June 18, 2004 Minutes

I. Location and Attendees

The meeting was held at the Education Commission of the States (ECS), 700 Broadway. Commissioners in attendance were: Co-chairs, Rev. Lucia Guzman and Dorothy Horrell, and Commissioners: Hank Baker, Brian Barhaugh, Dana Bryson, Leanna Clark, Ariel Cisneros, Judi Diaz-Bonacquisti, Rev. Regina Groff, Maria Guajardo Lucero, Debbie Jessup, Christine Johnson, Stephen Kaplan, Jesse King, Ginger Maloney, James Mejia, Richard O'Connell, Esther Rodriguez, and Al Yates; ex officio members Princess Rhines, Jeff Buck, and Ann Greenfield; Executive Director, Patricia McNeil; and Assistant Director, Liz Aybar.

Observers included DPS Superintendent Jerry Wartgow, Chief Academic Officer, Sally Mentor Hay, Assistant Superintendent, Wayne Eckerling, School Board members Elaine Gantz Berman and Theresa Pena; Gully Stanford, Colorado GEAR UP Director; Mariah Dickson, Brooke O'Drobinak and Suzanne Plaut, Public Education Business Coalition; Leo Smith, Citizens' Committee on Bond Expenditures; Nancy Mitchell, Denver Rocky Mountain News; Charles Elbot and David Fulton, DPS Office of Educating for Character; Jeff Miller, Arrah Closson, and Michael Allen, ECS; Ed Freeman, Martha Loera-Olivas, and Mary Sam, DPS.

II. Call to Order, Welcome and Introductions - Co-Chair Rev. Lucia Guzman

Reverend Lucia Guzman opened the meeting by welcoming Commissioners and guests. Each Commissioner introduced him/herself.

III. Welcome to ECS - Esther Rodriguez

Esther Rodriguez welcomed Commissioners to ECS and described its mission. Ms. Rodriguez explained that ECS is an interstate compact created to improve public education. ECS provides support and services to state education policy leaders on issues covering early childhood, K-12, post-secondary, and adult education. Ms. Rodriguez discussed ECS's robust website that contains policy studies and reports that may add to the Commissioner's knowledge base.

IV. Approval of Minutes and Review of Agenda - Co-Chair Dorothy Horrell

Dr. Horrell asked for the approval of the minutes from the May 21 Commission meeting. Dana Bryson moved to accept the minutes and Maria Guajardo Lucero seconded. The minutes were approved unanimously.

Dr. Horrell reviewed the agenda for the day.

Dr. Horrell gave the Commissioners several updates:

She asked if communicating by email is working well. Commissioners agreed that it is. Dr. Horrell asked Commissioners to contact Ms. Aybar if there is someone else in their office who should receive the emails sent to the Commissioners.
Kati Haycock, of the Education Trust, who some Commissioners heard present at the CASE Conference on June 10 ^th, will be in Denver on July 22^nd to present to 400 DPS teacher leaders at their July 22-23 ^rd conference. Commissioners are invited to attend any part of those two days. More information will be provided. An article about Haycock's work is in the blue folder.
Other articles for reading are in the blue folder. Commissioners agreed that it worked well to assign them specific readings.
Provided in the blue folder is information on the background of the Commission and talking points for the Commissioners to use when speaking with others about our work. Please email comments or suggestions to Ms. Aybar.
Thanks to Leanna Clark for her assistance in developing the talking points.
The Commission will be featured on the July DPS show on Channel 8. Dr. Horrell said this would be one of many opportunities to publicize the Commission's work.
The Commission's website is being developed. It will soon be accessible through the DPS website. It will include the Commission's charge, upcoming meeting dates, agendas, minutes, information on the Commissioners, news releases, and a list of readings. Liz will let you know when you can access it.
Last month each Commissioner received a journal. Dr. Horrell reminded members to record their ideas and observations to add a personal touch to our recommendations.

Dr. Horrell introduced Sally Mentor Hay and Wayne Eckerling from DPS.

V. DPS Presentation on High Schools - Sally Mentor Hay and Wayne Eckerling

At the May meeting, Ms. Mentor Hay and Dr. Eckerling presented some information on the current status of achievement in DPS. Ms. Mentor Hay said that this presentation would focus on trends and issues facing DPS high schools and current DPS initiatives to improve performance.

