“I want our two principals to understand they have the freedom to try something new and just because one attempt didn’t work, that doesn’t in any way hamper my support for them trying something else that’s different,” Perry explains. “We’re going to try something new again.”

The 450-student Arlee Joint School District, which is part of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes is 65% Native American and operates on a four-day school week. The schedule has helped the district attract and retain teachers who are willing to travel to the district from Missoula, which is about 20 miles away and home to the University of Montana.

Trying new things also means replacing outdated facilities with modernized schools. Arlee is now building a new space for grades 3-6 to replace a facility that is nearly more than 90 years old. The $14 million project, which is an extension of the K-2 building, is being financed with ESSER funds and bonds approved by local voters.

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To get those bonds passed, Perry invited community members on some eye-opening tours of the old building. “A lot of community members went to school here,” he notes. “Their memories of what the school looked like 30 or 40 years ago is not what the school looks like now. In their mind, it’s the same school they went to and it was fine.”

The project will feature a larger media center with a maker space and room for Salish language and Indian studies programs. There will also be formal—and creative—outdoor learning spaces right outside elementary classrooms. “We have mountains all around and it’s absolutely gorgeous,” Perry says. “We want our kids outside.”

‘The good that can come from school’

A Montana native, Perry says there is a misconception that education is not highly valued on Indian reservations. Still, a challenge the superintendent and his team face is a side effect of the large number of Arlee students who are being raised by their grandparents.

“Our guardians have a tendency to skip a generation,” Perry says. “Some of the guardians of our current students don’t understand what the landscape of education looks like, that it’s no longer a teacher standing in front of the room and just lecturing and trying to get kids to understand the instruction.”

Staff also sometimes have trouble connecting with guardians who had bad experiences in school. “We get a good amount of pushback from some grandparents when we contact them about issues we may be having with a student,” he says. “Some of those grandparents attended boarding schools and were unbelievably mistreated so they don’t have in their minds the good that can come from school.”

Arlee is also dealing with a severe shortage of classified staff. Recruiting bus drivers, custodians and paraprofessionals has been “10 times harder” than hiring teachers. He has received zero applications this year for vacant bus driver and custodian positions. “With the change in what people can make in other professions, to get someone to be a special education paraprofessional for what we can afford to pay them is almost impossible,” he points out. “We can’t afford to increase pay like a private business can.”

‘We care about them everywhere’

Arlee’s educators are now devoting much of their focus to literacy, particularly reading comprehension, across the K12 curriculum. “We will do all we can to bring in parents, guardians to get them involved, to show how important reading is,” he says. “If we make a concerted effort in that area, I think we’re going to see growth everywhere else.”

Perry also prioritizes staying involved in the day-to-day life of his schools, a task he says is easier in a smaller district. He helps coach high school volleyball, is licensed to cover bus routes, fills in as a substitute teacher and often drives several hours to Arlee’s away games, among other activities. He believes he’s also the first superintendent in decades who has lived in the Arlee community.

“I make sure students know that I’m interested in them 24/7—it’s not just when they’re on their campus. We care about how they’re doing everywhere,” he concludes.

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Answering those troubling questions was the goal of a Yale University education researcher who recruited teenage boys to “misbehave” in videos that were randomly evaluated by more than 1,300 teachers from about 300 middle and high schools. Jayanti Owens, an assistant professor in the university’s School of Management, recorded separate videos of a white, Black and Latino actor performing identical misbehaviors: slamming a door twice, texting repeatedly during a test, and throwing a pencil into a garbage can and crumpling a test booklet.

The teachers were prompted to write a description of the student’s behavior and decide whether to send the boy to the principal’s office.

“Some schools take a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to discipline,” Owens said in her report for the Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank. “At an extreme, they treat anything that could be construed as misbehavior as such and address it in a punitive manner, including by removing the misbehaving student from the classroom learning environment or from the school altogether.”

Student misbehavior mishandled?

Black boys are 300% more likely and Latino boys are 30% more likely to be expelled or suspended than are white students. Owens explains that many researchers believe this is because a.) Black and Latino students are punished more often and more harshly for comparable behaviors and b.) many Black and Latino students attend majority-minority or economically disadvantaged schools where discipline is generally more punitive.

