My
name is Austina De Bonte. I co-chair the Northshore Highly Capable Parent
Advisory Board and am President of the state-wide organization NW Gifted
Child Association. My goal is to continue educating the board on issues related
to the Challenge program.
You have heard pretty clearly over
the past several months that the Challenge program is working. Students are satisfied, parents are
satisfied, and since its introduction in 2011, key school board success
measures have improved. For instance the
participation rate of free & reduced lunch students has doubled since the
start of the program. This includes Algebra by 8th grade, and
advanced AP/IB courses in high school.
So why are we still here talking
about Challenge? I think it’s because the real question is not actually about
Challenge program, but the real question is more awkward to say out loud. I think the real question is whether we are
doing enough in our schools to help our struggling learners be successful.
If that is really the question, then
I would suggest that our first set of solutions should be directly addressing
that question, rather than radically changing a popular program that is working
well, which is at best an indirect solution.
There are lots of specific things
that we could invest in as a district to help our struggling learners. Here are
some ideas:
1. Put
more focus on programs in elementary to identify struggling learners earlier and
provide intensive intervention. These issues don’t just appear in middle
school, they may have been simmering for years. It is tempting to let
achievement gaps accumulate in elementary years, hoping that a few years of
maturity will make all the difference – sometimes it does, but often it
doesn’t. We already have LAP, ELL programs, and others – but even more
targeted, explicit, and intensive intervention for struggling learners in
elementary would make a big difference.
2. And
of course we also need to provide targeted, explicit, and intensive
intervention for struggling learners in middle school as well. The AVID program
is a terrific model to consider, and is adopted in several schools in both the
Lake Washington and Bellevue school districts. A friend of mine in Lake
Washington has her 7th grader in AVID this year, after nearly
failing most of her 6th grade classes last year, and the kid is
finding AVID extremely helpful – from teaching note taking and study skills, to
discussing what college is really like, it is both supporting day-to-day needs
as well as motivating the long term perspective.
3. But
perhaps the idea that I think could make the biggest difference is to fund a 7
period day in middle school. We currently fund 6 period days in our junior high
schools. In our area, Bellevue school district has had a 7 period day in their
middle schools for many years. A 7-period day has many benefits:
a.
Providing more space for elective classes for
middle school students, which is a major AMLE recommendation to allow and
encourage middle school students to explore broadly.
b.
Providing time during the school day for AVID
and other direct interventions for struggling students, without having to keep
students after school or before school, and still allowing those students to
take elective classes.
c.
Providing teachers an extra prep time each day
to enable collaborative work and interdisciplinary teaming, another huge AMLE
recommendation that is seen as essential in making an interdisciplinary block
approach work. Currently teachers are in the classroom for 5 periods, and have
one period of prep. With a 7 period day,
teachers would be in the classroom for the same 5 periods, and get two prep
periods. This would also make more time
for professional development.
The 7 period day
was strongly recommended by the middle school task force, however the cabinet
deemed it as too expensive. The task force felt so strongly about it, they
brought it back to the cabinet a second time to get reconsidered. Unfortunately
the cabinet still feels that this is too expensive to consider.
The
budget implications of potentially removing the challenge program haven’t been
calculated yet – but I’d wager that there are huge costs there as well.
Intensive professional development for differentiation, getting all teachers up
to speed on the challenge-level curriculum, upgrading student textbooks and
workbooks to challenge level curriculum, etc.
If we are going to
spend the money, I’d suggest we spend it directly on the problem we are trying
to fix.
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