2018-12-04 PPS School Board Work Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2018-12-04
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	work
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education-Work Session, December 4, 2018

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okay we are calling this work session into order and we have a pretty full agenda for this work session so let's get started I think we're gonna the first item on the agenda is the financial quarterly update directors this evening on the agenda before we get to academic obviously we're talking about our finances but there's a new face here out front and we're gonna formally introduce her Tuesday at the regular meeting but I also want to let you know who's here it's Cynthia Lee our news chief financial officer here at Portland Public Schools so there's many years of experience most recently as in our neighboring rental school district so thank you for joining the team okay good evening good to see all of you my name is Ryan Dutcher I'm the interim budget director I've Molly Bradley with you with me as well and you also you just met to us and DLA so good to see all of you tonight we're going to in your in your package you have one of our first regular quarterly reports for the financials for the district you've had this for a week so I'd imagine you've probably been able to read through it and have some questions the plan was we go through it at a relatively high level kind of orient you to the content and then take any questions you might have and the goal this is twofold one is to make sure that we're giving you regular reporting on the financials the other piece is to work to set a baseline kind of foundational understanding of the financial to the district then when it comes time for a labor intensive and an attention intensive process like the budget we're starting from a relatively stable baseline that's the goal of this but to orient you a couple different things one of the foremost pieces is the is our forecast actual so we're comparing our budget to the first quarter financials and you'll see some details to work for the presentation but we have that and then we also do a projection so we can project out to the end of the fiscal year and most importantly establish what we expect to be as an ending fund balance we also have projection on 2019 2020 for rolling some projections forward when we published this it was before the governor's budget came out so we've done an analysis in the past couple days with the governor's budget as well and we'll tell you where that oriented relative to our range we also have an enrollment report so it we have a relatively high level enrollment report that compares our enrollment as of October first compared to last year and also compared to the assumptions we used for the budget we have a quarterly investment report so you'll see where you stand from a cash point of view summary of our compliance with our local levy option we have some commitments that we made with the state we want to formalize the fact that we're in compliance with those commitments we also provided a quarterly real estate report and it's a exhaustive listing of all of our contracts with all of our outside parties on a real estate on a regular basis will be bringing you just the changes rather than the long long report lastly we have a fun summary PPS there's a lot of different funds for a lot of different purposes so we provide a fun summary with some definitions of what each for those funds is for and then the amount that we're budgeting for 1819 and then we did a slightly deeper dive on a couple of different funds or a little obscure both of them around pers and they both have independent purposes for managing our first expenses about those and then lastly and I won't go through all the different pieces there's an appendix that goes into at least one in some cases two levels of detail deeper on all the different pieces I just talked about so if no questions I can just I can quickly go through the summary okay so for the from a financial point of view for the first quarter of this year actual revenue was trending slightly ahead of budgets we've as of the publication of this document we had a hundred twenty five point seven million received to date but you can imagine the last couple of weeks are an intensive time for collecting tax receipts so we've collected upwards of three hundred million dollars over the past week since this was published and our treasury managers was busily investing that over the past couple days we do have we had a one-time Comcast tax settlement Comcast was in a tax dispute with the state of Oregon that was settled PPS was one of the one of the
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recipients probably receive the most actually more than Multnomah County out of that settlements that's a one-time revenue increase we'll see this year that we won't see in future years eight million dollars PPS well without for the whole state pardon me just for curiosity what was it for the host game [Music] sorry one second I have it right don't worry about it 39 47 billion yeah so Comcast tax settlement our expenditures for the year are trending largely to where we expect them to be at this point still early we'd only have first quarter behind us but expenditures trending as we expect them to so when we look at we look at the ending fund balance for this year largely driven by the Comcast settlement our local option is trending a little bit ahead of what we expect it to be at this point still being early we expect we'll have a little bit of good news from an ending fund balance point of view to a tune of 5 to 6 million dollars ok the over the past couple weeks though the collections have been a little bit softer relative of what we saw last year so that's something we were not ready to comment on one that we're behind which is something we're monitoring closely so when we look forward to the fiscal year 1920 we did this we did a Simran Alice and we did the budget just understand how 1920 we're going to shape up and we had there were a couple things we were watching at the time one was the fact that it was a new biennium so we were doing some high-level estimates on how we thought that my trend and the second was that we knew we had some large expenditures mainly our pers rates was gonna perforates we're going to increase pretty substantially for PBS we've refreshed that analysis a high-level analysis when we assume a couple different scenarios for state school fund we look like we're gonna have a shortfall of about twelve million dollars an important assumption is there is that we're gonna be marching from a budget reserve we'll be marching towards the board goal of five and ten percent so we're locking it into the assumption but that does it points to a one and a half to two percent shortfall since that time and we did a we forecast a range we've done a little bit deeper analysis with the with the governor's budget and it still falls within that same range oh just a dare question I don't know the mechanics of the special fund they're guys that they if they have the tax revenue that they're gonna set aside for the 180 days and potentially for the class sizes are there things that we do now that would potentially set us up that we may be disadvantaged if we've already paid for them ourselves I don't know the answer I don't know the specifics what those might look like so I'd have a hard time answering exactly what answering that with any confidence I really appreciate the question and my initial thought is that as people are so fond of saying all that you know you know one hundred ninety seven districts each one of us over the last thirty years has made very different choices and Portland one of Portland's choices has been to do everything we can to keep class sizes as small as possible are we going to end up being stuck if we're only going to be getting money to reduce class sizes and they're going to look at us and say hey you're fine that's eight hundred million dollars is for both class size and 180 days and they put it in a special fund very much like we got stuck on major 98 because of course we already made these investments in CTE that's right but of course that's not yet decided so one kid know that yeah it would be a relatively easy part of our advocacy strategy to just have it based on you know number of students and allotments on your enrollment relative to whatever the aspiration is for class size regardless of where you are now I mean this is why the category areas are important and we stand behind them but the specifics at the local area need to need to be flexible this applies not just on the class size issue which we definitely want to promote and support but all the other areas that are being contemplated I think we're gonna probably need to shape
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the flexibility Menem Jian member of the boards um it's a great question we don't have the answer for you tonight but I'm gonna go back and do some analysis and discuss with the Hertz and we will get back to you with an answer thank you okay just a couple of quick points on our enrollment so our Romans as of October 1st their detail farther deeper in the package we were slightly higher than last year and by slightly it was 24 students higher more notably we were 385 students below the Assumption we assumed for our budget and our as you know enrollment drives a lot of our staffing allocations for our schools we didn't make any adjustments based on that lower enrollment but it was a little less than what we'd assumed and then the last piece on the summary here once again this is as of October or September thirtieth operating cash in our investment portfolio district had 573 million in Book value we had ninety eight point nine million of cash of which about eighteen million of that is in our pers and a pers restricted use account would you say have we completed all of our reforms around cash management or is there still work to be done there so so one of the one of most important pieces so we did hire a highly qualified full-time treasury manager so we're happy with with the Kanak we've got on board so we're no longer managing after contractors we when we when we were managing through contractors we've got we got into compliance we went back through and refreshed all of our guidance make sure we're on the right page we are still in compliance so everything is under control and in compliance and we're investing in line with the board guidance and if you would like to see that displayed and in the numbers that is actually broken out in the table on page 7 so you can see the the maximum allowed per policy and then our percent our portfolio next to it just for the record it's page 8 Thank You JJ okay thank you Thanks no no junk bonds no guarantee can I go back to the enrollment before wait a second mmm so I know this is not your your field but are we doing any analysis of the enrollments and if we can see any patterns and how the enrollments are playing out or are we planning to do such a thing so you mean you mean relative to the deviation from their projections well I would say two things you know actuals versus projections and are we seeing any population trends are we seeing any trends at you know different grade levels or you know what there's a couple of things that I would bring to your attention first is in their southwest area schools there is a lower than projection enrollment as the housing prices continue to rise the number of students they move right with the housing costs so we will bring more information back on enrollment I think we're scheduled for a January report so we'll bring more of that analysis to you the other thing I would bring to your attention well we're showing you enrollment right now another area to be aware of is this as the first time this district is going to the hold harmless a dmw in a long time which means we have less weightings in 1819 than we had in 1718 so our overall a dmw number for this year is lower than last year's so that means we'll be held at the level of last year and that's mostly because of poverty in EML weightings so we are having a significant demographic change in our district and it is going to impact revenue so as we're held harmless in 1819 we'll have to stare a step down for 1920 so that's another consideration as we're going forward this is because there's going to be less poverty less poverty and less yellow and so the state has a hold harmless in the in the formula whatever your ad MW is this year if it's less than last year you get to get paid at last year's level but by next year then it lowers to the this year's current you know which is a lower level so if you if we end up in the Cline over time we stair step down each year just one man's opinion but I think the trend that you're talking about Rita that really is increasing
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unfortunately as volatility what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing is that the shifts are much higher much wider swings in enrollment from one year to the next for individual schools and yes fueled by transmutation by people being priced out by some schools looking much more attractive and I think that when reflection of that is that while almost all of the elementary grades go down high school grades go up and we are seeing many more wealthier established families moving in with high school students because they're established they're older they've got kids in high school and I also believe the modernization of our school oh yeah adding to that yeah so knowing that we enter into labor agreements that are multi-year and we make a variety of decisions that can't just be unwound in a year are we forecasting out like I doing a five-year forecast and making adjustments to what we think we need to have in the contingency fund so we address that we will be so that this one is a one-year shot in time we will be doing five-year in longer term forecasts great because I think that's what we needed yes I agree part of this is training staff in a way that they haven't been asked to work in the past so I'll be the the financial report here this is the first time you've had a projected ending fund balance or general fund in a long time I don't know when the last time was but it's been so it's training staff how to think in those terms and how to develop those reports and we will also we're gonna be using the forecast five tools that Paul is excited to hear us using and developing that five-year forecast we're gonna incorporate that also with we're collaborating with other large districts across the state in especially forecasting in the revenue component and working together as we go through this legislative session so I think this is great this dashboard so we're gonna get this quarterly and then eventually we'll we also have sort of so we can see across the trans yes yeah so it on page 11 if our page numbers recording it on page 11 we have the cadence of what we're committing to today and that's that's it that's a good one to add because we do not have on here the long-term the three to five here okay well thank you that's the same age 12 the three five year projection which is not on here we'll add that for the case great that'll be super helpful just a spot track yeah it's a good exercise we need to do and since you you mention revenue the happy little story I see is that it looks like revenue is up over what we projected which is nice it's good that the states take you and the county there we are taking in more money from property tax and the state school feels a little like a drop in the bucket but it's good as you're looking at district statewide getting together do you think you're going to get more accurate do you think that collectively we are gonna get more accurate at looking at what that's gonna be good I got 16 different ways to spend every nickel so where we was Comcast part of any kind of our budgeting projection was that no it was not yeah it was not so so just as a philosophical question why don't we take that 8 million and plunk it into our piggy bank and you know we're working on adding to our reserves why didn't it just goes straight into reserves boom done well I think by policy I forget how much but there is a the policy that was passed a couple of years ago around the reserves requires that any new money any new especially one-time money some portion of it goes into reserves I want to say half but I'm not yeah I have to I'd have to look I don't and it's still a I think and Clara
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correct - I think we'd still need to appropriate for because it comes in as revenue any recently to appropriate to the to a budgeted reserve as well which are taken the board and then under in the summary so next net expected result an increase of 6.4 million in the ending fund balance and then as four point eight percent of expenditures I wasn't sure what yeah so that yeah then I want clearly that would be they are ending fund balance would then be four point eight percent of our expenditures it would increase it to four point okay this is the time that we can ask the question about enrollment or is that between say those questions for another time I would prefer for us to bring a report to you though and but if they're specific if you want to email me there's specific curiosities about enrollment then that we can help that will help us incorporate what you're looking at me just generalize just looking at there's some pretty big changes in schools that you wouldn't predict there to be like is necessarily an unstable or a transient that have some percentage of Glencoe is a great example it's like what's what's happening there it's got a pretty big drop just so where you have some outliers that aren't easily explained or they're look any different from the normal I mean there's no special program there stable neighborhood program the same thing with I mean Chapman maybe there's some more mobility but still a pretty big drop have been a big part is the Ramona and people making other choices and that most of the the decreases in like kindergarten first grade I mean I think generally speaking your point is well-taken that it is lack of it on housing affordability our facilities planning can also make a difference so we saw the same trend in Beaverton I could see it by grade level in the unit that would have been the southeast portion of Beaverton so just on the other side of the Southwest you know Portland and that by grade level I could see how the families of the new families were not moving in to the area so it's a very similar trend on the other side of the border any other questions so the local option so the legislation that was passed last year that increased the cap when did that increase go into effect or our ability to are we still at the same rate as we were before because we actually haven't referred something at a higher rate or committee just automatically so it is within the the new legislative cap but I'm not sure I completely understand your question so the cap needs to be 20% and it's now 25 do we actually have to ask the voters to go to the higher level or we just automatically admin move to the new higher level in terms of maximizing our yield within right so village where we were leaving money on the table before so it's the it's the the collection is happening appropriately in terms it's really about the difference between in the compression between the real market value and the assessed value and I I understand that there's three limitations to how we collect a local option levy and in the past we would have hit one where now we're within the three I don't know if I'm answers a little question so there can be to be 20 20 percent and now it's 25 did we automatically go to the 25 or yes okay yes that because what we put before the voters is the rate per thousand and then that gets calculated at the assessor's office so now I'm getting your question yes it's at the assessor's office that this does the collection calculation okay so are we now collecting at the maximum rate that were allowed which keeps us under that 25 cap whereas before we were I'll go back and I haven't looked at the MoMA count because we just got a new report with the new tax bills and let me go out and
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take a look at that I have not done a deep dive in that yet and actually our new CFO will know how to make that deep dive as well it's lovely to have a person in our financial sitting so far our Oregon k12 experience I can't tell you how that warms my heart [Laughter] love my contractors information we have on its utilization in a multi-year frame just so we can start looking at that sort of look at the time period and if we were to extend it what would the ramifications would be I understand the need for the analysis there and we'll bring that back especially as the board is looking at future Local Option levy that is something that the the community budget review committee validates every year as well and they do the calculations and actually look at the at the at the journal entries and how we're spending tracked and does the calculation on the number of additional educators we were hiring because of the local option so you'll see it in all the CB RC reports as well and we have a great get like a rolled up and yeah summary over time sure so we have a bunch of funds besides the general fund and I understand about this much of them I don't have or I've forgotten the historical context of a lot of it so and if anybody if most of us are in that same boat then maybe it's as we go through budget sessions through the year you could pick them off one by one and do you know like a one-page summary that we can file away and refer to on each one that's most definitely that's going to be happening with the next report awesome I would also say in our planning for the budget cycle this from January through June that we will be connecting with the board monthly so you'll have six connections to the budget process from January through June okay I would volunteer to read them before you share them out as a here's a lay person reading them and it making sure it translates excellent thank you so much for offering and I hope the CBR C is going to be used as well in doing the bundling a budget oh yes I think what we're starting to inch into is you'll hear soon how staff is beginning to think about the budget development cycle and all the opportunities not just for the board to obviously be engaged but also for the community to also give input and be engaged so we're getting a head start now and I think you'll be hearing more details soon one other quick random question looking down the funds the last one listed as last ones listed as the self insurance fund for workers comp just is that at an adequate level you know considering all the all the financial squeezes that we've been under over the years that it was that at a good sustainable level or have we been cheating a little bit on and cheating but yeah low balling a little bit on it or based on analysis done last budget season we looked at it and that we had Jim involved with this also and actually we are probably a little too robust in that area oh come on down so we actually narrowed down what we were actually putting into that phone based on what would usage so we do feel very comfortable with that balance any other questions thank you okay Linda I think we have one there was one little section that looked like a sentence gotten cut off I'm here for whatever it's fun it was the 350 general obligation bonds debt service fund activity and the last sentence
