District Administration - May 2012 - (Page 56)

HARd AcTS TO FOllOw Joshua Starr speaks with a student at Oakland Terrace Elementary School as Principal Cheryl Pulliam looks on. JOSHUA STARR Superintendent, Montgomery County (Md.) Public Schools what’s next. “I’m not a passive steward of the status quo. That wouldn’t get me up in the morning.” Beyond the Moon to Mars Starr came into his post telling students, teachers and parents alike, “You’re already great. You’ve been to the moon. Now how do we get to Mars?” During his first year, he has stressed the importance of meeting Common Core State Standards in addition to satisfying the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law. “Focusing on the outcomes of state tests only gets you so far,” he explains. He is steering the district beyond “test-based” to “practice-based” teaching and learning that focuses on “the practices that teachers engage in every day.” In doing so, he doesn’t expect to be alone. “That’s part of a shift that I think most districts will be engaged in,” he says. Starr places a premium on teachers working together. He acknowledges that some schools in the district already have teachers meet in professional learning communities, but he’s aiming for full participation. “Every one of the 22,000 teachers has to belong to some kind of adult learning community by next year, with time carved out for teachers to work with 56 May 2012 each other,” he says. While Starr applauds the district’s emphasis on student data over the past decade, he wants to go beyond the “Seven Keys” that brought national attention to Weast. For starters, Starr plans to pay closer attention to the academic preparation of ninth-graders and to their performance data during freshman year. “If you’re not successful in ninth grade, there’s a much greater danger of dropping out,” he cautions. “We need to pull out (the data) to see if there are other stories to tell.” Starr also wants to zero in on the academic, social and emotional readiness of all fifth-graders as they prepare to enter middle school. He aims to gather new kinds of data in answer to such questions as, “Is there one adult in the school who knows you well?” and “Are you bored?” “We don’t know how to measure it yet, but next year we will focus on the socialemotional competencies of our kids,” he explains. “We know that social-emotional intelligence is critical to success.” Hartford’s Succession Plan Hartford Public Schools took a different route—and no chances—in seeking a successor to Superintendent Steven Adamowski, who left in mid-2011 after fulfilling the five-year commitment he had made to the district. During Adamowski’s tenure, the school board adopted a succession policy requiring that the next superintendent come from within the Hartford district. Christina Kishimoto, who had served as assistant superintendent of secondary schools and school design, became superintendent last July. “Steven was our first so-called ‘reform’ superintendent. We felt we were on the right track,” explains Ada Miranda, the former president of Hartford’s board of education who left the board in February. “We had accomplished so much under Steven that we didn’t want to risk undoing what was in place.” Within two years of Adamowski’s arrival in 2006, the beleaguered 27,000-student district registered its first overall increase on the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) in seven years. The high school graduation rate, meanwhile, rose from 37 to 42 percent. Adamowski took particular aim at the district’s high schools and oversaw a $100 million renovation and transformation of Hartford High School. The building was divided into four academies, each with its own principal, in the areas of nursing, engineering and green technology, and law and government, as well as an academy containing the entire ninth-grade class designed to foster their transition to high school. The district created additional academies at other locations around the District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - May 2012

District Administration - May 2012
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Sustainability Update
Conversations
Administrator Profile
District Profile
Problem/Solution
Product Focus
Digital Reading Empowers Students
The Critical Task of Hiring a New Chief
Hard Acts to Follow
Leading the Way
Sally Reis & Joe Renzulli
CIO News
Not Your Mother’s Student Information System
Professional Opinion
Noteworthy Books
New Products
Going Mobile

District Administration - May 2012