Dec 8 Mgmt Team Notes


Participants: Les Morse, Gary Whiteley, Susan Garton, Kathy Blanc, Kelly Tonsmiere, Robert Ozuna, and Al Smith

 

Update on Evaluation Team Visit to Juneau and Anchorage

•    Robert reports that the Evaluation Team (Ozuna, Smith, and Ryan Landvoy) visited recently in Juneau, met with Kelly and with officials from Alaska EED, then flew up to Anchorage and met with UAA Ed Leadership faculty and with Carol Kane. The meetings were very helpful in establishing working relationships, identifying baseline data and information sources and projecting which current data and information is appropriate for reference with each of the project objectives.

 

In Juneau evaluators met with ASDN and EED (Cyndy, Peggy, Erik, John) and learned:

 

Nominations

•    Susan reported that 34 letters of congratulations have gone out to candidates nominated by their district superintendents. Of these, she reported that 26 were new nominations and eight are current UAA students. Another four nominees are in the permission process stage with superintendents.

•    Susan projects approximately 30 students will be participating in the new “rural” UAA Ed Leadership cohort and that some current UAA students from our partner districts likely will be participating with the current UAA Ed Leadership cohort.

 

We are more than halfway towards our goal of 55 participants.  16 districts have nominated, expect NWABSD to nominate as well.

•    Kelly mentioned that we need to determine and earmark sufficient grant monies to get the new cohort in place and operating this summer.

•    So far, Susan reports that 16 of our partner districts have nominated candidates.

 

Assessment

 

Need pre and post tests using standardized instruments.  At our earlier discussion we were looking at the Vanderbuilt assessment, a third party is making it availiabe (Education Discovery) at $360 per assessment, per year.

 

Evaluation team will adminstrator the pre and post tests.  We will try to see if RAPPS can pilot test at a reduced rate.  Pre-service+induction+staff development - should be innovative application of assessment so we will ask for reduced fee for use of our data.

 

We also will ask the Program Officer if the feds are willing to help out.  If not, we need to find money in the budget to make it happen.

•    Robert reported that he recently had a conversation with Beatriz our USDOE Program Officer and he mentioned that USDOE recommends four options for pre-post testing and our interest in using the Vanderbilt University test battery… but we did not budget for this additional cost of approximately $360.00 per UAA cohort student. Beatriz understands our dilemma and she expects other project sites may have a similar dilemma.

•    Robert also reported that he recently carefully re-read our original grant application narrative and was unable to find any reference to UAA being expected to use a pre-post standardized test to assess professional preparedness as new elementary school principals. The satisfaction of UAA requirements for recommendation for state principal certification appears to be sufficient evidence of preparedness .

•    Gary mentioned he favors the Vanderbilt model and he doesn’t see a problem with our plans to adapt a variation of their model for use in assessing professional growth among brand new principals participating with the project’s induction (i.e. coaching) component; and again with veteran principals, acting principals, and/or lead teachers participating with the project’s Staff Development Component

(i.e. includes the emerging  focus on districts and schools among our partnership that are currently state designated as CORRECTIVE ACTION (CA) districts… or individual schools state designated as CA schools from among our partner districts.

 

Districts in Corrective Action

 

RAPPS Needs to enhance services to those districts without supplanting. 

Districts in Corrective Actions have been surveyed and support participation in a Summer Institute. 

We are also providing a webinar series with Mike Schmoker (tied in with Winter Conference) that has an enrollment of 140.

 

Les believes that the Summer Institute will benefit the Department staff as well as the District Staff. 

 

 

 

Measured Progress is designing spring webinars on assessment.  Gary will report out a next meeting.

 

Need to identify 16-30 people a year to evaluate for enhanced services.  Pre and post focused should be focused on the 5 corrective action districts NWABSD, LYSD, Yupiit , Yukon Flats, Yukon-Koyokuk. Three other districts may be involved later :  BSSD, LKSD, North Slope (not a partner).  AACP is very involved with most of these districts.

 

There was discussion as to who was the audience for the Summer Institute, and if it should be by invitation only.  Must balance:

CA Districts may already feel singled out - want to project a friendly and inclusive tone -  with the fact that CA Superintendents want time focused on CA districts without distractions. 

 

Could have an optional third strand that invites other districts with school improvement activities - could have some colloborative activities with the corrective action districts.

•    Les reported that all CA partnership districts favor participating with a Summer 2009 kickoff Institute supplemented by project initiated webinars during the 2009-2010 school year.

•    Les also reported that he expects new Alaska EED program personnel to participate with the RAPPs Summer Institute and series of webinars.

•    Les indicated that bottom line, he needs assurance(s) that the five RAPPs districts currently in CA status are in fact initiating steps toward corrective action. He wants assurance that these districts understand the nature of formative assessment and collaboration along with Response to Intervention (RtI) implications for school administrators.

•    Les mentioned that one of our early challenges is for all of us to be on the same page with the language and professional jargon in use due to NCLB mandates. Perhaps we should start a project glossary.

•    While other Alaska schools and districts may be participating with the 2009 RAPPs Summer Institute, Les envisions us doing pre-post assessments with only the five partnership districts currently in CA status. He noted that an additional three of our partnership districts may likely be added later.

•    Les mentioned that we may include 4-5 additional districts by “performance invitation” only.

•    Susan urges caution in not limiting RAPP service to the five RAPPs districts in CA status. She stressed “Inclusiveness” in that historically all of our partner districts are at high risk.

•    At this point, we appear to be describing the RAPPs Professional Development component as two separate but interrelated strands targeting (1) the five partner RAPPs districts in CA status; and (2) other districts and/or schools within the RAPPs partnership that the state sees a need to intervene with in a proactive manner (i.e. before they slip further toward state official designation as CA status).

 

Role of McREL

Purposeful community  and community engagment and other topics that are relevant would be helpful - see if they are able to put out material in managable format that doesn't require 2 year committment.  Look to have them develop  webinars next fall and to serve if asked at the Summer Institute. They can also advise UAA as they revise program with the rural concentration.

 

Measured Progress

They are already involved in coaching program -are designing materials that are user friendly for principals.  They will use the January Institue as test for those materials, work on a spring webinar series on assessment, and work with corrective action districts during summer or school year on assessment

•    As for contributions from McRel and Measured Progress, both Gary and Susan believe both partners can be very useful in helping format the RAPPs series of   self contained and stand alone curriculum “chunks” or “modules” while also providing substantive inputs to the learning activities included with these chunks or modules. ASIDE: What say we call them “chunky modules”

•    Gary and Susan foresee having both Measured Progress and McRel working this coming Spring on a RAPP series of  chunky modules addressing single subject topics such as “purposeful communities,” “community building,” etc.

•    Gary mentioned that it will be important to keep a focus on “user friendly” RAPPs materials and outlined three areas he anticipates Measured Progress can help us with

o    The Summer Institute

o    Ongoing technical assistance

o    Helping us develop stand alone staff development “chunks” as part of our RAPPs series of webinars.

 

•    Les suggested that we keep a focus for now on “who’s the audience for the Summer 2009 Institute?”

•    Kelly concluded the teleconference mentioning that we will continue discussing the Summer 2009 Institute during our next RAPPs Management Team teleconference on 12/15.

 

Next Meeting  - 10AM - December 15

Need to determine who is audience for summer program and get it on people's radar.

Need to figure out what we can offer financially for Summer attendance. 

 

Meet only on Summer Institute topics next Monday.