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Principles of Learning	Meet our New Administrators
District Offices Moved	New Federal Statute Impacts SK
Language Arts Curriculum	Special Education Reorganization
School Committee Goal Setting	Facility Plans Under Review
SALT Surveys: What Are They? Why Do We Get Them?	Middle School Schedule

Starting this September, South Kingstown will join several other districts around the state (and nation) in using the Principles of Learning as a guiding tool for how we look at teaching and learning. Following are some questions and answers you may have.

What are the Principles of Learning? They are a series of statements and indicators designed to help educators analyze the quality of instruction and learning opportunities offered to students. These are broken out into the following areas:

Accountable Talk

Clear Expectations

Fair and Credible Evaluations

Learning as Apprenticeship

Organizing for Effort

Recognition of Accomplishment

Socializing Intelligence

Self-management of Learning

Academic Rigor in a Thinking Curriculum

How will this help us? A goal for our school system is to bring consistency among schools and classrooms. Having a common curriculum is important, but not enough. We also need a common way of looking at, talking about, and examining teaching and learning.

How will we use the Principles of Learning? It is, at its heart, a professional development tool. We begin by introducing the Principles of Learning to our principals and other individuals and gradually expand the circle as resources allow. One component is the “Learning Walk.” On a Learning Walk, brief visits are made to classrooms within a school and a specific component of the Principles of Learning is examined.

Learn more about the Principles of Learning at http://www.instituteforlearning.org/pol3.html

Meet our New Administrators

Director of Pupil Personnel Services – Robert Mattis joins us from the Cranston Public Schools where he was the Special Education Director in charge of middle and secondary schools. Robert has extensive experience in the field of special education in both Cranston and Seekonk (MA).

Assistant Director of Pupil Personnel Services – Pamela Thompson comes to from the Barrington schools where her teaching career included elementary, middle, and secondary experience. She was a Pilot Team member for the Teacher Assistant initiative.

Broad Rock Middle School Principal – The new principal of BRMS is not really joining South Kingstown, she has been a guidance counselor at the school for the last two years with experience as a math and English teacher and a school to career coordinator.

Curtis Corner Middle School Principal – Coventry Middle School’s loss is South Kingstown’s gain. Michelle Humbyrd joins us from Coventry, where she was assistant principal. She is a graduate of the Aspiring Principals Program and teaches middle school leadership at RIC.

Wakefield Elementary School Principal – Michelle Conley returns to South Kingstown from Exeter-West Greenwich, where she was principal of Wawaloam School and was RI’s Outstanding First Year Principal in 2001. In South Kingstown, Michelle was assistant principal at Peace Dale and Hazard Schools.

High School Assistant Principals Depart – at press time, the district is searching for two high school assistant principals. Congratulations to Steve Ruscito, who leaves SK to become Principal of Middletown High School. The positions are expected to be filled before school opens, as strong candidates are in the field.

New Federal Statute Impacts SK

There has been much in the news recently about the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), a recently enacted federal law. NCLB affects education from teacher and staff standards to student testing to school categorization. Major impacts of NCLB that will be felt in South Kingstown and other RI districts include:

High Performing – Up to now, whether or not a school was high performing was based on the overall achievement level of its students. Now, subgroups of students (for example students in special education programs, second language learners, and low income students) must also meet the standard for a school to be high performing. This will have a major impact on school categorization and greatly reduce the number of high performing schools.

Testing Requirements – Beginning in 2005-6, students must be assessed in language arts and mathematics every year in grades three through eight and once during grades 10 through 12. Two years later, students must be assessed in science three times in their school careers, once each in elementary, middle, and secondary grades. Rhode Island is part of a consortium of four New England states (with ME, NH, and VT) to develop these assessments, as it is hard for small states to afford the expense of test development.

Compensatory Services – Parents and families of students in low performing schools are entitled to compensatory services and school choice. This takes affect after schools fail to meet their annual yearly progress requirements for three consecutive years. South Kingstown has no low performing schools.

