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I sat in on David Hebert’s 8th grade social studies class at Northern Middle today for a feature piece I’m working on about paperless education. I’m looking at how education is shifting from pens, paper and books to computers.

I saw something that will probably make it into my article but I wanted to share it here with you guys to see what you think.

The kids were working on a project about American western expansion on their computers in groups of three. Hebert is one of those teachers that believe you can’t have learning without a little noise but when the kids got too loud and he felt they were off task he went over to his computer and clicked the mouse one time.

With that one click, an act that took milliseconds, he turned off the monitors to every desktop and laptop in the room. As soon as the screens went black there was a uniform, “awwww” followed by silent, swiveling heads looking at Hebert.

I’ve been in a lot of classrooms and I can say I’ve never seen a teacher snap students to attention like that without making a sound.
 

The 2010-11 school calendar is on the school board’s agenda tonight. They’re being presented with four options but the board could scrap all of them and go back to the drawing board. Here are the choices. If they do decide on one it’ll go out for public comment before a final vote.

This is always a topic of some discussion and with good reason considering last year the school district got into a little tiff with state officials because they tacked on bad weather make up days to the end of the year. Here’s a link to that.
 

My Spider-sense (I do love comic books) seldom fails me (See my post from earlier today). Here’s the press release from the district sent out this afternoon.

Greensboro, N.C. – Guilford County Schools (GCS) is hosting four forums to discuss the idea of paying employees additional incentives based on performance and other strategic compensation issues. Two of the forums will be for teachers and GCS employees and two will be for community members.

The forums are part of the district’s efforts to inform the community about new research showing the relationship between teacher quality and compensation. During the forums, participants will talk about how to ensure GCS recruits and retains high-quality employees, and how to ensure employees are rewarded for improving student achievement.

Nov. 16 at 5 p.m.

Public Forum for Employees

Smith High

Nov. 23 at 11:30 a.m.

Public Forum for Community

Southwest High

Nov. 18 at 5 p.m.

Public Forum for Employees

Southwest High
Nov. 23 at 5 p.m.

Public Forum for Community

Smith High

In September, GCS hosted a forum for school board members, state representatives, school administrators and community members to discuss this issue. The forum, titled “Measuring What Matters: Paying for Teacher Quality,” was funded by the Center for Educator Compensation Reform through the U.S. Department of Education. GCS hopes the upcoming forums will allow the district to get more feedback about strategic compensation for all teachers and other school-based employees.

“As we continue to explore the idea of paying teachers incentives based on performance, we want as many voices in the room as possible,” said Dr. Amy Holcombe, executive director of talent development for GCS.

Nationwide, teachers are traditionally paid on a single salary schedule with standardized increases based on years of experience, advanced degrees and certification levels. School districts on average spend about 35 percent of their teacher compensation budgets on these standard increases. However, traditional schedules do not take into account student achievement, nor do they provide motivation or rewards for elevated levels of school or teacher effectiveness.

During the 2006-07 year, GCS launched Mission Possible, a comprehensive teacher incentive plan that combines multiple components to keep and attract highly effective teachers and administrators for the ultimate goal of increasing student achievement in schools with critical needs. Teachers in testing grades at these 30 schools are eligible for annual performance incentives.

So far, Mission Possible has helped recruit highly qualified teachers to these schools. In fact, 100 percent of math positions were staffed on the first day of school this year. Additionally, teacher and principal turnover has decreased and school climate has improved based on annual faculty and parent surveys. However, when it comes to student achievement, there are still some fluctuations in reducing the gap between Mission Possible and non-Mission Possible schools.

In the district’s strategic plan, which launched in January, a strategy calls for evaluating and refining a pay structure that recognizes the need to differentiate compensation for hard-to-fill positions. This year, GCS is evaluating the impact of Mission Possible and other differentiated compensation structures and also examining the current compensation package for all hard-to-fill areas.

With Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools announcing they'll start paying teachers for performance rather than seniority, how much longer do you think it will be before we see a similar shift here?

So what does everyone think of the laptop program at Welborn? Here’s the link to the article.

