District Improvement Plan Provides Road Map

School districts that have not met the student achievement goals articulated by the state under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) are required to submit a plan detailing their strategies for improvement. The Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education will be asked to approve the District Improvement Plan at tonight’s meeting which will be held at Western Dakota Tech. The plan could have far-reaching consequences for students, educators and parents.

NCLB’s Goals: Transparency and Accountability

Transparency and accountability were intended to be the keys to No Child Left Behind’s strategy for improving education. By requiring districts to test students every year and publish the results of those tests, policymakers hoped that parents and community members would hold school boards, administrators and educators responsible for student achievement. The law also sought to force failing schools and districts to publicly outline a strategy for improvement. If schools do not improve, districts and states are required to give students and parents alternative ways to get the effective instruction they need and, ultimately, if the schools continue to fall short of the state standards, the state can even take control.

Although Rapid City made some significant gains in 2008-2009, student achievement, as measured by test scores still fell short of the state’s goals. In reading and math, an insufficient percentage of American Indian students and students with disabilities scored proficient or better on the annual Dakota STEP test last spring. Economically disadvantaged students in middle school also fell short of the state’s target in reading and elementary and middle school math. In fact, for all students, the percentages scoring proficient or better were either flat or declined from the spring 2008 test.

Plan Emphasizes Data Analysis, Teacher Training and Tutoring

The District Improvement Plan on the agenda tonight reflects a further revision of the plan the District has been working on for a number of years, and despite the fact that the Board is considering the plan tonight, implementation actually began when teachers returned to work last August. It starts with data analysis. Building Leadership Teams throughout the District pore over the Dakota STEP scores to identify patterns of weakness so that teachers and principals can strengthen curriculum and instruction to address those weaknesses. By the time students start class, these new strategies are already in the works.

Research overwhelmingly shows that the key to student achievement is effective teaching. Ongoing research in education also identifies new strategies for teaching specific curriculum and ways to meet the different learning styles of a variety of students. The District Improvement Plan highlights a variety of ways in which Rapid City will provide professional development to help teachers continually sharpen their skills. It also provides an overview of the District’s strategies for recruiting, mentoring and retaining highly qualified teachers and administrators.

To protect students and parents, No Child Left Behind mandates that when schools are not making the grade, students must be able to transfer to successful schools or receive additional tutoring at District expense. The District sends a letter to parents at the beginning of the school year letting them know how their school is doing and what options they have. Although Rapid City has been on school improvement for a number of years, the number of families taking advantage of the tutoring option has been minimal. This year, however, the District is making a major effort to reach out to parents and has increased the budget for tutoring services from $100,000 to nearly $900,000.

Student Achievement Goals for 2009-2010

The major elements in the District Improvement Plan that should drive spending and planning are the student achievement goals for 2009-2010.  With the specter of NCLB’s goal to have 100 percent of all students scoring proficient or better in both reading and math by 2014, this year’s goals for spring 2010 testing in Rapid City are ambitious, but also confusing because of differences between the way scores are reported and the way the State asks for goals:

• Reading K-8 – 86% of all students will score proficient or better (Actual in 2009: 74% for elementary; 71% for middle school);
• Math K-8 – 72% of all students will score proficient or better (Actual in 2009: 72% for elementary; 68% for middle school);
• Reading 9-12 – 77% of all students will score proficient or better (Actual in 2009: 71% ;
• Math 9-12 – 63% of all students will score proficient or better (Actual in 2009: 61%);
• Graduation rate – 80% (Actual in 2009: 84.65%);
• Attendance rate – 94% (Actual in 2008-2009: 94.55%).

For a copy of the draft District Improvement Plan click here: 09-10 DRAFT RCAS District Improvement Plan.

Tonight’s Board of Education meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. at Western Dakota Tech. A copy of the agenda is available here: Board agenda 121909

PRIME Grant Report to Board Looks At Strategies for Teaching Math to Indian Students

Seven years ago, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided funding for a new approach to teaching math to Indian students in Rapid City. Tonight, Dr. Ben Sayler of Black Hills State University and Dr. Suzie Roth from the Rapid City Area Schools will report to the Board on the successes and disappointments of this project and what researchers learned in the process.

