Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012
From Guest Writer Rick Riker, who attends most of the Board meetings and workshops of the Lake County School District
On January 4th 2012 the Florida Department of Education unveiled their 2010-2011 High School grades. The grades are based 50% on FCAT and 50% on other components, ie. Graduation Rates and College Readiness. The letter grades the schools receive are much like the grades we all received in school, a C = Adequate or Average and an A or B = Better than average, of course we all know what D & F represent.
(Editor's Note: Here are the new and prior High School Ratings taken from the official press release from the Lake County School District (link is at bottom of this article):)
"The 2010-2011 grades for each high school are (and grades for the previous four school years):
(2009-10: “B”; 2008-09: “D”; 2007-08: “B”; 2006-07: “C”)
As a county, Lake received an overall grade of “C”. How did this grade stack up against the other 67 public school districts in Florida? State wide 21% of the schools scored C and below, Lake's score was 43% C and below or 22% worse than the state average. C or Average is not what anyone wants to achieve or what we want from our schools. How did the Lake schools do when compared state wide to above average scores, A & B? Of the 67 public school districts we find that 50 of those school districts have A & B percentages higher than Lake leaving only 16 doing worse in the above average category.
The County School Officials have put a positive spin on the grade with statements like, “Overall we're encouraged by the grades”, this is to be expected and having a positive attitude is encouraging, lets hope this attitude doesn't take the place of conceding the fact that the statistics indicate that the Lake County School District has a lot of work to do to achieve an acceptable grade which taxpayers are paying them to achieve.
At the first Lake County School District Board workshop of the new year many topics were covered but the meeting ended with one Board member passing out another pro uniform paper supporting the unfounded concept that uniforms would have a major positive impact on students deportment and learning. Last year this topic took up a great deal of time, time the school board could have been using to deal with legitimate reasons for and ways to raise our schools grades. This issue was soundly defeated by both the parents and the school board and would only be an unnecessary distraction from the real issues.
(Scroll down to see links to related news articles. - Ed )
Rick Riker
Editor's Note: It will be interesting to see what the existing Board members do about these ranking drops, and how their campaign opponents use this information against them. My opinion is that there are some good schools and good teachers in Lake County, but residents just have to research and find them. We will see if the Superintendant takes any action about changing leadership within the School leadership system. There are some great principals, but maybe some others have been retained too long and do not have the skills to keep up with the ever changing and complex curriculum and testing requirements that require more analytical minds. The School administrators also might need to find a more assertive way to cope with union restrictions and still edge out lower performing teachers who also cannot keep up with the more complex metrics used to measure school scores. Teaching isn't easy anymore, and that is part of the problem as higher level teaching and administrative skills are needed.
If I were on the Board, I would be asking to see a list of adminstrators and teachers in the lower ranked schools and grill the Superintendent on how they compare to the successful ones, what has been done, and specify that the lowest 10% be re-assigned, demoted or let go. I know the staff has been doing some benchmarking and tracking what teacher actions result in better grades. My recommendation to let low performers go is harsh, yes, but in this changing world, the old skills might not be working and the District needs to rotate staff until they find people at ALL levels with the proper skills to cope with the newer requirements. There are always excuses for poor performance, but you want people who FIND A WAY to work within new requirements and perform, even if that means coaching parents also. Stop hiring extra coaches and consultants, and find staff and teachers who can self learn and do what is needed on their own. Sales departments do that all the time. They provide basic skills and then let them demonstrate their sales ability. They then let the lower 10% go every year (or sooner) because the metrics for the corporation will improve vs holding on to poor salespeople HOPING they might improve. The same disciplined approach is needed for the teaching profession to ensure disciplined instructors are hired to improve School ratings vs those who constantly fight what is needed for improvement.
The question is, are the schools run to meet teacher and union interests to protect the lowest common denominator or seniority levels, or to hire people who provide higher performance methods of teaching to improve rankings regardless of seniority or education levels.
One solution is perhaps creating competition by staffing one school just with teachers who worked in industry first, then went through Lake Sumter Community College's "Education Preparation Institute" to become teachers after having worked in the "real world". It would be interesting to see if they have better coping, discipline and teaching skills to meet the current, complex teaching environment.
Vance Jochim
References & Articles Researched and Added by FiscalRangers.com :
Orlando Sentinel Jan. 4th Article on Most Recent FCAT Scores for High Schools
"Lake and Volusia county schools didn't shine as much. Lake had one D, Mount Dora High — and Volusia County had two, Atlantic and Pine Ridge high schools, and no A-rated campuses."
Here is the Press Release from Lake County Schools Explaining the above drop
“Overall, we’re encouraged with the grades,” said Dr. Susan Moxley, Superintendent of Lake County Schools. “We’re exhibiting an overall trend of academic improvement. These results validate the strategies we have in place, in addition to the hard work of our teachers and principals, to adapt to the changing landscape of more rigorous standards and assessments. We’ll continue to evaluate and analyze these grades so we can build strategies toward improvement.”
Jan. 4th Press Release from Florida Dept of Education on new FCAT Ratings for High Schools
Florida Education Ranking drops from 5th (B-) to 11th Place (C+) in National Education ratings
FLDOE Press Release Explaining their version of the above Ranking
Florida Gov. Scott Wants $1-billion more for 2012/2013 School Budgets
Orlando Sentinel Database of latest 2011 Florida School FCAT scores
