Wednesday, March 7, 2012

School Board discusses changes to school accountability formula

E-1: Monthly financial report for the period ending January 2012

Dr. Marta Perez asked whether the Board's self-insured program was stable. Dr. Richard Hinds called upon Mr. Scott Clark, from Risk and Benefits Management, to address her question. "It's in fine financial state, very stable right now...Our claims expenditures from 2011 to 2012 did see some spikes, but we were successful in negotiating some plan design changes we believe are going to even out those claim spikes. As we shared with the unions as well, based upon our projections of annual expenditures, had we remained in a fully insured environment as opposed to moving to self-insured, our claims expenditures and our liability would be $100  million more than what we're looking at right now."

Dr. Perez also brought up yesterday's ruling on the pension reform, in which Circuit Court Judge Jackie Fulford ruled in favor of FEA's lawsuit that the 3% mandatory contribution was unconstitutional in that it broke the state's contract with workers. She mentioned that the state was going to appeal, but asked what the situation looked like for the district.

Dr. Hinds responded, "This is a lengthy process. The potential liabilities are considerable. A loss of over a billion dollars this fiscal year and over a billion dollars next fiscal year. However, it is my information that the state plans to appeal this circuit court ruling all the way to the supreme court. This could take easily a year; at the present time, there is no action contemplated either on our part or on the part of the state. So the situation remains open." In other words, we won't be getting reimbursed anytime soon, despite the court ruling.

G-3 Proposed Amendment to School Board Advisory Committees Rules

Among other changes to the rules for appointments to school board advisory committees, this item would require that a PTA/PTSA member be appointed to each committee. UTD Vice President Artie Leichner stood to request that UTD have a seat at the table as well, as we are also stakeholders in these decisions.

Dr. Marta Perez referred to Leichner's request when she said that, since the PTA was a dues-paying organization, requiring their members be appointed to boards would be a "slippery slope" whereby other dues-paying organizations, such as unions, would demand their seat at the table too.

H-19: YouTube and Websites

Board member Raquel Regalado's item concerned access from district networks to YouTube and other websites. "I think that initially when our district decided to 'black out' certain websites from our computers, it was done partly for legal reasons and partly to ensure that there weren't certain websites that were being visited at school sites. But things have changed with smartphones; we all have our smartphones; our kids have their smartphones, our teachers have their smartphones, so I think it's time to rethink the list and exactly how we do that. (...) Most parents haven't really thought about this. They think it's more sophisticated than it actually is. Equally, many of our teachers don't understand, they think that they can either access a website or they can't. We need to streamline it. I think in the same way we have a process for accepting books into our libraries, we should do the same for certain websites and then find a way to promote it so parents have a way to find out which educational websites the district approves of and which ones it does not approve of. I think it would be especially good for special needs parents. I think it should be something accessible to all parents whether they initiate the conversation or not."

Does this mean a change in the district's policy of blocking many websites is forthcoming? And would it be a good thing, or just mean more distraction?

Superintendent Carvalho spoke to the issue: "One of the reasons we have been in pursuit of this e-rate initiative and campaign, and very successfully I may add, is to come to a point where we can declare that digital deserts have been erased in our district, and the reason we want to do that is to bring parity and equity to all sectors of our community. That brings some issues to be considered. As a prerequisite to that step, we are in the process of developing protocols to do two things. Number one, I'll be presenting you with a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to school, which is important. It is a resource and provides access and can actually be a very useful technological tool that assists learning, particularly remediation and acceleration. Two is conducting the protocols to survey and pull students and their families regarding their access to connectivity. Do they have a device? No district in the country has the funding to go out and buy devices for every child. However, through our efforts we may be in the position of providing connectivity and making inroads with providing devices to communities that currently don't have access. (...) I can guarantee you that for me, it is extremely important as we provide this asset to rely less on restriction and actually more on responsibility. The responsible use of the asset. As one of the speakers said, students will always be able to bypass controls. We ought to share the responsibility with parents and caretakers and modify our own board rules regarding student behavior and comportment to provide protection for our district, emphasizing the responsible use of these tools that can be extremely beneficial."

The item passed unanimously.

A-1: Superintendent's Announcements

Superintendent Carvalho's first announcement concerned the "everchanging nature of the school accountability formula in Florida." He called on Assistant Superintendent of Data Analysis Ms. Gisela Feild to make a presentation on the changes to the formula made by the State Board of Education.

