South Dakota education plan would downplay graduation rate

by Josh Verges
Argus Leader

High school graduation rates would play a relatively small role in determining how well a school is performing if a new South Dakota school accountability system is adopted.

The state plans to submit a waiver request to the federal government next month, which would allow the state to start using its own system next school year in place of No Child Left Behind’s goals.



The original draft of the plan, released last month, would have made high school graduation rates only 4 percent of a school’s total grade. An updated draft, published Friday, increases that to 10 percent.

Continue here...

Class Reflections - Module 1

Article: What is Instructional Leadership? by Thomas R. Hoerr
From Education Leadership December 2007/January 2008

Roland Barth - Improving Schools from Within
Barth says - "If students are to grow and learn, their teachers must grow and learn, too."

Four aspects of collegiality

1. teachers talking about students
2. teachers developing curriculum together
3. teaching observing one another teach
4. teachers teaching one another

***Teachers and administrators working together to shape a solution for a particular school issue.***

"I share the concept of collegiality with my faculty, which helps them see themselves as resources and partners in creating a collegial setting. I expressly include collegiality on teachers' end-of-year evaluations, commending some for leading committees or helping teammates and pointing out to others that they are not yet active participants in our learning community." Hoerr

"Teachers need to see their principals as partners in education, learning with and from them." Hoerr


Article: How Leadership influences student learning by Keith Leithwood, Karen Seashore Louis, Stephen Anderson and Kyla Wahlstrom From the Learning Project Commissioned by The Wallace Foundation


It turns out that leadership not only matters; it is second only to teaching among school-related factors in its impact on student learning.


1. Leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school-related factors that contribute to what students learn at school.

The total (direct and indirect) effects of leadership on student learning account for about a quarter of total school effects.


2. Leadership effects are usually largest where and when they are needed most. 

demonstrated effects of successful leadership are considerably greater in schools that are in more difficult circumstances. There are virtually no documented instances of troubled schools being turned around without intervention by a powerful leader. Leadership is the catalyst.


Different forms of Leadership

1. Many labels are used in literature to signify different forms or styles of leadership mask the generic functions of leadership.

Labled: instructional, participative, democratic, transformational, moral, strategic - Be skeptical about "Leadership by Adjective"

Two essential objectives critical to any organization's effectiveness: 

1. helping the organization set a defensible set of directions
2. influencing members to more in those directions

2. Principals, superintendents and teachers are all being admonished to be "instructional leaders" without much clarity about what that means.

Hallinger's model

• defining the school's mission
• managing the instructional program
• promoting a positive learning climate

3. "Distributed leadership" is in danger of becoming no more than a slogan unless it is given more thorough and thoughtful consideration.

Successful leaders develop and count on contributions from many others in their organizations. 

• teacher leaders
• parent leaders

Leadership must be carried out at different levels of the organization.

The Basics of Successful Leadership
1. Setting Directions
the largest proportion of a leader's impact is helping one's colleagues develop shared understandings about the organization and its activities and goals that can under gird a sense of purpose or vision

• identifiying and articulating a vision
• fostering the acceptance of group goals
• creating high performance expectations
• monitoring organization performance 
• promoting effective communication

 2. Developing People

• work-related motivations are influenced by the direct experiences organizational members have with those in leadership roles as well as the organizational context within which people work
• offering intellectual stimulation
• providing individualized support
• providing appropriate practice and beliefs considered fundamental to the organization

 3. Redesigning the Organization

• the contribution of schools to student learning depends on the motivations and capacities of teachers and administrators, acting both individually and collectively
• Successful educational leaders develop their districts and school as effective organizations that support and sustain the performance of administrators and teachers, as well as students

• strengthening district and school cultures
• modifying organizational structures
• building collaborative processes

The purpose behind the redesign of organizational cultures and structures is to facilitate the work of organizational members and that the malleability of structures should match the changing nature of the school's improvement agenda.

