Superintendent's Report
* The Volunteer New Hampshire Organization named Milford a 2007 Spirit of New Hampshire Program Award Winner. The award will be presented on November 7th at the Grappone Center in Concord, and Governor Lynch will attend the ceremony.
The Volunteer Program Champion Awards recognize outstanding volunteer programs that provide the infrastructure for volunteers to be successful in their service. Awards in the Volunteer Program Champion category recognize excellent program management, fund development efforts that sustain volunteer programs, and commitment of time/resources to engage employees in community volunteer roles.
* Reading information night will be held at the Jacques Memorial School on Thursday 10/18 at 6:30. This will be hosted by the early education literacy team.
* The open houses at each school were completed and all were well attended. The Global Connect telephone messaging service was used to notify parents of the nights, and the notification system seemed to work well.
* Rivier College is sponsoring a professional development program titled "Developing Teacher Leaders of Elementary and Middle School Science" for some of the science teachers in the District.
Project Management Committee
Tom Hurley (Committee Chair) gave an update on the various issues that were addressed at the committee meeting on Thursday. Tom updated all the items that were described in my previous posting. The board approved the fencing and the bleacher recommendations.
ATC Curriculum
Rosie Deloge (Director of Technical Studies) presented the ATC curriculum that was recently developed. This book was the result of a lot of work by various individuals throughout the state. The objective was to develop a common curriculum for many of the ATC's (Applied Technology Center) around the state. Previously each ATC developed their own curriculum for each program, which led to an inability to compare the results from each school.
The new curriculum seems quite good. Each of the 12 program areas has a defined curriculum that is in a structured format.
Kindergarten
The school administration presented the results of their studies on the feasibility of various kindergarten options that are available to us in our efforts to implement public kindergarten as is now required by state law.
Laurie Johnson (Assistant Superintendent of Schools) was the lead presenter of the information, but everyone chimed in as needed.
State Funding
There was a lot of discussion about what are the potential funding sources for the programs from the state. We will not know for some time as to what portions will be funded by the state. Len Mannino seemed pessimistic about the potential for state funding, but based on what I have read about the subject, I am much more optimistic that we can expect to receive significant funding levels for implementation.
The old formula for construction aid for kindergarten start-ups was 75% kindergarten construction funding for the project plus 30% building aid for the portion not funded, for a total of 82.5% aid. It is my opinion that we can expect to receive at least that level of funding, and there is a possibility that it could be even greater.
While there is some debate on this topic, the feeling of many people is that an adequate portion of public kindergarten costs is a new state mandate, and the state constitution requires that all new mandates be funded by the state. I expect that the legislature will decide to 100% fund an "adequate portion" of new kindergarten programs, and that they will be generous with support of construction projects.
Peter Bragdon, who is on the state committee that is working on the funding aspects of an adequate education, seemed to agree with my assessment of the situation, and that there would be some significant level of funding.
Five Options
Five construction options were presented. The start-up costs and annual operating costs for each option were estimated, and the resulting tax impact was also estimated based on various assumptions. Options one to four were for half-day kindergarten and option five was whole-day kindergarten.
We identified some relatively minor items would need additional costing review prior to submitting a warrant article, but the options were developed in enough detail where we can get a fairly good estimate of the tax impacts of the choices.
The four half-day options have similar ongoing costs of about $0.22 per 1,000, or $55.80 for a $250k house. This is net of state adequacy funding of $1,200 per student. The whole-day option is $.86/1,000, or $176.00 for a $250k house.
The main differences in cost are for the construction costs for each option.
These are the options (with tax impacts based on continuation of existing state funding):
1. Jacques 2 Portables - Add two portables containing four classrooms to the rear of the Jacques school. This is the least cost option, but did not get support from any board member. My opinion is that this version is OK as a stopgap measure to enable us to get the program implemented next year if needed, but is not suitable as a long-term solution. Portables are OK when future needs are uncertain, but when it appears that you have a long term need, then it is less costly in the long run to have a long term solution. The construction cost is $190k, or an extra $0.01 on the tax rate for five years, or $2.50 for a $250k house.
2. Renovate Bales Annex - Construction is $1.3M or $0.05 on the tax rate for ten years, or $12.50 on a $250k house. The is the option that I have discussed in the past. It is the least cost option for a semi-permanent solution. The total cost (start-up and operating costs) for this option is about $0.27 per 1000, or $68.30 on a $250k house.