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activity and this one is related to the 2013 2015 and 2017 general yeah 22 thank you poppy yeah no thank you it's good that was a test okay okay I'm sorry dude and you'll really quickly how are you doing getting some good metrics off port oh actually we have started the implementation cycle of that we're in our second week we should be signing the design document in the next day or so and with implementation plans we should be live in the software by end of January so we're putting too much but you're gonna miss those Excel spreadsheets I know you're like okay thank you okay so the next item is guaranteed and viable curriculum before our chief academic officer dr. Luis Valentino entertains us with the first of what we hope is a series of conversations around curriculum and assessment and other key areas it's his birthday today as I was as I was telling Julie I it's it's you know I'm spending it with the people I love doing the work I thoroughly enjoy Julie knows me again you know I am really happy pleased to be here the only challenge is that after this I will have to drive to Eugene so that I can become a documented Oregonian because my license is from California so a group of us are there taking courses starting tomorrow morning so in my head I'm spinning around preparing for that as well but I am happy to be here because it's a great opportunity for us to reconnect with you since last spring around the work that odl has been engaged in in the development and delivery of an integrated student service support model and so the work that we have engaged in since last year that has leveraged work that began a couple of years ago and before that is the manifestation of our intent to address issues of inequity and marginalization for a large number of students and Portland Public Schools and to take the opportunity to address the predictive power of demographics so that regardless of where students live where they come from whatever experiences they have they have the same opportunity to work to their fullest potential and so that has been a driver for us in how we think about this work and so when we look at our the delivery of support for our students we think about what is the curriculum and the practices that's going to guide that learning opportunity for students how are we going to monitor for progress and growth over time and how are we going to build the capacity of those charged with leading this work and that includes teachers site administrators and central office staff and so tonight the focus of that which is multifaceted will focus on two things the guaranteed and viable curriculum with some focus on the literacy aspect which has been the the primary rollout with mathematics and science right behind it and then and dr. Kimberly routier is going to shed share that and then we'll engage in that hopefully in a conversation around that and then after will be the second piece which is on the assessment framework at which dr. Sarah Davis will share with you and hopefully will engage in that but as you think as you listen to both presentations the takeaway will hopefully be one that independently they are designed to bring about a more comprehensive approach to teaching and learning and the way in which we we learn about the quality of that learning through a comprehensive data management approach and so if we are vision driven we still have to be data informed and so how do we pay attention to that in the context of the work that we are developing and preparing for for students and so I'll turn it over to dr. metier and then we will then engage in conversation good evening everyone so I'm just gonna give you a brief
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overview and talk a little bit about where we are in terms of our updates from last year and move into questions see oh okay thank you all right so we do have three objectives for our conversation tonight we really just want to kind of give an overview of the components of our guaranteed and viable curriculum the process that we are going through to develop that talk about some of the training and instructional supports that are being developed and the implementation status so those are the three areas of focus for a conversation and as dr. Valentino talked about really are the purpose of providing a guaranteed and viable curriculum is to ensure that we have a quality education for every one of our students in every classroom in every school and so as we think about what it means to have a guaranteed curriculum it's really making sure that all of our teachers are aware of what our students need to know and be able to do so that we can ensure their success beyond school and then the viability piece of that is really about making sure that we have the time in which to cover all the content so that the students are able to access that regular rigorous learning opportunity yes widely discussed topic but I'm wondering by our professional judgment do we have enough time to teach the content that we're saying that our students should master at all levels that's a very good question I think it will depend on how the implementation and design happens with the classroom teacher because every teacher has an instructional approach I think for certain students for particular populations of students for example our students who are duly identified if they're receiving special education services language services and things like that there may be more strain in terms of the instructional time for providing all of the quality components of an education system in terms of looking at enrichment and what's happening not only in core but beyond core instruction as well so I know that we're looking at time I we're very tight on that it's we would if there was opportunities to expand some of that during the day that's you know great but I know we're looking at a six eight team is looking at a task force is looking at the instructional minutes and how we might improve on that for particular students populations of students like for example for like a fourth grade so here's all the things that we expect a fourth grade teacher the curriculum we expect and removing sort of maybe the outliers do we no matter how much time that should take and whether or not that's actually provided in the yes so we're school day so we are providing a scope and sequence which is a pacing guide and we'll get into that a little bit into the presentation that helps to provide that guidance for teachers around how much time you should be spending and that is an important part of why we have a pacing guide to make sure that we're not spinning that we're spending the appropriate amount of time on each content piece or a Content area there is no there is no question that inside of a comprehensive standards-based instructional program there is an expectation in the shifts in the way students learn and the way teachers teach and in the way site administrators lead and the way that we support one of the learnings that comes from that is the amount of content that is inside of each of the disciplines there is no question and so one of the things that has to happen when a scope and sequence is being developed is to be mindful in its development that it falls within that the
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the time blocks that are available in that school and in some cases it can it can't provide a challenge there is no question and so that's why the iteration of our work has to be aware of that and it has to incorporate the the feedback that is received about what is working and what is not it's not static it is a dynamic process that from the first iteration we've learned a lot and we will continue to learn because there is there's a lot to it there is no question and so we need we need to be aware we need to be aware of that those of us developing this work as we work with our with our sites well well I appreciate you have to work your nuanced answer answer and that you have to work within the limits that we have we got the shortest school year or one of them in the country we have a crying need for extending you know the school you're into the summer we have kids who have big drop-offs and their retention you know I would have felt more comfortable if you just said no we don't have enough time to do what we need thank you because I don't think we do and that's why we're going down to Salem talking about adding more days to the school year and especially if you throw in acceleration on one end all the differentiation that we need to do around language around special education just which is where I see even a more fundamental problem I really appreciate the emphasis on the number of minutes but this is not what I would think of the this really literally was not what I thought was meant by guaranteed and viable curriculum because we've gone many many years where core classes were were not offered and in many instances where they were it didn't do the kid any good because you couldn't actually get to it and of course it was always the historically underserved students who were denied the opportunity to take the course in terms of just on paper offering the courses from what I've seen so far this year we seem to be doing a much better job but is that list of courses in fact viable have we got all of the kids getting into core classes for our middle school students seventh and eighth grade theoretically they've got the opportunity to take compacted math is it made available at a time when yes arielle kids can actually take it those are the questions that keep me up at night right and and there are great questions and I think one of the things when we think about the design of the guaranteed and viable curriculum and how we get at some of the challenges that dr. Valentino alluded to is about how are we integrating so you use the word integrated how are we integrating our work and and working and making sure that our instructional design is actually meeting a variety of different needs and so I think as a part of the the GBC design which I'll kind of talk about here so it is a standards-based approach to creating a viable and guaranteed curriculum so we're looking at how we prioritize the standards and so we're prioritizing particular learning essential learning components or essential learning content but then we talk about the supporting standards to how do we scaffold that learning to get to this larger more essential learning in addition to that we're integrating English language proficiency standards and really working with teachers about how do those things work together so that we're looking at oral language development or language acquisition at the same time that we're teaching in our content areas and so integrating those components and being more intentional around that is providing that service for our students who need additional language supports beyond the classroom day and so it helps with the challenges of scheduling and also making sure that we're meeting the needs of our students as well so then when we also talk about
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the curriculum map it does provide a pacing guide to give again as we think about how students are being responsive to the way that instruction is being designed and delivered are we on track or are we keeping students in particular learning too long so it gives us a way to evaluate are we helping our students to move along and making sure that they are being responsive so the part of that curriculum map really spells out different components that will be helpful for teachers to think about how they're making decisions around the teaching and learning process the assessments then will be used not only after the learning has after the instruction has occurred to see how they learned what we want them to learn but are they learning all along the way are they responding at each component part of the the lesson yes yes so the curriculum map is will layout and we'll look at an example of that but it lays out the different curriculum resources that teachers can use and one of that is the standards-based scope and sequence so it talks about when students should be learning for how long how many lessons will you spend on on this topic and that kind of thing and so we'll look at the specific components of the map in the next slide but that gives a guide it's not locking step but it lets the teachers evaluate kind of the decision-making that they're doing as they are designing and delivering instruction between the scope and sequence in the map yes okay so let me move forward just to yes it's a subset it's a component of a map so here is a kind of visual of the scope and sequence that's the year at a glance so we'll let you know when you should be teaching the topics each month how many lessons it gives you a guide for our time frame for those lessons and then here's the map here are the other components of that so you have your scope in sequence but then it also gives a unifying theme so what are we gonna be learning about in this unit here's an example of multiplication and division and the connection and the relationship between those things it'll take 20 days approximately this is just a guide again it will call out what is the essential learning that we want students to be taking away beyond this unit what will carry over it will have questions that will kind of frame how we want students to be thinking and the way that they should be investigating some of the learning that they'll be going through the learning targets are really how we Chunk the learning or defying the learning in discreet ways so that students can process and manage around that learning and then we have the unit overview which really describes how all of these pieces tie together dr. metier yes so back to the question about instructional time I'm just curious so you're pretty specific there 20 days so is that just your efforts to back map for Portland Public Schools based on the instructional time we have or is that connected in any way to best practices or you know other right knowledge about how long it actually takes to teach this material it's based on the best practices around how long it actually takes to teach the material it's not really defined around our time right okay good but but also as a result of that one of the things that we also needed to be aware of is as the units are being developed with a particular timeframe in mind as we look at the quarterly assessing period how does it land and where does it land right to make sure that it's a normal integration between the instructional piece and the assessment piece to sort of determine the the level of progress and growth over that over that quarter and so there are not all units are constructed the same right and teachers do make decision and there are buffers on either end because as a teacher when you receive the unit of study then you have to make decisions inside of the lesson that are being built the length of time that a lesson will take some lessons will be fairly quick some will take more time some need some acceleration some need enrichment some will need a little bit more more support so there has to be some buffer on either end of that 20 days for example that give teachers an
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opportunity to make decisions and this is something that we've had to think about across all disciplines because it's not just in language arts it's in math as well so building in a mindset that says there is flexibility in the in the way I think about my unit and my lesson is critical because we don't didn't want to standardize it to the point where the decisions were not being made if you look at the slide can you go back to the one that actually has well no what we what the district does which is what the teacher does go back a few more go back to there so there is the what the system-wide expectations are right but then at the school level when they're planning their lessons and the instructional delivery there are a lot of decisions that a teacher has to make the largest change that a great level half that they have to make and so they make decisions both about the quantity and the quality of that work and then that is the time allotment yes it's really an overarching framework which core all right all assessments yes secondary tertiary supports so all of these components really work together and so it may not be the best graphic but they're just the components so the things that we're thinking about so as we think about MTS s we're thinking about core not only when we think about core instruction but when we talk about tier 2 and tier 3 instruction what are the instructional scaffolds that were embedding and core instruction so that we're not just moving to an external program to meet student needs but how are we really defining what's happening with our teachers who are spending the most time with our students and designing quality instruction to meet the variety of needs so MTS s is embedded in all elements but I think we're just specifically calling out the components it is so so when again that really drives what core looks like and how you provide the scaffold in court press we're not gonna meet the needs of all students we know that right so then I mean it's just the system that is the overall feed system of getting kids to get to standard to get closest to standards as they can yes so MTS s as a framework that that looks at at good first instruction as the driver understanding that perhaps eighty-five to ninety percent of students will get it with good first instruction which has been the focus of the GBC worth right understanding that there will be that fifteen percent of students who will need additional support the expectation as we developed that framework and we begin to look at RTI as to begin to intervene within the good first instruction right that we provide the supports necessary for teachers in that same space to address the needs with expanded support we don't want to move to tier two and Tier three without fully addressing tier one right we don't have those systems in place for them and there's two and three can't just be expanded core or scaffolded no no and so I want to make sure I clarify it's not we're we're emphasizing Tier one at this time in the process of our GC development and the idea is that we are really trying to think from an interdisciplinary team or integrated team approach to how we are designing and delivering instruction for all students making sure that our core instruction is solid before we start talking about tier 2 or tier 3 because oftentimes we rush to look at what's happening outside of the classroom to deliver services for students and then we miss opportunities to to really get them what they need and so sometimes
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they they'll spend more time in remedial kinds of supports when we can accelerate them through core and so I just wanted to emphasize that part and and talk about why we are explicitly calling out these components around the GBC but the main piece of this is that there are centrally or centralized developed infrastructure and resources that we're trying to provide the most of how the GBC gets implemented is really around school based decision making em in these particular areas lesson planning instructional delivery again and then the resources that they use to design and deliver instruction can I stop you for one second yes Scott did you have questions I thought maybe I just hold off okay presentation get a flow to it and then okay I'm back so we looked at the curriculum map and the in your packet you have an example of a fourth grade actual unit and that's outlined so you can see how those components are being described for our teachers again just to clarify the units are based on a series of lessons that are organized around a theme it defines the content focus our priority standards really describe what students should know and be able to do it declares a higher degree of instructional emphasis and then we also talked about what are the language demands within that learning that students should be paid that teacher should support the students and their development so they're embedded in a part of the map the top portion of the curriculum map each regular map is four to five pages yes yes so as we look at where we're currently at in terms of the GBC development so we started in the spring with English language arts and math as our primary content areas for development yes and well yes as for the content areas that we have developed so far and we will be moving through that process with the remaining content areas as well and so you'll see the projected work that we have to continue developing in all of our content areas with science health social studies ethnic studies is a part of the same timeline but there will be some differences in the process of development and we'll be working with a variety of different partners for that particular scope of work but you'll see that we're trying to continue the same process that we have started with English language arts and math but we will extend the process of development out a year and so it will be a two-year process for developing the extended content areas for the additional content areas what has been modified since the spring is the the pace of implementation because one of the things that we needed to address was the preparation of all teachers to be able to to implement right so one is developed being with a great deal of ambition and the second is the reality of how fast can you actually roll this out so that it actually has the right impact in the school and the classroom and so with some guidance some changes to the rollout process have been made to make sure that we're actually are pacing it properly and so but the development does does continue to ensure that as we begin to align all of the disciplines around the GBC that were ready to roll them out in the right in the right sequence as teach more and more teachers in access
