Summer Parks Program Update

On the June 17th blog I discussed how the school district is offering hot lunches for the kids that participate in the summer parks program.  I want to let you know that the program (and the food) has been a big hit.  The school district is serving between 85 and 100 lunches three times a week to students in the parks program.  This is a great opportunity for the kids!

I am attending a superintendent's institute at Vanderbilt University next week.  I will try to mobile blog while I am there. 

Blendedschools Continued...

 I have included a comment from the last blog posting for your perusal. A friend of mine (and the school district) commented about the tension that can easily exist when you use technology to "open the world" to your students while at the same time helping students appreciate where they live. I have literally lost sleep over this question. We must provide the students in the school district the education that will allow them to thrive in the 21st century. I believe this includes the ability to sort and make sense of an incredible amount of information AND learn the culture, mores, and significance of their local community. In other words, how does the school district foster global citizenship while at the same time teaching the importance of the local community? One simple way to accomplish this task is to encourage the students to become involved in, and learn about, their heritage. This involves more than just their American heritage, but the heritage of their ancestors. Just a thought. I love this comment because it strikes at the heart of the matter.


Tom,

Great stuff here. It's good to see RASD on the cutting edge. I have two observations.

 This first regards the "amount of information." I wonder about the implications. Even back in the encyclopedia days, when the amount of information was limited, most students didn't really engage with it. The best students, sure. But the struggling students? Even then, the "amount" of info seemed to exceed their grasp. I wonder if the more important development is the "variety" of information. That is, it seems like it might be a lot easier for a student to hook into a topic or a field that he or she finds worthwhile. So the kid who hated the textbook version of the Civil War might fall in love with the Shelby Foote version, or the Michael Shaara version. Or might come at it through the world of art or antiques or soldier memoirs. So it's not that we are going to cram more material into the kids' heads, but we might be able to make them more willing to cram it in there themselves.


On the (potential) downside... what does this mean for the concept of place-based learning? I have a strong affinity for the local, in terms of culture and heritage. And I think it's great to expose students to as much culture and heritage as possible. But when everyone has access to everything, does anybody truly own or occupy anything? I have to be careful about this argument, as it can easily cascade into a plea for holding people back, or limiting options. But think in terms of something seemingly simple like cuisine. We love that that there are regional versions of certain dishes in Italy, and that Memphis has a different way of doing BBQ than does Kansas City. One way to perpetuate these interesting variations is to pass them along to the kids. And one way to do that is to raise them with that cuisine, do develop in them a bias.

 

Is there a way to continue passing this bias along, but still giving kids access to the whole world? Can we convey preferences AND options?




I'm not at all sure.

Blendedschools

Today I want to discuss an initiative that the school district has started. I believe that the school district must position itself to “have a seat at the table” in the virtual learning environment. A virtual learning environment is one where the benefits of being “online” will impact our students and staff. The benefits for education (in my opinion) are twofold. First, the amount of information available for our students and staff on the internet is amazing. Think about when many of us were children. I can remember the encyclopedia salesman coming to our house and my parents purchasing an encyclopedia. My family used this encyclopedia for years to help with school work and to look up information; people now have the ability to “Google” their question and receive thousands of options to look for information not from just one encyclopedia. RASD must allow our students a chance to learn in this type of environment and teach them the skills so they can effectively find information on the internet. Second, a virtual environment allows students and teachers an opportunity to collaborate more effectively. Deeper collaboration occurs when students can communicate with each other in an online format and teachers can monitor and contribute to discussions among students online. I do not believe that a computer can replace the benefits of having a teacher in a classroom. However, a “virtual presence” will allow our teachers to enrich and expand the curriculum and instruction for our students.