3. Four-room addition to Jacques - This would include tearing down the Bales Annex, and adding a four-room addition to the front end of Jacques. This has the advantage of putting all the students under one roof so they don't have to go outside to move to other areas of the building. The traffic patterns may be better also, but I'm not sure of that. Construction is $1.8M or $0.07 on the tax rate for ten years. Total cost is about $0.29 per 1000, or $73.30 for a $250k house.
4. Stand-alone building on Brox property - This is an eight room stand-alone building on the Brox property near the Heron Pond school. This would include six rooms for kindergarten and two for pre-school. Construction cost is $4.5M, or $0.17 per 1000 on the tax rate for 20 years. Total cost is about $0.39 per 1000, or $98.30 for a $250k house.
5. Full-day stand-alone building on Brox - This is similar to option 4, but is a 14 room building to allow for the full day programs. Construction cost is $10.4M, or $0.39 per 1000 on the tax rate for 20 years. Total cost is about $273.50 for a $250k house.
Options 2 and 3 are lower cost options that provide a solution for the nearer time periods, say perhaps 10 years. At some point the enrollments will rise and further solutions would be required. They do save money in the near term, and it may even extend to longer periods if enrollments rise slowly.
Option 4 costs more now, but provides a longer term solution. It leaves open the option of expanding Jacques or renovating the Annex at some time in the future if the first grade enrollments expand, and the Brox building will be designed to be easily added to if needed.
Option 5 costs the most, but provides for a full-day kindergarten program which is educationally desirable.
In my opinion, although a full-day program is desirable, I think that we should stick with a half-day program for now. We need to walk before we can run, so lets move forward with a half-day program and leave the full-day program discussion for future times.
I think that it probably makes sense to go with the complete new building instead of the renovation/addition options. The stand-alone building gives us more flexibility for future changes. There is also the chance that the state will pay for most or all of it at this time, and this might be a one-time shot at a high funding level for construction. The cost adder of $25 or $30 per household for this option seems like a good value for the future flexibility.
Enrollment Projections
We went over the enrollment projections for next year. We do this at this time each year in preparation for the budget development process. We use average cohort survival rates for most of the estimating, but we use a different process for the R-1 grades. The cohort process seems to work well, but we are less successful at estimating the numbers of students that are enrolling in R-1 for the first time. We reviewed the numbers, and we will formally adopt them at the next meeting.
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2 comments:
Hi Paul --
You have a medley of education topics on this post, so I thought I'd inject one more...
This week's Economist magazine has a fascinating global study of what works well, and less well, in education policy. The article compares education policies and results in countries around the world, and has some interesting findings.
Below is an excerpt on what appears to be the critical importance of recruiting and retaining the most academically qualified teachers. In a word, if schools (like those in South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong) can recruit teachers from the top 5%-30% of college graduates ("top" by academic performance), the schools generate substantially above-average outcomes for their students.
The article contains the challenging assertion that in the United States (in contrast to the countries with the best-performing schools), teachers are typically recruited from the bottom 1/3 of college graduates. The suggestion is that this may explain, in part, America's lagging performance in global education rankings.
Does the Milford School system maintain data indicating the academic ranking (in a systematic way) of the teachers in our system? Do we benchmark the "academic ability" and "academic achievement" of our teachers against national standards, international standards, or other metrics?
It seems to me it would be relatively straightforward to construct an objective index of academic ranking of teachers in the system. One could start with a widely-used ranking system for US colleges and universities, with weights assigned corresponding to rankings (eg, Yale is higher than Colby Sawyer); then input the college GPAs (or percentage class ranks) of our teachers; adjust each GPA/rank for the college weighting; and then come up with an aggregate weighted ranking for the teachers in our system as a whole.
This would show, in a general way, whether Milford is attracting the top 10%, 20%, 50%, etc., of college graduates to be our teachers.
Is this done, or has it been considered? If the McKinsey study cited by the Economist is correct, then this should perhaps be a metric that the school board follows over time.
What do you think?
Thanks, Jim
***********
Excerpt from The Economist, October 20, 2007
Now, an organisation from outside the teaching fold—McKinsey, a consultancy that advises companies and governments—has boldly gone where educationalists have mostly never gone: into policy recommendations based on the PISA findings. Schools, it says*, need to do three things: get the best teachers; get the best out of teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind. That may not sound exactly “first-of-its-kind” (which is how Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's head of education research, describes McKinsey's approach): schools surely do all this already? Actually, they don't. If these ideas were really taken seriously, they would change education radically.