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to the right levels of support along the way and so we're hoping that as we move from literacy from the language arts program to mathematics that then science follows to your question Julie about whether it's k12 it will enhance and it will begin to differentiate some in areas where you have single subject teachers there are aspects for example in science when you actually can focus there we're at the elementary level you might not be focusing at the same time because of the next generation science standards being right behind we have to be aware of that as well and mindful about that and so as we look at the science sequence and then later we look at the math core sequence those are conversations that are now on the table as to what what will be the focus whether it be secondary middle or elementary right now we're all in the same place but eventually we see some divergence away from it all of it being k12 simultaneously but we're not there talking about give us a high-altitude assessment of these specific curriculum expectations relative to where we have been relative to the status quo prior to implementation prior to that we need to have a sense of the scale of the change in expectation that I think it's important I mean it's important to me to feel like I have an understanding of how different the expectation is for individual teachers and how different the experience may really look in the classroom so in the conceptually speaking not necessarily I'll run the expectation right that when we're when we're implementing a comprehensive standards-based instructional program the expectation is that we teach the standard not the program in teaching to standard then it is the understanding that teachers and site leaders and central offices are have provided some support or continued support around what it means to teach in the standards-based environment so that means understanding what we're teaching the standards mean what a scope and sequence means in other words what took to what depth and what link are we teaching to a particular set of standards what is the order and sequence of those standards what are the units that will be developed to ensure that it contextualizes the teaching of those standards and the learning of those standards what are the lessons that a teacher will be planning contain a comprehensive way so that it becomes observable and measurable that that practice is taking place in the classroom and that that learning is actually taking place so then we need to be able to have an assessment system within the school district that allows for us to measure progress and growth over time and to use that data to inform how well the students did but also how well we performed in the in the teaching of that lesson and so we make decisions both on a daily basis in the formative way that allows us to make adjustments to the lesson that we're teaching but also in in in the long term way that says from lesson to lesson this is where I'm going to adjust from unit to unit these are the changes that I need to make across the porter's because I know there are measures that are quarterly what do I need to make sure that I prepare the students to to to do well on and where are the challenges in Mike from right within the standard environment you also have the expectation the teachers teach to a high ceiling and a low floor to teach through high cognitive demand that's the hardest part because you're asking them to teach to high cognitive tasks rigorous tasks right that measure in a comprehensive way with what students are learning after having engaged in that lesson right in most cases the best way to assess a student is through the observation that a teacher does because they know the students best but that is not the only way an assessment system has to be comprehensive it has to measure over time and it has to be both internal but also externally calibrated that allows for us to be able to compare across the school district that means that in your question there is an expectation across the entire system to do all students are having access to that rigorous instruction and that we can actually regardless of where they where they live and where they go to
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school were able to compare apples to apples particularly in our literacy approach it's very much a workshop based approach and that has not held up with data there's no research to support its efficacy really with students with disabilities such as dyslexia or English learners so and so how do we propose that to broaden our toolbox and our approaches to really train our gen ed teachers with how we work with those that are struggling learners particularly around literacy I think that's our because percentage of kids with language-based disabilities they screen of struggle and literacy if that's about 20% of a population and then not to mention the percentage of English learners we have so if we only are really focusing on one approach I worry that we're missing you know 30% of any classroom with children with that their ability to learn from core I do not disagree the the the the learning theory in Portland Public Schools is one that is fairly constructivists right it's about the co-construction the co-construction right but as an overarching theory but when you say some kids that's where the issue is right because not all students will acquire the necessary knowledge base or skillset to succeed as a as a progress through the grades if we don't intervene and intervene early and when you're talking about students who fall behind early students whose language needs are have a high demand behind them all of those things require also that within the workshop model that you describe which is teaching and writing that is relatively co-constructed that some of the skills necessary to access that content becomes limited for many students and so how are we intervening early to address those things well one of the things that we have to think about and and this is where deputy superintendent Curtis can really share because she has a very similar concern and so we are beginning to address that more directly that if we are addressing the needs of a group of students who are not accessing the core because they cannot read well or they cannot ride well then all of the all of the all of the GBC word goes by the wayside because they're not accessing it so what are we doing to ensure that we address that and that's when we're we are in the middle of studying that and I know dr. metier has has a position on that as well because it is a concern that we have and so when we talk about a balanced approach to literacy we have to be very careful what we mean by that to ensure that we are providing full access to the instructional pour correct and that is a part of yes absolutely and I think as we look at the balanced literacy system it's about being very explicit and working with teachers about how do we create those intentional instructional supports within core and what does that look like within a balanced literacy system and providing the ongoing training and supports to help build the capacity of our teachers to deliver in that way and this is why working in an integrated service delivery team is critical so our ESL teachers are right alongside in the facilitation of our professional learning our special education educators are alongside and facilitating the professional learning and so we don't we cannot afford to work in isolation with each other and so the reorganization and the redesign of our teams is about working in an integrated or interdisciplinary way when we're creating our professional learning when we're rolling out supports when we're doing any coaching or pushing into the schools we're not looking at it from a single lens and so Mt SS while work under the division of student support services is helping to co.design our professional learning for teachers in the same way that ESL and DLI were all working together to do that to build the capacity of our classroom or core
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teachers to deliver instruction for all students so there's at least one board member who doesn't understand what Co constructivist means and I would wager following this the public probably 99% don't understand so this is this is a challenging discussion because you know Julie Julie gets it but if you want to bring the rest of us along you know this is this is exactly what we're talking about right I need a tier 2 intervention here right so I can access the tier 1 content because I yeah so I I would ask well welcome all staff when making presentations but especially around the professional curriculum educational part is that your teaching and the materials you provide us with should be as if you're teaching and if you have terms here that aren't defined and go right over my head you're you're gonna lose me and you know I'm gonna be like one of those kids and I'm gonna start playing with my pencil one you know for airplanes and spit wads yeah so yes that would that would help there's you know gradual release shows up here and I went catch and release is that I so I would ask you as we go along with this to to take that into consideration yes this is great feedback because then as as the teacher that feedback is how I respond to that so this formative assessment is telling me formative right now that the way that we're sharing with you might require some scaffolding right some built in supports temporary supports until the language is we're on the same page on the vocabulary on some of the concepts right and then possibly through hands-on the skills development right so in the lesson there are three things that we look at concept skills and language and so the concepts that we're sharing with you might be a little bit too abstract so how do we make it more real for you more concrete the skills are that are acquired as teachers who've been doing this for a long time how do we provide how do we accelerate that for you in a safe space for you to experience them and then the lexicon that we're developing which is language that the the educators behind me have used throughout the career for us it's like normal but we have to be aware that it's not normal for everyone and so how do we use language that is more relevant and useful so that's information for us so that when we come back in the future we will make sure that we have where we have addressed that so that's how we're addressing the feedback that that we're getting from you we had a test at the end there will be there will be a of so it is this one of the cotton when you were doing the accelerated scope and sequence work is this what you were producing yes okay so seeing like the whole thing for one you know for for great for or for a piece of grade 4 math would have been great and going through it from from my point of view and kind of going through it and it would get to and I think that concerns well you know on the one hand you're building from nothing okay we get that and in a hurry not nothing but and on the in terms of the central office and then on the other hand so yeah yeah sorry I yeah this is yeah yeah okay just want to be clear here that the concerns are your your building that Tier one without the acceleration without the ëall without the special ed and those are sort of add-on components as part of what part of what I've been thinking and I don't know if that's yeah as it went on I heard that more but but
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getting into I think more concrete would show maybe where so that is something we'd like to come back multiple times to do for today's we understood that it was supposed to be an overview and our struggle is always there is so much and how do we find the time to do the teaching on every component what we'd like to do is bring back smaller components and have opportunities hands-on or whatever the discussion or strategy we use we could model strategies as well as the content today what we had planned to do and we actually took out a lot of it anyway but we wanted to make sure we had a chance to share with you and linked back to what we shared in the spring how the work is continuing to develop and then what we have left to do and then how the instantly how the assessment framework fits along with that it is a lot of information so there I want to say I'm sorry but I also want to say I want to give you all the information so you know that it's there and then by your questions we can come back and talk about specifics so one of the so the issue you talked about Julie I you and I've talked about it we're I'm really familiar with that there are a different theoretical basis for what Julie's talking about and the way that the common core were developed and even within our hold Disko we are having opportunities for us to even discuss between us what do we mean do we have the ship same shared understanding I'm sure many of our teachers are also wanting to have the same conversation so this is so complex right so deep that we have to come to consensus as we're working on it that's why it's an iterative process I want to make sure too that you're basing it on what we know of the science of reading for example because I have yet to see anything that lists out the five components of reading where is that so when we get to the literacy you will see it great on but again it follows a constructivist yeah so we know there's another part that needs to be balanced and constructivist comes from a view of four for laypeople that students will help construct their own meaning versus being directly taught and we know that both ways are needed and some areas we would teach more at the younger grades around phonics and phonemic awareness and that is the part that I've shared with you we don't have as strongly rooted in our language arts adoption but we are looking at ways to implement that so that's coming right along with the budget requests and I also wanted to say though from my perspective I mean it makes sense that we're looking at standards what standards they're gonna help us are gonna give us the most bang for our buck how are we gonna go about here here some ways here are some things to think about as you're planning your lessons and it's not yep prescribed what teachers are using which casting up in what teachers want and I would just be proscribed but you give them enough guidance and here is what we're gonna hold for students learning here's where they need to be I mean so I understand the work that you're doing and it's making sense there's just pieces want to make sure that we're talking about all learners and that we're providing enough knowledge broad range of knowledge that we're gonna make sure to meet the needs of all of our learners I do think those are some of the unique elements of the Portland GBC design when we talk about the other components of reading in terms of the foundational building the foundational reading skills on the big five we do have resources for teachers and routines it's just not integrated into the yeah the e bbl model and so we're working on building those pieces so that they're the relationship between all of the literacy components will be very explicit and that teachers are able to deliver for all students and I just want to remind everybody that we all came on board after the adoption yeah and then built a GVC that's not really the right order so we are doing what we can to make it comprehensible for people and yes and to make it work for all just deal with gaps yes and we're not done related okay so that what you just said um that sends off like alarm bells in my head that the literacy adoption happened but gratis
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were out of sequence right so we're we've adopted some stuff and I've heard you know about the literacy adoption I ever heard very strong opinions on basically all sides of the questions I have heard people who hate it I have heard people who love it and most people are somewhere in the middle which is true with any adoption anywhere I've ever been okay but but I gotta say relatively speaking I've heard a lot more on the negative side than positive sighs so so here's my question too so we're up here we are not educators with one exception and and the way you guys talk is a foreign language in case you didn't know it is and and I wary that okay and PPS has not in recent years been as deliberate and intentional and farsighted as it might have been so we've made some investments in some things and I don't have based on my experience I don't have a lot of confidence that the investments we made were the best so I wary that we're we're just doubling down on stuff that was not a great idea so I just want to say the materials we've purchased are good materials we we have literature you have books in the classroom for the kids we have writing units so we have a good start there are elements that we're gonna have to fill in with and we can do that because it's all about what you it's focused on the standard and how you teach the standard you can use any set of materials we are just in the middle of identifying to help support teachers how to use the materials they have to address those standards I think it will help if we get farther through the presentation because the elements when we get through the literacy piece that gives you a little bit more focus on one content area and what we are doing with the litter said ID also want to address what you've said we chose the harder path what we did was we chose five five separate two programs to that we called a bundle to bundle together that have no no research there's they don't tie together versus what many districts do that use a estate adoption because it's a curriculum that's there and it supports teachers it's it's just what we have and why it's seeming more difficult it requires a lot of professional development and that takes a lot of resources and it's where we're at can I ask the question about the professional learning so you've talked a little bit about the teachers what are we doing with the principal's so that they're the instructional leader in their schools are they are they the ones ultimately who are mostly responsible for the professional development around around this or what's being done in that level cuz it seems like we're going from the central office to the teacher in the classroom and then I'm sure there's a link there has um the superintendent has made it very clear to all of us that there's an expectation that we support our site administrators so that they are the instructional leaders at the site and that is a tall order using your previous comments about where we have been that we have to accelerate that and do larger scaffolding around that and supporting that because a lot of things that our principal does or in the course of a day but if they are to be the instructional leader what will that look like in their learning so we're working together with OSP and OSS and the three of us formed disco under dr. Curtis and the world is to integrate our learning integrate the work supporting assistant superintendents and the senior directors so that they to then become instructional leaders and are able to lend support at schools at the same time we have our regular administrator Institute's and you can speak more to that directly in a second but it really is designed to develop their capacity as an as learners and as teachers so that
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they can then beat and structural leaders in the content that is being delivered through the cockpit that is being delivered to them so that they can then go back to their sites and deliver on that work to lend the support at the school site to give the feedback and to provide enhance support as needed with our support in in in our office and so principals then we'll continue working with us around the instructional core which is the GBC work so that they can then deliver on that at the same time there will be expanded support for the over the summer into the fall and we're going to be much more deliberate now that we have a expectations and agreements on what that work will look like at the school that we focus on those things as opposed to providing content or a of things that now that we've provided the overview we provide general understanding of how teaching learning happens and the strategies that our best practice to then narrow the focus so that they can actually observe and support for those things so we've broken it down in terms of the written curriculum which is what we've been talking about what is developed the teach the taught curriculum which is what happens in the classroom between the teacher the student and the resources and that's the instructional core and then the assess curriculum what is measured over time to see whether the student did well and whether we did well and so we are focusing on the written curriculum so the RIT curriculum includes units of study and lessons so if if an assistant superintendent or a principal or even the superintendent is visiting a school there is an expectation that there is some evidence of planning instruction right what does that look like at this point that's a site based decision but there should be some expectation that a lesson is being planned that is being taught that it's observable that that lesson was being planned right to the degree that that happens that's work that we will continue to do but if we if we start there then we began to calibrate across the district that lessons are being are being planned and that there's evidence of that a principal can then give feedback to that but if we're asking a principal to give feedback on whether there were learning targets or learning objectives which are what do we expect the student to know and be able to do by the end of the lesson then we need to be able to prepare to administrators to be able to to look for those things and to be able to give quality feedback to those things to support teachers to be able to to do that when there is no evidence or limited evidence of that so but if this is a new skill for them around this curriculum so are they primarily getting the their instruction or their PD at administrators Academy or are you giving them like a textbook and like they've got to study and then they have administrator Khadem II how they how are they getting the content and interacting with them because you know hundred different things are happening during the school day yes very true presumably that's also the benefit of the entire restructuring of with the deputy superintendents who are in their buildings you know four out of five days a week so there are a number of structural supports that we have that we're designing for the principals and one of them is the Leadership Institute but they also have cohort regular cohort meetings in which they're also receiving a professional learning support and really try to align all of those structures so that we're reinforcing the learning and that they're getting multiple opportunities and touch points around the learning that we need them to do we are designing or redesigning the Leadership Institute in a way that follows best practice so we've chunked the learning so you heard dr. Curtis talk about we're starting with the RIT written curriculum we're looking at the standards we're starting with the unit plan and then moving towards lesson planning but we work with the principles and we talk about what are the teachers need to know and be able to do to implement a standards-based instructional program and then what are the things that you need to have in place to support the teachers so that they can do that in a high quality way so we say what does that sound like what does that look like what infrastructure needs to be in place have how do you build consensus with your staff just so that their shared understanding around the language that
