By Julia Paine
Shades of Gray
Clarenceville HS
1st Place
Division 4, News Writing
News Analysis
By now everyone knows that CHS is a Priority School, but not everyone knows what, if anything, is being done to rectify that status. It is important to know that the Priority School Status doesn’t translate into the school being a terrible place. Mr. Troy Nelson, principal, explained, “We’re not saying that it’s a bad school. What we’re saying is that now some-body from the outside has said that there are some things you can change and because of how we identified things, we are saying you have to change.” The Michigan Department of Education won’t just let the school sit idly by and hope it gets better. “We have to put our feet on the gas, and make sure it gets done the right way, so that we really are impacting kids,” continued Nelson.
An in-depth Redesign Plan detailing the agenda for the next four years is required. Nelson and his “Transformational Team”—which consists of teachers from each core class and other Clarenceville District staff— submitted the first draft of the plan to the MDE on Jan. 20, 2015. After extensive analysis and research, the group determined the three “Big Ideas” or focus areas of the plan to be culture, literacy, and mathematics.
Big ideas for big improvement
Building culture means that the school needs to become a positive learning environment with academic consistency and higher performance expectations. Although academics are important, Sarah Meili, ‘16 believes that behavior needs to be addressed just the same to improve the classroom. “It’s a calmer environment [in classrooms with no behavioral is-sues] where my mind is more open to learning. When there is constant interruption, I just get annoyed and stop focusing on my class work,” Meili said.
However, Nelson’s focus seems to be more heavily based on academic over behavioral consistency at this point. “But even more so is consistent instruction, the consistent bell to bell work, the consistent expectation that all students will achieve at a high level,” said Nelson. As a result, LEAD class will be further used to discuss students more personally— their achievement levels and shortcomings. Furthermore, this year —the planning year— is the time for developing and researching top-ics for future implementation such as college and career readiness.
A current issue is the discomfort that students face when it comes to certain teachers’ approachability. “I think that the staff at Clarenceville is great, but some teachers I have trouble approaching to ask questions,” said Amanda Katchorek, ‘16. These issues that students face are exactly why the culture of the school is one of the “Big Ideas” that will have to be addressed.
Teachers creating this safe and open environment has to be of utmost importance as the school moves forward. “There has to be a bit of forgiveness that a student might not know that answer, and you’re going to say that’s okay. You’re going to help them get there…The Priority Plan is looking at our instructional practices. Part of that is that idea of being open for students, so they will ask those questions, so students feel safe to learn and not intimidated,” said Nelson.
Because of teachers’ role in building culture, they’re understandably a huge part of the plan. Mr. Brady Gustafson, math teacher and Transformational Team member, identified components of exemplary teaching as “being prepared, communication with your students, timely feedback, and understanding your content material, and then using the most modern, best practices to convey your information to the students.”
A key throughout the plan is communication, which puts the spotlight on the timely input-ting of grades by teachers. Seth Krazel, ‘17 said, “Most of the time they put the grades in, in a week or two, but sometimes they take up to a month.” Currently, Nelson and Mr. Alan Kantor, assistant principal, monitor grades on a somewhat weekly basis. However, with the plan’s stress on consistency, there has been discussion about picking a day and time, which parents and students would be aware of, when grades are due every week. Also, new reward systems are being established for teachers such as “Teacher of the Month” to en-courage better practices. As the school is under the microscope, teachers will be evaluated and watched carefully through a new process, and those determined ineffective for three annual evaluations will be let go.
Literacy is another of the “Big Ideas” that needs to be worked on as shown from test scores. Strengthening vocabulary is essential for higher achievement and is currently being practiced though Word Walls. Testing showed students also struggle in reading content-specific text and in data literacy. Although this year is just a planning year, the English Department is getting ahead of the curve. “We’ve already started to incorporate some new strategies that are outlined in our plan. We outlined all the different techniques we’re going to try, and we started immediately—we’re not wait-ing until year two,” said Mr. Mike Korczyk, English teacher and Transformational Team member. Support programs for underperform-ing students will be more prevalent in the up-coming years as well.
Math is the final focus of the Redesign Plan. A gap was found between what is taught and what the expectations of the Common Core are. “Aligning the practices of the Common Core while making sure all teachers follow Common Core will improve test scores,” said Gustafson. The learning targets posted in math classrooms are aimed to help teachers focus and align their teaching more effectively.
Schedule change up
The MDE requires a change in the school’s schedule to allow for increased time in the core classes. Teachers and students seem to see things differently when it comes to the schedule alteration coming next year. There will be six hour days, and students will have to take math, science, English, and social studies all three trimesters as opposed to two. “I do not want that schedule next year because we just got out of middle school, and I don’t think we should go back to that,” said Dante Marzolo, ‘17. An upside for students is that the length of the school day will not be ex-tended; instead class periods will be reduced to about 60 minutes.
On the other hand, teachers think it’s a great plan. According to Gustafson, “It’s going to allow us to do more hands-on activities, to do more learning based on discovery, to implement the practices effectively of the Common Core, and it gives us more time to cover more topics and cover those topics deeper than we were previously…The shorter time they’re in class will help them [the students], and it’ll keep the same amount of electives, but give them more time to focus on their core work which should improve their test scores.”
Testing bombardment
Students are all too familiar with the excessive testing taking place and the fact that
scores must improve. If it’s not finals, it’s NWEA, and then ACTs come around along with the state testing. Although it may seem dizzying, the question of how it influences the Priority School Status is key. “What we’ve been told from the MDE, is that no matter what the tests are…that those are the measures for Priority [School] Status… We are also be-ing told that they will be consistent in how they measure. Now, we’re being told that, is that accurate or not? That’s up for argumentation,” said Nelson.
The state’s inaccuracy
Accuracy, or the lack thereof, has been huge. Gustafson explained, “The formula that was used to judge our school takes into account three things: achievement, the gap in student learning, and your improvement score. The achievement score is based on test scores that every student takes. The assessment score for improvement is based on your test scores compared to the group of test scores from four years ago. This is inaccurate because you’re testing two completely different groups of students, so it doesn’t show improvement. Our students might’ve improved even though they have lower test scores compared to a completely different set of students. And then the last one is the Bottom 30 Top 30 comparison. This gives a score based on how far your lowest students are compared to your highest achieving students, which is also inaccurate because if all your students are low, you get a high score in that category even though they may not have ever passed a single test or met a single state requirement.” Gustafson predicts that after this year, the school’s scores will be
higher. In fact, the MDE’s results fluctuate a lot. Just three short years ago, the school received money from Michigan as a reward for success. Data actually suggests that Clarenceville hasn’t changed all that drastically, but the measuring system used is flawed. In recognition of this, it seems that this year the MDE will take the junior’s test scores and compare them to their eighth grade scores. This way the group of people being measured is a constant variable which should show the growth the state is seeking.
Time for students to step up
As CHS moves into the future with this plan, students must remember to play their role. What needs to be done for students on a daily basis parallels what the school is now do-ing—learning from mistakes and improving. Students are just as crucial in this process to clean the school’s reputation as the staff. Stu-dents need to take testing and any educational surveys seriously because it all lends itself to data analysis and information gathering used to help the school.
Feeling hopeful for the future
Optimism is the general consensus for the future. “I see us, no matter what the test is or how they’re measuring, as a very different school. I see us out of the Priority [School] Status. I see us as a school where everyone knows that learning is the essential piece of why we do what we do, and why students come here every day,” said Nelson. Korczyk and Gustafson had similar sentiments. With the Redesign
Plan firmly in place for the next four years, the school’s future looks bright.