Ms. Mentor Hay highlighted four issues that are currently impediments to success in our high schools. This data was gathered in part from student surveys.

Curriculum Issues : Ms. Mentor Hay explained that there is very little relevance between the current curriculum in DPS high schools and either jobs or careers. The curriculum is teacher-centric and therefore often inconsistent within and across schools. Teachers decide mostly in isolation what they want to teach. The course-passing rate is very low, especially in 9 ^th grade. Over 20% of 9 ^th graders do not pass enough classes to be considered 10 ^th graders, and these rates are higher for minority students than for white students. Students know how many courses they need to graduate with their class and once they fall behind, they often decide to drop out. When compared with external test results, course grades of A or B often seem inflated. Ms. Mentor Hay suggested that schools should agree upon what constitutes good work, how it should be graded and how it connects to outside assessments.
Teaching Issues : Ms. Mentor Hay said that some teachers do not know their subject matter well enough (and the students know this), their teaching practices have not kept up with what is known about good teaching, their expectations of students are too low, and they lack strategies to help students who are not well-prepared to succeed. These strategies are especially important for poor and minority students who often enter high school unprepared. DPS is trying to get at the teaching issues through the Teacher Appraisal process. With the new ProComp compensation system, the appraisal system will get better. But stronger steps need to be taken to help tenured teachers continue to improve.
School Organization Issues : Ms. Mentor Hay described four organizational issues that affect a school's ability to educate all students well. First, comprehensive high schools are difficult to change. Change is slow, and we need something that can address problems and fix them more quickly. Second, schools are bound by the master schedule and that limits options for students and teachers. Third, grading practices can derail standards-based reform efforts if teachers grade students not on the work they do but on behavior or attendance. A Commissioner asked if DPS has an attendance policy. The District policy says that after a student has been absent for 20 days a school must look at the attendance of the student, but the school has no obligation to take action. The state mandates attendance plans for students who attend sporadically. Lastly, within schools, students don't have equal access to rich curricula and learning experiences.
Student Issues: Ms. Mentor Hay explained that many students enter high school unprepared for high school work. In addition, about half of DPS students report in student surveys that they don't feel safe or respected and think the instructional quality is poor and the leadership is weak. These numbers for high schools are much worse than at the elementary and middle school level. In some places around the country over 90% of students report feeling safe and respected. Those schools that receive more positive feedback from students have strong organizational systems. A Commissioner asked if there is a strong correlation between student comfort and success, and thought that reform should address these issues. Ms. Mentor Hay stated that learning requires risk-taking and therefore students must feel safe to learn. Ms. Mentor Hay explained that attendance is also a big issue for our students. Many are simply not going to classes.

After the presentation, Dr. Eckerling distributed materials requested by the Commissioners at the May 21 meeting that included data on our high schools about the staff, school satisfaction surveys and student success.

Commissioners raised the following issues and questions:

Could we see data on school counselors?
Looking at the data, what is the inertia we're facing? What is keeping people from being passionate about making change? Dr. Eckerling stated that he hopes the Commission will examine that issue. Ms. Mentor Hay said that some people do not know what to do and even those who do know what to do are stymied by a lack of resources and a culture that has not fostered change.
One Commissioner noted that if you have "good people in a broken system, the broken system always wins."

Ms. Mentor Hay also discussed three current DPS initiatives:

Literacy : Three years ago the district began targeting literacy with a program now in elementary, middle and high schools.
Math : This is the second year of a program targeting math in grades 4 through 8 and improving student performance in that area. This initiative is now moving into high schools.
Secondary Teaching and Learning Project : This project focuses on the teaching and learning in middle and high schools in the areas of literacy, math, science and social studies. The district has recruited and identified three teacher leaders per subject per school from each middle and high school. The professional development focuses on best practices in teaching. There are Design Teams focused on developing curriculum for teachers to use in their classrooms.

VI. Discussion of Readings on High Schools, Students and Policy - Commissioners

Commissioners read a number of articles in preparation for the meeting that focused on the themes of the institution of high school, adolescent development and education policy.