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we use the content that we use and so we use a framework around how do we scaffold the learning for staff and and so how do we make the learning accessible to the teachers in the way that we would want them to do that for the students so that we're modeling that we also talk about what's a meaningful context so we're not just talking about learning in absence of what are you doing in your building so we'll look at specific things that are happening in their building and then try to see how does that learning apply to what's what decisions you're making at your site because a lot of it is site based decision making and then we have what we call a community of practice so they'll be working in PLC's they'll be looking at problems of practice within their building and then applying that learning to their problem of practice so that they can begin to see how do we work through some of the challenges that we have towards implementing a literacy system that works for every student and we know that some of the challenges are the same across the building but then some of them are also unique we are providing them with tool kits as well so that they can extend their learning back at their site we call those instructional guides we have embedded in their videos and research articles and different activities that they can engage with their teachers in so that they will begin to practice around that learning and get a deeper sense of what does this all mean in addition to that we are providing what we call guidance around how to actually do observation and feedback around these different elements that they're learning so we are starting with the written curriculum so let let's say what have we learned about unit planning how would you how would you check or have a conversation with your student or your teacher around how they're planning using the GBC resources for example are you in pace with the pacing guide or the scope and sequence if not tell me what's going on are the students being responsive around the decisions that you made if not you know what do you plan to do about that looking at the assessment data those kinds of discussions at the Leadership Institute and then those are reinforced in their cohort meetings with their area superintendents and area directors and they also then look at infrastructure how do you use your PLC's do you have an instructional leadership team how do you use them to work with you in supporting all of your staff so we we try to really break out or chunk that learning over time so that we're not teaching at all but we want to be explicit we want to model the behavior and so we give the resources at sight but then they can embed those back at their site as well in addition to that we are establishing a principal leadership cadre so those principals who are showing higher levels of skill and knowledge around specific competencies that we want them to have will be leading or facilitating around specific learning components at the Leadership Institute so we have several principles that are identified around literacy at this time and so we're focusing on that building that cadre and then we'll move into other content areas later on general questions before we get into the literacy so you talked about you know 20 days for this unit of material plus or minus I'm guessing that plus or minus is going to be more plus at lower income schools and that the pacing is is going to be different and maybe different different years depending on you talk to teachers you can tell you know wow this year's class is hitting it out of the park this year's class is needing more time to that becomes an equity issue because I'm guessing on balance that higher income that can go at a faster pace than an average lower-income school unless there's more resources lower class sizes etc so I just want to raise that as an issue and yeah I'm gonna ask some questions I don't expect to have full answers now but just to get them out there that's one materials being optional or at the discretion of at the school level on the one hand as a
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teacher I want to have that flexibility on the other hand will that again play into some equity issues in terms of the level of challenge from different materials and I've watched that through I was on a textbook at options committee ten years ago in social studies and I watched the conversation about well this textbook I'm not going to use because my it's it's my kids won't be challenged while another at another school it's like I can't use that textbook because it's too challenging so the materials choices if they're optional can play into a different level of rigor and I know with with a literacy adoption we know some schools got the full set of level readers and some are making it up as they go along how to deal with that going forward if you're trying to build a system with equity is the map testing timing adjusted to that flexibility around 20 days plus or minus for this lesson so that it happens at an appropriate time in terms of when the material is covered those are all questions that are bumping around my brain and if there's one of those that feels like it's appropriate to answer now as opposed to later as we can continue this discussion that's so I was just gonna suggest that there might be some other ways that we could provide more depth for those of you who are interested I'm not sure every single board member needs the depth of information that some of you are asking yeah I think we won't be able to get through this presentation and at least share something with you about the assessment framework on the questions all of you are asking are all questions we have raised and we live with every single day so what I can tell you is the materials are useful there in people's hands they're good literature we have a lot of other supports to put in for them we plan to do that we will have some requests at budget time we've already talked about it as a whole SLT but I would like to have us at least go through the overviews acknowledging that there's a lot of details it's really hard in this setting to get into that kind of stuff especially because some of you might want it some of you don't need that that depth all the questions you're asking are the kinds of questions we work with educators about so in a board session we can't meet all of those needs so I we would be happy to invite you in for sessions to have more discussions where we can talk about components we can share what schools have what what we're doing to support them if they don't have what they need and why we will continue to have more budget requests until we completely fill out what our teachers need yeah it's and it's a challenge to me as a board member as we go through this to figure out as a board member what's my you know what do i what do i need to know what's what's beyond my role as a board member going forward I don't have a handle on thing but I think all of us are naturally curious about this and might go beyond what our board role is and I don't want to create a lot of action when we get into curriculum and programs and content the board's role is mostly to learn there isn't anything we're asking right now that we're asking you to weigh in on but we're just trying to provide you some background information some information about how the work keeps changing as we learn more information our interest is absolutely being collaborative with our staff in the building because they're all in different places they all need different things just as our students do so we know how to do that so we will continue to do that we will ask for budget and we will give present a case for you and about what we need the ask is huge we couldn't do it all at one time anyway given the staff we have and everything that's already on teachers plates because the other thing we're always cognizant enough is how much teachers are doing at the same time so we want to stand ready to have the support ready and support them but we we have to be careful and and provide what's helpful and that doesn't bury people right both administrators and teachers so it is a process it's not going to get taken care of in one year
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right the this is a journey that we're on and we will provide some more information around budgeting that looks more like here's a five-year strategy we just haven't been together long enough to dig down to that and provide that for you so if you can free I appreciate that it's still here a couple months well especially as a team we're still adding people so we kind of have to start the consensus all over again where are we what do we need what's my job what's the best way to support and it's constantly iterative so I appreciate that you all want to understand that but in board meetings or work sessions we won't get to that level of detail but we're happy to give you up opportunities with that level of detail anytime you want it so we can set those up so I actually find this framework pretty straightforward as a just beginning as a beginning framework and I guess I would say while we our job is primarily to learn there's certainly policy implications related to related to this so it may be the staffs picking the curriculum but the question of like do we have it should we be asking the question do we need to be providing additional days or time so that you can actually it's viable to be able to deliver the curriculum so I think there's you know at its base probably some policy questions absolutely if we're talking about more instructional time I will say yes every time and then the other issue and I don't have the answer now because I need to learn more but that you know the fundamental question when students aren't progressing and parents are asking us so like so what are you doing to help you know my child I think we need to be able to articulate like what strategies at a high level and maybe even be the translator between all of this to parents and community members about how the district is realigning to better support students but I mean I think for me that's what would be most helpful is understanding it enough so that you can then both ask the right questions and make the right decisions as a board member but also then to translate things because I said to me I'm gonna leave here without the knowledge of and I know this is a longer conversation but like so how the different tiers of support layer on top so I get kind of a general sense now about the 85% of the kids that you're trying to reach but then what's how's this other piece layer in how do you how do you know that's happening or the resources that are there it's being delivered so that's in the TSS model we're also saying I'm but not tonight those are the types of things that I think would be helpful to be able to articulate and just plain right Scott's point and like plain English and that's why we have to come back multiple times because there's multiple parts to that I mean that's just what I said earlier that I think we just have to be careful about putting all of the emphasis on core you know it mean it's really you have to think of it vertically as the system because not all kids are gonna be served in core so it would be helpful to come back with here's what core looks like and here's what we're thinking in how we're building out the system and I think you've done a good job with that as a basis yeah that's like to meet up to the next phase of learning is understanding that the second and third steps and I think oh go ahead well and I would also ask of you all I mean I agree with what you said dr. Curtis about the complexity of this and our role but I would also ask staff to just consider that we are always trying to look at you know a variety of levers that ultimately end up as budget decisions for how to really serve our students and especially address the inequities in our system and obviously you are all looking at that all day every day as well but when it comes down to limited resources there are different ways to invest and so we we need to be able to have a sense of okay well you know with the new expectations and the new protocols around a guarantee dividable curriculum you know how much of a difference is that going to make for our historically underserved students and how you know what's that really gonna translate what's that really likely to translate to in terms of improved student outcomes or and or what are the other level levers that we need to be pushing at the same time and to what extent and so I guess what I'm asking is just for none of us to get too siloed in these
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conversations and I'm not saying you are this is what we asked for exactly and this is what you're bringing us because we have the responsibility of kind of integrating all of those needs to get the full picture that we're all looking for as to you and we want to provide you that information so we can come back every work session if that's you know helpful so we just need to know what what are the pieces yeah so I listening intently appreciate the broad range of questions that the board is asking it's demonstrating long overdue attention on the academic agenda of the school district clearly motivated as it is for us around how do we produce equitable educational outcomes for our students I believe that's all of our stakeholders our families our teachers everybody's desired objective tonight was intended to give you an overview as was stated in the objectives around the components of a core curriculum our staff was prepared to kind of walk you through how those units are constructed the work that's happened over the last tonight by the way is least one year anniversary here in VPS and everyone in the department practically has come at some point either right before right after his arrival it's represented a monumental task to identify the instructional guidance that our educators deserve and with their support to develop by teachers for teachers some widely understood units that could guide instruction k12 across all content areas that is work that takes up to a decade to get through an entire sequence across content areas and I'm hearing and the range of questions already thinking ahead around what are the material costs what kind of professional development does that require our principals equip to provide thoughtful coaching and feedback to our teachers how are we expanding the professional learning catalog how are we publishing that do we have enough time for it these are these are all the right questions and things that we're also thinking about and we won't have the answers by ourselves because we have to continue to engage with those folks that are in our classrooms who are delivering instructional core but tonight what we're hoping to give you is because there's been a lot of questions around what's GVC that's a big acronym and it represents a lot of work and so this is just an initial installment I'm glad that there's interests and we definitely want to go deep in this topic our goal will to make sure that every board member is well versed so that what we really need out of all of this is a very simple and elegant shared expectation and definition for what we should expect to see when we're standing at a classroom door and so there's some there's some basic components around sort of what we mean by rigor and evidence of purposeful planning and things that all our professional practitioners I think understand and deserve to be supported both materially and in advancing their thinking in as a community of practice so that's sort of what we were hoping for tonight is to kind of give you a sense of some of the work and how it's been organized and how that's beginning to roll out which is going to be a process it's not something we can say after these 10 PD days you know pencils down everybody will know exactly what to do because components of a core curriculum are our both curriculum our instructional pedagogy our assessment and more importantly our continuous improvement cycles which I think they were intending to talk about there and the improvement science work so I just wanted to kind of like check us at this point because I know they've been very much wanting to share the work that's been going on but it's it's going to be continual work in progress and will continue to sort of invite and make opportunities for personal walkthroughs so we can have these conversations in a live building with teachers so we can continue to grow our understanding what this all means for our students especially those who we haven't served well that we know we have to differentiate for but in the absence of a core there's nothing to differentiate so there's the challenge how do we make sure we also will have the tools and all the appropriate supports and interventions to make sure all of our students and teachers have the supports they need and that starts with us at a central level to make sure and define what that framework is and this is this is just a part of it so can we have staff kind of just wrap up the remaining slides and then I know we've all been
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noting the questions that have been getting asked and at the next installment and opportunity will revisit sort of some of those bigger areas that were called out if that's ok with the board so the remaining five or six slides actually take us into one of the direct aspects of the literacy development which is the EB BL and I know there will be a number of questions director is part of rep will have to know which is which is fine which is great I mean we have to we have to put those out there because for a long time we've just made those of us coming we just made assumptions that it's okay to move in that direction and we haven't actually challenged the thinking right and so if if we're gonna challenge the thinking once we put it out there then we they don't help us make better decisions and just assume that we continue moving forward but you asked you raised the question and you get and so well we'll continue to move forward with the presentation so so as you know we do as a district have a high priority and focus around supporting all of our students including our students who have a diverse cultural and linguistic background that all of our students deserve to have rich literacy experiences that are honored and expanded through responsive and personalized instruction and so we're working with our teachers our communities and our families to build upon the assets that our students bring to the table to make sure that those are cultivated in the classroom and the instructional design and so a lot of our our supports are really focused and that's why I talk about the Portland GBC so we have gbc's across the country but Portland is paying paying special attention to this area yes and so we will go more into the theories in our ongoing presentations yes no yes the eb BL design emphasizes a scaffolded approach which means that we're actually providing ways for students to process the information that is meaningful for them that is relevant so as I talked about we're gonna chunk the learning for our principals so we're not giving everything to them all at once we're starting with the written curriculum even though when we talk about our GBC we're talking about the written curriculum which are those standards the way that it's taught as a as it's delivered and then how do we assess in terms of how do we know that our students have learned what we wanted them to learn so we're using a variety of different strategies to make sure that our students are learning what they need to learn when we talk about a gradual release approach we often talk or describe it as I do so the teacher is modeling we do we provide that guided practice and then you do we turn it over for independent practice through in reading writing and opportunities for students to interact with a variety of texts this is just a visual graphic of the different literacy components that our teachers are developing in their classroom and so you heard the reference around reading workshop writing workshop word study and so when we think about these elements what does the instruct the best practice around each of those components look like and so there's some in this graphic design in terms of foundational best practices that work with all students so keeping a racial equity work at the center of how we create quality interactions for students with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds working from an asset based approach so that we're really building on the string of our students and tying those into the instructional design the teacher is the decision-maker and so they should be thinking about how to design instruction from a student's frame of reference and again a tuning to the the content standards that have been mapped out for them in the scope and sequence of the GBC we talked about gradual release already and making sure that it's a culturally responsive classroom and so when we talk about responsiveness that's where we get into the assessment conversation which you'll hear about