"A group of us, including Dr. Vitti, Mr. Carvalho and myself, attended the meeting the State Board of Education meeting last week on February 27, and a lot of the issues that were discussed were issues that we ourselves had addressed in our letter to the DOE as a collaboration amongst a number of districts. The first proposal of major importance to us was the proposal by the DOE as a result of the No Child Left Behind waiver to include all English language learners and students with disabilities in the computations for the schools' grades. As Mr. Carvalho said, there were a number of people present at the meeting, including groups of English language learners and students with disabilities, that fought against this item. The issues were that we believe that kids will eventually be ready, but to assume that a child who has only be in the country for a year and a half learning English, or a student with disabilities who's sitting on an alternative assessment, will be proficient in a year is unthinkable. The outcome at the SBOE meeting is that there would be a task force that would be convened to decide how these children and their data would  be included in the proficiency target for the school grades. Mr. Carvalho was invited to be part of the task force at the beginning of the week, and I believe the task force is ready to meet right after spring break on March 22 and 23. We have a representative from the ESE group and a representative from the bilingual group that will also be part of that task force, and we anticipate having major input on how these children will be included in the school grade.

"The second proposal was the elimination of level 3 students from the computation and the low 25 in reading and inclusion of retained students. That was one of the proposals that we did not oppose, and that proposal was approved with minimal discussion.

"Another proposal had to do with the waiver for adequate progress. Those of you that are familiar with the school grading system, a school grade may drop if they do not meet a certain target on the lowest 25% in both reading and math, or if they do not meet it every other year, the school grade will drop.  Because we have a new FCAT and new FCAT cut scores, and because the state had set the target at 50 on the old FCAT, not knowing how students will perform on the new FCAT, they agreed to waive that element for the school year that we are in, '11-'12. Once the results of the new FCAT are in the state will revisit that cut score to decide whether to keep it at 50 or change it accordingly.

"The other item that led to a lot of discussion was to add 100 points to the middle school. Right now the middle school will have 900 points, with 50 points being awarded to participation in algebra, as well as 50 points being awarded to performance. The issue that we had and one of the items that we addressed in one of the memos we sent to the DOE was that the participation was based on kids that had scored a particular level on the FCAT the prior year. Since middle schools did not know about this criteria, they did not have the opportunity to actually enroll these children in algebra this year, so we knew that our middle schools would be disadvantaged on that component. The state has still not decided fully how these 100 points will be distributed this year. They did discuss at the meeting that they would waive the participation component for this year, which is 50 points, but how those 50 points will be distributed in the overall formula has not been communicated to us.

"The other discussion was about the high school science. As you know, for the first time this year our students will not be taking the high school FCAT science, they will be taking a biology end-of-course. There have been no passing scores that have been set forth yet for biology, so the recommendation was that science be eliminated from the formula for this year. The state has agreed to eliminate science; the only thing they have not given information on is exactly how those 100 points will be distributed for the final grades of the schools.

"The biggest item that was addressed in the memo to the DOE was what we called the F trigger, the reading threshold. As you know from my presentation last month, the criteria was that if the school had enough points for an A but 25% of their kids were not proficient in reading, that school would automatically drop to an F. And that data was precarious enough as a trigger, but it was even going to be more compounded by the fact the state was planning on adding our ELL and our ESE kids in the proficiency, which meant the data would drop across the board. The decision that was made at the state board was that the trigger would be waived for this year. There will be no trigger in place. In addition, for the future years, starting in '12-'13, the trigger has changed, whereas instead of the school dropping to an automatic F, it would just simply drop one letter grade. The only issue we have to contend with is that this does not preclude a school from dropping from a D to an F. There was a trigger before that still exists that deals with adequate progress, but that adequate progress did not allow a school to drop to an F. If a school was a D and did not meet the adequate progress it would remain a D. This trigger, on the other hand, does include a school dropping to an F if they don't meet the 25 threshold. This is still a compromise, though not one that we're 100% happy with, because this will be impacted by the inclusion of ELL and SWD into the proficiency formula when that decision is made.

"There is a state board meeting at TERRA on March 27. At that point we anticipate the state will put forth the final decision on the three items that are of uncertainty right now. The first one being the most important is the inclusion of SWD and ELLs in the proficiency; the second will be how exactly those 100 points are included for middle schools; and the third will be how the distribution of the science points will be used in the high schools for this year."

Dr. Perez asked if we had any data with regard to what effect the FCAT has had on other standardized tests like the SATs. "Is there a positive impact on the ACTs, SATs, standardized tests?"