Staff Requirements – All teacher aides hired after January 8, 2002 must have the equivalent of two years of college or have passed a qualifying examination. Beginning in 2005, all teachers must be fully certified and new elementary teachers must have passed a content examination. New secondary middle and secondary teachers must have either a major in the subject they teach or have passed a subject content examination.

Language Arts Curriculum

South Kingstown has a new English language arts curriculum! A team of teachers from kindergarten to grade 12 spent this past year “unpacking” state and national standards to determine what students should know and be able to do at each grade level across the district. The curriculum was presented to the School Committee in July.

Their work has led to the creation of a document that will provide direction for our professional development programs and serve as a classroom guide for teachers and students and a resource for parents.

· It focuses on the essentials of reading instruction: phonics, phonemic awareness, comprehension, fluency and vocabulary.

· It breaks down complex literary concepts such as when students should be able to identify the antagonist and protagonist in a story, or when they should begin to see how and why character change affects a story’s plot.

· It addresses when students will focus on persuasive writing and when they will use dialogue to enhance their writing

· It is a document that will prove valuable to senior teachers as well as novices, and since it will be on the district web site, it will be accessible to all as well.

Our work has just begun, however. In addition to a new English language arts curriculum, teachers are designing a K-12 mathematics curriculum. Again, using state and national standards as the framework, we will determine appropriate grade level expectations for our students.

As this work continues, teachers across the district will meet to share instructional strategies that will enable students to achieve grade level expectations. They will examine student work to find examples that can be used as classroom models. What it means to achieve the standard will be clear to all. Look for updates on our work in future newsletters.

Special Education Reorganization

Over the course of last year several reports and planning documents were presented to the school committee regarding our special education programs. In summary, the reports showed that, while there is much excellent teaching and learning occurring, over time, they had placed too great a reliance on certain types of services and out of district programs at the expense of programs within the district.

Specifically, out of district tuitions rose at 28% per year, spending on paraprofessionals increased at 5 times the rate of overall spending, driven by an increase in 1:1 aides, and we spent 20% over the state average on therapies and less than the state average on instructional teachers.

The result is a lack of comprehensive instructional programming throughout our schools resulting in either 1:1 services or out of district placements. This less effective service pattern ends up costing more without achieving more.

The strategy to change this scenario is to shift resources to instructional programming within the district. What makes this shift challenging is that we cannot unilaterally revoke services that are committed, and, due to our already high expenditure level in special education, cannot muster new resources to create another set of parallel programs. As a result, the change will be gradual. One of the reports to the school committee included a set of data indicators against which progress will be measured.

Some changes that are in place for this school year and will move the shift along include:

The establishment of an alternative program within the district that will begin with 7-10 students and is planned to grow to up to 20 students.
Creating a centralized management structure for school-based teams, to bring consistency in the identification and placement of students.
Reorganized staff to create additional programming options, particularly at the middle and secondary levels.

The school committee will be receiving regular reports on the progress of our reorganization efforts.

School Committee Goal Setting

The school committee held three work sessions this spring and summer to develop a type of “report card” for the district than can be used to measure progress and report it to the community. The sessions began with an analysis of the district’s mission statement and a determination of what its key elements are.

MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of the South Kingstown School Department is to educate the children of South Kingstown in partnership with families and community, so that each student becomes a responsible individual who possesses the knowledge and skills for full productive citizenship

At the first session it was determined that the mission statement included three core questions that could be measured for progress:

Are we creating a partnership with families and the community?
Are our students becoming responsible individuals?
Do our students have the knowledge and skills necessary for full, productive citizenship?

At the second session, these initial questions were developed into numerous indicators that could be used determine how well the school system is meeting each of the core questions.