Here’s a look at the two key findings from Owens’ student misbehavior experiment:

1. Differential treatment by race: Teachers were about 7 percentage points more likely to say they would send the Black student to the principal’s office than the white student. Higher levels of blame were one reason for the gap, meaning teachers used significantly more “blameworthiness language” to describe the behavior of Black boys compared to what they wrote about white or Latino boys. “Even though both the Black and white students were behaving in the exact same way, the teachers perceived the Black students as behaving more negatively,” Owens pointed out.

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2. Between-school differences: Teachers in the experiment did not discipline Latino teens more harshly than white students. Owens believes the schools that Black and Latino students attend are another important explanation for the discrepancies. Latino and Black teens “typically attend schools where everyone is punished more often and more harshly, regardless of students’ race or ethnicity,” she asserts. “It seems that in general, schools with a high ratio of Black and Latino boys have more punitive climates.”

Majority-minority schools are also more likely to have installed security cameras and to station police officers in the buildings. “Increased security means that more students will get caught breaking school policies, even if the students themselves break policies with the same frequency as students who attend less-surveilled schools,” she adds.

Where do we go from here?

Owens recommends that administrators make the following policy changes:

• Change the criteria required for a referral to the principal’s office.
• Offer “empathy interventions,” which have been shown to reduce both suspension rates and racial disparities. For example, teachers should consider why a student might misbehave—such as conflict at home or hunger.
• Implement coaching programs that guide teachers in adopting culturally responsive classroom management practices.
• Emphasize restorative justice techniques, such as mediation, over harsher punishment.
• Assess whether potential hires favor restorative justice over punitive approaches to determine if their philosophy aligns with district culture.

Ultimately, the interventions that transform school culture most broadly will be the approaches that are most effective at eliminating discipline disparities. “Such cultural transformations will create the school contexts that reduce the need for referrals in the first place—such as by increasing student-teacher trust and teacher cultural competence and empathy, and,” Owens concludes, “by putting into place the structures that support teachers in accomplishing their aims without removing students from the classroom.”

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“When it comes to the prioritization of our students and their education, our nation is still at risk,” said Sydney Morris, co-founder and co-CEO of Educators for Excellence. “Unfortunately, the survey shows us that teachers do not have the professional autonomy, support or resources to effectively support their students, especially those who have been historically underserved, leaving many educators overwhelmed and disheartened.”

Educators for Excellence polled 1,000 teachers—including an oversample of 300 teachers of color—about curriculum, assessments, workloads and salaries, among other critical K12 topics. One startling finding: two-thirds of teachers surveyed said their schools are not meeting the needs of underserved students.

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Some 80% of teachers confirmed they are committed to their jobs, but only 14% would encourage others to pursue the profession. And nearly 90% of teachers feel like they have too many responsibilities, saying that despite receiving guidance and training to support diverse learners, they do not have enough resources to overcome everyday K12 challenges. Here’s what else the survey found:

• 60% of teachers say student mental health is worse than it was before the pandemic; only 22% of teachers believe their school is meeting the needs of LGBTQ+ students.
• A fifth of teachers have been told by a member of their school community to limit culturally relevant conversations.
• Only 36% of teachers report having the curricular materials needed for effective instruction.
• Only 56% of teachers believe that their state assessment accurately measures student mastery of content standards.
• Two-thirds of all teachers, and half of teachers of color, report that higher salaries are the best way to attract and retain teachers.
• All teachers, and particularly teachers of color, favor higher salaries for top performers or teachers working in hard-to-staff schools or subject areas.

“Every day, teachers are feeling the stress and overwhelm of the classroom, but they’re also feeling undervalued,” said Winnie Williams-Hall, a diverse learning middle school teacher at Nicholson STEM Elementary of Chicago Public Schools. “Supporting teachers and letting them know they are valued, whether through financial incentive or other recognition, can not only help retain current teachers but attract new teachers we desperately need.”

