Plan to Attend

The next Demographics Task Force Meeting: Tuesday, January 3rd from Noon-2pm at the Mark Sanford Education Center on 47th Avenue

The next School Board Meeting: Monday, January 9th at 6pm at the Mark Sanford Education Center on 47th Avenue

The bi-annual Public Forum: Monday, January 23rd with Business Meeting at 6pm and Forum at 7pm at South Middle School on 47th Avenue
Pre-Register for Forum by contacting me with your name, phone number, and address.

Consider the City's Goals

The Grand Forks Herald Opinion:

OUR OPINION: GF schools should consider city’s goals
Shouldn’t the Grand Forks School District declare that it shares with the city of Grand Forks the goal of avoiding and/or counteracting urban blight?
By: Tom Dennis for the Herald, Grand Forks Herald

The Grand Forks School District is thinking about closing a school in the north end. Parents in the area object, saying the closure will hurt the neighborhood and slow or stop its revitalization.
What does the city of Grand Forks think?
In particular, what does the city of Grand Forks think given that the city has an explicit policy of investing in Grand Forks’ traditional neighborhoods “to ensure they remain quality places for individuals and families to live, work, learn, and play”?
The school district should ask the city for its view. And if that’s the first result of Tyrone and Becca Grandstrand’s thoughtful letter on this page, it likely won’t be the last.
The Grandstrands write from a unique vantage: She’s on the School Board, he’s on the City Council. So, not only have they watched the processes in both of their organizations and seen the need for more cooperation, but also their voices and votes can be counted on to support such a change.
We suspect there will be a lot more support among other School Board and City Council members as well, because communicating and cooperating just make sense.
Take the issue of closing a school. Again, as stated in the Mayor’s Urban Neighborhood Initiative and other policies, helping the north end avoid blight and boost the ratio of owner-occupied homes is the official policy of the city of Grand Forks.
Shouldn’t the school board be brought up to date on that policy before making a decision that might affect it?
This makes more sense than having the district consider school enrollments, demographic trends and budgets in a kind of vacuum, almost as if the city government and its concerns didn’t exist.
In fact, shouldn’t the district at least consider declaring that it, too, shares the goal of avoiding and/or counteracting urban blight?
That way, the city and school district could work together to reach mutual goals rather than finding themselves at cross purposes.
This isn’t a question of blurring jurisdictions or infringing on each other’s turf. It’s a question of recognizing we’re all in this together and that in order to be at their best, Grand Forks schools need healthy neighborhoods — just like healthy neighborhoods need good schools.
The Grandstrands say it well: “We urge the city and school district to work together more closely, as we are only successful when we all succeed in the long run.” Let the mayor and other city officials give the school district their views about the impact of closing a school. And let that communication and cooperation be the start of a beautiful friendship.
Tom Dennis for the Herald

Our Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor in the Grand Forks Herald:

GF city, school district should work together
It is clear that the city of Grand Forks and the Grand Forks School District have had both successes and challenges on the north end. To ensure we succeed, we urge the city and school district to work together more closely, as we are only successful when we all succeed in the long run.
By: Tyrone and Becca Grandstrand

GRAND FORKS — The recent discussion about closing north end schools has made us start thinking about why we live on the north end of Grand Forks.
We value all of Grand Forks; in fact, Tyrone grew up on the south end of town and loved it. But we chose to live on the north end when we bought our home.
We love that we are within walking and biking distance of a grocery store, two convenience stores, the university, downtown, the Greenway, and Becca’s job at the North Dakota Museum of Art.
As a result of the higher density and character of the area, we have met many wonderful neighbors who come from all walks of life. We greatly value the nearby schools and, based on the number of younger families moving into the area, it seems to be a common trend.
We appreciate that when we have children, they will be able to walk or bike to school throughout their K-12 experience, as we are close to Winship, Valley and Central.
Walkability is particularly important considering the health benefits and the reduced risk of obesity for us and our children.
Our values and reasons for living here shouldn’t be surprising. Housing industry experts have noted that 77 percent of Millennials (our generation) plan to live in more centralized, walkable locations that promote a sense of connection and community, with access to schools, farmers’ markets, transit systems and restaurants.
In fact, the Greater Grand Forks Young Professionals have put a priority on advocating for improvements in Grand Forks’ ability to meet these needs for our generation’s preferences as well as our community’s health and well-being. This is great news for everyone who prefers lower taxes because neighborhoods that are more densely built also require fewer tax dollars to provide services.
It is clear that the city of Grand Forks and the Grand Forks School District have had both successes and challenges on the north end. To ensure we succeed, we urge the city and school district to work together more closely, as we are only successful when we all succeed in the long run.
Long-term thinking and building cooperation are two of the major reasons we ran for office. We urge our colleagues to take these ideals into account when making decisions that will affect our community now and for generations to come.
Tyrone Grandstrand is a member of the Grand Forks City Council. Becca Grandstrand is a member of the Grand Forks School Board.