High Schools as Institutions: Christine Johnson led the discussion of the articles on high schools as institutions ( Evolution of the American High School , Background Paper Prepared for National Commission on the High School Senior Year and Introduction to Horace's Compromise by Ted Sizer). Dr. Johnson summarized the article on the Evolution of High School explaining that high schools have largely maintained their structure while what they are expected to do has changed. There are many demands on high schools, and they are often doing too much. Dr. Johnson summarized Sizer's Introduction noting the nuances and paradoxes of the American High School. In general, high schools look very similar to one another although where there are differences they are almost always attributed to the income of the students. She also noted that teaching and learning are complex, and there is nothing more important than those who teach our students. Sizer recommends that we restore to teachers and students the responsibility for student success. Dr. Johnson noted 4 key lessons for the Commission's work. They were:

The challenge for this Commission and the complexity of this work is that high schools are deeply personal and highly public. Americans are not unified in their thinking about what high schools should be. There are no quick fixes. We must focus on systems change.
We need to keep in mind the fact that the high school structure has remained the same over a long period of time and across many types of districts. We need to examine how this structure and practices such as the master schedule inhibit success.
We need to keep in mind how little students know about their own learning- when they are learning well and why- and that we rarely ask them questions to access their thinking about their own learning.
The Commission must focus on teaching and learning.

Other Commissioners joined in the conversation raising the following points and questions:

Do teachers talk together?

There are groups of teachers working together well but the structure (lack of common planning time or other priorities) make this difficult.
In business, it would be a disaster if organizations didn't encourage their staff to talk with each other.

High schools offer lots of courses to meet all interests. This costs money. Sizer notes that by being all things to all people, high schools often end up being not much to many. Some groups are working on giving students choice among schools rather than within schools.
From conversations with principals at the CASE conference, it seems that we could outline strategies that are working very well and provide professional development around these strategies. If there was choice among schools, you could help counsel students on the best school for that individual student.
There has been a change in demographics. Should we focus on segments of the population and develop programs specifically for them?

Adolescents : Brian Barhaugh led the Commission's discussion on the article, The Rise and Decline of the Teenager by Thomas Hine and the chapter on "Replacing the American High School" from Jefferson's Children by Leon Botstein. He noted that the idea of the teenager and the increase in the percentage of students attending high school was, in part, the result of the Depression. There were no jobs available, so students stayed in school. America did not have better things for our young to do, so they became teenagers, students and consumers. Commissioners had the following reactions:

The teen brain is still developing between the ages of 12 and 15
Our country and city have changed both ethnically and culturally, and we must meet our students where they are.
Our high schools are not keeping pace with cultural differences or with what we know about how students learn. We are not helping students prepare for the future.
Maturation rates have accelerated but we have not accelerated schools to keep pace.
Adolescence is a time when identity is forming and is so important-if we don't nurture identity, something (like commerce) will step in.
Look at the identity issue and what adults are paying attention to. We need to look at what kids are doing outside of school, beyond the classroom and at what are the other influences there are on the students' lives.

Some key ideas and questions from these readings that may inform the Commission's work:

While the course of human development has changed (humans are maturing earlier), our schools have not adjusted to this change. How should our high schools change to acknowledge where students are at that time in their lives and encourage them to take on more responsibility?
Popular culture now captures the students' imaginations. What can we do in our schools to excite the students about learning?
We should think about how high schools can and do contribute to students' abilities to become productive citizens and critical thinkers who aware of the way our popular culture targets them as consumers.

Policy Issues: Ginger Maloney led the discussion on "Policy Cycles and Institutional Trends" by David Tyack and Larry Cuban. She summarized the article explaining that there are two notions of educational change: an endless cycle or a steady educational progress. There are three aspects of reform: (1) policy talk, (2) policy action (when recommendations are put into policy by the school board or superintendent), and (3) implementation. In policy talk people like to stress compromise and consensus, but this is usually why reform is not extremely successful. There are certain aspects of reform that increase the likelihood that it will be implemented, but there is usually a lag in implementation and sometimes the implementation does not reflect the original intent of the reform. Commissioners had the following comments:

Change comes from compromise so we often end up tinkering around the edges.
Sometimes reform results in more bureaucracy and that hinders reform.
School reform is not a pendulum- it is an upward spiral. We are advancing. Methods we used to use with a homogeneous group did well but now we have a heterogeneous student body and our methods haven't changed. Therefore, the challenge is to adjust schools to meet the needs of students instead of imposing the schools we already have on students. Maybe we need a mindset change. Perhaps we need to think about the product of our schools as learning rather than teaching.
On the private industry side, we are dealing with rapid change-how can we take principals, districts, and school boards and help them change rapidly?
Change happens slowly so we have to look at longer time horizons to see its impact
When did the crisis of minorities failing begin?

