STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION
September 18, 2008
Public Service Building, Room 251-A/B
255 Capitol St. NE, Salem, OR 97310
Members Present
Duncan Wyse Chair Alan Bruner Advisor, K-12 Teacher Rep.
Brenda Frank Vice Chair Mary Spilde Advisor, Community Colleges
Art Paz 2nd Vice Chair Paul Fisher Advisor, Community Colleges
Lew Frederick Board Member
Jerry Berger Board Member
Nikki Squire Board Member
Leslie Shepherd Board Member
Members Excused
Other Participants
Susan Castillo Supt. of Public Instruction Sue Hays Principal, Scappoose HS
Camille Preus Com. Colleges Commissioner Michael Bremont Asst. Principal, Redmond HS
Krissa Caldwell CCWD Deputy Commissioner Emily Anderson Teacher, Scappoose HS
Ed Dennis ODE Deputy Superintendent Susie Erickson Teacher, Scappoose HS
Doug Kosty ODE Assistant Superintendent Val Helm Teacher, Scappoose HS
Debby Ryan ODE Executive Specialist Michelle Parson Teacher, Scappoose HS
Jan McComb Board Administrator Rebecca Steinke Teacher, Scappoose HS
Salam Noor ODE Asst Supt Sara House Teacher, Redmond HS
Pat Burk ODE Chief Policy Officer Gregory Scott Teacher, Redmond HS
Cindy Hunt ODE Legal Coordinator Colleen Mileham ODE Director
Drew Hinds ODE Education Specialist Phyllis Guile ODE Director
Susan Daggett ODE Education Specialist
Preliminary Business
Call to Order/Roll Call/Flag Salute/Introductions
Chair Duncan Wyse called the meeting to order at 9:02 a.m. Wyse called the roll; all members were present. He then led the room in the flag salute and asked the audience to introduce themselves.
Comments, Agenda Review
Chair Wyse introduced new advisor, Paul Fisher. Fisher said that he was a business instructor from Rogue Community College. Fisher had been teaching on a part-time basis at RCC since 1989. In 1997, he started teaching full-time. Before that, Fisher was in the California canning industry.
Wyse noted that the afternoon agenda items had been rearranged since the mailing of the packet; the tour of the two schools was moved up an hour, and the board would hear two agenda items following the tour: Workforce System Overview and Instructional Materials in K-8 Mathematics.
Chair Wyse stated that it was very important to see the facilities at the Oregon School for the Deaf and Oregon School for the Blind. He also said that the agenda was great and that they looked forward to the discussion on credit for proficiency. Wyse stated that there was very exciting work going on around the state related to policy development around the Oregon diploma and the whole redesign of the system. Also, the board’s work plan would be on Friday’s agenda; the board retreat was helpful to get the board focused on work to do for the rest of the year. There was a little work to do at lunch with NASBE and OSBA elections.
Committee Updates
Commissioner Preus stated that the Joint Boards Budget Committee had met. Chair Wyse said he was impressed how Governor Kulongoski was developing the education budget this year. This was the second time where the governor had asked the joint boards to come together to reflect on the priorities of the whole system, taking all budgets and looking at them as a system. There were more requests than dollars, as always. They were trying to think of how they could use the school improvement dollars to focus on the diploma priority work. There was also a focus on college assets. It was a great opportunity to have a conversation. Wyse expressed appreciation to James Sager and the Governor for asking the board to think about setting priorities from a system aspect and offering their insights.
Member Reports
Director Frederick: Frederick reported that he attended a National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) conference, last May, at the Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta, Georgia. African-American members of the Boards of Education met to talk about HIV and AIDS in the African-American communities. Over 50% of new AIDS cases had taken place in black communities. Sixty-five percent did not know they had AIDS. The focus was on what they could to get the message out and to get people tested. The question was how to address young people. There was a presentation at the conference by Brad Victor, Educational Specialist from Oregon Department of Education. Oregon was seen as a model for educating people about health care issues in this nation.