Education career corrections

Teachers were also asked about what course corrections the education system needs to make to both improve working conditions for educators and to boost outcomes for students. Their feedback covered the following areas: expectations, content and teaching and time:

Expectations: Teachers say the “central purpose” of K12 education is to prepare students to lead happy and productive lives, become engaged and informed citizens, and to participate in postsecondary education or training. To achieve this, schools must track a broad set of metrics, including graduation rates and social-emotional and career outcomes. Assessment systems must also be revamped to measure student progress more comprehensively.

Content: A large majority of teachers oppose laws that restrict classroom conversations. They believe grade-level appropriateness should be the only standard when discussing race, racism, gender identity or other issues related to identity or oppression. Teachers also believe they are the most qualified to decide how to teach culturally relevant content.

Nearly 80% of teachers report receiving the materials, guidance or training to deliver culturally relevant instruction, compared to only 30% who said the same in 2021. When it comes to parental involvement, only 2% of teachers think parents should have ultimate decision-making authority over the curriculum, though many of the educators surveyed are willing to collaborate with families.

Teaching and time: Eight in 10 teachers say they plan to spend their entire career in a classroom. That’s a slight drop from the 86% who shared this outlook in 2022. One reason may be that many teachers field their current workloads are unsustainable. One solution is giving them more time and support in “effectively collaborating with other members of school staff in order to allow them to focus on their core instructional work,” the report says.

Teachers also want more help in supporting English learners, students with special needs and other unique learners, as well as more training in alternative discipline approaches, such as restorative practices and positive behavioral intervention and supports.

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Even though an American Library Association poll found 70% of parents oppose bans, “a vocal minority” continues to target books about race and racism, gender and LGBTQ+ identities, and various periods of U.S. history. But the censorship targets appear to be expanding: Earlier this year, the movement forced the removal of books about baseball legends and civil rights heroes Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente and Jackie Robinson from Duval County Public Schools in Florida.

During the 2021-22 school year, most book-banning campaigns were parent-led but this year, these efforts have been “supercharged” by new state censorship laws that have stoked confusion in school classrooms and libraries, PEN America says.

School administrations are feeling pressured to “err on the side of caution” and remove books when parents complain. “Many public school districts find themselves in a bind,” PEN America contends. “They face threats and political pressure, along with parental fears and anxieties surrounding the books on their school shelves.”

An escalating ‘Ed Scare’

There were 1,477 individual book bans from July to December 2022, which equates to over 100 titles removed from student access each month, PEN America says. In comparison, the organization tracked 1,149 bans from January to June 2022 and 1,383 from July to December 2021.

Books with LGBTQ+ themes and characters and characters of color have faced the most challenges, but more topics have been targeted this fall. Schools have also removed a number of books about violence and abuse, health and wellbeing, or that include instances or themes of grief and death.

Here are some of the key findings from PEN America’s most recent book ban analysis:

• 30% of the unique titles banned this fall are books about race, racism, or feature characters of color. Meanwhile, 26% of unique titles banned have LGBTQ+ characters or themes.
• This school year, instances of book bans are most prevalent in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah and South Carolina.
• Bans this school year are increasingly affecting a wider swath of titles, including those that portray violence and abuse (44%), discuss topics of health and wellbeing (38%), and cover death and grief (30%).
• Books are more frequently labeled “pornographic” or “indecent” by activists and politicians to justify removing books that do not fit well-established legal and colloquial definitions of “pornography.”
• This school year, numerous states enacted “wholesale bans” in which entire classrooms and school libraries have been suspended, closed, or emptied of books, either permanently or temporarily. These “wholesale bans,” have involved the culling of books that were previously available to students, in ways that are impossible to track or quantify.

“These efforts to chill speech are part of the ongoing nationwide ‘Ed Scare’—a campaign to foment anxiety and anger with the goal of suppressing free expression in public education,” PEN American concludes. “As book bans escalate, coupled with the proliferation of legislative efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities, the freedom to read, learn, and think continues to be undermined for students.”

More from DA: LGTBQ instruction has now been silenced throughout K12 in Florida

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Neither the original bill nor the new rule prohibits instruction related to sexual orientation or gender identity within a reproductive health curriculum. Florida, however, does not require K12 schools to teach reproductive health.