Letter the Editor in the GFH

Letter to the Editor in the Grand Forks Herald:

Marsha Gunderson, Grand Forks, column: In GF, school-closing costs may exceed the benefits
Cost savings are important to us all. But on balance, will the savings really offset our losses?
By: Marsha Gunderson

GRAND FORKS — Schools, especially elementary schools, are the sustaining element in living, livable neighborhoods. The very existence of an active school can provide energy, identity and a sense of community for its students, parents, teachers and neighbors.

Active neighborhood schools support their immediate community in so many ways: 

• Walkability promotes healthy children and reduces car emissions and potential vehicle accidents. 
• Property values are maintained because homes near schools appeal to a broader segment of the population.
• After-school programs are within walking distance of homes.
• Affordable and lower-income neighborhoods retain direct access to quality education.
• Neighbors have a venue for voting, meetings, community activities and emergency shelter.
• Children have a safe, familiar, accessible playground.
• School district funding is supported more broadly by non-parent voters, who develop ownership for the school through community activities.

School closure also has impacts well beyond the immediate effect of removing children and parents from their home school. The natural cycle of neighborhood rejuvenation — older owners selling to young families — is disrupted when young parents look elsewhere for homes close to schools. Property values diminish when a significant proportion of the buying market looks elsewhere because there is no neighborhood school.
Lower-income parents and children become disenfranchised as schools are removed from the immediate vicinity. Income from property taxes is reduced as housing stock devalues.
Older, historic neighborhoods have a livability and sense of community that often is missing in newer sections of town. But, as with small towns, that sense of community is tied to its school.
Without the school, student access suffers, parent-teacher relationships decline, community programs suffer for lack of a friendly venue and even voting patterns are subject to change. And as non-parents become more and more removed from a neighborhood school and from the families of the children it serves, monetary and emotional support for school issues erodes.
The loss of a neighborhood school endangers Grand Forks’ historic cultural and built environment just as surely as do floods and fires. But the neighborhood dies slowly, unlike the process brought about by a natural disaster. And rebuilding is not an option without the nexus of a school.
Cost savings are important to us all. But on balance, will the savings really offset our losses?
I urge Herald readers to carefully consider the broader community health as West, Wilder and Lewis and Clark schools are discussed. We encourage the Grand Forks School District to adopt a proactive approach to rejuvenating and maintaining these neighborhood schools in order to better meet their stated goal of providing opportunities for all students to reach their maximum potential.
Gunderson, the Herald’s marketing manager, is chairperson of the Grand Forks Historic Preservation Commission.

Demographics Task Force Meeting in the News

Article in the Grand Forks Herald:

Closing old schools, building a new one
Members of a Grand Forks School District task force on Tuesday studied eleven scenarios that define the impact of redrawing school boundaries or closing schools. Scenarios still under consideration include those calling for a new south end school and closure of Lewis and Clark, West and Wilder elementary schools in Grand Forks and Carl Ben Eielson at Grand Forks Air Force Base.
By: Pamela Knudson, Grand Forks Herald

Members of a Grand Forks School District task force on Tuesday studied eleven scenarios that define the impact of redrawing school boundaries or closing schools.
The Demographic Task Force ruled out five of the scenarios and kept the rest for more consideration or refinement.
Scenarios still under consideration include those calling for a new south end school and closure of Lewis and Clark, West and Wilder elementary schools in Grand Forks and Carl Ben Eielson at Grand Forks Air Force Base.
Dismissed scenarios were taken off the table for various reasons, such as students having to cross busy streets to attend school.
The 30-member task force, which has been meeting since mid-November, is charged with eliminating or reducing inefficiencies in the system where some schools are crowded and others have room to spare.