Director Frank: Frank stated that the Oregon Indian Education Summit and Government-to-Government had made plans to meet on Sunday, September 21, 2008 in Pendleton in conjunction with the Affiliated Tribes of the Northwest Indians conference. Also, there was an Oregon Community College Assn. meeting planned for October 3. 2008.
Chair Wyse: Wyse stated that he, Director Frederick and Superintendent Castillo went to the ACHIEVE meeting last week. There was a great delegation from Oregon. It was very inspiring work. There was a very large national movement to ramp up diploma requirements. Many states had adopted the ACHIEVE format. Oregon was a hybrid.
Castillo stated that Vickie Phillips was there from Gates and gave everybody a briefing on where they are in terms of the work that needed to be done around the country to improve our schools. She said that Oregon had tried to take a diverse team. Among those there were the Chancellor, Ron Saxton from the Tigard-Tualatin School District, Salam Noor, Ed Dennis, Doug Kosty and Lew Frederick. It was great to hear stories from other states and the challenges they have faced as they worked on the diploma.
Discussion:
· Director Wyse recognized the work of Brad Victor.
· Director Frank stated that Victor was well known in the tribes’ communities. He did a lot of tobacco cessation, HIV, alcohol, and high risk teen assessments. Every junior high and high school student was assessed. That netted a $6.1 million grant for the county. Tribes had a $5.1 million grant to combat methamphetamines.
· Squire related that at the end of the Apollo Space Project, the U.S. was responsible for 75% of the technical and scientific innovations in the world and we are now at 25%. That is a powerful message about how we invest our public dollars.
· Wyse spent time with the Irish and learned about their educational system. Every high school graduate went through a comprehensive assessment for college. It was very rigorous. They had high numbers going into college and high graduation rates.
Public Comment
No one signed up for public comment
Information – Diploma Update
Salam Noor, Colleen Mileham, Susanne Daggett, ODE; Principal Sue Hays, Emily Anderson, Susie Erickson, Val Helm, Michelle Parson, Rebecca Steinke, Scappoose High School; Assistant Principal Michael Bremont, Sara House, Gregory Scott, Redmond High School
Implementation Coordination
Noor gave an update on the diploma, its implementation and rollout. Credit for Proficiency was at the heart of the diploma work that the board had been doing. Achieve had the blue print for the initiate. Oregon Department of Education (ODE) learned a lot from Achieve and has continued to learn from their work. Achieve was the first one that ODE turned to because they represented 32-33 states that were involved in this work. Many research institutions and educational entities around the country had contributed to that work, including ODE. Noor distributed a two-page high level summary overview on the Oregon diploma implementation. There were intense internal efforts to coordinate diploma implementation. ODE offices and staff meet on a monthly basis to look at project plans and activities and how they supported the diploma work.
Communications
Noor stated that there were a variety of methods for diploma communications including the Superintendent’s Pipeline, Superintendent’s Update, news releases, newsletters, and the superintendent’s e-mail distribution list. A numbered memorandum and the Oregon Administrative Rules that outlined the diploma requirements and timelines were distributed in June and August. Diploma updates were provided in all content area teacher newsletters. The Moving Education Forward brochure had been distributed to every middle school and high school for each 6th – 9th grader in the state. There was an updated ODE website, Get Ready Oregon that provided information for parents and the general public (http://www.getreadyoregon.org). There were in-person diploma presentations/input sessions that targeted administrators from Educational Service Districts throughout Oregon. Noor stated that ODE had begun to see a high level of awareness on the new diploma. They mostly saw implementation questions, not questions regarding the goal.
Resources and Tools
Noor discussed resources and tools such as the Administrator Toolkit: 10 Tools to Help Implement the Oregon Diploma created through an ODE-COSA-OSBA partnership. The Educator Toolkit was designed by teachers and aimed specifically at teachers. The board allowed districts to issue credits based on proficiency and to issue credit based on applied learning experience. ODE needed to provide some guidance for the field.