Teachers risk losing their teaching licenses if they violate the expanded ban, which was approved unanimously on Wednesday by Florida’s Board of Education, CNN reported. “We’re providing clarity on what the students are expected to learn. Nothing more than that,” state board member Esther Byrd, told CNN. “This really isn’t a complicated thing.”

State officials on Wednesday also downplayed the idea that the ban could cause emotional harm to LGBTQ students or prevent them from receiving counseling and other support. “The curriculum and the standards taught in an academic classroom have nothing to do with the school’s compassion and being able to provide services to individual students,” Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz said at the board of education meeting in Tallahassee, according to Politico. “They’re not being shunned, none of this is being addressed here.”

Critics called the decision an effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to exert ideological control over public education. “Beyond this flagrant escalation of educational censorship, the decision sends a disturbing message that some families and students can be erased from public recognition, their stories, histories, and identities prohibited from being discussed among the rising generation,”  said Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education programs at PEN America, an anti-censorship and civil rights nonprofit.

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Since the start of 2020, students’ academics have taken a toll, thus sparking this increased need to meet their needs. Districts are utilizing educational technology more than ever before. Students have better access to mental health resources. Wherever there’s a need, rest assured that schools are making efforts to meet it. But just how has the conversation surrounding equitable education changed?

A new study from the NWEA, a research-based not-for-profit that creates academic assessments for pre-K-12 students, sought out to understand how teachers, building and district leaders understood and defined equity. To no surprise, the term prompts both positive and negative emotions from respondents as K12 education becomes increasingly politicized since the pandemic.

“Most district administrators expressed mixed feelings regarding hearing the term equity,” the report reads. “Many feel passionate about improving equity, some are also filled with dread about the ‘loaded’ term, especially those who have experienced politicized pushback from their community.”

Administrators even reported spending significant amounts of time addressing misinformation and fears while trying to help families and community members understand the importance of equity in education, the report adds. And while school leaders know just how important it is to incorporate initiatives that support equity, they find such solutions difficult to implement.

Participants cited a “good understanding” of both school and student-level disparities that must be met by investing in student and teacher success. Yet, COVID-19, behavior and emotional issues “have been all-consuming,” the report reads. In addition, leaders also say there’s a lack of support and guidance at the district level that demonstrates a clear path toward achieving equity.

More from DA: School discipline problems are predictable. Here is how to disrupt the forecast.

Another barrier to equitable education for students is the complexity of the issue. The definition of the term is constantly evolving, according to educators. The pandemic exacerbated inequities for student groups who have been marginalized for years, and the growing sensitivity and polarization around certain topics only make matters worse.

“Nontraditional gender is the biggest struggle,” said one curriculum developer cited in the report. “It is not our place to make a judgment. It is our place to educate the kids regardless of who they are.”

Some administrators even find themselves having to tiptoe around discussions about equity.

“If we use the term ‘equity,’ people are suspicious… If we talk about providing opportunities to all kids, no one has a problem with that,” said one principal.

Taking steps toward diversity and inclusion

Fortunately, despite the challenge, leaders shared with the NWEA the successful strategies that helped them to create an equitable school environment. Three proven solutions stand out:

1. Focus on creating a sense of belonging: Inclusivity is key, especially for traditionally marginalized students. For those with specific learning needs, consider adding specialized teachers, learning spaces and resources to support them.
2. Reimagine your school’s policies: Start with performing interventions, turning assessment data into action, providing students with more tools and resources and adding more mental health support staff. Each step goes a long way.
3. Encourage teachers to focus on the individual student: Educators outlined an emphasis on understanding individual student data to drive their decisions. Rely on traditional resources, such as assessment and academic data, behavior records, school counselors and parent engagement.

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The purpose of the trip was to get members of our leadership team on the same page with a shared experience and common understanding about issues of discrimination and systemic racism. District leaders who made the trip included Ulster BOCES Deputy Superintendent Jonah Schenker, his predecessor Charles Khoury, the president of the teachers union, the president of our employees union, an officer of our teaching assistants and aides association, two principals, a leader from our instructional services team, and one teacher, who is also a member of the DEI committee.