Ms. Feild responded: "We have not done an analysis of whether there's been an impact, but we know there is a correlation between the FCAT and the SAT and the ACT, because there are concordant scores that allow a student who does not meet the criteria on the FCAT to meet the graduation requirement on the ACT and the SAT. So there are concordant scores for graduation and for college readiness."

Dr. Perez continued: "If we have had since 1998 an FCAT, and if that has improved our education, then you would think that in these last ten years or 14 years that there would be an improvement in our SAT scores because of the good impact that the FCAT has had on our students' ability to learn, therefore they would be able to do better at those other standardized tests."

Ms. Feild: "It's a kind of complex question, because the FCAT is taken for graduation in tenth grade. Once the student passes, then it is not until they really get to 11th or 12th grade that they take the college exams--the ACT, the SAT, the CPT, and now we also have the PERT. What we find is that more students are taking the SATs and the ACTs, which in itself means that scores tend to drop because we're giving access to more children. More children are taking it multiple times both for college readiness and for passing a reading graduation requirement. Scores may not necessarily be improving as a district, but it doesn't mean that individual student scores aren't improving. We're finding that students take the test multiple times, and they're doing better, and they're meeting college requirements and college readiness. So I believe there is an improvement on the college scores. Whether or not they're directly related to the FCAT is not necessarily something we've studied."

Dr. Perez suggested: "It would be a very interesting thing to look at, because right now fourteen years later, the students that began school--we've had for two years students who have gone throughout their school lives with the FCAT, so that would be something very interesting to look at."

Ms. Feild: "I would like to say that we've seen the results of that through the improvement in the graduation rate. The graduation rate is in essence the final end result of all of this, the FCAT, the ACT, the SAT, and for enrollment in college.  The fact that our graduation continues to improve in all of the subgroups indicates that both the combination of the kids passing the FCAT, and you know, have had for the last couple of years, among tenth graders, in reading and math we've got more than 50% of the kids passing on the first attempt, and of course higher results on the SAT and the ACT..."

Dr. Perez attempted to extrapolate: "I don't know how far we can take the correlation, but I suppose that one of the things that could be said is that the FCAT has not precluded students from continuing to graduate if our graduation rates have improved."

Board member Dr. Larry Feldman asked about the readability level of the tenth grade reading FCAT, to which Ms. Feild replied that it is at a tenth grade reading level. "I have to indicate that review of the PERT, which is the new Post Education Readiness Test, which is going to require students who don't pass the PERT to take a college readiness course, has a much lower reading level than our FCAT. Our kids are passing the PERT a lot easier than they're passing the tenth grade FCAT."

Mr. Carvalho spoke up on that point: "There's always this commentary that I hear publicly when people talk about FCAT, certainly individuals who don't really understand the FCAT, that first they believe the FCAT reading level is far lower than the grade level of the students who would be taking it. And as Gisela said, yes, back in the days of the HSET, that was true. Let's be mindful that there was the FCAT; that has changed now to FCAT 2.0, higher standards, higher level of difficulty. But that notion still persists. It's going to increase again. Not only has the FCAT level of difficulty increased, but the cut scores also increased dramatically. It's not an easy exam. Recently on both NPR, you may have listened to a couple of board members from the state of Florida who asked to be tested, and they were tested. They couldn't pass it. They could not pass it. They said that there are skills here that we don't really understand. I would not have passed it then, and I still became successful. Just to explain to people that this is not an easy exam; it is a high-stakes accountability test, and what we are assessing are high-level concepts."

Dr. Feldman asked then about the readability level of the SAT and ACT and AP exams. "We have more kids taking the exams and participating in Advanced Placement than anywhere else. Our Hispanic students are #1 in states in schools of comparable size in passing the AP exams. Our African American students are #7 in the country, and Miami-Dade County schools are first in districts of comparable size. Is it possible for us to utilize the kind of tests that are getting our kids into college internally, and use that as a benchmark for how our kids are doing internally, since we're being recognized by College Board and everyone else."

Carvalho responded: "We're not just #1 in Hispanics for districts of similar size, that's out of all 15,000 school systems. We're #1 in terms of participation, #1 for Hispanic participation and success, and #7 for African American participation and success, in all 15,000 school systems. Now your question, could we internally use our own sort of accountability pronouncement looking aggressively perhaps at NAEP and AP success? Yes; the only challenge of marketing that out externally, that Tallahassee would have with it, is in terms of AP participation, you're talking about American government, literature, physics, chemistry, biology, art, music, foreign language, all, inclusive, instead of a single metric dealing with reading, so one probably could not easily be substituted for the other. But I think there's a great deal of value in coming out with our own internal accountability system to provide a more rounded, more expansive perspective on school and student success beyond just one single exam that looks at a once-a-year snapshot of student performance."

