District Administration - October 2012 - (Page 40)

AdministratorProfile EugEnE g. WhitE, supErintEndEnt, indianapolis public schools White’s Waivers The Indianapolis superintendent brought stability—and graduation waivers. By Jennifer E. Chase E ugene G. White is a superintendent of firsts. He was the first in his family to graduate from high school in his segregated town of Phenix City in southeast Alabama. Both academically and athletically inclined, White scored high enough grades—and points—to earn a basketball scholarship to Alabama A&M University, where his education led to his becoming a teacher, basketball coach and the first AfricanAmerican high school principal in two Indiana high schools. He’s also the first superintendent to win the Indiana State Superintendent of the Year award in two different districts: Metropolitan School District of Washington Township in 2002 and Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) in 2009, where he’s been superintendent since 2005. Indianapolis schools is the state’s largest and only urban district, and stretches across 87 square miles. Another White “first” was becoming the first superintendent at IPS—where he Eugene G. White reads to students during a “Read Across America” event in his district. One of White’s reforms was to centralize the curriculum, and in turn, better support students. EugEnE g. WhitE, SupErintEnDEnt Indianapolis Public Schools Age: 64 Salary: $200,000 Tenure: 7 years Students: 31,000 Staff and Faculty: 670 Per-child expenditure: $7,500 Dropout rate: 19% Students receiving free or reducedprice lunches: 82% faced a curriculum in disarray, no art and music classes in K12, and a 44 percent high school graduation rate—to offer graduation waivers to seniors who didn’t pass Indiana’s Graduation Qualifying Examination (GQE) in algebra and English. Failing the exam would have prevented them from graduating in spite of above-average performance in those subjects. Calculated Decisions When he arrived at IPS in 2005, White encountered what he called a chaotic district structure. He and colleagues worked on a realignment, first by creating a centralized curriculum. Li-Yen Johnson, White’s assistant superintendent of elementary education at the time, says that through the Division of Curriculum that White created in 2009, collecting realtime student data in three- to four-week cycles changed the way the district provided targeted support for students. “Consistent data collection and the analysis of student work put us on the path to real improvement, as well as holding principals accountable for giving teachers honest and actionable feedback, which was the focus of our professional development for principals in the last three years,” says Johnson, who today is the district’s associate superintendent. District Administration 40 October 2012

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

District Administration - October 2012
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Facilities
The Democrats and Republicans’ National Education Platforms
District Profile
Administrator Profile
The Challenge of Assessing Project-Based Learning
Why Teaching Civic Engagement Is Essential
Superintendents’ Frustration Grows, but Intangible Rewards Remain High
Not Your Grandparents’ Vocational School
CIO News
Keeping Pace with Technology Innovation
Managing BYOD Effectively
New Products
Noteworthy Books
Professional Opinion
Professional Opinion
Problem Solution
Going Mobile

District Administration - October 2012