My role is a Board member is to be a liason from the community to LCPS, and I am priviledged to speak to you on behalf of the community today. I am excited by the diversity of your group. Some of you taught in other districts, for others your first day at the head of a classroom will come in a few weeks. Some of you come from other countries, some of you live just around the corner from the schools where you will teach.
You are joining a team of exceptional professionals. They are experienced, they are committed. They are all educators, though not all of them are teachers. The custodians, cafeteria workers and bus drivers are part of the team too, and they are also educators.
You are part of a profession that is becoming increasingly technical. We will ask you to gather and track and respond to more data on our students than has ever been done before. Your job will be increasingly challenging, as the people in our community expect the very best opportunities for their children. But the teaching profession must never lose its heart, the ability to connect with children one on one as individual human beings.
We are sending you our most precious cargo, trusting that you will return them safely to us at the end of the day and better prepared for the world before them. This is a daunting task, but the team of professionals you are joining are here to support you, and you were picked because those professionals saw in you the ability to rise to the challenge. Learn from their experience, follow in their footsteps, but bring your own ideas as well. Bring new energy. Bring the fresh to LCPS.
Thank you for choosing to be a part of our team, welcome to LCPS.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Welcoming New Teachers
On Friday I attended the orientation for teachers who are new to LCPS, and as Chairman I was able to speak to them on behalf of the Board but also on behalf of the community. I have the notes that I used to speak, this is roughly what I told them on your behalf:
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How many employees did LCPS hire this year?
ReplyDelete"...better prepared for the world before them."
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm curious about is, just what exactly do you mean by "better prepared?" We never really hear what the specific academic goals of Loudoun County Public Schools are. If someone is articulating them, then I'm missing them, and would be happier if Mr. Stevens would direct me to them. What are LCPS's goals for the 2010-11 school year?
It's actually a news story in Leesburg Today which prompts me to ask this. In the article "LCPS Fails To Meet Federal AYP Standards For 2010" Asst. Superintendent for Instruction Sharon Ackerman responds to the news that LCPS failed to fully meet NCLB requirements: "It's disappointing because of the efforts that I know everyone in the schools and the central office put into including the Virginia standards in our instruction," Ackerman said. "I really admire the efforts of our school administrators and teachers. I think the NCLB methodology continues to be flawed when there are 29 different ways to measure a school and any one child in any one cell causes the whole school to have a specific rating."
Interestingly, Ms. Ackerman doesn't express dismay that students' overall learning achievement wasn't what it could have/should have been for the past year, but that's understandable since she believes that the NCLB methodology is "flawed." Fair enough; she is not alone in that criticism. However, what are LCPS's goals, and did our students and staff meet those goals this year?
This is not an idle question.
Ms. Ackerman is free to question the federal and state governments' methodologies for evaluating her performance, but if she (and the school system, including the Board of Education) don't point to another, better methodology for measuring attainment of goals, what message does that send to students and staff? That's akin to my 14-year-old coming home with a poor grade on a test and complaining the teacher didn't give a fair test — and not explaining what a fair test looks like.
So, Mr. Stevens, when you tell new staff you want our students "better prepared for the world before them," what do you mean by that? Or, more importantly, what do those new teachers think you mean by that? No organization can be truly productive without setting goals and subsequently measuring its progress toward achieving them. If the NCLB goals are flawed — and therefore irrelevant to LCPS — what are the specific goals we set for staff and student achievement in Loudoun County. "Really admiring" staff efforts is laudable, but if the people putting out those efforts don't understand what goals lie at the end of those efforts, not much is going to happen.