I’m working on a feature piece that will look at paperless classrooms and the idea that notebooks and textbooks really aren’t necessary anymore. Look for it in the next few weeks.

The netbooks are the students’ to use but school officials told me it’s understood that the rest of the family at home will use them as well. Some of the parents I spoke with said they like the program but that their child has access to a computer at home or even has their own computer already.

Then again Welborn serves some of the poorest communities in High Point and for many of these families this will be the first computer in the home.

Some of you might take objection to that. “Why should tax money go to buying these people a computer? Nobody bought me a computer!”

Not a bad point. I definitely intend to look at how many of these things actually come back at the end of year and if the school tracks any overall improvement in the kids’ grades and performance.

But you can also make the argument that giving parents access to these computers is a major benefit as well. What if the unemployed parent uses it to find a job? What if they have two jobs, find it hard to get to the school and this computer allows them to have email communication with their child’s teacher?

I’m sure some parents and other siblings will use these laptops for YouTube, Facebook and God only knows what else and, though I don’t know it for a fact, I doubt the grant that paid for them includes that.

So what do you think? Is this waste of taxpayer money? Do you think it will benefit student and family alike?
 

I got this press release from the school district on Friday. There’s lots of criticism of the Advanced Placement program in our schools, most notably that the course are watered down because the district forces too many students who can’t handle the course load into the classes.

That said, 482 students scoring a three or higher on three or more exams impressed me. Then again, I’m a half-full kinda guy by nature. Which is why I've asked for the number of students who scored a one or two on exams. 

The press release is after the break.

________________________________________________________________________________________________
Greensboro, N.C. – During the 2008-09 year, 934 Guilford County Schools (GCS) students at 19 schools earned AP Scholar Awards in recognition of their achievement on AP exams. This marks an increase of 107 students over the 2007-08 year.

The College Board’s Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) provides motivated and academically prepared students with the opportunity to take rigorous college-level courses while still in high school and earn college credit for successful performance on the AP exams. About 18 percent of the 1.6 million students worldwide who took AP exams performed at a sufficiently high level to also earn an AP Scholar Award.

The College Board recognizes several levels of achievement based on students’ performance on AP exams:
• AP Scholar is granted to students who receive scores of three or higher on three or more exams. Across GCS, 482 students earned this recognition.
• AP Scholar with Honor is granted to students who receive a score of at least 3.25 on all AP exams taken, and scores of three or higher on four or more of these exams. Across GCS, 123 students earned this recognition.
• AP Scholar with Distinction is granted to students who receive an average score of at least 3.5 on all AP exams taken, and scores of three or higher on five of these exams. Across GCS, 267 students earned this recognition.
• State AP Scholar is granted to one male and one female student in each U.S. state and the District of Columbia with scores of three or higher on the greatest number of AP exams, and then the highest average score (at least 3.5 on all AP exams taken).
• National AP Scholar is granted to students in the United States who receive an average score of at least four on all AP exams taken, and scores of four or higher on eight or more of these exams. Across GCS, 35 students earned this recognition.

For a list of AP scholars by schools, click here.

Oak Ridge Military Academy will introduce its new school president today. The school has struggled in the last year financially and came close to closing. For a private school, the administration has been surprisingly open about its situation and even admitted earlier this month it had trouble making scheduled repayments of salary owed to employees from last year.

I would bet parents and employees appreciate that forthrightness.

The school brought in Reginald Ponder to serve as the acting president. Ponder has experience working with schools in financial trouble. Whether he’s done a good job or not is not for me to say but the doors did open this year and that missed payment earlier this month was said to have been made.

This new president – the board is withholding the name until the press conference today at 4 p.m. – will have no small task ahead of him (or her). One question I will ask is how the new president intends to attract new students?

I worked at ORMA for about a year back in 2003 if memory serves. The one struggle I often heard teachers and administrators talk about was the perception the school was a reform school, that only “bad kids” were sent to military schools. That’s a misconception but it’s one that’s hard to shake.