A Gatekeeper Curriculum

Math is sometimes described as a “gatekeeper” curriculum. Whether you like it or not, if you get math in high school it’s a sign that you will probably graduate. As a group, Indian students in Rapid City in 2002 were not succeeding in math. As a result, many were not graduating.

To turn this situation around, the Rapid City Area Schools formed a partnership with Black Hills State University and TIE to launch a five-year Mathematics and Science Partnership aimed at reducing the achievement gap between Native American and non-Native students. Project PRIME (Promoting Reflective Inquiry in Mathematics Education) received grants funds from the NSF to provide professional development for teachers, support alternative testing for students and finance data analysis to evaluate the program.

Research has shown that the greatest single factor affecting student achievement across the board is the quality of the teacher. A teacher’s ability is in part shaped by the training they receive. For this reason, the Rapid City Area Schools and many districts across the country have increased their investment in professional development. Assessing the value of these professional development efforts, however, is often challenging because so many factors affect student achievement — especially when its measured on a single, high-stakes test like the Dakota STEP.

With the PRIME grant, however, NSF provided additional funding at the end of the five-year grant so that the project leaders could do a deeper analysis of the data they collected from students and teachers in the project. As a result, PRIME has the potential to offer District leaders an extraordinary analysis of what works and why in math education. Sayler has intimated that the data that he and Roth will share tonight will offer provocative insights.

Tonight’s Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m. tonight to allow board members to attend Parent/Teacher conferences. The meeting will be held in the Council Chambers at the City/School Administration Center at 300 Sixth Street. A copy of the agenda is here: Board Agenda 11509

Readers interested in background on the PRIME grant can read Ben Sayler and June Apaza’s 2006 report here: PRIME – paper by SaylerApaza. A comprehensive analysis of the issues in math education for Indian students was developed by Inverness Research in September 2007:   PRIME – getting numbers dance Inverness Res 2007.

Forum Focuses on Early Childhood Education

“By the time they are three years old, most children have already developed 85 percent of their core brain capacity,” Dr. Gera Jacobs told attendees at the Leadership Forum on Early Childhood Education today. Jacobs, a researcher at the University of South Dakota, said that children living in poverty are much more likely to enter kindergarten developmentally far behind their peers who come from middle class families. Many never catch up, and as a adults they are more likely to end up in prison or dependent on one form of social service or another.

The forum, which was organized by the South Dakota and Rapid City Chambers of Commerce along with South Dakota Voices for Children highlighted the economic and social benefits of investing in early childhood education. Keynote speaker, Art Rolnick, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told the audience that high-quality early childhood education programs, targeted for children in poverty, can produce a 16 percent inflation-adjusted return on investment. In other words, for every $1 spent in the pre-K classroom, taxpayers save $1.16 on prisons, unemployment, and other social service programs.

Taking a Market-Based Approach

Rolnick and Raven Industries CEO Ron Moquist emphasized a voluntary, market-based approach to pre-K education that empowers parents to choose a program that fits their family and their values. The programs they described in Minnesota and Sioux Falls provide incentives for non-profit and for-profit providers to offer a curriculum that prepares children to enter school at age five. “Our program rewards outcomes,” Rolnick said of the privately-funded Minnesota Early Learning Foundation. If children leave a program and pass the Minnesota Readiness Test, then the program is eligible to continue receive funding from the Foundation.

“Society pays in many ways when children fail,” says Ron Moquist, CEO of Raven Industries.

Several speakers emphasized that market-based, pre-K funding focused on children in poverty should not be a threat to private childcare providers. “Most of these children are not currently in a pre-K program,” said Moquist. Instead, “they are often footballed around between boyfriends, neighbors and friends.” Moquist underscored the need for pre-K education by reminding the audience that 80 percent of women with children under the age of six in South Dakota are employed.

State Senator Tom Dempster of Minnehaha County is working with private pre-K programs to draft a bill for the Legislature that will support a market-based approach to meeting the state’s early childhood educational needs. Several of the legislators who will debate this bill were in the audience today, along with members of the Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education.

A copy of the 2003 study of economic benefits of early childhood education prepared by Rob Grunewald and Arthur Rolnick at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve is available here. Read Barbara Soderlin’s story in the Rapid City Journal here.