Here’s what I learned from my experience in Montgomery, and how it’s informing our initiatives to build DEI culture.

The trip to Montgomery

I am not prone to hyperbole, but the trip to the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice has changed my life. I believed I was knowledgeable about the history of racism in the United States, but I walked away shocked at what I learned and experienced there.

It was incredibly affecting to walk the streets and understand that I stood in the same place where enslaved people were unloaded from ships and marched to an auction block. The memorial itself, which is a monument to the victims of lynching, was a heavy experience. Seeing all the names, which included children and many “unknown,” really puts into perspective how many people were impacted by this racial terror. Seeing that some of lynchings took place as late as 1959, which I would consider the modern era, brought into focus how recently this all continued. My own parents were alive and in school and very much participating in the world at that time.

One of the more emotional experiences for me was realizing just how many families were arbitrarily separated. Most of the people who were enslaved were mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers who had been torn apart from each other, never to be reunited again. How difficult it must have been for them to keep their sanity, let alone maintain any sense of community, when their children were systematically stolen from them, and their familial ties severed.

Making this trip as part of an educational organization, I was struck by the enormous risks enslaved people took to learn to read and write. Looking at it all as someone who is tasked with helping to make an institution welcoming and equitable to all, I was embarrassed by how many of the laws that enabled this brutality are still on the books. The fact that racism was codified, actually built into the governing institutions of this country and the states, can get lost when people talk about “systemic racism.”

I experienced a profound shift in perspective. I came away with so much to think about, and an understanding that I have so much to learn.

Some lessons learned about DEI culture

Experiences like this trip bring people to a common understanding of this country’s past. After visiting I realized that, not just in K-12, but in college as well, I had been taught a very sanitized version of this history. When we understand the truth, our history, it allows us to frame conversations within the idea that there is a basis for the discrimination and inequality we see today. There is a legacy of deliberate decisions and practices that have led to the reality Black people experience today. Many people bristle at the idea of systemic racism, but the museum makes it impossible to deny.

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In Montgomery, we were encouraged to sit quietly with this new knowledge, to process it, before discussing it together, and I think the whole experience made us willing, authentic participants in difficult conversations about race. For me personally, knowing that I was talking about tangible historical facts gave me footing, and confidence, to engage in those conversations. It’s not just an opinion or a perception of mine, but an undeniable reality created by a history of laws and practices that our federal and state governments enacted over centuries.

Setting DEI goals

Having experienced the power of this visit, I’m interested in finding activities that can provide similar common experiences for not only members of our DEI team but everyone in our district, and don’t require cost-prohibitive travel. They make these DEI culture discussions so much easier to navigate.

DEI work, however, is a long-term commitment and our work has only just begun. Last year, from January to June, we focused primarily on learning what DEI could mean for Ulster BOCES by looking at tools such as the New York state’s Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Framework. I expect our own model to be quite bespoke because it will be based on the existing culture and the particular challenges of our district, but tools like the framework are a great place to begin understanding what is possible.

Our first goal as a DEI committee has been to establish a community amongst ourselves. We began as a group of 28 individuals. By virtue of my position as the head of human resources, I knew everyone on the committee already, but most did not know each other. We have teachers, pupil support personnel, and other staff from all around the organization. As a result, our primary focus has been on creating a place where everyone can feel safe to be honest in these difficult conversations, because we cannot expect progress if we shut down the moment someone says something that challenges us in some way. So we’ve been establishing norms such as practicing courage and forgiveness, listening more, assuming everyone has the best intentions when they speak, and more.

Supporting diversity also requires understanding who we are as an organization. I think we often take that for granted and skip past trying to understand it systematically. And so, in order to explore what conditions exist, we are launching a climate and culture survey.

Using data to guide next steps

We have more than 450 full-time employees, not including incidental employees or summer school staff. Personally, I am completely separate from our school buildings, so I know very little about who our students are. To make sure we aren’t defaulting to our own biases, the climate and culture survey will go out to all students, families, staff and faculty. Once the first one is launched, we’ll survey the community periodically to help us understand changes as they occur.