Scenarios
Here are the scenarios the task force kept:
Close Wilder and send students to Winship Elementary.
Close Wilder and repurpose it for Community High School, now housed in leased space at 500 Stanford Road.
Close West and send students to Winship and send Winship students living east of North Washington Street to Wilder.
Close Eielson and send students to Twining elementary and middle school.
Close Lewis and Clark and send some students to Phoenix Elementary and some to Viking Elementary.
Send some Viking students and some from Century Elementary to Ben Franklin Elementary. Task force members said this option would be viable only if a new school is built.
Build a new school in the city’s expanding south end.
Superintendent Larry Nybladh told the group a new school would ease enrollment pressures at Century and Kelly elementary schools. Building it would take two years from the point of School Board approval to opening its doors.

Big picture
Several parents and others spoke in favor of smaller, neighborhood schools which, they said, are important to their families’ quality of life and children’s safety.
City Council member Tyrone Grandstrand encouraged the task force to consider alternatives to closing a school, such as sharing principals, a model already in place, and saving money through energy efficiencies.
He also questioned how closing or repurposing schools would affect property values, and what effect that may have on recruiting young professionals to the city, a group that’s crucial to economic vitality.
“I really like neighborhoods, and neighborhood schools,” he said. “I prefer walking and biking, as much as possible. This may be a generational thing.”
Grandstrand urged the group to continue to take its work seriously. “These decisions will affect Grand Forks for generations to come.”

‘Save Wilder’
Council member Eliot Glassheim urged the group to consider Grand Forks’ long history of supporting neighborhood schools.
A school attracts homebuyers to a neighborhood, he said, and conversely, closing a school causes them to buy elsewhere.
He represents a north end ward that includes Wilder Elementary, which has seen enrollment shrink dramatically and is being considered for closure.
Fear about Wilder’s future has led parents to enroll their children elsewhere, he said. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy.”
He pointed to post-Flood of ’97 efforts which resulted in building Phoenix Elementary in the area once served by Belmont Elementary, so flood-damaged it had to be razed.
“Numbers cannot tell you what the future will be and could be,” he said. “Turn your attention to how to save Wilder, then come up with the best plan to make Wilder work.”
Task force member Matt Bakke asked for additional information on how to increase enrollment at Wilder and potential impacts of redrawing boundary lines of middle and high schools.
Assistant Superintendent Jody Thompson said the task force’s scenario subcommittee would work on those, and other requests from the group, and report back to the task force.
The subcommittee meets at 9 a.m., Friday to discuss and respond to requests the task force made at its meeting Tuesday. Open to the public, the meeting will be in the computer lab of the Mark Sanford Education Center.

Reach Knudson at (701) 780-1107; (800) 477-6572, ext. 107; or send e-mail to pknudson@gfherald.com.

Grand Forks Demographics Task Force Meetings - Open to the Public

Demographics Task Force Meetings

To view the agendas, minutes, and "key messages" from the Demographics Task Force, click here.

Upcoming Meetings:

• Tuesday, December 13, 2011 Noon-2pm
• Monday, December 19, 2011 Noon-2pm
• Tuesday, January 3, 2011 Noon-2pm

*All meetings are held at the Mark Sanford Education Center and are open to the public.  I would strongly encourage everyone to attend. Unfortunately I will be unable to come today, but hope to attend in the future.

In the News

Article regarding December 12 School Board Meeting

Wilder friends: Money shouldn't be main issue in decision to close school
The Near North Neighborhood school has too few students
Enrollment has shrunk for years, but parents say closing the school would undermine efforts to revitalize the neighborhood.
By: Pamela Knudson, Grand Forks Herald

Wilder Elementary School supporters urged the Grand Forks School Board at its meeting Monday night to carefully consider the quality of life afforded by neighborhood schools and revitalization efforts aimed in the Near North Neighborhood.
With an enrollment of 75, Wilder is the smallest school in the district. Enrollment has declined 63 percent since 1995 and it has the highest percentage of students attending other schools.
The district’s Demographics Task Force charged with reviewing inefficiencies has cited the north end school for possible closure.
“Across the district, 82 percent of students are attending their home school; 46 percent attend Wilder,” said Justin Berry, a Wilder parent. “Has the district done anything to address this outmigration?”
He and others have formed the Friends of Wilder Elementary to organize parents and rally support for the school. They recently canvassed the neighborhood to inform parents about issues affecting the school and its possible closure.
Next month, the task force will deliver a preliminary report to the board that reviews different options that include redrawing school boundaries, repurposing or closing schools, and building new ones.
The task force meets today from noon to 2 p.m. at Mark Sanford Education Center. The agenda includes time for public comment.