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from dr. Davis and in a moment but those are the elements of our EB BL literacy system it is a bi literacy system so we have that in all of our programs across our schools even our deal like schools our dual language in dual language schools and we continue to work and develop each of those elements with all of our classroom teachers so we we have Committees of teachers who come and work alongside our content area specialists at the central office to begin to continue to develop and revise our content area work so that I think is the last slide so I do want to ask since there is so much interest in the GBC and the number of people in the community have asked me about this oh why can't people not see the curriculum the curriculum is is available on our website at what level because I I'm hearing that they can't actually see what is in the the core everything that was shared with you this evening is available on the website and the unit's the sample units and the sample lessons are available PPS next /gv see okay and a number of the components are there there are there are sample lessons there they're sample units there the the preparation of the the rationale behind it even the committees that were involved in the development of this work all of that is available and there there have been requests for that information and it has been made available to them for people who have asked us in OTO so some of the instructional materials are still behind the firewall because those instructional materials are covered by copyright and so students facing documents that would be going home can't be made available but teacher facing documents and teacher guides and answer keys and assessments and assessment keys those who live behind the firewall and they always have because that's that's material that needs to stay confidential thank you that right there is a very useful answer I appreciate that I'm gonna say a couple things you got to tell me if I'm right or wrong so so very you know very high up so the advantage of having a guaranteed viable curriculum is that we're gonna have a curriculum because we haven't had one right correct yes okay that's an important point I'm not sure everybody knows that so we haven't PBS hasn't had a curriculum coming out of central office for what 18 years ish so I think that last part is important sort of adjectives and that our teachers in the absence of a centrally supported instructional framework I'm sure have developed work to deliver its our students right and which you know and bless you thank you but it makes it really hard for new teachers and their students because it takes a while - okay so sorry period no I'm gonna say a couple things okay a semi going okay so the guaranteed one of the chronic issues in PPS has been vast disparities in educational opportunities made available to students from one school to the next so part of the point of this right is that we're setting a kind of a floor that at minimum every kid in third grade is gonna learn X correct okay [Music] and the idea that we're setting that you're kind of divvying up the calendar year the school year by unit and I'm
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gonna put this in the form of a question is that going to mitigate the impact of housing instability and student mobility is that good because one of the things that I've heard for years and years is that students who have housing instability and there are many many of them they'll move from one school to the next and they miss units so you know by the end of sixth grade they've missed you know half a third grade half a fourth grade so is that gonna is this gvc going to MIT mitigate that yes one of the objectives is to address issues of variance okay that depending on where they go to school how often they move their education will be disrupted and then when they enter it it will be very different than what they've experienced in the past so it's about bringing consistency in the learning okay is there let me ask a phone it is there any consistency across school districts there okay cuz we get we get a lot of students who you first about if you're if you're in a state of or grant to the degree that there's standardization in the implementation of state standards then yes if if the if it's if you if there's a great deal of independence across school districts then you will have variants across school school systems okay ma'am I just threw that one in I'd be happy if we had consistency across our own schools so you know okay I'm okay I did just want to add some urgency to the question because unique among large cities it's my understanding an unsupported move by a child from one school to another doesn't hold that trial back six months which is the national standard in Portland it holds them back a year and we have many many many children who are making a dozen moves over the course of their school career their entire career just evaporates right there so yes we do need to take this extraordinarily seriously wonderful thank you okay so some of the sorry some of the other issues that I've heard a lot about from teachers is that the the rollout has been a little bumpy in places and it's been inconsistent across schools which is a little surprising if one of the points of all of this is consistency so so can you talk to us a little bit about kind of how it's been any lessons that you've learned how how are we gonna do this moving forward you know that kind of stuff I'll be honest from the spring forward one of the challenges was for us as a team was to meet the expected deadlines of having initial drafts of some of these and the pace was quite rapid and one of the things that we did not have honestly on the front end was learning time together before we began to develop and implement with not enough staff to begin with and then the degrees of understanding of what the GBC was and in some ways as a district we still grapple with defining what the GBC actually is because we're still we're not and in that learning phase and so that was one that actually led to an acceleration that was very difficult to me and so the result was that as we began to roll some of this and we may make this content available online or in our professional development there were inconsistencies in some of this content right especially because we're looking at math and language arts math and science at the same time and when you juxtapose them there was some variance in the consistency because when things we want to do is to be consistent so the teachers see consistency across the subject areas and not have to rethink across subject areas right or even across grade levels that much well we weren't as successful as we would have liked in that so as we iterate we have to pay attention to that then when it came to the professional development part of what happened over the summer was not knowing whether
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we were gonna have a budget to provide professional development in preparation for the so for the opening of the school year so we weren't we were not able to talk for one at the end of the year but then had to wait till the till no we did but that is big as we thought we did at Roosevelt High School which was great but there were there there there were there were issues that was there and that's what understanding EB be else it's inside of GBC it's the elementary component of GBC so it's in there so that was that was the focus and so then in the fall we did it again but that one was smaller and we didn't have every teacher attend so then the expectation was let's begin to implement but we had teachers who had gone to the training twice and some where none so there were for us there was a consistency in the way that we lent support there so that's the other thing we have to be mindful of and address how we provide the professional development to make sure that all of the teachers have the understanding they need to begin to to implement so that that was also a lesson right and so then the third piece is the the resources and being able to have the resources to be able to do that so those are the lessons so we've learned a lot a great deal and so with that in a lot of new people on the team the the positive of that is that they bring great ideas and how we address some of those things because they've experienced it in their own environments right and have been successful in doing that the challenge there is that is that same thing we come from various places where said yes and we have to gel and then have a common understanding of what that work is and and that's for us to figure out [Music] see where this is going so the second part of our presentation is the assessment framework which will generate conversation and lots of questions we know so now we know we're sort of calibrated and understanding our guard our discourse and so dr. Sarah Davis will be sharing with how the assessment framework is designed to capture how we look at not only our practice but the results of that practice in measuring how students are performing over time and how it aligns with the assessment framework that was actually drafted inside the school district a couple of few years ago and so we've dusted it off and we are bringing it forward and implementing our assessment instruments or processes inside of that framework great so you guys have been sitting for two and a half hours and health and PE is also in my portfolio so I would we're gonna take 20 seconds and stand up please I promise you're not gonna have to shake hands or anything but if folks would stand up roll your shoulders back roll your shoulders forward we're gonna do a big inhale much better okay so here we go let's see if I can figure out the interface now can you rub your tummy and pat your head [Laughter] no okay um so the objectives of this part of the presentation is to really kind of just do a very quick hit on assessment research and its impact I'd like to show you guys the assessment framework and talk about its development and then we're gonna review some of the district's assessments and then I'm hoping that if I talk fast enough in the beginning part that we'll have some opportunity to actually get hands-on with some data and actually do a data exploration protocol so that you guys can kind of see some of the the ways that we can dive into the data but if we're working to grow our data literacy as a district and this is a place that we need to do that as well okay so yeah maybe we let's try to let's go to questions okay um so black and Williams
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and Hattie have both done very large overarching literature reviews on research and education and what it can be summed up in kind of three very big statements one formative assessments one of the most effective educational practices when it comes to improving academic achievement formative assessments are those little things that you do as you walk around the classroom looking over kids shoulders interpreting if a kid's looking left and right and blank - you know Fisto five who understands or having kids explain strategies and in those strategies you start to see what are the things they're most comfortable with and what are the things that they're not grasping and so like an example for mathematics if you ask us if you ask students to create something that equals four and everybody does addition and nobody does negative numbers you can kind of have a feeling that maybe they don't really feel comfortable with negative numbers yet maybe we need to spend more time with that but it's these in process activities that give you insight into what the students know formative assessments helps all students and gives particularly good results with low achievers and the single most powerful modification that enhances achievement is feedback and so this is what our assessment framework was situated in that a balanced assessment system really relies heavily on formative assessment and is balanced in terms of interim and summative assessments so our framework development goals we wanted to Co construct an assessment framework we wanted to have common agreements as a system to provide culturally responsive feedback to students and we wanted to develop a multi-year implementation plan and so here are the steps that we went through so at first in 2014 there was an advisory council that was formed and it developed very high level guiding principles for assessment what do we think assessments should do in the district but at a high level then much like we did with the GDC if you if you know where you want to be you also need to know what that's going to look like if it's done well and so we created a rubric for if we are going to create an assessment framework what are the key elements that that assessment framework needs to have so that we know that it's a good framework then the next portion of it was we act we work together there were over 30 educators 50% of the group with school staff central office building based and we drafted at k12 quality assessment framework we then applied that rubric that had been created to see had we actually hit all of the big landmarks of a quality framework and then we did some feedback and revisions and then finally at the in June July of the school year before last we did final comments and revisions and this assessment framework was released on to the website included in your packet that was sent to you previously what is a copy about if the instructional framework it's about 22 pages long so it's we worked really hard to have it yep we worked really hard to have it be accessible user-friendly and and something that was not such a thick research tome that you'd never get past the second page and it really talked about this idea of having a balanced system of assessments and that assessments should be used to inform instructional decisions assessment should encourage students to try to learn it's one of the things that we kind of we get so focused on assessments as being a summative thing that we actually forget like if you're playing soccer and you're trying to headbutt the ball into the goal you're gonna miss a whole lot and then when you finally hit it into the goal there's your formative assessment there's your ideas of what you're doing but as a student you need to know what personal success looks like you need to be part of that process of really engaging in how our assessments going to help me learn how am I gonna know when I really own the information assessment should be accurate should be accurate information about student learning it should be useful at several levels of decision making so we need assessments to inform the classroom but we also need information like at the system level if you know in some of the data we look at later we're gonna see that in algebra we have system-wide struggling in certain topic areas so as the system we can then use that information to say we need we need to explore additional supports for that topic we need to explore professional development for that topic we need to look at our instructional materials for that topic and so in addition to informing the in-the-moment classroom decisions we also need data that can help us inform our district level decisions and then assessment really needs to be mindful of the emotional dynamics of the assessments experience from the learner's point of view and that's where really engaging students and understanding that assessment is helping us know what they know and what they still need to learn and not just about you know here's the roadblock as your
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interviewer career and you pass or you don't pass and so this graphic kind of represents the the time and I'm sorry I got a little wonky I went from a widescreen to a three by four and I missed this one so the mathematician in me is really unhappy that the end and the G from learning is on the next line but I'm gonna let that go and so the the bar around the outside is representing kind of the amount of time that should be spent on summative assessments that that is in fact the smallest amount of time that you're spending the next bar in is talking about interim or periodic assessments and and so those will be your next band and so it's a little wider but then court Center is this idea that the majority of your assessment time should actually be formative assessment really deeply informing instruction to enhance student learning and then there is this interaction between the standards the assessment for learning culturally relevant instruction and our instructional materials and that the standards the standards are what we want students to learn assessments are what that learning is going to look like and instruction is how we get there and how we span the gap and then we need data to inform our assessment to inform our instruction because if we don't know how the students are doing we don't know if our instruction is working and so as an overview the framework talked about the assessment purpose and so it really went into why do we need assessment and and and how do we use it it talked about high quality assessments and so what were some exemplars of high quality assessment and how do those show up the framework then talked about assessment practices that support all students and then it also talked about reporting and communication assessment shouldn't be a black box it shouldn't be data in and you know hehe we've got answers you don't and so really looking at if we are having a balanced assessment system if we are gathering data if we are informing instruction then we need to be reporting that back out at a number of levels of the system and then finally if we are going to have good data we also have to have people who understand how to use that data and to really grow that assessment literacy and competency again at all levels of the system so that date or assessments that are meant to inform one thing aren't being used for four purposes that the data themselves weren't meant for and so after we created this document we talked with the group and we said you know if if we if this is where we want to be if this framework is describing this perfect state and we look at where we are now what are some key recommendations that need to happen and so we've defined a balanced assessment system but what it really highlighted was that that we had some significant gaps in that balanced assessment system that this was in fact a growth area for the district and so we started doing an inventory of our current assessments and we found we had a high level of participation for screeners for early literacy fluency and vocabulary but our assessments weren't aligned to standards yes sir thank you I've been living this for the past week so these these were all somewhat even newer to me a couple of weeks ago so forgive me for for buying into the buzzwords so certain assessments are screeners that are given upfront that are used to kind of indicate if there are problems that we need to dive deeper into and explore and so in terms of like our dibbles and our easy CBM those are kind of screeners to give us ideas of where our students are and what's going on and so we actually have some fairly high participation in the use of those particular screeners yes yep yes is you know a policy law that we're gonna have to address at some point and so what it also highlighted was that the current assistant assessments being used in the district were not aligned to the standards not to common core not to NGSS not to the new health standards not to the new PE standards and that we had no common assessment for mathematics across the district outside of the sixth grade performance assessment for compacted math I mean that that truly is the only district-wide mathematics assessment that existed and so kind of situating that within the work in progress with the creation yes
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my kids were in different middle schools for example had if they were in three different middle schools had math assessments it was based the same stamp does the standards-based report card so is it that they weren't common all across the district yes or yes so in the same way that easy CBM and dibbles were given pretty consistently across all of our schools and data could be be looked at at a number of different levels of the system there was not a similar common assessment across the schools for mathematics okay so I'm sorry just some schools had it or they had different ones there was a decision to made to go to something entirely different or that was a better practice than to go to one of the standard based based report card standard based systems we already had so I can speak most clearly about mathematics for math we had pacing guides and we have in we had information that was very strongly tied to the bridges instructional materials we had also a number of schools that because our adopted our adopted version of bridges was not aligned to common core but we had done that alignment in collaboration with the publisher and there were additional materials that that brought it into compliance but a number of schools felt that kind of that type of Frankenstein kind of curriculum they didn't want to do that and so a number of schools were using engage New York a number of schools were using instructional materials from NCTM and they were taking their scope and sequence from their instructional materials still standards-based still lots of opportunity for amazingly high quality instruction but if I'm doing things in the sequence of the bridges and curriculum and you're doing instruction in the sequence of engage New York and somebody else is just starting from the Common Core documents and pulling random instructional materials then there are assessments embedded in that but there is one there's no meaningful way to look and and to have PLC's and to talk about where the gaps are and where additional instruction needs to be focused and so though the report cards do have the standards listed on them there is no assumption from the old system of sequence and also rigor and depth of knowledge that all students will have access to across the system and so the engage New York assessments were standards-based the bridges assessments are standards-based other assessments that were being created we're standards-based but that commonality across the system and that ability to do that system level analysis didn't exist so in terms we have the scope and sequence documents as articulated in a guaranteed and viable curriculum we have some common assessments embedded in those and as we move toward next year and the full implementation of the guaranteed and viable curriculum we're looking to have those common assessments done and so those would be kind of your your unit assessments and so kind of in terms of thinking of a balanced assessment system with mathematics since the Maps assessment which I'll talk about in a second helped us kind of see conceptual understanding we need some assessments that really focus on the practice standards and so from mathematics especially the common assessments that have been created at each grade level are performance tasks and very much focus on students problem-solving ability persevering to answer questions looking for patterns things that don't show up as readily in an adaptive assessment but we need additional data to inform instruction and the development of program supports and so we then had to look at how do we get that data and so that's where the map growth assessment comes in it is an interim assessment and as is also a formative assessment and so that's that's one of the things that people talk about formative assessments and and informative really has to do with how the data is used and so if you're really using that data to inform instruction it is a formative assessment interim refers much more to the frequency with which it's given and so for the map growth assessment it being an interim assessment is because it's being given the map growth is given three times a year but it is formative because as we were rolling this out the key focus of this is to inform instruction and I don't have slides in here I know we had talked about it previously but I can also give you the breakdown there was an extensive process engaging with stakeholders across the system to really