We plan to come up with action steps based on the survey responses, and the outcomes we observe, but already have some ideas for things we’d like to do in the future. Personally, I would like to bring some text work to the DEI committee. The Legacy Museum website has a number of resources, including reports, studies, and videos, that I was able to explore before the trip. I would like for the committee to use some of those resources to inform our need to look at our curriculum, for example.

So far, everyone who has participated in this work has shared the opinion that it needs to be done. From my own personal experience, however, I know that we live in a heavily polarized society and the words “systemic racism” can start an all-out argument in a matter of seconds. We are going to run into skeptics, so finding ways to engage and work constructively with all members of our community will also be a priority in the near future.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion don’t happen by accident. You have to carve out time and resources for it. It’s scary, difficult and necessary work that requires both immediate action and long-term perspective. Students and employees who feel marginalized deserve improvements now. The only way forward is as a community—and there are going to be people in the community who do not believe this needs to be addressed at all. That means work and commitment, and having hard conversations about things we don’t want to hear and, sometimes, about attitudes or beliefs within ourselves we don’t want to acknowledge.

Nevertheless, I pinch myself every day that I get to do this work. It’s such a privilege and an honor to be able to contribute to improving our community this way, because I know that if our most marginalized students are able to thrive here, then this will be a community where every child can succeed, regardless of their background or circumstances or how they identify.

The post How a life-changing museum visit is helping BOCES build DEI culture appeared first on District Administration.

“We can predict year-long suspension rates in just the first 21 days of school. That’s information that we needed to know. And now we do,” says Jason Okonofua, assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the study’s principal investigator. Zeroing in on middle schools, the researchers found:

• Daily punishment rates jump in through the fall, drop in the days before major vacations and rise again rapidly when classes resume.
• At schools where there are wide racial disparities in discipline referrals or suspensions early in the year, discipline rates for Black students increase faster throughout the semester.
• By November, the Black student discipline rate is 10 times higher than at the beginning of the year. Compared to white students, it’s 50 times higher.

One of the researchers’ goals is to reorient the collection of student discipline data that has long been centered solely around year-end reports for state and federal regulators. While that process can help educators and policymakers examine how discipline varies in severity among schools and subgroups, “it fails to capture the day-to-day realities at school,” the study says.

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Researchers crunched four years of data about the daily disciplinary experiences of nearly 47,000 students at 61 middle schools in one of the 10 largest school districts in the country. The district, located in the Southeastern U.S., had implemented more sophisticated discipline data tracking and the results—and especially the disparities—were startling. “It is incredibly important, useful and valuable to know we should do a specific type of intervention at a specific point in the year based on the real-time data,” Okonofua said. “That’s where we’re going to get the biggest bang for our buck. If we can be more cost-efficient, everybody wins.”

Disrupting a downward spiral of school discipline

When district leaders and their teams have a picture of the forecast, they can begin to disrupt it. For example, racial disparities in discipline early in the year may send the message to Black students that teachers and administrators are biased. Educators, in turn, may consciously or subconsciously decide Black students are more unruly. This predicament, of course, damages student-teacher relationships and can further school discipline disparities.

Schools are therefore encouraged to front-load activities that help students develop a sense of belonging and build relationships with teachers at the beginning of the school year.

“School breaks precipitate short-lived but prominent declines in both daily discipline rates and daily discipline disparities,” say the researchers, who also offered guidance on how to capitalize on the decline and eliminate the regression. For instance, educators might consider adding activities such as morning meditation or occasional in-school celebrations that “make the school year feel less imposing and reduce student and teacher anxiety.” Schools should also experiment with interventions that allow students and teachers to reconnect right after they return from breaks and vacations.

Finally, administrators are urged to offer professional development around unconscious bias and empathy to teachers before the school year starts so they are ready to begin building trusting relationships on the first day of school.

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“As a result of having few resources and the lowest-paid professional staff in the county, our students have not performed to their academic potential and some even suffer from self-esteem issues,” Rodriguez, who has served Pottstown as superintendent since 2017, tells District Administration.

Still, the recent infusions of COVID relief have funded new staff at the high school, which, Rodriguez says, has helped Pottstown’s graduation rate “rapidly increase by leaps and bounds.” Implementation of a “house model” at the middle school is improving academic outcomes and reducing negative behaviors.