Dakota STEP Scores Disappoint and Confuse

Rapid City teachers and administrators received disappointing news from the South Dakota Department of Education today. Results from this spring’s Dakota STEP tests did not meet the District’s goals. The District has fallen to Level 3 school improvement in reading and remains on Level 3 school improvement in math which means the District will be forced to take steps to improve instruction. Eleven schools failed to earn passing grades from the state. Despite the disappointments, however, there were some hints of good news in the District’s report card, especially with regard to math and reading scores for American Indian high school students.

At the District level, the scores for all students who took the tests were essentially flat in math, with 69 percent scoring proficient or better, including 13 percent who rated as “advanced.” In reading, the overall percentage of students who met the mark dropped from 81 percent last year to 72 percent. Although this meant that those who scored basic or below basic increased from 19 to 28 percent, the number of students rated advanced also increased from 18 to 22.

Looking more closely at the performance of students in particular age groups and schools, the test scores offer a mixed picture of student achievement in Rapid City. Elementary students in grades 3-5 exceeded the district’s goal in math, but the number of students who scored proficient or advanced fell from 73 percent last year to 72 percent in 2009. Again there was good news in the slight increase in the percentage of students in the advanced category, as this group rose from 13 to 15 percent of all students. Meanwhile, reading scores dropped dramatically as the District fell from 85 percent scoring proficient or better in 2008 to 74 percent in 2009. Here also, the percentage of students in the advanced category rose from 20 to 26 percent. Read the rest of this entry »

A Lot Riding on Test Scores Due This Week

Report cards will be released this week, but it isn’t students who are crossing their fingers. Across the state, school administrators and teachers are hoping their students made the grade on the Dakota STEP test.  

The annual August release of results from the spring administration of the Dakota STEP has become a pivotal event in the weeks leading to the start of school. Positive results allow school staff to launch the year with a swagger and a sense of self-assurance in the classroom. Negative results cast a pall over the faculty and leave the principal lying awake at night wondering how to turn things around. Either way, in the weeks before the start of school, teachers and administrators will spend hours poring over the data searching for patterns that highlight strengths and weaknesses in the way they teach reading, math and science.

Controversies Over the Test

Students in grades three through eight, as well as eleventh graders, take the Dakota STEP to fulfill the requirements of the federal government under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). But the test is controversial. Under NCLB, every state that receives federal aid is required to administer an annual exam to measure student progress, but each state is allowed to write its own exam.

Critics of the testing requirements of NCLB argue that there is so much variation between the tests administered by the states that the system fails to achieve the law’s goal of ensuring that students across the country are meeting high standards. (See, for example, the report from researchers at Fordham University: Proficiency Illusion report 2007 - PDF 2mb.) Compared to other states, South Dakota’s Dakota STEP has received low marks for its academic rigor. When the Dakota STEP and the tests of the other 49 states were compared to student performance on a national exam known as NAEP in 2006, the Dakota STEP received a grade of D+ and ranked below the exams administered by 31 other states. In other words, student achievement was probably not as good as the state’s educators were reporting. (See Education Next, Summer 2006.) 

Rapid City Has Cause for Concern

If the Dakota STEP tends to overstate student achievement, parents in South Dakota districts have cause for concern. Parents in districts like Rapid City and Sioux Falls, with large numbers of students who fail to score high enough on the exam to meet the state’s standards, may worry even more. In Rapid City, for example, for a number of years, some individual schools and the District as a whole have failed to hit the targets set by the South Dakota Department of Education.

The “District Improvement Plan” developed last fall and approved by the Board of Education in February outlined some of the District’s problems. Large numbers of economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities and American Indian students, for example, scored below proficient in reading and math. In addition, in 2007 and 2008, 22 percent of all middle school students failed to score proficient or better in reading. (RCAS District Improvement Plan 2009 - PDF)

As required by the state, the Board of Education adopted its District Improvement Plan to address these low scores. The plan’s goals for the spring 2009 test asked administrators and staff in the District to see that:

• 82 percent of all students in grades K-8 score proficient or above in reading;
• 72 percent of all students in grades K-8 score proficient or above in math;
• 72 percent of all 11th graders score proficient or above in reading;
• 63 percent all 11th graders score proficient or above in math;
• 45 percent of all American Indian students score proficient or better in math.