Core Standards
A critical development of the diploma requirements was a new structure for the content standards. Math and science standards were in focus. The development of those standards was under way and had progressed well. They had the first draft of the revised science standards posted on the website for the public to review and comment. It was planned that the math and science standards would go to the board for review and adoption this school year. Science was slated for January and high school math standards were planned for the spring of 2009. Next month, they planned to do a presentation for the board on the development, review and revision process for content standard so the board clearly understood the process that ODE used to develop content standards in the state of Oregon.
Assessment
Noor stated that the Assessment of the Essential Skills Review Panel (AESRP) work was under way. Members of AESRP had been selected. There were plans to meet in October, November and December of 2008. Members included representatives from K-12, and a variety of other interest groups that had expertise on the topic. It was planned that the criteria for local assessment options would be developed by December 15, 2008. The additional list of assessment options such as SAT, ACT, etc. would be available June 1, 2009. Guidance for the assessment of the Essential Skills was added to the Test Administration Manual 2008-2009. An Essential Skills assessment FAQ’s was available on-line and was updated regularly.
Professional Development
Noor stated that ODE and ESDs were working together to help districts include Essential Skills assessments as part of their continuous improvement process. The current projects related to that work included:
· The direct Access to Achievement (DATA) project
· Teaching Learning Connection (TLC)
· Growth Model
· KIDS (K-12 Integrated Data Systems).
Noor stated that ODE was working with the Northwest Regional Education Lab and ESDs to develop math and science instruction professional development that was to be delivered regionally. A diploma video was under development to provide examples of school implementation practices.
Credit for Proficiency
Noor stated that there were two schools that had traveled to share their work with the board. That work had progressed very well. ODE would bring a set of recommendations to the board next month to consider as administrative and policy rules.
Discussion:
· The desirability to get feedback from students; the current presentations were left-brain and highly administrative.
· The need for students to know early on what was required of them and what their choices were.
§ The benefit of watching the two winning student videos.
§ The need for regular board updates and timelines.
Chair Wyse welcomed Mary Spilde, new community college president advisor. Spilde shared that she was glad to be at the meeting. She stated that she was the Oregon Presidents Council chair and a part of that role was to be advisor to the state board. She missed the August retreat because she was in Scotland.
Mileham gave a brief context about what the board would hear. She said that a task force completed their work this year around credit for proficiency. She wanted to remind the board that the work really began in 2002 with board adopted policy at that time. There were a series of questions such as:
· How could a proficiency based system co-exist with a time based system?
· How should we use time if students were engaged in learning at their own rate and level of learning?
· How do we create value for proficiency-based systems?
· What policies would help to empower schools to implement a personalized proficiency based system?
Critical assumptions:
· A proficiency-based system was essential to learning.
· A proficiency-based system promoted best practice in teaching and learning.
The board would hear from representatives of Scappoose High School and Redmond High School who would describe how they implemented credit for proficiency options with the traditional classroom. Department of Education staff would follow up at the October Board meeting with recommendations from the Credit for Proficiency Task Force.
Daggett introduced the two schools. She said that this had been a developmental process.
Redmond High School
Michael Bremont, Assistant Principal, Shay Mikelson, Ass’t Principal, teachers Sara House and Greg Scott.
Bremont shared that they were excited to be at the board meeting. Redmond wanted an assessment based on standards and true content knowledge, not on artificial barriers. He stated that:
· Redmond started with their freshman class.
· Over time, their goal was to have a comprehensive proficiency-based high school.
· Their teachers were excited.
· They rolled forward to 10th grade this year.
· Forty teachers were involved.
· 11th and 12th grade teachers wanted training.
Bremont informed the board about process, results, proficiency-based grading, standards-based instruction, Essential Skills, process for implementation, artificial barriers, and reasons for creating a proficiency-based system.
· Too many students dropped out of school because their current educational model did not fit their needs.
· Students learned to play school requirements, rather than learning to think critically and demonstrate their learning.
· Administration provided ongoing data.
· There was a recovery system for students who needed support.