“With more resources, we have been able to make a real difference for students and the community,” says the one-time high school principal who began his career as a substitute teacher.  “Parents have noticed, and other communities have noticed, but being able to continue on this path will require appropriate and fair funding, which is still a question mark for future years.”

Here’s what else Rodriguez has to say about the bright spots and barriers in his district:

1. Describe the Pottstown School District and some of the unique challenges and unique assets of urban school districts. 

The Pottstown School District is a small urban town 50 miles outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We are a post-industrial boomtown with a special education rate of 23% and a poverty rate of over 70%. All of our students receive free breakfast and free lunch. We are very diverse with approximately 33% white, 34% Black, 19% Hispanic, 13% two or more races, and 1% Asian.

We share contiguous borders with the Borough of Pottstown and are five and a half square miles with 23,000 residents and 3,300 students. We have a district-run Pre-K Counts program available for those parents who want to get their children started early. It is a model throughout the state for collaboration with community partners. We have four elementary schools, grades K-4, each with an average enrollment of 330 students. Our middle school is grades 5th through 8th with 900 students and our high school is 9th through 12th also with 900 students.

The biggest unique challenge the Pottstown School District has is being a highly underfunded entity for several decades. As a result of having few resources and the lowest-paid professional staff in the county, our students have not performed to their academic potential and some even suffer from self-esteem issues. Here is a short list of our challenges:

• Adequate and appropriate funding
• Competitive salaries for teaching positions especially in the area of special education
• Healthy tax base within the community which has decreased over the past decade

2. What are you and your team doing to support students’ mental health?

Counseling and support services: Thanks to COVID recovery funding and the Pennsylvania legislators’ recent additional investment in schools we have had the opportunity to provide both staffing and programming to address the heightened mental health needs of our students. First, we hired support staff including a home and school visitor, a social worker, and school counselors for each of our schools. This has allowed us to address significant issues our students are presenting instead of being overwhelmed with negative behaviors, classroom outbursts, and physical confrontations. Students are participating in positive support measures and as a result, we have seen a decrease in negative behaviors districtwide for the first time since returning to in-person instruction.

PBIS and mentorship: We have also instituted a Positive Behavior Intervention Support System in each of our school buildings, helping students to understand the positive behaviors that help them to become successful. We have added clubs and sports to our middle and high school programming to give students extra opportunities during and after school. We are supporting community mentorship programs that provide students with excellent role models and we especially target minority adult role models to help our students explore future possibilities and stay focused on their educational goals.

3. Is your district experiencing teacher shortages? If so, how are they impacting your schools and how are you responding?

The Pottstown School District is not immune to the statewide and nationwide shortage of teachers. Even when we are able to fill positions, competition is fierce and we often lose teachers to more affluent districts. We have had multiple positions open throughout the entire school year and some buildings have not been fully staffed. Our teachers who show up every day for students end up getting almost no break because they are covering classrooms that have no teachers. We have had to fill some classrooms with more students than normal and have put other teachers on permanent overload schedules to make up for the loss.

4. What are you most excited about that is happening in your district?

When we have more we can do a lot more! Thanks to COVID recovery and additional resources, we have a myriad of programming that is having an immediate effect on our school district. We’ve never been more encouraged by the excellent student response and positive growth they are demonstrating. As we all suspected, when given the opportunity our students outperform our expectations. Here’s a short list:

• Implementation of a new curriculum at the elementary level called ‘Fundations’ has helped our students to read at a faster pace than we have seen in 25 years.
• Implementation of a new ‘house model’ at our middle school with purposeful oversight of each student by grade level. The negative behaviors we track to assess school climate have been reduced by more than 50% and student outcomes are on track to be higher than in the last several years.
• High school programming has been supported with new staff and our graduation rate continues to rapidly increase by leaps and bounds. Our academic growth scores on Keystone Assessments indicate double-digit increases over the last year.

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5. What are the top 3 goals for the rest of this school year and 2023-24?