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explore the adoption of an adaptive assessment for mathematics and the map map growth is where where we resolved at the end of that process and so what I want to switch to now because I know that there have have been a lot of kind of questions out there to kind of talking about how this initial rollout of the the map assessment happened but sorry but again the one of the reasons that we really focused on math for this roll out of this true true common assessment math is our highest failure rate in the district at the high school level we have a 22 percent failure rate of for algebra and and and that's highly problematic math is also our lowest s back so our lowest scores in terms of state assessments and as I talked about from the work that the assessment committee did there was no common assessment across all schools for mathematics and so that's why we move forward really focusing on on mathematics question what does map stand for a measure of achievement and progress that sounds better so thank you is that like like I branded something or is it just like yes it is and so it's from nwea which is a assessment organization and and so that we work with and so the challenge that we were really faced with was to know what students are ready to learn and to maximize that growth for all students and so the solution that that was settled upon was an adaptive assessment it's unique to each student with our partnership with NWA it's powered by over 40 years of academic research and the data that it gives is immediate and and actionable so that it can be turned around to be used in classrooms because a number of assessments have kind of come in and gone out of the district you know like our our tidal schools would get something or this cluster would get something or these schools would get something there there has been low confidence that things would actually really be be here and that there would be bi in and we would move forward and that's why when we put forward the contract to the board for the map assessment that we actually asked for you guys to approve a five-year contract and I know that with our contracts and everything else you know we still have flexibility as a district but we really wanted to make that powerful statement that that we are we are investing in a five-year contract and when information about the assessment was shared to building principals and to our teachers it was shared with a five-year vision for the rollout of the assessment so that there it was really understood that there was intentionality that we are going to grow in our understanding and use of this assessment and so for year one our goal is successful implementation we've made it through the first assessment window it it it is actually it's it there have been there have been some some frustrations in certain levels but you know we we've assessed close to 36,000 students and and had you know our largest technical support problem was logging in issues and and so which isn't to say that there weren't other frustrations at sites and stuff like that but it it we are on our way we've had our first window we've got two more windows this year we're learning from the problems of the first window we actually have data to look and see oh hey we think you know this the school is having more technical problems in other schools we need to have tech support there when they start doing the second window this school has a really high number of students taking over 50 minutes how can we go in and support them to really help that go more fluidly and we have the data for year two we want to deepen that data literacy so we're working with teachers this year to even to start to understand the basic reports and to how to use that how to use the data next year we will continue that professional learning in year three we're going to expand in all of our schools to k12 and then your four we're going to use it for goal setting and so really focusing on having students take ownership of here's here's where I'm starting the year what do I want to have my goal as a student be for my growth in terms of the the winter and then the spring assessments and then by year five we're really hoping that this is going to be fully embedded in practice that schools will be using this is that school level goals and that it is it's just a regular part of our instructional practices here within the district and so then some stories from the field so from a second-grade teacher at Woodmere elementary she was talked about that maps been really helpful in identifying areas of weakness and strength for students each of my students in my class
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and so being able to use that to structure instruction another teacher at Woodmere said the kids knew that their brains were growing and that the test was a visible way for them to see their growth and so she had had experience using the map assessment from her school in Chicago and was excited to be seeing that coming here to Portland Public Schools one of our principals was talking about they did a preliminary data dive during the staff meeting as part of the work on instructional and database decision-making and that it was really great to have something that all of the teachers could really have common conversations around and finally from Hayhurst and I've got a formatting issue so we were able to use the map data set school-wide goals for for something that I hope is really really important and hopefully it's on your printout so so anyway so but but from both teacher and principal perspectives just kind of this excitement and then from our schools that chose to pilot the map assessment for reading as well we've had feedback from number of principles of how exciting it is to have data across reading and mathematics that's in the same format that that is easy to to focus on and talk about and so then how do we support that in terms of professional learning we did 84 on-site sessions to discuss the purpose of map growth as an interim assessment and to review the basics for managing the map test sessions we have done custom sessions for principals at convocation we've done custom sessions with toeses with high school algebra teachers and nearly 25 at the NWA and PPS staff were out directly supporting schools for that very first assessment window to really make sure we were understanding how to make it go smoothly moving forward building internal capacity so there been video tutorials presentations at leadership Institute's dedicated sessions for DLI special education MT SS and then we brought in different subject matter experts to even talk about deeper integration we've continued to have office hours with building administrators going to area meetings meeting with principals there and then we've done full-day professional learning with all of our OTL toeses so across all of the different content areas so that we could grow that data literacy even if you weren't directly working with mathematics or language arts and then finally to start building that data literacy we've done 55 on-site sessions to introduce map growth data and to increase data literacy for using map to inform instruction and we did that by so if a school had like two strands at second third and fourth grade we embedded two substitutes in the school for the day and then rotated teachers out for 90 minutes at each of the grade levels where map was being done so that people weren't having to drive into central office and lose/lose a whole lot of time and so and they were also able to meet with their grade-level peers to kind of start to have that shared data literacy nwa provided us this continuum and it's got a lot of words and what i'm going to say is that we're beginning and that's right where we should be having completed the first session of implementation we're beginning we're growing our capacity to leave this work and our teachers in school they're at the beginning they're growing their capacity to understand the data and and move forward together and so I did well with my speed talking and and you guys did amazingly well with not answering questions or asking questions sorry so so let's let's let's play with the data and let's get into some some of the questions but so just kind of like at a high level there were 36 thousand individual assessments results we had 24,000 in mathematics and we had close to 12,000 schools that opted in to do the pilot of the the reading assessment and so that that's a that's a pretty significant number but what I'd really like to do now is kind of dig into the data and I'm going to put it up on the screen but I want it to [Music] look like and so to kind of do part of data literacy is knowing what the the format of the is showing us at a high level Green good bad so if we can all be comfortable with the Green good red bad were like halfway to reading this
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representation of the data grey means were somewhere in the middle the farther topic is to the left means the more fundamental or easier in an instructional program so things like third grade fourth grade those sorts of things the farther to the right the more advanced of the topic it is the longer it is a topic that spans multiple years before students hit mastery and the black bar is showing where our district average is on that topic because this is an interim adaptive assessment students are actually supposed to get 50% of the questions incorrect because it keeps giving it wants to find out what you know but it also wants to find out what you don't know and so this is one of the key differences between a summative assessment and an adaptive assessment and so the math assessment will give you a question if you get it right it gives you a harder one if you get that right it gives you a harder one if you get that wrong it gives you an easier one and it bounds it until it it starts to hone in on where is the zone that you are consistently like what's exactly the the maximum of what you know on that particular topic and then where are things starting to fall off and so 50% is actually about where we want to be on any given assessment and so if students are and then if students are up above 50 so if they're starting to get to 56 57 that means that as a district we have a lot of students who are getting those types of questions consistently right all the time on that topic area and so that starts to indicate some kind of higher levels of mastery if we're starting to get closer to the 45 zone 44 43 42 that means it's a topic area on which a number of students have actually consistently gotten it incorrect yes ma'am so this may be a stupid question but they do the kids know that they the answers enough so so that had that was part of the professional the question was do the students know if they have if they've gotten something wrong or is this primarily a tool for the teacher to modify instruction or to know where the students are so um within the assaut the assessment itself is trying to gauge what's where students knowledge is and so it's not a intelligent tutor it's it's not trying to take a student who got a problem right and get them to getting it incorrect and so the students are asked to do their best on a problem and if it is beyond what their knowledge is to make their best guess and move on because that data is then made available to to the teachers to the building to the district to then really kind of dig in on what are the topic areas and what are the concepts that the students know and what are the topics and concepts that they have yet to learn and so it could even be thought in some you know as as we as we develop across the years and using this it could be done it's like a quick pre pre assessment you know I you know we've just seen on the unit guide that you know potentially up to 20 days of instructional time may be spent on a concept what if the majority of the students in your class already know that concept or what if the majority and the students of your class don't have the underlying skills that are necessary to even start learning that concept and so these are the types of information that this type of assessment can give us yes sir so if a child is expected to get half of it wrong this is going to be a fairly chromatic test for them isn't it but that's what they that's why I was asking but I think they don't know so my experience yeah and so so I'm sorry I interpreted your question as do they know as they're taking it which questions they have gotten correct or incorrect but also as as part of setup and as part of the professional learning for doing this assessment that was part of what was talked about with our educators across the district was how to set this up so that students knew what was coming are our two schools that have the highest number of students taking over ninety minutes on the assessment are two of our more higher achieving schools and and one of the things that that that we were told that we tried to communicate that
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we'll continue to communicate in professional learning as we move forward is that students who are used to always getting things right have a much harder time of going okay I've tried my best but I don't know this so I'm gonna make my best guess and move on and they they stay with the test trying to figure out and work out every single problem and so we need to continue that communication of setting our kids up to to successfully make it through this assessment to understand this assessments really helping them figure out what they already know and what they still need to learn and they're no harm no foul if you don't know it yet it's that's that's all that we're trying to figure out is what do you know and what you have yet to learn so with the district level summary that you have in front of you and so we have kind of the - two big algebra topics what I'd like you guys to do is just kind of take a second and as you look at this data to ask yourself what do you see as I'm going to ask you to take a couple of minutes to look at it silently and then I'll give you a couple of minutes to kind of turn and talk and then then we'll kind of see like what what are the types of things that we're seeing in this data and I'm gonna now put that question up actually with the representation of the data so are our folks in the yes so yes sir there's the percentage which you explains what that man there's a black bar and so that black bar is where we are as a district and this is across all of our high schools in ninth and tenth grade so I'm not sure what this means because because you would think that higher score is better that we've got some greens that are lower rents that are higher and so so if you think it in terms of say addition subtraction whereas multiplication and division would be slightly slightly more to the right and so where the actual concept is presented the far one way to think it is like the farther to the left the easier the concept or but it's much more in terms of it would come earlier in instruction and farther to the right is much much more advanced and complex and so that's that's where these boarders are from the left and to the right the ones to the left also can be seen as kind of much more foundational and so so like one of the things you're noticing is like some of the things are to the left and some are to the right and if a one on the left is red that can be highly problematic because if not or foundational topics then that's going to have an implication for those concepts that then build on it what are other thoughts you guys focusing that where what does the black line average mean on those bars if left to right is foundational to higher what do the bars mean well it appears from your description like you're trying to community like the graph is trying to communicate two completely different concepts with the same dimension okay so the black line is where we are as a district and so if we are closer to like 43 percent so on that on this concept that that spans that that spans and so what the numbers at the bottom are are in terms of R it scores and which is a construct that's just it's specific to the organization and we can get into that more later but essentially the lower the Ritz score the more foundational the concept and so we're talking a concept that spans a broad range and then as a district where our students are actually scoring and so so on that one that says forty three percent so that is a more foundational concept that's that has a broad span and we as a district our students scored at forty three percent which means this is a concept that as a district we are struggling with see data literacy it's not for not for wimps we got to dig in we got to dig in come on director Anthony come on stay with me it's our first of many
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so two of them the algebraic expressions are more sophisticated or less foundational that number sequences the six or seventh one so what are some other things you guys are noticing yes oops this isn't noticing from the data so much as a question about how does this dovetail with the district's wholesale movement at least at the high school level two proficiency based grading which one would think that they would marry very well because you are really disaggregating in the different content areas but in my experience the challenge with proficiency based grading is that theoretically the student has an opportunity to you know continually keep trying to meet a particular target however instruction marches on and new content is introduced all the time even when the prior foundational content hasn't been mastered so it's there is that - we D or is there anything you can say about how those two processes so they interact they do tell dovetail really brilliantly and as we put together our official processes for proficiency briefs grading at the high schools this needs to be a deep part of the conversation and we need to really dig deep and figure out how is it going to fit you know where is it going to where is it going to slot in is it going to is it going to you know is it going to be something that we decide as a as a system that we're going to allow to be an indicator of proficiency or as we dig into the data do we feel you know this gives us an indicator that the students on the trajectory but but we don't feel comfortable having this be an indicator of proficiency we're going to need to dig deeper and have some other protocols and systems in place and so how it dovetails is that yeah that has to be a part of the system we have a new data source that we haven't had previously and so how do we use it but use it well and those are the things we really need to dig in and work on together as a system and I guess it gives you the baseline when the teacher begins a unit of proficiency to have a much better sense of where the students are and how to approach it yep this is just PPS and just from the very first assessment window and so it's its baseline data or that those are the areas where we're slightly above the national norm and we have other areas where it's solid gray were right where the national norm thinks we are and we've got we've got a couple of core areas where yeah or I mean and not not even that but it's like and then as a system it's like okay so now the math team and I we need to go dig in and kind of look at where where is that following in our scope and sequence what are the instructional materials that are aligned with that have we done professional development on that concept you know and and so how how can we support and I think it's and the only reason I want to because this really is to inform instruction and to help improve the system and it's not a gotcha it's just an indicator of where we need to grow as a system so and that was kind of my earlier well this is an offshoot of my earlier question about when the test is given is it appropriate does it match what we've been teaching and so because it really works to figure out exactly what a student knows and it is standards-based and so our instructions aligned with the standard but it's not a summative assessment so it's not looking to see if you learned what was in the unit that we just did it's looking to actually see how are you growing on these concepts across time and so it looks to understand what you know then as a teacher you can go wow I just did two units on scientific notation and my students haven't shown growth on scientific notation from the from this window to this window so maybe I need to dig in deeper or wow this is the unit that we just covered and they all of them demonstrated exceptional growth so I think my unit on scientific