As long as there were plenty of jobs the fact that students dropped out of school was not seen as a big problem.
It could date from the 1950s with the advent of the civil rights movement. The question was forced and some reform has been instituted since then.

Dr. Maloney then discussed two key points to inform the Commission's work:

Our work is policy talk, but to make it meaningful we must pay attention to policy action. We should listen to the voices of teachers and administrators because if our recommendations cannot be implemented or if there is resistance, our ideas won't work.
There are two policy trends now. One focuses on standards and curriculum and the other focuses on choice. These are opposite poles and districts are often caught in the middle.

VII. Report from CASE Conference - Lucia Guzman and Commissioners

Commissioners who attended the CASE Conference shared the following insights with the Commission:

Kati Haycock's presentation helped illuminate the current state of high schools and the necessity for reform
Haycock's presentation showed the power of data analysis
It was comforting to hear examples of successful change in high schools
It was valuable to interact with so many administrators and reinforces the fact that to address the problems facing high school we need to be engaged with other people across all sections of the district
The conversations with principals were extremely valuable. We must continue to talk with people in high schools and middle schools.
Interacting with principals highlighted that we must work together
When asked why there are such high failure rates among students, students talk about what is wrong with the school, and adults talk about what is wrong with the students and their families
There are some schools breaking the mold. Although more than 50% of their students come from low-income families, they have graduation rates that exceed 90%.
The failure rates of low-income students who take advanced courses are no higher than the failure rate of those same students in low-level courses

VIII. Discussion of Work Plan and Next Steps- Dorothy Horrell and Trish McNeil

Using a power point, Ms. McNeil introduced a discussion of the proposed work plan. The purpose of this discussion was to (1) Reach agreement around some key principles that will guide the Commission's work, (2) Decide how the Commission wants to organize to accomplish the work, and (3) Agree on key activities and a timeline for achieving the Commission's objectives. Ms. McNeil discussed 9 principles that will guide the Commission's work. They are:

Student Focused
Forward Looking - Future Oriented
Vision driven
Develop a few big ideas, expressed as key principles, to achieve the vision
Identify key practices, not specific programs, to achieve the vision
Understand the current realities in DPS high schools, including the disparity in student achievement based on poverty, race and ethnicity
Broad consultations with stakeholders
Be open to "ridiculous innovation."
Engage in dialogue, not debate.

Ms. McNeil suggested that the Commission approach its work by developing a shared vision, working in small groups, reviewing research and studies, shadowing students, conducting student and teacher summits, meeting with a wide range of stakeholders, making site visits to see best practices, and dialoguing at Commission meetings and possibly a retreat. Ms. McNeil talked about the need for a shared vision raising the following questions:

What is our picture of the desired future for DPS students?
What will give a sense of purpose and coherence to all the activities in our high schools?
Will this vision be attractive to stakeholders?

Ms. McNeil described eight possible working groups: (1) Expectations, Instruction and Assessment, (2) Professional Development and Leadership, (3) School Culture and Environment, (4) Personalization, (5) Parental and Community Involvement, (6) Structure and Costs, (7) Relationships between middle, high and postsecondary schools, and (8) District Leadership. She asked Commissioners to consider these topics and the questions under each in their handout and provide feedback on the work plan.

A timeline and list of proposed activities were also presented for consideration.

Commissioners had the following comments and questions during the presentation:

We should not be limited in our thinking by concerns about finances. There are other resources, such as business, that we could draw upon.
We should seek the ideal before we capitulate to political reality.
At the student summit we should also have dropouts there and students from alternative high schools such as Emily Griffith.
We should shadow principals and teachers, too.
We need to have implementation costs and a timeline with our recommendations
We need to be willing to make the hard choices between balance points
Should we deconstruct the pieces and look at those or look at the whole system?
We need to structure around a goal.

Ms. McNeil asked Commissioners to think about these issues and Dr. Horrell said that Ms. McNeil or Ms. Aybar would be in touch with each Commissioner before the July meeting to get their feedback.

IX. Adjourn

Meeting adjourned at 3:00.

Commission on Secondary School Reform