So I’m curious, who among you would send your child to ORMA and why or why not? Is it because it’s a private school, a military school, because you think it’s for bad kids or because you believe they would get a strong education and learn leadership skills?

And watch the site later today for the article about the new president.
 

What constitutes a promise and how much should it cost to keep it? Those are two questions that have been weighing on the minds of school board members for several months now as they attempt to plan for a new elementary school in the southeast.

Two groups of southeast residents have lobbied the school board during recent meetings to build the school where they believe it was promised. And the school district held a community meeting a few weeks ago to hear more concerns from families and make their argument. Here’s a link to that story.

The issue centers around a map included with material promoting the 2008 school bonds. That map had a star on it in the southeast that many in that area of the county took as a promise of where the new elementary school would be built. But district officials say they got sticker shock when they attempted to buy land in that area.

So the district’s looking in areas beyond the star, outside of where the southeast community believes they were promised a school. I should note school system officials say the school would still alleviate crowding at southeast area elementary schools.

Southeast folks are less than thrilled about the issue.

I’m writing an article this week about this and would love to hear from families in the area. Call me at 373-7351 or email me at brian.ewing@news-record.com.

But my questions for the blog are these, should taxpayers shell out more for land to keep this promise, is a star on bond material even a promise, should the school be built where it’s cheapest?
 

I’m preparing an article on the Advanced Learners program in Guilford County Schools and wanted to know your thoughts. If you’re a parent, please feel free to e-mail or call me.

E-mail: brian.ewing@news-record.com
Phone: 373-7351
 

Remember how odd it struck many that Guilford County Schools would win an award from the EPA considering the issues being reported at Oak Ridge Elementary? Here’s the link to the original post.

Well here’s the reply I got from the EPA when I asked who nominated the school district for the award.

Brian,

It's a self-nomination process. The school completes the short application and a short narrative describing their current actions and commitments towards establishing a comprehensive IAQ management program and future action plans for their IAQ management plan implementation.
Applications are then evaluated based on whether applicant schools have demonstrated that an IAQ Coordinator and/or an IAQ Team have been established.

Dave Ryan
EPA Washington Headquarters Press Officer
PHONE: 202-564-7827
E-MAIL: ryan.dave@epa.gov

I replied asking how many other nominations the EPA had for the award during that period. I'll update when I get an answer.

So you might wonder, was this just an attempt by school officials to make angry and scared parents at Oak Ridge feel a little better about the work being done at the school?

If there isn’t a problem with air quality at Oak Ridge, as some have claimed, then aside from just doing all the work GCS is doing at Oak Ridge (here’s an update on that by the way) then will the work alone make people feel safe? Wouldn’t getting an award for that work help those folks feel safer? Might that make the work seem even more important and correct in the minds of those who fear the school is dangerous?

Then again, maybe Leo Bobadilla, the school system’s chief of operations, and his team learned a lot from this experience about indoor air quality, the threats it poses and how to address it. If so, is it any wonder they might want a little recognition for that? Isn’t that why the EPA has the award in the first place?

Here’s what Nora Carr had to say about it when I asked today.
 

Brian--heard you were looking for a comment.

Most awards are self-nominated--the company, CEO, CIO, advertising agency, newspaper, TV station, or in our case, teacher, principal, or other district administrator fills out an application--just as newspapers have to submit articles for consideration for the Pulitzer prize and other programs. The key is that these applications must meet specific criteria and standards set forth by the group making the award. Generally the purpose is not only to recognize good work, but to help educate everyone about the standards and what constitutes good work according to those in the profession.

Improving indoor air quality is a major initiative for GCS, and part of our strategic plan strategy to improve operational efficiency and productivity, particularly when it comes to energy management. Finding new and better ways of recognizing employees for the work they do is also part of our strategic plan.

This recognition acknowledges both of these issues.

1) We are using the EPA Tools for Schools process to guide this work at the district, school and departmental levels, so it made sense to submit what we've done so far to see whether what we're doing (and what we plan to do) is on the mark; and, 2) acknowledges the team's efforts thus far in the process, and provides them with a well-deserved pat on the back for "the great start" on this important effort.