course it is. Why did this happen? Because the board listened to a few vocal parents instead of listening to the principal's recommendations that there be gifted trained classroom teachers so all gifted students could be filtered through those classrooms and get gifted education all day long, not just a couple of hours in the morning. At our school, some of our best teachers were already to be trained and ready to go by the fall. As it is those teachers already teach 90% of the gifted kids in our school anyway.

Using the rainy day fund to pay for the gifted program was a really poor choice, we agree. There is no question, self-contained gifted is the way to go. If you have to, expand the gifted/honors to 15-20% of each grade and have them assigned to the gifted certified staff. I am sure there are a million reasons why you cannot do this but hey some have said we need to ‘think outside the box’. :)