When the scores are released this week, District administrators and teachers will find out if students hit these targets.

High Stakes for the District

For the Rapid City Area Schools a lot is riding on this week’s results. Under NCLB, districts failing to make adequate yearly progress have five years to turn around student achievement. Rapid City is already on Level 2 (of 5) in reading and Level 3 in math. If the scores released this week in math are not high enough, the District could go to Level 4. According to the U.S. Department of Education, this means it will have to take “corrective actions” such as “replacing certain staff or fully implementing a new curriculum, while continuing to offer public school choice and supplemental educational services for low-income students.” If these changes don’t work, the District could be forced to restructure failing schools by reopening them as charter schools or “replacing all or most of the school staff or turning over school operations either to the state or to a private company with a demonstrated record of effectiveness.”

Rapid City is not alone in this struggle to meet the state’s standards and the goals of No Child Left Behind. Many urban districts face similar challenges. Still, some positive news would be welcomed by administrators and teachers as the 2009-2010 academic year begins.

District Struggles to Educate Indian Students

Addressing the needs of American Indian students is critical to the District's educational program.

Nearly one in five children enrolled in the Rapid City Area Schools is Indian. Meeting the educational needs of these students poses special challenges to teachers and administrators in the District, as well as to the community as a whole. The data suggests that we are not doing very well when it comes to meeting these challenges. On the annual Dakota STEP test, the gap between the achievement of Indian students and all others is substantial and, in some cases, growing. Truancy and absenteeism are high, and Indian students continue to drop out of high school at an alarming rate.

Over the last several years, the District, with financial support from the Bush and Vucurevich Foundations, has endeavored to deepen its understanding of the issues facing Indian students and to develop programs that will lead to increases in student achievement within this important community. A new strategic plan for American Indian Education ratified last year by the Board of Education articulates eight key goals that aim to erase the gap between Indian and non-Indian students on standardized tests and in graduation rates.

Eight Goals for Indian Education*

• Improve student achievement and address cultural awareness.
• Strengthen data collection and analysis for programming and evaluation and increase student and parent access to technology.
• Hire and retain American Indian staff at all levels.
• Increase Indian participation in all extra-curricular activities and strengthen extra-curriculars that appeal to Indian students.
• Work with parents and the community to improve attendance.
• Increase graduation rates among Indian students by enhancing opportunities for relevant, real-life learning.
• Address the emotional and spiritual needs of Indian students by developing mentoring and wellness programs

* These goals have been paraphrased for our readers.

Progress on Implementation

ACADEMICS — Implementation of the new strategic plan began this year. In the academic arena, advanced classes in Lakota have been developed. Parents were invited to review curriculum materials and recommend ways to make these materials more culturally sensitive. This summer, Indian Education staff and teachers will begin looking at the State’s content standards with an eye to making the benchmarks more culturally relevant to Indian students. For next fall, lesson plans will be developed for the social studies curriculum that integrate American Indian history and the contributions of American Indians to the overall history of the United States and the world. The District will also expand cultural training programs for non-Indian staff to help them understand issues affecting Indian students. Read the rest of this entry »

As Researchers, Rapid City Teachers Excel

Does the learning environment change when the classroom teacher is also a researcher and a student herself? Judging from the research reports presented over the last several years by Rapid City teachers enrolled in the University of Sioux Falls’ masters degree program in Literacy, the answer is overwhelmingly yes. Tomorrow night, educators and community members interested in seeing Rapid City teachers in a different light will have the opportunity to hear teachers present the results of their own research at the third annual Literacy Research Symposium.

The symposium is the culminating experience for teachers enrolled in the University of Sioux Falls’ Masters Degree program in Literacy. Seventeen teacher/students will present the results of their investigations related to reading, writing and self-assessment. The public is invited to the event, which will be held at the Ramkota Inn from 4:30-7:30 p.m. with a public reception sponsored by Rapid City Area Schools, Highmark Federal Credit Union and The University of Sioux Falls.

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Rebecca Aker Focuses on Fluency

Rebecca Aker leans in towards the two girls and two boys participating in her reader’s theater: “How do you think the salesman will sound?”  

