School Board Newsletter #47, November 2, 1998

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Subj: School Issues Newsletter #47
Date: 11/2/98 11:39:19 AM EST
From: jklagge@bev.net (Jim Klagge)

Dear friends,

I need to begin with a reminder once again that this newsletter is only a report of my views about issues before the school board--it is not an official report of the SB. I repeat this because there are a number of new people who have recently been added to the mailing list, and because I recently took to calling this the "Schoolboard Newsletter," which was quite misleading I now realize. (If you don't want to receive this newsletter, please let me know and I will delete you. If you know others who do want to receive it, please send me their e-mail addresses. There are now 545 e-mail addresses on my mailing list.)

1) Standards of Learning. There have been several articles in the newspaper recently about the State Board of Education as it deliberates about setting the passing scores for the SoL tests. These cut scores are important because they will eventually affect whether a school is accredited by the state, since 70% of students will have to pass the tests; and because HS students will have to pass 6 or 9 of the tests for core HS classes (depending on which diploma they are seeking) to graduate.

The tests are given in the spring in core subjects (math, English, science, social studies) in 3rd, 5th, 8th grades, and in a number of HS subjects.

At our last SB meeting we heard a report from 3 teachers in the county who had participated in the state committees that proposed possible cut scores to the state BoE. Their reports were quite important to know about, considering the news that is coming out about the BoE decisions. (By the way, I have not yet seen the actual cut scores, which vary from test to test, that the state BoE adopted last week. I'm not sure why they haven't been in the paper, but I'm sure they will be eventually.) The state gathered a committee for each SoL test (some 2 dozen committees), each committee consisting of about a dozen teachers and other citizens. I won't go into the details of the process, but essentially each person on the committee scored each question on their SoL test as to how crucial it was for a passing student to be able to get it right. Then the committee would talk through the questions and their importance. Then each person would redo the process. They went through this scoring and discussion three times. After the third time the committee-members' judgements about the questions were arranged as an array of scores (generally they had the shape of a bell-curve). As a fictional example: suppose a test had 45 questions on it, perhaps one teacher wanted the passing score to be 20, two wanted it to be 22, 5 wanted 25, 3 wanted 26, and one wanted 28. Then this was reported to the state BoE as the committee's recommended range of passing scores. What is important to note is that the "committee" as a group never "recommended" this range. It is simply the range of recommended scores from each committee member. What we are hearing in the newspapers is that the state BoE is generally choosing to place the cut at or near the top of the "recommended" range. What that means is that, in this fictional example, 11 out of 12 committee members would DISagreee with the BoE's decision to set a cut score of 27 or 28. I don't deny the Board's right to set the cut scores, but under the circumstances it is misleading to suggest that their choices were within the ranges recommended by the committees. It is more accurate to say their choices were recommended by at least one committee member for each test.

One of the concerns our superintendent, Fred Morton, has pushed is that these tests are given in April, but cover the full year's material, so students are being tested (and scored) on material that they haven't, and couldn't have, covered. Even more unfair is the fact that classes that are on block schedule will have covered a smaller percentage of the material than classes on regular schedules by the time their tests are administered.

Fred wrote a letter about this to the State Superintendent, and the SB has written a letter to the State BoE, last school year. Though these points have been acknowledged, no adjustment has been made for them.

Another concern is that schools with high percentages of at-risk students are being held to the same standards as other schools. Though it is noble to have the same expectations for all students, it is hard to miss the fact that there is an inverse correlation between average raw scores at a school, and percentage of its students defined as at-risk. It will also be interesting to see what the correlation is between average raw scores in a district, and average amount spent per pupil in a district. If there is a positive correlation, then that raises the question for the legislature whether we should try to do more to equalize spending on students around the state, before we hold them all to the same standards. The legislature might well say that this is a local issue, and localities should expend more effort to make up the differences. But at the local level, it is easy to fall into a Catch-22 on local spending: If we perform well, we don't need more money; and if we perform poorly, we don't deserve more money--so in either case we won't get more money.

The State BoE is clearly motivated by the idea that setting high standards is the way to get better results. There is something to that, at least in some cases. Perhaps this will focus our attention more precisely on academic performance in core subjects. But the deeper implication is that the real problem is that students and teachers just don't try hard enough, and that we can get them to try harder by setting (much) higher standards. I think it is an important and interesting public policy issue as to whether both parts of my previous sentence are true. We are certainly betting an awful lot on their being true. Most of us have experience raising and motivating children--I think high expectations can be a part of that, but that has to be handled with a good deal of sensitivity to the child and to the many factors that are involved. I wonder, in general, whether setting really high standards prompts much greater effort. We'll see.

One thing that our local SB has said is that the focus on standardized tests should not be the sole way we evaluate our schools, AND that the focus on core subjects should not detract our attention from the value of other classes in arts, language, vocational, etc.

I hope this information better enables you to understand what is going on with SoL's, and why it is important. You will eventually be getting information about cut scores, how your children did, how our schools did, and other pertinent information on School Report Cards.

2) Blacksburg Middle School. This has also been in the news. Since this will be discussed at our meeting tomorrow night, I will not comment extensively. But I would like to summarize some of the (recent!) background.