Revitalization
“I believe in the value of neighborhood schools,” said Cory England, a UND Center for Community Engagement staff member working on revitalization of the north end. “There is a perception that the north side is stagnating. “You don’t combat that perception by closing Wilder.”
He and others who spoke at the meeting pointed to early signs of growth and the city’s revitalization efforts to attract residents to the Near North and rehab homes there.
“I’d ask you to make sure you’re not working against those initiatives,” said June Preuss. “Closing Wilder would especially hurt that effort.”
His son is a kindergartener at Wilder.
“It would be a real shame to close Wilder when the current kindergarten class has 24 students, its first increase in 15 years,” he said. “We might have just turned a corner.
“It just seems like really bad timing.”

Quality of life
Tom Bures, who lives in the Riverside area, said he understands business practices and the need for fiscal responsibility. But he said walking and biking a few blocks to school are important benefits of living in Grand Forks.
“I want to provide my kids the favorable education that I feel I received when my parents chose to locate where they did,” he said. “It’s a feeling I want my kids to have.”
The onus is on parents to take care of their kids, but in close-knit neighborhoods “it’s certainly nice when other parents are looking out for your kids too.”
Mike Berg, who retired after 31 years’ experience as a teacher and coach at Grand Forks Central High School, told the board, “When decision time comes, please don’t let a balance sheet be the deciding factor. In Grand Forks, we do what it takes to make this a great place to raise and family and a great place to live.”
Board President Roger Pohlman thanked each person for the comments, noting that a decision about closing a school will be “difficult.”
No action was taken by the board.

Reach Knudson at (701) 780-1107; (800) 477-6572, ext. 107; or send e-mail to pknudson@gfherald.com.

Also, check out WDAZ's story.

Supporters of Wilder Visit the School Board Meeting

A wonderful turnout for the start of our School Board meeting tonight - lots of parents and citizens in attendance.  Thank you for taking your time to visit with us.  Quantitative data is good, but qualitative data is essential in order for the Board to make an educated decision regarding demographics within our school district.  Thank you for your support of Wilder and the various neighborhood schools sprinkled throughout our community.

To see an overview of comments, click here.

Congratulations to Board President Roger Pohlman!

Congratulations to Board President Roger Pohlman for his election as the Northeast Director of the North Dakota School Boards Association. Having local representation serve at the state level is an important
opportunity for the schools districts. Check out Mr. Pohlman’s bio as it appeared in the NDSBA Candidates brochure on Page 1 of the November 4, 2011 SuperNotes.

Find Out What's Happening at Eielson Elementary

I received the November 2011 Newsletter for Eielson Elementary in my email box today.  This is an excellent publication filled with information, happenings, and events relevant to not only Eielson parents but also to school board members, district administration and personnel, parents of school-age children, and the general public of Grand Forks.  Check out the newsletter by clicking here.

In addition to the newsletter, Eielson's principal, Mrs. Angie Jonasson, created a Principal's Blog to help keep parents up-to-date with the happenings at Eielson.  The blog was created in response to parent feedback at fall conferences.  What an awesome idea!  Check out the blog and subscribe by signing up for email updates whenever a new post is created: www.eielsoneagles.blogspot.com.

Parent Raises Issues with Century Elementary School's ELL Program

Check out the newest SuperNotes, which addresses the recently raised issues regarding Century Elementary School's ELL Program and what school and district leaders are doing in response.  Click here.

Cushman Field Nearing Completion

The new turf has been laid and the track is just waiting for lines.  Here are some pictures I took from the School Board's tour this past Monday night (phone camera so the quality is not the best plus it was dark out):

As you can see, the lines are very crisp.