At the third session, the list of indicators was narrowed to find those that (a) are measurable; and, (b) reflect what we want to know about the South Kingstown schools. Examples of the selected indicators are:

Each student becoming a responsible individual-

· Attendance data

· Disciplinary data

· Test results

Our partnership with families and community-

· Community mentoring in schools

· Student internships in the community

· Parent conference attendance

Student knowledge and skills-

· Graduates completing Algebra II

· Achievement test results

· Graduation rate

The work of the sessions will be refined and reviewed as the final indicators are selected, baseline measurements determined, and goals set.

Effective school improvement plans use data from many sources - test scores are not enough. Important information can be gathered from analyzing student work, school visits, assessment results, and surveys of parents, students, and staff.

SALT Surveys are given to students, parents and school personnel regularly to provide information on the operation of schools and districts throughout the state. While surveys ask about many things, schools typically will narrow their data analysis to what is most relevant to their specific situation.

Survey questions ask about diverse areas such as: school safety, instructional practices, demographics, student achievement, and parent involvement. The surveys also provide for cross-referencing this information, for example analyzing instructional practices by achievement or expectations by gender.

The surveys can also be used to track over time, thereby assessing the effectiveness of programs, recognize emerging challenges, and tracking parent reaction to the district.

The surveys are administered by the Department of Education to all public schools and the results are publicly reported. When you receive your next SALT survey, please fill it our and return it, because the better our response rate, the more useful our results. In the recent school committee goal setting sessions, it became evident that the community was not fully aware of how or why the SALT survey is given and this article is one step in addressing that gap.

Below are some excerpts from our survey results this year. More complete survey information and results are available at http://www.infoworks.ride.uri.edu/2003/reports/salt.asp.

Elementary Students (grades 4 and 5)

96%	Say they have the reading skills to understand the materials used in school
60%	Love to read
14%	Do not like to read

Middle School Students (results from 97-98 – as a junior high, and 02-03 – as middle schools)

Things that are a big problem	97-98	02-03
Not getting along with teachers	13%	9%
Not understanding class work	16%	13%
Fighting/problems with friends	14%	8%
Pressured by friends about drugs	7%	6%

High School Students – percent who think that:

They will make the honor roll next year	All – 59%	Boys – 55%	Girls – 65%
They will go to college	All – 81%	Boys – 72%	Girls – 90%

Parents – what do they say about homework?

Question	K-5	6-8	9-12
My child should get more homework	38%	33%	34%
I’ve helped my child with homework many times	77%	72%	53%
School explains well how to check my child’s homework	37%	21%	12%

Teachers – What are the greatest barriers to improvement?

1	Lack of organized curriculum
2	Inflexible scheduling
3	Inadequate professional development time
4	Inadequate materials and resources

Middle School Schedule

Each of the first two years of our middle schools scheduling has been a problem. Developing a schedule for a middle school is a process of balancing competing priorities. There is only so much time in a student’s day, and, no matter how the pie is sliced, the day is fixed in length.

In the past, one drawback was that priorities were set without fully considering the ripple effect on other areas of the schedule. This created the result where students had to choose between being in allied arts (art, computer, family and consumer science, technology education, robotics, or modern language) or band or orchestra. Similarly, students receiving resource support could be in neither. This is antithetical to a core goal of middle schools - providing students a broad exposure to many curricular areas.

Over the course of last year, administrators met with teachers, parents and students to explore the middle school schedule, the plusses and minuses of various options, and the impact of possible decisions. Several updates and reports were made to the school committee throughout the year. The resulting schedule is a complicated one, but one that balances the competing priorities. In summary:

The schedule is based on a seven-period day. Students spend five periods in their core subjects (literacy, social studies, math and science) and two off the team in allied arts and support areas.
There is a three-period allied arts rotation, and two of the periods meet each day. In general, the three periods are planned for (a) health, physical education and reading; (b) allied arts; and (c) either band, orchestra, chorus, or reading or resource support.

The balance that is made in this schedule is that while less time is spent in what non-core areas students participate, students are able to more fully participate in the full variety of offerings available in our middle schools.

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