The Board then discussed the College Board capstone pilot program to be rolled out starting next school year in four Miami-Dade public high schools. As detailed in a Herald article this week, the program is meant to bolster critical thinking and writing skills among high-achieving students already taking Advanced Placement courses. Board member Dr. Dorothy Bendross Mindingall asked about the criteria for being one of the four chosen schools--what made one school be chosen for the program over another.

Superintendent Carvalho answered: "Actually, we could not have done anything. What the College Board did was look specifically at the profile of each of the schools. They identified the first [Barbara Goleman Senior High], and then, as Helen said, I said, You probably will not come into Miami-Dade with just one, because wider access is an imperative for me, and then based on the profile of the schools, they identified three additional schools, because we wanted more. They were clear in their willingness to actually expand it as time permits and resources allow, but they first wanted to see how the implementation in these first four schools goes. This does not mean that we do not have AP and IB in many other schools. In some of the schools that this went into, there wasn't much of an extraordinary program or financial investment. But this issue keeps coming up and you know I'm very sensitive to it, and I'd like at some point to provide you the Board, just beginning with high schools, the level of resource investment by high school. I think it will shock or surprise some of you. Where the need is greatest is where we invest the most. It's necessary to provide an equalizer; that's our responsibility. That investment is in terms of program, in terms of money, in terms of teachers, incentivizing teachers to go there, afterschool programs, City Year, all that good stuff. But there are instances where big partners come to the table with a mindset already that these are specifically targeted areas they want to target. They were interested in some of these schools because of demographic profile. And that was the reason for selecting a school like North Miami Beach Senior. For selecting a school like Barbara Goleman Senior High School. And going to Palmetto, a different kind of school. And Southridge, which is a melting pot, an ETO school; one's a district-targeted school; one's a high-performing school; and one's an average high school. They wanted that criteria."

Board member Raquel Regalado asked how students would be participating: "Is it an application process? Is it ninth graders? Tenth graders? We'll get a call at our office: is it a magnet? Have the children already been selected for the next academic year?"

Dr. Helen Blanch, Assistant Superintendent for School Choice answered: "Each of these schools will look first at their current ninth grade student population. The students will go through an application process and the seats, up to 100, will be filled for next year's tenth graders. We don't anticipate that any schools will need to go outside their school to fill those seats."

Public Hearing

UTD Vice President Artie Leichner took the microphone spoke to our victory in Round One of the legal battle over the 3% income tax on state workers enacted by the Florida state legislature last year. "Today is a very important day. I need to thank all the members of United Teachers of Dade. I need to thank all the members of the Florida Education Association. I need to thank all the other unions that have been helping out with this lawsuit. I've spent many, many days going from meeting to meeting, school to school, explaining why the basic premise of this lawsuit has to do with contract rights and the language being so strong about how those rights should be maintained. But if it wasn't for the members and the dues money they put into this fight, all of the non-members wouldn't be benefiting from the overturning of this really, really bad law. I think now is the time as you're watching us have to fight the battle again, because I know the state put $300,000 aside to take it to the next level, and they'll probably take it to the next level, because they don't want to pay what they're responsible to pay. So now is the time for all people in this bargaining unit to step up to the plate and say, you know what? We have to help pay our fair share of these legal fees. It's costing an enormous amount of money to fight this battle. But you know what? How often do you really have such a tremendous victory? And it's a victory for pretty much everybody in this room, because everybody who's an employee of this school system, or even a board member, is part of FRS. So I just wanted to thank my members and let them know that we really need to keep on getting other people to join the fight.

Vice President Leichner continued on to the topic of the undercutting of libraries in our district: "I met with 35 media specialists about two weeks ago, and we talked about the fact that they're not--you'd think they'd be concerned about the fact that their jobs are becoming less available--they're more concerned about the kids, and the fact that the kids are not going to have enough attention, and that libraries are being used more and more as testing centers, and less as less as places for people to gather information. Kids don't instinctively know how to do research. They don't have it just pop into their heads one day how to use the databases and all the other things the school system has. As a trained librarian myself, I can tell you that it's very important that we maintain our libraries, and I think that's something we need to prioritize moving forward."