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notation is is really strong but if you're measuring growth that implies there was yes and so there are there are three assessment windows across the map assessment and so we had an assessment window right at the beginning of the school year there will be another assessment window in January and then there will be a final assessment window latent spring for the end of the school year yes that is our baseline data from the very first assessment window my apologies because you were in so after we do the assessment in January that's when we'll look at growth data so I apologize this representation is not currently talking about growth but when you were asking me about unit assessments and how would it measure how students were doing on different units it would be in in those next assessments that you'd been able to say so the original assessment was done in January we're gonna do another assessment window sorry the first one was done in September our next window is going to be in January and then you can look at the concepts and topics upon which students have seen growth and we'll come back with that growth data in January when we have that so that you can see what what that looks like but it's not going to tell you at the end of a unit how your students did because it's only quarterly yeah so it's it's yeah I understand functions it if the instructions between now and January are between September and January functions hadn't been covered you wouldn't expect to see growth in that area okay that's so this is really to inform instruction so for example just take it from the perspective of a parent so you may or may not know if this has even happened right because you're not gonna get the results your students I can't get the results so the way that you're you're gonna know if your student is how they're doing in class is by whatever other tests that the teacher is doing so in a sense energy and then you're like well they're getting Cesar laser so we are working to to get data into the data dashboard it is the the classroom data is immediately available to the teachers so that they can use that to structure information we put together some simple ways to share data with parents at parent-teacher conferences if if folks were interested again this baseline data isn't the most interesting data the really interesting data is going to be after that that second window in January when we're really looking at at the growth and and so kind of of figuring out you know what when does it when does it when does it fit within the system and in what ways do we want to make that data visible back to to parents and so for this baseline data we just did kind of a really simple protocol and just kind of sketching the math and the reading on a piece of paper with some information on where the national norms were because it is it is useful data people kind of talk about oh it's the first assessment window it's not useful I'm like no it's not as interesting but it's still useful it gives us baseline data to kind of look at things and then and that's part of it again like this year the goal was to successfully give the but we've got a whole lot of structures we're gonna have to figure out and interact with parents and find out you know when are the touch points that the dais is needed what are the meaningful ways to to share that back you know and and to and how we do it and so we're we're talking with other districts who have been doing the maps assessment we're interacting with our teachers and and we're getting feedback but but this is not a black box assessment that you can never know how you did it's just kind of figuring out those those processes and protocols for for how to do it and to do it well you guys have to help me here okay like this test that we're using to measure literacy and math and list out the specific test for example so like what are you what would be the little under literacy what all mm-hmm tests you would think we would have that wouldn't you and we are building it right now so we are hoping to have that by the end of January but
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that is not something that cohesively and thoroughly exists right now so we're we're working on it that's a great idea it's important too because I think there were some confusion around some of the progress monitoring tools that I had used and that's going to be important going forward just because of the per mandate to address the dyslexia screening and needing to continue that line so be just helpful for us to know for example maybe why we're needing to do certain tests or continued to have them in an assessment yes matrix because and we have a team that is covering all of the different departments and then when we get that matrix together we're actually also then putting on what are the strengths and weaknesses of the different options that we have and we're going to be taking that out to teachers our educators we're going to be taking it out to building administrators because things that we see is strengths and weaknesses say of dibbles may be different than the strengths and weaknesses the people in schools are seeing but for efficiency we were starting to populate that matrix centrally so that then we kind of gave the gift of the first draft and got feedback and so dibbles at the kindergarten level is still in place whatever just to almost the president so part of your fourth year out is when your goal is to have across-the-board engagement of students and they just took this assessment here's your strengths here's your weaknesses and we're phasing that in so so kind of the plan is that to start with potentially focused students and have have teachers work with two or three students in their classes the first year and then to then build out to the next year to do it more because it's a learning process for all of us for how to do that and to go from zero to thirty to you know having those goals conferences with students that's part of the professional development plan and we would like to ease into it and kind of say okay let's start with you know let's identify two or three target students in our class let's have those goals meeting let's see how those work let's revise that plan and then the following year really looked to expanding it out and doing it with with all of the students in the classroom and so so at the high level I did just kind of the big landmarks for each of the the five years but we would we would ease into it so it's not going to be all the way to year four before we start doing those goal-setting meetings with students so does the 43% on the whole numbers represent and solve word problems which I'm not sure exactly what that phrase means except for the last part and solve our problems so it's word problems that involve whole numbers and and and so one of one of the things that you that could indicate is that we've got kids who are struggling with problem solving that they're strong with the computation and so if you give them a naked number problem they can solve it but when you embed it in a problem situation where they have to dig in and kind of figure out what numbers are important what numbers do I deal with which ones do I actually interact with that that might be something that our students are struggling more with and that wouldn't be surprising because nationally our students struggle with that more so I'm informally talking with either a teacher community college course and talking with others in the higher ed realm I was working with a student Monday who was taking calculus who did not know that 1 over 5 equals 20 percent and and that's in Vancouver which is supposedly beats the pants of us in educational quality right well no and I think my hypothesis is that this is a an outcome of the we're going for deep understanding at the cost of you know all those friggin times tables that I had to do back in third grade learning how to do long division yeah but we're ending up with I mean it's I don't know how to solve simple problems you know calculating the unemployment rate for the class that was that you know it's 10 over 50 what is that couldn't do it and they're taking calculus yeah save that for a later day and how
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we're doing it but I think that's a huge issue around I teaching to the test and and not to day-to-day application of math okay can I just follow up with that um well it it isn't it isn't because I think I would love to have a deep philosophical conversation about all these things because I think a lot of a lot of our questions a lot of our confusion a lot of our hesitation is actually grounded in kind of philosophical dilemmas that we're not talking about it might be worth talking about we have as a society right now it's yes quite past nine but you know it's at some point I think I think and key three math is it as a society we don't believe that everyone can do math we believe that everyone can read but we don't believe that everyone can do math and when is it okay maybe it's the way we're teaching math but anyway I agree with that so maybe during the visioning process maybe we can talk a little bit about educational philosophy and satisfying my desire for philosophical debate there but it could be a table topic yeah I mean it because and I've got a graduate course I've taught that I could get you the syllabus for information from the third assessment be useful to me and see if I'm teaching if they took algebra last year and I'm doing geometry this year will this be useful for me in terms of assessing their incoming proficiencies and where I might have to do some you would have insight as to the strengths that they had at the end of the the previous school year because right now at the high school level we were only doing the assessment in algebra classrooms we wanted to get that so those three sixth grade you know what they would be probably because at the very beginning of sixth grade they would be taking they would be taking the assessment again and so you'd be able to look at you know where were they at the end of fifth grade where are they now at the beginning of sixth grade where were their Summer Slide topics and then you'd know like at the beginning of sixth grade what are the things that they really know where are their strengths what are the things that you can leverage in your instruction to to build on and you would have that data at the individual student level and you would also have classroom level reports to kind of know as a class it can also be used to help group students so that you can do heterogeneous grouping for problem solving types of situations and you could do homogeneous grouping to do like centers and really do a deep dive because these are my five kids who just cannot figure out how to divide with fractions and so I can do a focus group with them because I now I have I have some additional information on how to work with that I did my best soccer coaching when I did any other questions um okay okay well can I can I go back to an earlier slide before we got into the data it's the way it's it's the one on the five-year plan yes ma'am nope there there we go okay so so I just want to ask a few so what would qualify as a successful implementation the number like for our first assessment window I would say we had a successful implementation of the first assessment window we have lessons learned we have things we need to improve we need to get the numbers of students taking over ninety minutes down and we need to get this number of students taking over fifty minutes way down and so across the next two windows a huge indicator of success for me would be getting getting those time time to test numbers way down and we have data to focus that support we we have some strategies in place and we're really gonna we're gonna work with
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schools that had really high numbers and we're going to kind of really review with with the educators that are are on the front lines giving the assessment is you know really talk with students about this idea that it's really okay to miss the problem we want you to try hard we don't want you just to kind of blow through it and not care but it's really okay that if I've tried and I just don't get it I can make my best guess and move on and so we're hoping that as we can kind of I mean it's a shift for all of us I mean cut pretty much every other a system assessment in our system right now is all about getting as many questions right as you can and so to have something come into the system where it's like nope you're gonna try really hard but if you don't know it make your best guess and move on because as I said before it's important to know what you know and it's important to know what what learning still needs to take place I mean that's why you're still in school there's still more to learn and so that for me would be successful implementation is is to get to the point to kind of lower the pain right now okay so what was the original plan for how I mean I'm actually confused about year one versus year three you three is expand to k12 so what are we doing now so the the original the original plan for mathematics was to start with grades three through algebra focusing on mathematics but for our title schools because there are additional data requirements especially in related to SF and the need for a a full data management system for the title schools they were given the option of implementing it k2 as well and these were site based decisions some sites may have been more inclusive into making sure it was something that everyone was bought into some sites it may have been a little bit more directive from the principal level that's part of growth as a system and so this is so you know it's kind of we can we can continue to have conversations we can continue to work with schools is it unfortunate that at a couple of sites it was more of a top-down decision than a than a collaborative decision yep so so now what so I mean that happens so first test so now what we just gonna I mean others schools gonna power through to test2 and test3 or are they are you have you put the I mean have you backtracked I'm a what so one of the one of the areas of greatest pain was at our DLI schools where students were done did the assessment in both English and Spanish research-based best practice says that you actually do want to do that maybe not in the first year maybe maybe we learn how to do the assessment and get things more efficient and so what we are going to do for the second assessment window is we're going to ask schools pick a language and we're going to collaborate with DLI and with the individual schools so that there is an intelligent protocol for the picking of that language so in our lower grades it might be something specific in our upper grades it might be the language of greatest proficiency I'm not saying that's the way it's going to be I'm just trying to give an exemplar but we have we have a little bit of time to kind of say okay if we're gonna back off if we're not gonna do it in two languages what's the best advice we can give the schools for how to pick the language because we don't want to just kind of throw it to them and say hey you guys figure it out so so that that is going to be one of the things that we do in a conversation in the recent conversation with the Peter said that question came up because there was an understanding that for the Li programs had been asked to test about languages in continuing to communicate with principals we cannot find a single principal who has actually done that and so this they were only assessed as far as we how we could make how we communicated to site administrators and it has been said by by PT leadership that that they were told by teachers that students were in DI programs were asked to assess in both languages since then Michael bacon and other people have been communicating with their principals and as of now we have not found a principal and I am hearing that is not true what I am saying is that we have not been able to identify a principal who has said
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that they have been assessing in both languages in the k2 in in the k2 and that it was in the language of the majority of the ins where the instruction took place whether it was Spanish which is the case in our di programs will be able to but this was just a very recent conversation it was yesterday so so my understanding i I've heard the original plan was to and I may get the grades wrong but to limit the testing to like third grade mm-hmm that was original something and but some schools did it K through 2 so so title schools are funded programs made available to those schools that they could also do the assessment k2 and that's what I was saying that was a site based decision and and as I said some sites did it inclusively and and had it had it be kind of a collaborative decision that that that's what we were going to do and some sites it was a bit more of a top-down decision and so it it you know that that's gonna be a growth area for us moving forward to kind of like you know when when we have these situations that it's going to be a site based decision you know kind of how do we have that be more more opening and collaborative but but that but that's the reality of what happens some schools are doing it from K on and are very happy and we have a number of reports from tidal schools that are so excited to be seeing consistent data across the whole school in math and language arts and that they're very pleased with it and then we have some other schools that are that are really unhappy and and all of those are our constituents and we have to to work to to find a way to do better moving forward so I am a couple of things concerned me a I think one of the problems we've had as a district is kind of offloading decision-making about important things on to school principals basically and I thought we were trying to move away from that so I'm surprised to hear that there was that much flexibility and - and this is verging on philosophical I got a problem with assessing kindergartners I got a problem but I'll let that go for the moment not forever but for the moment pick up those kids that might need a little extra boost there it's not like they need hours of assessment and assessments needs to be developmentally you know appropriate time also I also okay this is verging into philosophy um kindergarten should not be the new second grade kindergarten should be stealing you know free play and you know I wary about I worry about yeah rigor yeah I worry man hey max has given economics rigor alas but also mortis Robert Kyle Brock thank you oh I was just gonna say if you had a student though in kindergarten who hadn't picked it up any of the basic fundamentals and they went into first grade they're gonna be I mean just the it's not having a rigorous kindergarten experience but it's if you get but do we need a 50-minute assessment what unless that's I must say that I think just philosophically it's worth knowing if your child's heading into first grade totally unprepared and way behind other students and most times parents you don't know what you don't know I'm not I'm not advocating for a game you got entreat the new second grade that's fine if you have a child who's reading by third grade they're not what it's not about assessing it's about a particular assessment that that is sitting down at a computer for however
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many long it it is to assess it I don't think you need that long to assess it kindergartners math skills or art that you need to do at a computer I that that's that's the yeah so thank you guys on stability and I know that there's a lot of questions here I know that we're not questioning the role of assessments entirely but first year implementation is to help gather input feedback learn some lessons clarify guidance to our school leaders making sure that we're continuing to provide support and more importantly provoking important conversations about what if students learned what do they still need to learn and what adjustments do we make in the classroom and at the system's level to provide equitable interventions so everybody's achieving so that's that's our responsibility that's what we're gonna keep working at there are no perfect instruments but that's the whole point of having a balanced assessment system that there's a range of those that are used at the classroom level and primarily their to inform instruction but also to inform the system moves that were being held accountable for for making sure are in place so we look forward to telling you more as this continues to evolve I have lots of opinions on lots that was mentioned tonight but I'll reserve those for our conversations as district administration on how we proceed thank you so at our next exciting episode I want to give you a chance one I enjoyed your presentation to give you a chance to amplify on successful implementation because AC I'm gonna assume it it's a lot more than cutting down the time it takes the test it's also Wow now we've got two sets of data now we're learning our strengths and weaknesses now we can definitely be doing our homework about all the hundreds of districts that do use the map successfully across the grade levels to see how they've addressed some of these similar kind of concerns when they first started rolling these out years ago yes ma'am it'd be more shocking if we had no data I can't see that chart from here and I don't have the package so we would like to invite all of you we know it can't be in more than three people at a time but to come to our offices to have smaller conversations where we can really dig in and answer questions and if it's a smaller group then of course it can go wherever that group wants but this is such a hard format to do that in and to really teach and we'd love to do that so we're all saying we'd love to do office hours we can get a group together we can talk about MTS SG b c eb b l so we'll work with roseanne to see what you all would like in addition to we would like to come back multiple times to work sessions because not only do we have what we know now but we're learning so much more and doing so much more so there's always more to talk about did you want to say anything about the disaggregated data or we're wanting to know do you want us to answer that right now well I'm the in the immediate our students are students of color are not doing are not performing well without exception correct so this first administration of the map is confirming what summative results an observation have been telling us and so once again it's just underlining that we have a lot of work to understand why that is and so this is one data point
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there are certainly others and why we need assessments that give us that drill down data to the skills so that we can tell district why what what we do to provide those supports at the district level or from the discrete district level okay thank you rate division 22 so given the time this is just an update I know you have it in front of you I don't intend to read it to you I can kind of summarize but our promise to you almost a year ago when I the first meeting I had with you was the division 22 report and the areas were we were not in compliance so we have summarized quickly what we are doing to be in compliance and where we will be into compliance we had talked at agenda-setting one time of just providing you the written information and then having you send me questions and then we decided to put it on a work session given the time I don't know if if you would like to do it that way I think it's short enough to read through and see where your questions are why don't you just start with thankfully a couple of areas where we are on track to be back into compliance this year so why don't you just talk about the couple of areas where you don't expect that we'll be able to get back into compliance so one of them we've talked about over and over again and that's the materials adoption the library systems we will be in compliance but there's a component to what is expected under division 22 that is aligned with where you are with your curriculum because the expectation is that you're aligning your materials in your libraries to go with your curriculum so that is just ongoing work and as we do new adoptions we'll have to look at library materials as well and under the talented and gifted I think I was a little confused because I didn't have enough information about what we had done and where the tag act plan was so what the state requires is that we meet students rate in level and so that is what we're working on right now I know board members have asked where are we with the tag act plan and we've kind of done a reset with the new tag coordinator that we have - a tag director she's meeting with tag AK and right now there are a few priorities they're working on one of them is moving to ensure universal second-grade testing and to improve that identification process and the services for our ll students and students that are twice exceptional the other challenging area that always is and has been my entire career is how what are the assessments you use and how do you identify the historically underserved students because we're very under identified in that area so that is something that they're taking on with earnest and so not only have we done the training with every single school on Wright and level every school has a tag plan there is a facilitator in every school who is responsible for making sure that assessments happen that rate and level is being met for the students and I think what you can see in the way that we're responding to all of these speaks to our efforts to be systemic so just it's not that some of these things didn't happen before especially around talented and gifted it just wasn't consistent and there wasn't any checking really or any accountability and and then there wasn't the follow-up that we want to provide now which is that ongoing professional development where teachers have individual students and they need some support with how do I meet the rate and level if the students really high very high above the rest of the kids it needs it at a really quick pace they need support around that sometimes you need to cluster kids in the building and so just more professional development for everyone in that professional development has to be aligned with the GBC professional development because it's tied to those standards so those are areas that will just be ongoing I think the rest of them were on track and you saw under PE we can't we won't meet the PE compliance until we're in compliant with the minutes and then the curriculum work has to be aligned with those minutes so that'll be the one area where we will just continue to use our