A close up of the turf: artificial grass "growing" through black rubber gravel, giving it a nice "bounce".

GF Schools Report an Increase in Enrollment!

For the first time in 16 years, enrollment is up on the first day of school in the Grand Forks public schools.

The district, which includes elementary, middle and high schools in Grand Forks and Grand Forks Air Force Base, recorded 6,773 students in grades K-12 when classes opened Wednesday and Thursday. That was 55 more students than on the first day of school last year, and 181 students more than were enrolled on the last day of the 2010-2011 school term, according to the school district.

The opening day enrollment at Grand Forks Air Force Base was at 310 students, down 27 students from last year’s first day and up 27 students from last spring.

Superintendent Larry Nybladh said analyzing the numbers made him “both cautiously optimistic and curious.”

“I suppose to some observers an increase of 55 students or about eight-tenths of one percent may be statistically insignificant,” Nyladh said in a news release. “But when you’ve had a 16-year trend of enrollment decline, there is reason to celebrate when one sees a deviation from that trend.

He said the district would have to spend more time studying the data to determine if the increase was a one-year aberration in a long-term trend, or the start of a new trend. Officials also will try to determine the factors that influenced the numbers, he said.

Assistant Superintendent Jody Thompson said it was typically positive to see an increase in elementary school enrollment, up 114 students compared with the first day last fall. An increase in elementary numbers should translate to driving enrollment in upper grades, he said.

The district has conducted a number of studies to analyze the 16-year pattern of decline. School boards in the city and at the base have endorsed the concept of more study via an action plan, a news release said.

Herald Staff Report. (2011, August 26). GF schools report increase in enrollment. Grand Forks Herald. Retrieved from http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/213911/publisher_ID/40/

A Font Designed Specifically for Readers with Dyslexia

Check out the corresponding article at: http://www.springwise.com/style_design/dyslexie/

2010-2011 Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) Reports

2010-2011 AYP reports for the Grand Forks Public School District are now available:
District AYP Report
School AYP Reports
Public School Choice Notice

Construction Projects

To check out all the construction projects taking place in the District, click here.

District's Strategic Plan and Demographic Study

The District's Strategic Plan draft will be reviewed at the July 11th GF School Board meeting and consideration for approval requested at the August meeting.  The aspect of student enrollment will be examined in this plan.  If any citizen would like to know more about this matter, or if they have any data or information they would like the district to consider, please  contact either Mr. Thompson (701.787.4882) or Dr. Larry Nybladh (701.787.4880).

Creating A Successful 1-to-1 Laptop Initiative

New Jersey’s Pascack Valley Regional High School District let visitors peek into the inner workings of its successful eLearning initiative through a webinar hosted by the New Jersey School Boards Association and NSBA on May 11.

Pascack Valley, located in the northeast corner of the New Jersey and home to corporations like BMW, Sony, and A&P, was the first of three 2011 Education Technology Site Visits that NSBA’s Technology Leadership Network presented. Other events included visits to Newport News (Va.) Public Schools in April and Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Ky. this week.

“The site visits have been part of NSBA’s commitment to educational technology since the late 1980s. They provide a great hands-on opportunity to see, hear and talk with educators who are engaged in using technology in transformative ways,” said Ann Flynn, NSBA’s director of education technology.

Flynn said with about one-third of school districts across the country embarking on a 1-to-1 learning initiative, hearing from one of the districts who have launched such an endeavor was a reason Pascack Valley, which began its laptop project more than seven years ago, was selected.

“I remember when you started this [project], the newspapers, everybody thought you were all crazy, nobody could imagine it,” said Erik Endress, NJSBA’s director of association and business development.
For some time Pascack Valley had been interested in integrating technology in more effective ways in classroom, said Erik Gundersen, the district’s director of curriculum, instruction and assessment. And while the demand for more technology was there among teachers and students, the lack of hardware and infrastructure prevented them from moving forward.

So district officials decided to visit Virginia’s Henrico County Public Schools, which in 2001 became the largest school district in the country to implement a 1:1 initiative without a major influx of funds. On the way back, the busload of community members, board members, district staff and parents had a lot of time to talk and eventually come together behind this huge undertaking.