1. Fully implement a multi-tiered system of support for students at all levels which is a core part of our comprehensive plan.
2. Prepare students and staff for the implementation of new curriculum and software tools next year that will help us fulfill our mission: To prepare each student, by name, for success at every level.
3. Fully implement the mental health supports for both students and staff we began last September.

6. Aside from mental health and teacher shortages, what are your biggest concerns?

For an urban school district like Pottstown, our biggest concern is in sustaining the excellent growth we started this year. With more resources, we have been able to make a real difference for students and the community. Parents have noticed, and other communities have noticed, but being able to continue on this path will require appropriate and fair funding, which is still a question mark for future years.

7. What’s at the top of your district’s list of must-have-ASAP?

• Fiscal security for the future
• Special education teachers and a solid teacher pipeline
• Continued access to mental health support for students and staff

8. Do you have a good relationship with your school board? If so, what are the keys to collaborating effectively with the board?

Rounding out my seventh year as superintendent, I’m happy to report that the school board and administrative team have an excellent relationship and are mission-driven in our approach to leading the district. I believe the key to collaborating effectively with the school board is continuous communication and honesty, especially in difficult situations.

Relationships take time and effort to build but are very easily disrupted and destroyed. If both the board and administrative team are sensitive to the importance of trusting relationships and don’t take each other for granted, the students and the community will be the beneficiaries of positive, excellent sustained leadership.

The post Why this urban superintendent is worried about sustaining a post-COVID rebound appeared first on District Administration.

Academic standards, accountability requirements and assessment programs—what the RAND Corporation calls the basic infrastructure of K–5 social studies instruction—are inadequate in many states, the nonprofit research organization asserts in a new report. “Concerning trends in both the United States and around the world, such as truth decay, declining trust in institutions, increased political polarization, and abuses of political power, have only underscored the need to reinvest in the civic mission of schools,” says the report’s authors, whose key findings include:

• Districts and schools provided teachers with less support for social studies compared to English language arts, math and other core subjects. In the 2021–2022 school year, elementary principals reported offering less PD focused on social studies than on English, math, and science.
• Only half of elementary school principals said their buildings or districts had adopted published curriculum materials to support K–5 social studies instruction. Teachers, therefore, tended to “cobble together” or create their own social studies lessons.
• Principals whose schools offered more extensive teacher evaluations, professional learning activities, and curriculum guidance were more likely to report that teachers collaborated on social studies instructional practices.

“Over the past few decades, school systems have invested less in students’ civic development and more in academic and career preparation as educational priorities,” said Melissa Kay Diliberti, lead author of the report and assistant policy researcher at RAND. “Our findings suggest that inadequate state and local infrastructure focused on social studies instruction may have affected what elementary teachers did in their classrooms in 2021–2022.”

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Just 16% of elementary teachers reported using a required textbook for most of their social studies instructional while about 30% of principals said their schools had not adopted social studies curriculum materials. “Even where state-level infrastructure to guide teachers’ instruction is in place, its comprehensiveness and quality vary greatly,” the authors added.

Political climates in various states are another barrier to comprehensive social studies instruction in K-5. While this has always had an impact on classrooms, educators have been increasingly intimidated by more recent pushes to restrict teaching about race, racism, discrimination, LGBTQ issues and gender identity.

Solutions for social studies instruction

To bolster instruction, district leaders can ramp up PD and teacher evaluation and feedback around social studies. Principals should commit more time to observing social studies instruction. “Principals might feel that they lack the expertise or content knowledge to identify high-quality social studies practices,” the report points out. “If so, district leaders should provide training, professional development, resources, or staff to principals to help them do that work thoughtfully.”

District leaders can also push state policymakers to develop more rigorous social studies standards that are based on national frameworks such as the C3 standards. This would likely lead to the adoption of more comprehensive social studies curriculum materials. In turn, more transparent assessments of the quality of these materials would encourage adoption by more teachers. District leaders might also prepare for states to impose tighter accountability measures around social studies achievement.

At the high school level, RAND’s researchers found more robust supports—such as teacher evaluations and instructional coaching—but that the subject still takes a backseat to English, math and other subjects.

The post Why social studies instruction may not be coming to the rescue appeared first on District Administration.