In 1997 the Board of Supervisors commissioned the Marsh-Witt engineering firm to do a "value engineering" study of the school's building plans. This was done because of concerns about expense, and also to get an outside opinion on what the real needs were. At the same time the SB commissioned Glen Earthman to do another demographic study of enrollment projections in the county over the next dozen years. He had done this in the past for us, and his projections have been reliable. (We'll be doing this every 2 years.) At the time that these 2 reports were received (Summer, 1997) the plan was to expand and renovate BMS for 1000 students. Earthman's numbers predicted that BMS would have 1000 by the time it opened, and could have 1200 students by 2010. Marsh-Witt suggested that the county look at having 2 MS's in Blacksburg both for educational reasons and to deal with possible future growth. Parents and educators in Blacksburg seemed to agree that a MS of 1200 was larger than we wanted. The Marsh-Witt report also judged that the costs for 2 rather than 1 MS were roughly comparable. The Earthman numbers also showed that BHS would be reaching capacity in the next several years (and over 1400 by 2010).

In light of this new information, the SB convened a group in Blacksburg to hear the new information and review ALL the options. Among the options considered were: stick with 1 expanded and renovated MS (current plan at the time); build a new MS and renovate current MS for 2 MS's, with a new HS to follow at some future date; build a new BHS and use old BHS and current BMS with renovations as 2 MS's; build a new HS and a new MS between Blacksburg and Christiansburg; and other options to be added. This group of about 3 dozen people included citizens, parents, teachers, administrators, etc. The specific process and preferences of the group will be reviewed at the SB meeting tomorrow, but essentially they were insistent that we should have 2 MS's in Blacksburg, and they were impressed by the fact that BMS is already way overenrolled, with over a dozen trailers being used, and that this was the most pressing need. Thus they voted overwhelmingly to endorse the idea of building a new MS and renovating the old BMS as the first step. They were well aware of growing space needs at BHS, but did not feel that this was nearly as pressing (BHS has no trailers, and no plans for trailers). The idea of building a new BHS first was certainly considered and discussed. The decision was a judgement call, but one that received a decisive majority.

Then, the SB voted (4-3, with 2 members absent) last December to accept this recommendation. We sent a resolution to the BoS requesting that they buy land sufficient for a new MS and a new HS in Blacksburg, and that they proceed with building a new MS and renovating the old MS for 2 MS's in Blacksburg. The BoS received this resolution from us in December. In August we were asked to make a presentation to the BoS about why there should be 2 MS's in Blacksburg, and we focussed on the educational, growth and financial issues. The extensive and detailed presentation weighed both sides but claimed that 2 MS's were preferrable from the growth and educational perspectives, and that 1 vs. 2 MS's were roughly comparable from a financial point of view. After the presentation there were no significant questions. In late September a motion was placed on the BoS agenda to move forward with the 2 MS idea. It was tabled once over wording of a provision concerning the nature of cooperation between the 2 boards (no other issues were raised at that time), and tabled a second time because two BoS members were not at the meeting (no other issues were raised at that time). Then at the meeting on 10/26 one supervisor said he thought we should build a HS first, another supervisor said he didn't understand why we were even considering two MS's, and in the general confusion that followed a majority of the supervisors felt there were "too many unanswered questions" for them to be able to act at the time, so the motion was again tabled. As of Friday afternoon we had not received any list of questions to answer from the BoS.

After the meeting I gave the following statement to the press: Considering that this resolution was sent to the Supervisors some 10 months ago, and that we made a detailed presentation on it 2 months ago, with ample opportunity for questions, and that it had been on their agenda for 2 previous meetings when these issues were not mentioned, I am surprised to see all these questions being raised now.

As I said earlier, this is a judgement call. Indeed, most all of our decisions are judgement calls. But we (the old 9-member SB) did our best to make a judgement that reflected the needs and the desires of those people most affected by the decision. And we (the current 7-member SB) have done our best to explain and advocate that decision this year. We have pushed for land for a new HS, but felt that a new HS building was not nearly as pressing as a new MS and a renovated MS.

This item will, however, be on our agenda tomorrow night. I will report to the SB about what happened at the BoS meeting last week, and we will be deciding what, if anything, to do from here. We have a liaison meeting with county officials soon, and we may need to decide as a board what should be said there. In any case, I invite you to come hear the discussion at the SB meeting. I don't want to try to guess what we might do, but I have tried to make the background clear. I think we have done a thorough job of following a legitimate process for making this decision. Can the decision be second-guessed? Of course, as all judgement calls can.

I am grateful and amazed that there are still Blacksburg people who care about this issue even after the several years and twists through which it has been dragged. Stay tuned...

Some people have been asking why the VT flag flew at half-mast last week. A little bit of research revealed that the composer of the "Hoky-Pokey," Steve Avalon, died recently at age 90, and his funeral was over the weekend. Everything went well, except they had trouble with the casket. Every time they put his left leg in, it would come back out!

Sorry, but I couldn't help it,

Jim Klagge
Chair & District F Representative
Montgomery Co. School Board.

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