“We had to have district leadership in place and the board played a key role because when you have those questions in the supermarket line you can answer those,” said Erich Tusch, Pascack Valley’s supervisor of technology. “Then there’s technology leadership and of course, financial leadership is critical because that person needs to know what is needed in classroom so they can build a budget based on those needs.”
One of the most important things the district did before unrolling the laptop initiative was move from purchasing the hardware to leasing it.

“That way the inventory remains fresh and it becomes a fixed cost and effective way of managing it,” Tusch said. “The hardware was less important to us than instructional piece.”

That’s really the bottom line, said Gundersen.

“Professional development ended up being a huge cost factor and fortunately leadership understood this,” he said. “And professional development isn’t focused on the laptop but continuous curriculum change and engaging the student on a greater level.”

For instance, Web 2.0 technologies have allowed students taking Italian to converse with students in Italy. Meanwhile peer editing thanks to blogging software is a focal point in all of the district’s English classes, and primary source documents gathered online enrich their social studies courses.

For board members intrigued and enticed by what a 1:1 eLearning initiative can offer, there is a lot of data to draw from to make a compelling pitch to the superintendent, Gundersen said.

“But you can’t go ahead and try to convince people that this will improve test scores, that’s not what this is about,” said Gundersen. “It’s about engaging students and creating authentic experiences for them.”

Watch the archived webinar here.

Retrieved from "N.J. district shows how to create a successful 1-to-1 laptop initiative" by School Board News Today at http://schoolboardnews.nsba.org/2011/05/n-j-district-shows-how-to-create-a-successful-1-to-1-laptop-initiative/

Other Summer Activities in the GF Area

Grand Forks Park District
Check out a variety of activities for youth and adults by the Grand Forks Park District. Youth activities include baseball, exercise/fitness, golf, hockey, ice skating, Just for Fun, racquetball, rollerblading, skating, soccer, softball, SMILE, sporting clay, swimming, tennis, track, and trap shooting. Adult activities include basketball, exercise/fitness, golf, horseshoes, racquetball, sand volleyball, seniors programs, softball, swimming, and tennis.

North Dakota Museum of Art
Summer Arts Camps are a time for imaginations to run wild. Students will have the time of their lives creating and imagining alongside professional artists. Each week brings a different artist with new themes and projects. Students learn to develop an artwork based upon everyday experiences using the basic elements of art. No art experience is needed. Days are full of fun! Check out the schedule here.

Summer Programs in the Grand Forks School District

Elementary Summer School Program: Grades Pre-K through 6
Secondary Summer School Program: Grades 7 through 12
Summer Performing Arts (SPA): The Summer Performing Arts Company, or SPA, is an eight-week summer arts program available for students in the elementary, middle and high schools in Grand Forks, North Dakota and the surrounding communities.
Student Driver Education: The Grand Forks Public Schools Driver Education Center registration is now open for summer classes. Three sessions with different time options are offered to students throughout June and early July. Driver's instruction includes classroom curriculum, simulated driving experiences, and Behind-the-Wheel driving. All instructors are licensed Driver Education teachers in North Dakota.

Recycling in the Schools

A few SB meetings ago, I asked about the recycling program in our public schools.  Here is the response as per my request for information:

Although I think this is awesome, I know we can do more as a district. I would love to see recycling bins in the lunch rooms, the main offices, and the teacher lounges at every school. Now that recycling is mixed (glass, plastic, paper, etc. all together) recycling is much cheaper and easier to implement.

The Current System is Lacking: Teaching Evaluation Systems

NSBA's Center for Public Education today released an analysis of the push to change teacher evaluation systems, focusing on the inclusion of statistical measures of teachers’ effect on student learning. That report, “Building a Better Evaluation System,” finds that the current teacher evaluation system is lacking—and most current evaluation systems fail to identify truly effective and ineffective teachers.