Undistracted by the activity of other students around her, third grader Hannah responds, “They shouldn’t be that trustworthy. They need to sound like someone trying to convince someone.”

“Exactly,” Aker smiles, and the students continue reading parts from a play about a bald emperor who is talked into a fairy tale potion to re-grow his hair.

 Aker has been teaching at Grandview Elementary for four years. She will graduate next month from the University of Sioux Falls with a Master of Leadership in Reading degree. To earn that degree, she had to formulate a research question, study what other researchers had learned related to the problem and then design her own investigation.

 Aker was interested in whether reading fluency could be improved by giving students more opportunities to focus on reading with expression as a way to increase comprehension and speed. She developed some targeted lessons and identified both an experimental group and a control group for the research. Hannah and her classmates took part in that research. Keeping track of progress with test scores, Aker was able to reach a limited conclusion that focusing more on expression enables students to achieve higher fluency overall.

 Aker says her research “has made me more reflective in the classroom. I think more about what I’m doing and why,” she says. She also asks herself more questions and thinks more about how she, as a researcher, would investigate those problems. By thinking more about theory, she has also taught her students to think about concepts – particularly the idea of fluency. 

On this day the students are writing an advice column for a mother who is concerned that “her son sounds like a robot” when he reads out loud. They offer advice on how to avoid sounding “choppy” and how to let the punctuation tell him how to change his voice. Asked by Aker to explain the idea of fluency, their responses are clear and show immediately that they understand the concept. When a girl named Kendall asks to share her letter out loud, she reads: “You should send your son to third grade with Ms. Aker. She’ll teach him all about fluency.”

Rebecca Aker will present her thesis on expression and fluency in the Needles Room at the Ramkota Inn at 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21.

Kayla Gahagan also has an excellent article on the University of Sioux Falls program and the Literacy Research Symposium on the Rapid City Journal’s website.

Editorial Begs Central Question

On Saturday, March 7 the Rapid City Journal ran the following editorial suggesting that declining scores should raise questions about the impact of continuing budget cuts on the quality of education. For the data behind this story, click the tab above labeled Quality Indicators.

When Will We Talk About Quality?

By Eric Abrahamson

As budget cuts follow budget cuts in the Rapid City schools, the debate rages over pay to play sports, administrator salaries and the impact of unfunded mandates like No Child Left Behind. Strangely, almost no one talks about quality. Are the schools in Rapid City delivering the education our children need to be competitive in today’s economy and to contribute to our society?

A significant amount of data suggests that the quality of education in Rapid City is inadequate or in decline. Every spring, as mandated by the state and federal governments, students in Rapid City take the Dakota STEP test to assess what they have learned in reading and math. Since 2004, the District has failed every year in math and for the last two years in reading. Socially challenged students – low income, Native American and the disabled – fail to meet the state’s standards in sufficient numbers.

Parents and grandparents who are not poor, Native American or have children with disabilities should be concerned as well. Across the District, while the percentage of students who are “proficient” is rising, the number of students who are “advanced” in reading and math is declining since 2003. Ironically, these declines are most evident at schools that have been deemed “distinguished” under the rules of No Child Left Behind, including Corral Drive, Pinedale, Meadowbrook and South Canyon.

The Dakota STEP data suggests that resources matter. Schools in Rapid City with high numbers of low income students get extra money from the federal government to pay for extra literacy teachers and math tutors. These “Title 1 schools,” unlike the “distinguished” schools, have actually increased the percentage of their students who are proficient and advanced since 2003.

Does the decline in “advanced” scores matter? After all, these are the college bound students in Rapid City. Won’t they do well anyway? Not according to the South Dakota Board of Regents. In 2006, graduates of Stevens and Central high schools who went to college at a state school had a lower college grade point average than their peers from other high schools in the state. In that same period, Rapid City college bound students who took advanced placement tests scored below the state and national average in five out of seven subject areas.  

Without doubt, teachers and administrators in Rapid City work hard to deliver a quality education, but with the steady rain of budget cuts they are forced to put their fingers in the dike as the quality of education springs new leaks every year. It’s time to shift the focus of the debate. It’s time to talk about quality. What does the evidence tell us? And what do we need to do to help our children be successful?