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current PE adoption which has been approved by OTE the other area that we are not in compliance we have a waiver and we'll ask for extension this year is around instructional materials for ll students our ESL materials the GBC if you are going to follow that same model so they've done them together and embedded the ll standards into the core standards do you want to speak to them yes and I don't need a lengthy it's been because again what I had tried with you about the accelerated pace the integration one of the things that happened and you can imagine they became in our in our development and now in the initial iteration so we have to rethink some of that and that is where Kimberly and the team are now revisiting that because the expectations that they're integrated and not another box and because we do content-based eld it has to go along with each of the content areas however I can say just having been in the state for a while that the adopted program that we're using right now avenues was the recommendation by the state originally until the standards changed so we're aligned until we can get everything else aligned but just kind of I know I'm working backwards now on the page but just speaking to the just making things systemic the library services and ensuring that we we are up to speed with with the standards of how we're operating and distributing materials a lot of that can only be done when it's done centrally and then we can monitor it so that is I think the major effort was to continue working on our curriculum continue making sure that we aligned with one another and that we have system-wide approaches and ways to continue to support with professional development and then to continue monitoring implementation of those so we will be back with you on January 4th with where we are in compliance for this year but you already have a preview of what that is and then on January 22nd we will come to a work session on the tag plan and Linda will be here and Aurora and they'll talk more about what's in that plan that they've been working with the parent tag at Groupon know we just come to you and report whether we're compliant or not we're where we needed waivers or extensions and in January 4th and it's way ahead of schedule because we don't have to have it to them until February 1st but we just wanted to get it done because we already have the information like say here the three area will be three areas that are no longer that work so not a compliance would so yes and every year OD eat tells us what they want us to respond to in Division twenty two you may remember last year that I shared with you teams had worked statewide superintendents with to lower the mandating requirements from OD e because there were so many reports they were mandating that and they weren't looking at them they weren't giving us any feedback they weren't monitoring anything so we said we would rather you tell us what are the ones you think are most important are new that you think most people are not in compliant with because a lot of it was a lot of work a lot of reporting and then nothing and so they had started a new format of like picking two or three areas and then wanting to go deep into that well then they kind of were reduced in capacity to even monitor that so the last two years they've just sent a list where you just check off the box are you compliant or not we haven't yet gotten a copy of how we have to report it they said they're working on it we should have it soon so what we're intending to do at this point is to use the same checkoff list but we thought it was most important to report where we knew we were not compliant and where we would continue to have be not in compliant going forward because the response it's a responsibility of the superintendent to make sure we're in compliant or have reported that to the board so you just need to hear the report and then the minutes and the agenda just go into our report toady so it is acceleration part of core in
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what context well you're you said like eld is part of core in our core instruction is acceleration part of core considered core or not rate and level is that what you're responding to yes yes every student should be getting instruction at their rate and level and that was something I wanted to mention earlier we can talk about it more with tag but by a using adaptive test I've actually seen tagged teachers teach students kind of what the tests give them and then for students to start using the assessments themselves to see where they can challenge themselves actually Rosen was just telling me hurt her daughter's doing that right now she's saying I love this test because it's telling me what I know and what I don't know I said maybe she should do the presentation but on there are many ways to use that data with students so they own their own learning and of course we're just at the beginning of it but I've been in districts where we have used that as a way of helping kids know the rate and level and have them help create extensions for themselves which oftentimes they can do so in our hear about the tag plan the accountability piece so our schools actually integrating rate and level into their instruction the daily instruction how do we know that the interesting because that is the facilitators job to what did they call it a tag yeah facilitator so um first we had to make sure we had one identified and they were actually doing that work and then we had to go out and provide the professional development now their job is to follow up with teachers who have students who are identified as talented and gifted and help them understand when they take assessments what is it they need how can they do that how can they differentiate in their classroom or if the teacher says I need other help I need other supports then they have somebody to help and and then the facilitator asks for that help at the district office taters shop or the principal's job facilitators job I mean the principal's have to be backing up that facilitator because a facilitator can't go tell a teacher what to do they're really the support for that so it's really a team okay so I know we have some public comments I'm a costume teacher and ESL teacher and also an ESL Tosa I just want to say talk about map testing in layman's terms this is standardized testing gone wild seriously we I was um trained to go out and help teachers understand the test and also get feedback from them which I provided to the district and to the MWA and the three biggest components that were is that it was not useful for instruction that it was an incredible loss of instructional time and I know Elizabeth has more of that information and also extremely stressful and and for kids and for teachers but really for kids and I think you know Julie you mentioned it I think the best we have you're operating under these assumptions that teachers have no idea how their kids are doing that teachers that we can't use the s back or summative assessments to decide you know where we can fund more algebra instruction or where kids are going so as we go along we know that kids are as teachers we know where kids are at or giving assessments and so it's three times a year and originally it was supposed to be in grades three through eight math in August was told to us and then all of a sudden it's reading and then all of a sudden it's it's k2 in title one schools so we're talking you know I've been up many many nights after the last IPC meeting that I testified because I'm so upset about it because basically what we're doing is kids of color and four kids are getting over tested it is disgusting it is inappropriate and it is not okay and basically I was also trained when we looking at the data so you group out the kids because you can see where they're you know not meeting and when you're giving them a test where 50% of what they're getting is they're gonna fail at basically and so we get groups of kids and we were told to group kids and I think as as a
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district we pedagogically we should not be tracking kids and tracking kids of color or tracking low-income kids thank you hi my name is Caroline : and I teach third grade at Llewellyn Elementary and I'm a PPS parent my daughter's gonna graduate from Cleveland and I come I'm a nine year teacher here mostly in third grade I was five years on the Karen equity committee I'm dyslexia coordinator for my building and I'm in the leadership committee as well just to kind of give you an appreciation to the on the ground perspective and my comments aren't as written out because I really want to respond and try and make some connections welcome to our world the exact conversations that have led you here for three hours tonight are what we are doing in the hallways and in our staff rooms and trying to fit in throughout the past month I want to give a couple compliments just to because we was got to have a little positive I in the GBC conversation the scope and sequence information that you saw and those relevance amount of time are the websites maybe all are working well I mean in terms of our accessibility however all this conversation we started with assessment and everything you're connecting here is why workload staffing levels the staffing model has to stay on the forefront of conversation you can see with all this that you're digesting how that impacts us when we're trying to go in and now we're delivering it so I have to take this tomorrow and deliver it to my 24 students and during the testing and relative to maps I agree absolutely with the very front part of that presentation what good assessment is what has happened in math with disintegrated curriculum and that we need stronger cooperative coherent assessments but I give probably the first quarter to my third graders half-dozen ten different assessments for standards that correlate with the bridge I have a report card I do four times a year the more those are done well done better that's where I grade that's where I inform my instruction Maps is a piece and it is very much a district piece I cannot go there first to inform my instruction it told you a lot tonight my map testing I could sit and go through that data and have that big data conversation you just have but I want to look at what the students are doing I need all those assessments and the more I can electronically enter them the more I can rubric them the more I can take that as my measurements versus a map test which does not allow my students to use their best expression of learning does not allow me to partial grade Thaksin language that doesn't match my report card or what my standards are it's just not a priority let alone all the comments that Rebecca and you'll hear all the way through it's not that I don't think those are important but I want to give you that perspective otherwise so again I think that focus needs to change and change dramatically in terms of what's happening both in math and how we're measuring and how you guys are receiving information there's tons of information you just can't get it I have you know what I do every year so that's how I and again measuring how we are going to measure our students I want to focus not so much is good or not but just kind of like what what we're doing is the district but as far as the philosophy question I mean one thing that pains me was to see it embedded into our framework of assessment which that collaborative work with PPS that was done over many years is based on the work of Brix Dickens who clearly outlines the experience for a student when they're taking an exam and that that an exam is like students need to feel success and when you are given an exam and you cannot answer the questions correctly when it's not on stuff you've been taught that feeling of failure and this can happen with high achieving anxious students as well as low achieving students who feel that challenge and so we've now are working with an assessment that just kind of guarantees that every single student taking it has to experience that level of failure and I think that's a philosophy conversation I'd love for us
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to have but right now I want to talk about the five year plan the inconsistencies that I heard in tonight's testimony and and maybe to clarify something so we've brought up concerns with the map testing since the first administration we brought it up with a superintendent we've brought it up with our instructional and professional development Council so this statement for example about whether or not students should be taking the language the test in two different different languages at the at the same time that was a question that we asked in member and said we needed an answer by our December meeting which was yesterday at this point in time no one can answer whether or not a student should have to take a test twice in two different languages so it's hard to even know how to begin the philosophy conversation about what best practices is when people aren't aligned and that goes back to your comments about you know like every principal got to choose and how did they choose and who's monitoring how many different things are happening at once within a certain school and how could things like that happen we had educators who gave this to their students the test in two different languages come and speak to PBS about that so it's having that like oh it didn't happen is um it's pretty indicative of what it's gonna take for us to actually be successful at something so that's kind of like my my big overarching thing here's our district's big it's growing there's plenty of areas to look at to adapt what should our focus how much time have we spent what are their focus for our educators when we talked about leveraging work that's been done providing equity opportunity curriculum I mean look at our special education students that still don't have good curriculum adoptions there's so much work that we could be focus focusing on students safety climate discipline these are things that we've been talking about for a long time that are foundation to good teaching and to being amp for students to be able to learn and when there's those kinds of disruptions happening in the classroom there's real immediate needs that time and attention needs to be looked at so at this point in time we have still not gotten clear answers on a certain thing we know that it was a district plan to roll out the map test for third through eighth grade and maybe that's a good test and maybe it isn't and and this should be that opportunity to work on that but with this over expansion there's been like technology issues there's differences and and no one can answer should kindergartners be taking this and who decided and do we want to stop it what about kindergarten get in Spanish and in English in math and in reading and so what I would I appreciate the time you're spending and I think what I want to just point out is that not everyone's even clear and on what we're trying to do and why we're trying to do it and it's important to slow down get things right gather good input and and really kind of concretely define some some specific answers to questions that people are wondering because the next testing windows in January and we still do not have some really basic answers to questions so that's what I wanted to say yeah and hi I was part of the committee that created that balanced assessment framework and I'm really happy to see it being brought to this group visits I think some really important work and it's work that's important to me and Allison who had to leave because she teaches early in the morning and he needs good bed she was on that committee too and I know it's work that's really important to her having a district that has a strong assessment policy that makes sense and and and serves kids well and also meets the needs of a district and one of the slides that was shown had those concentric circles of formative assessment being the bulk of the of the assessment we do with interim and summative assessments being thin rings on the on the outside I want to be clear map testing is not a formative assessment it is an interim assessment formative assessments are created by teachers are flexible to be used and really directly to what you're teaching so that right then when you give it you can adjust most formative assessments are very quick they might take a number of seconds it might be a question I ask it might be an exit slip at the end of a class so that I can adjust the next day but a formative assessment is not something that takes a week of instruction for a student to use and may or may not be related to what I was teaching them in the first place I want you guys to be clear about the kind of instructional time that map testing used when we when we heard of the plan the original plan in August we were told that map testing would be about an hour per kid three times a year because it that's only for kids three grades three through algebra and we also heard that after the testing window closed PBS gathered data about the average time that students were logged in and we were told look it was about the same it was about an hour per kid but we were hearing from teachers is that an hour per kid logged in is not the same as a
03h 45m 00s
our of lost instructional time for many reasons because logging in a class full of first graders does not take zero time it takes a lot of time and kids were getting logged out and there were technical difficulties but despite any difficulties kids have to take time to get logged in we know not all kids can concentrate through its 60 minutes of a standardized test so kids we're stopping and then starting the next day and we also know that however much time it takes the average kid is not what's important in the class what's important is how long it takes the class to finish and so when we ask teachers what's the amount of time it took you to get back for two instruction the average answer from teachers was three hours per test and so then I want you to remember that in our title one schools especially students were taking this test in math and English starting in kindergarten and that and we will be doing that four times a year so that is three hours times two tests times three times years 18 hours of instructional time for students who are doing that in two languages that's twice as much so 36 hours of instructional time potentially per student and I want to put way this I'm against one of the goals I know this this board has expressed and expressed today actually is the the importance of our instructional time how are we going to get through the curriculum that we believe is important how we're gonna get through the standards that we believe is important for our students and while we have this new guaranteed viable curriculum and we're asking teachers to follow we're also asking them to make time for dozens of hours of testing that are that haven't been accounted for and I also want to point out something that with the West set and result in in relation to the results of the mat testing that you saw these tests are verifying what we already know and that is how teachers feel about Maps testing this is information we already know about our kids no teacher waited until October to find out which of their kids are behind in reading which of their kids are struggling with computation which other kids don't know how to do word problems those are things we figured out in August in ways that our kids might not even notice that we were gathering data on them because this is what teachers do we start the first minute we meet a kid and we gather data and we're assessing them formatively so that we can give them the instruction they need without them even noticing that instruction stopped because it didn't stop and so when we talk about the need to have a balanced assessment system we're supposed to be valuing the students education and making sure that those rings of need for people in this building to be able to look into our classrooms is not getting in the way of students need to learn and I think that perhaps an unintended consequence of choosing this system is that it gives tons of fascinating information I love those reports too I could look at them for hours but if that is at the expense of students learning opportunity that is not an ethical decision to make I think that I can stop there yeah thank you and happy to answer questions if you have now we're privately or other ways if you have them about about what we've heard from teachers about how this is going I think the silence you're hearing is 10 p.m. yeah okay anything else for the good of the order okay we're going to adjourn and the next regular meeting is next next Tuesday of

Sources

PPS Board of Education, Archive 2018-2019, https://www.pps.net/Page/14001 (accessed: 2022-03-24T00:57:50.174924Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)

2018-12-04 PPS School Board Work Session

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education-Work Session, December 4, 2018

Sources