With many states moving to adopt systems that tie teacher evaluations to student performance, this issue will eventually affect most school districts. Copies of the report are available for download on the Center’s website, click here. The Center has prepared a summary of the report for school board members and administrators:

The push to change teacher evaluation systems, and especially to include statistical measures of teachers’ effect on student learning, is here. In 2005, 13 states were able to link teachers to their students’ performance data; in 2010, 35 states were able to do so and the number is expected to grow. The Obama administration’s Race to the Top effort urged states and districts to use this teacher-student link in teacher evaluations in order to be eligible for grants. In response, 17 states reportedly changed their evaluation systems to improve their chances of receiving RTTT funds. Private foundations like the Gates Foundation have also used their resources to examine teachers’ effectiveness and encourage the use of such measures. Clearly, this is a fast-moving train that will likely affect many if not most school districts eventually. In order to prepare, here’s what you should know:

1. The current system is lacking. Current evaluation systems fail to identify the true variation in teacher effectiveness by rating all but a few teachers as “satisfactory.” One study of teacher evaluation systems nationwide found that only 1 percent of teachers are evaluated as “unsatisfactory.” In districts that use multiple evaluation levels, only 6 percent of teachers rate below the top two categories. Other research proves that there’s huge variability among teachers, even within schools, but it’s hidden by inadequate evaluation tools. Until now, most evaluation systems have not been linked to any measure of students’ real learning, partly because data systems have not been in place. A recent quote by Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, sums it up: “As important as evaluation is to assessing teacher performance, what passes for teacher evaluation in many districts frankly isn’t up to this important task.” 

2. Improving teacher effectiveness can dramatically impact student learning. Research has shown that teachers have the single greatest impact on students’ performance, more than family background, socioeconomic status, or school. By improving teacher effectiveness, districts could improve student achievement and save money at the same time, because they would be able to identify ineffective teachers early and provide them with appropriate support, rather than having to replace struggling teachers who leave the profession because of a lack of assistance. Designing and implementing a quality teacher evaluation system – one that identifies strong teaching where it exists and targets interventions where they’re needed for improvement -- would take additional funds and careful thought, but the benefits would be significant. 

3. Value-added models have flaws, but are much better than the system we have now. The fairest way to identify strong teaching is through a system that looks at student gains. Value-added models, which work to isolate the impact a teacher has on his or her students’ achievement from other factors, are the latest refinement of such a system. However, value-added models have come under intense scrutiny and criticism, and the criticism needs to be considered. Most importantly, value-added scores, while better than other measures, still fluctuate enough that people question their precision. For instance, multiple studies have found that among teachers ranked in the top 20 percent of effectiveness one year, about a third of them were still in the top 20 percent the following year, although the vast majority stayed in the top half. The wide fluctuation shows that some of the difference in year-to-year scores was due to statistical imprecision instead of an actual change in the teacher’s effectiveness.
However, while imprecision is a concern, the variation in scores should be considered against the current evaluation system, which almost certainly misidentifies many ineffective teachers as “satisfactory.” One study that compared teachers’ instructional practices to value-added scores concluded “[Value-added scores]…seem to be capturing important differences in the quality of instruction.” Another study found that value-added scores were useful in predicting which teachers would be successful in the future. As long as they are used in concert with other methods of evaluation, value-added scores provide a useful insight into teachers’ impact. 

4. Statistical measures are used to evaluate people in other industries effectively. Using imprecise statistical measures in evaluations is a generally accepted practice in fields outside of teaching. Major League Baseball, for instance, bases its million-dollar salary decisions largely on a player’s statistics, which can vary from year to year about as much as teachers’ do in value-added models. Other professions evaluated on similarly imprecise year-to-year measures include realtors; investors’ rate of return; utility company repairmen; and others. Value-added models should not be compared to a criterion of perfection, but whether including value-added models as part of a comprehensive teacher evaluation system would be an improvement over what is in place now. 

5. There are ways to improve value-added models. The more years of data are used, the more precise value-added models become. For instance, the chance of misidentification drops by 10 percentage points when three years of data are used instead of one. Better state assessments, and aligning the assessments to what is taught, could also improve value-added models. 

6. Multiple measures are the way to go. Virtually all researchers advocate using value-added data as one of multiple measures when making decisions about teachers. Using traditional measures, such as classroom observation, along with value-added data will present a fuller, more accurate picture of a teacher’s true effectiveness. In current formulas that use value-added models, the value-added score generally accounts for 25 to 50 percent of the total rating. Which measures to use and how much weight to put on each are decisions best made locally based on data, resources available, and the district’s goals for the teacher evaluation system.

Retrieved from the Center for Public Education at http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Staffingstudents/Building-A-Better-Evaluation-System/default.aspx?css=print