Begin with hiring the best. There is no question that, as one South Korean official put it, “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.” Studies in Tennessee and Dallas have shown that, if you take pupils of average ability and give them to teachers deemed in the top fifth of the profession, they end up in the top 10% of student performers; if you give them to teachers from the bottom fifth, they end up at the bottom. The quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else.
Yet most school systems do not go all out to get the best. The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a non-profit organisation, says America typically recruits teachers from the bottom third of college graduates. Washington, DC recently hired as chancellor for its public schools an alumna of an organisation called Teach for America, which seeks out top graduates and hires them to teach for two years. Both her appointment and the organisation caused a storm.
A bias against the brightest happens partly because of lack of money (governments fear they cannot afford them), and partly because other aims get in the way. Almost every rich country has sought to reduce class size lately. Yet all other things being equal, smaller classes mean more teachers for the same pot of money, producing lower salaries and lower professional status. That may explain the paradox that, after primary school, there seems little or no relationship between class size and educational achievement.
McKinsey argues that the best performing education systems nevertheless manage to attract the best. In Finland all new teachers must have a master's degree. South Korea recruits primary-school teachers from the top 5% of graduates, Singapore and Hong Kong from the top 30%.
Jim,
I read the complete article in the Economist to get a better understanding of the points that they were making. I agree with one of the basic premises of the article, and that is that having good teachers is the key element in achieving good educational results. I have long been in favor of trying to make Milford attractive to good teachers.
I don't disagree with the other points of the article which basically revolve around what can be done to improve the overall level of teacher talent. However, I think that most of the suggestions that they have need to be implemented at a much higher level than can be obtained by an individual school district. These changes would need to be done at least at the state level and probably at the national level to make them viable.
For example, the article discusses the systems in place in Singapore and Finland. In Singapore they screen candidates for teacher training, match up the numbers accepted to the expected positions, and then guarantee jobs. Finland also limits the number of teachers accepted into programs to the expected jobs. There is also "generous funding" for teacher training in both countries. Teaching is a high-status profession in each country since it is so competitive.
We would need to change the way the higher educational institutions are set up and funded in order to make this work in the USA. To offer a similar approach would require that there be limits on the number of students accepted into teaching slots at schools of higher education, and that there would be increased public funding of those slots. I frankly don't see that happening in the USA any time soon.
Without making the systemic national and/or state changes that are needed to upgrade the status of the teaching profession, I don't think that measuring the quality of teachers in the district will have much impact. It could certainly be done in some manner since we have some of the needed data (schools attended, degrees received, GPA's attained), but I don't know if there would be much value in making the effort required to get the answer. It would not be a trivial exercise to create this ranking since a formula would have to be developed and additional data would have to be collected. For each school attended, there would have to be a quality measure developed that was meaningful. For example, I'm not sure if we could develop a meaningful method of comparing a BA from Plymouth State College with a 3.2 GPA to say a BS from the University of Vermont with a 3.0 GPA. I am unaware of any similar national calculations, so the numbers that are developed would not be comparable to anywhere else, and could probably only be used to see how the district itself is changing over time.
There is some data that is collected that is on this same topic. The state collects info on the number of teachers per district with various educational levels. The complete listing can be found at the State Department of Education website.
Milford's teacher educational mix is similar to the state average except that we have a few more teachers with less than a Bachelor's degree than the state average. These are the percentages for the 06/07 school year:
Less than Bachelor; State 0.3%, Milford 2.8%
Bachelor; State 51.2%, Milford 51.2%
Masters; State 47.3%, Milford 44.75
Beyond Masters; State 1.2%, Milford 1.3%
There are two major interests that attract quality teachers in our current overall educational system, and that is the general financial package (salary and benefits) that is offered, and working conditions.
Milford has been doing the right things in recent years to try to improve both of these, and we have had good results with upgrading our teaching staff as a result. Milford is now a desirable district in which to work, and we usually get numerous excellent candidates for open positions. We currently have a competitive teachers' contract, and our working conditions are good.
It was not like that in the past, and we were in a different place only ten years ago. Our teachers' contracts generally offered below average provisions and the schools were in bad shape. Since then we have systematically upgraded our contract provisions to competitive levels, and we have upgraded the schools. We also offer significant levels of professional development, which helps to attract good teachers and to upgrade the capabilities of the existing staff.
Milford follows the quality philosophy of continuous improvement where we try to consistently make steps in the right direction each year. A major portion of this is the curriculum development cycle where we upgrade our curriculum each year on a schedule, with each subject area being upgraded in a rotation of about eight years. The professional development group also gets a lot of attention with a variety of training going on in a systematic manner.
Paul
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