We need to develop leaders with large repertoires of practices and the capacity to chose from that repertoire as needed, not leaders trained in the delivery of one "ideal" set of practices.
1. Organizational Context

South Dakota ranks last in education policy, performance

by Josh Verges
Argus Leader

South Dakota is rated last in a new report on education policy and performance in the United States.
Education Week’s “Quality Counts 2012” gives South Dakota particularly low marks for education spending, college readiness and supports for the teaching profession.
The state did OK on an achievement index that examines test scores, improvement over time and poverty-based performance disparities.
South Dakota earned a D+ overall.

For the rest of the story click here...

January Literacy Lab

Jane and I attended the Comprehension Strategies Learning Lab in Mission last night. Katy and Erin really did a great job. The information was relevant to the work we are doing in our classrooms. I highly recommend you attend. Click here for a schedule of the Learning Labs.

Here are a few key discussion points from the meeting:

Teachers, we have access to the Choice Literacy website as well as the Daily Cafe. You should have received an email earlier in the year with your passwords. If you don't have them you can go to the site, go to lost password and type in your TCSD address. If you don't receive an email with a password, let Katy or Erin know.

Here are a couple of additional sites that were mentioned:
Mosaic Listserv
The Reading Lady

• I was snooping around on the Reading Lady site and found a page with Comprehension Strategy posters. Click here. 

 Metacognitive Strategies - Thinking Strategies - (from Mosaic of Thought and Strategies that Work)

• Monitoring for Meaning - knowing when you know, knowing when you don't know
• Using and Creating Schema - making connections between new and the known, building and activating background knowledge
• Asking Questions - generating questions before, during, and after reading that lead you deeper into the text
• Inferring - combining back ground knowledge with information from the text to predict, conclude, make judgements, interpret
• Mental/Sensory Imagery - creating mental images to deepen and stretch meaning
• Determining Importance - deciding what matters most, what is worth remembering
• Synthesizing - creating an evolution of meaning by combining understanding with knowledge from other texts/sources.

Katy and Erin recommended that we don't try teaching all seven of these strategies every year, but rather that we decide as grades what 1 or 2 concepts should be taught each year. So, kindergarten would focus on certain concepts, 1st grade would focus on certain concepts, etc.

Katy and Erin had example of anchor charts to use with each concept. Jane and I both wrote down examples. If you are interested in seeing our notes let us know.

We also watched several videos that modeled these strategies. The videos are posted on the Choice Literacy and Daily Cafe sites.

Lastly, they gave us a Think Aloud strategies script. It's a script on how to use Think Alouds to teach the Thinking Strategies. Again, please let us know if you would like a copy of the script.

Daugaard: Overhaul how we pay teachers in South Dakota

by Josh Verges
Argus Leader

Gov. Dennis Daugaard on Tuesday unveiled an education reform package that would phase out tenure and pay $15 million in annual bonuses to high-performing and hard-to-find teachers.
The legislation, to be filed as a single bill later this week, eventually would end the due process protections that make it expensive and time-consuming to fire veteran teachers. Any teacher who is tenured as of July 1 this year will maintain that status, but no one else could get it in the future.
The trade-off for teachers is $15 million in additional compensation paid directly from the state each year.

For more click here...

Grant to address American Indian teen pregnancy

Source: KSFY

The University of South Dakota and the nonprofit Sanford Research have been awarded a $1.5 million grant to address teen pregnancy rates among American Indians.
Teen pregnancy rates among Native Americans are four times higher than those for the rest of the state's population.
The grant from the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities will be used to research the reasons why and develop a prevention program. Amy Elliot with Sanford Research says the program would be for reservation and urban Indians throughout the Northern Plains.
Helping with the project are the University of Minnesota, South Dakota Urban Indian Health and the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen's Health Board.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

October Math Meeting

Structures
K-1
Ten Frame
2-3
Base Ten System
4-5
Array - creation and decomposition
Multiplication/Division - Quick Images - groupings
Expressions


7E
Elicit
Engage
Explore
Explain
Elaborate
Evaluate
Extend

Connect math with the world around us

I have _7 bananas______ |||| My friend gave me _____8 bananas______
I have ____15 bananas___________.