With that in mind, Ridgway Area School District has joined Blendedschools (“blended” comes from the fact that education will become a blending of traditional “brick and mortar” environment with a virtual environment). Blendedschools allows RASD to place our curriculum in a virtual format so it can be accessed online. RASD will use the virtual format that Blendedschools provides to meet short term and long term goals. The school district’s short term goals for Blendedschools are:


1. Provide resources for our teachers to enrich their curricular and instructional repertoire.

2. RASD will use Blendedschools to teach the school district’s alternative education students

3. RASD will offer “credit recovery” for seniors who did not graduate because they failed a class their senior year. This option will start the week of July 5th.

4. Teachers will be able to place their curriculum on Blendedschools enrich the learning experiences for their students.


In the long term, I believe that Blendedschools will allow RASD to position itself to meet the future of education. The importance of an online presence is important for two reasons:


1. Parents are increasingly “shopping” for the best educational opportunities for their children. The impact on public schools is enormous. Public schools must offer educational opportunities that will expand and enrich the student’s educational experiences. In years to come, I believe that location will not be the determining factor about where students will attend school. Rather, parents will place their students in learning environments that they believe will benefit their students the most. A virtual presence puts RASD in that position.

2. RASD wants to provide the best 21st century learning opportunities for students. To me, a 21st century learning environment is one in which the students and teachers are taking advantage of the information available on the internet and the enhanced collaboration opportunities available in a virtual environment.

I hope this makes sense to you. I am really excited about the future of education and what it means for RASD.

A great Video On What The Future of Education Could Be

A friend forwarded this link to me. Sir Ken Robinson travels around the United States and the world discussing the importance of Arts and creativity for young minds. He believes that children are getting short changed in the current educational system because many schools are starting to cut the Arts and other opportunities for creativity. He believes that the opportunity to create something is an absolute must for children. I happen to agree. As we look into the future, workers that thrive will be those that are creating something. It may be a piece of artwork, a business, an organization, a school...anything; but the creative process will be used. There are school systems in the United States today that are so stressed about meeting the requirements from a high-stake test that they are limiting the curriculum that children receive to only those subjects that are tested on these tests. What a shame. Schools must help students thrive in a democratic society and teaching students to take a test and limiting their learning opportunities to match a test will not accomplish that goal. Click on the link and listen to the video. It is 50 minutes well spent.

The Future of Learning…What Does It Mean?

I have given a lot of thought recently about how schools educate students.  I believe that there needs to be a significant change in the United States about how we educate students.  This blog post from the Knowledge Works Foundation starts the conversation:

A world of learning



The vision emerging from our study of the future doesn’t much resemble the industrial-era world of schooling most of us know. Instead, we foresee a world of learning where:


• Education centers on the needs of learners, not those of institutions. Teaching is tailored to an individual student’s needs and abilities.


• Learners take charge of their education. Students and families seek out information and experiences from an array of sources rather than depending on schools to direct their learning.


• Children gain 21st-century knowledge and skills – how to make decisions, solve problems and create solutions – through hands-on experiences that cross subject areas and are connected to the real world.


• Success is judged through a wide array of measures that account for different learning styles and assess capabilities and progress, not simply acquisition of knowledge.


• All learners have easy access to technology and other tools that open doors to information and knowledge.


• Learners are supported in all parts of their lives, with physical, emotional and social health being nurtured alongside intellectual growth.


• Teachers are more than content specialists. The teaching profession diversifies to include such roles as learning coaches, classroom coordinators, cognitive specialists, resource managers and community liaisons.


• Learning isn’t limited to a physical place or time of day, but is mobile and constant, with wireless technologies allowing learning anywhere and anytime.

This envisoning for education is a radical departure from what we have today in K-12 education.  However, a radical departure is what public education needs.  I am haunted by the students that are "lost" in the current schooling system because there is no meaning in school for them.  Systemically public education must change.  I will write more in later blogs about this subject.

Lance Corporal Michael G. Plank

Please allow me to stray a little bit from the usual blog topics to talk about one of my students that I had as a guidance counselor at Elkland high school. Michael plank came into the school his senior year. Think about coming into a new school during your senior year and “starting all over again”. Mike handled the situation very well. He did well in school, worked hard and was always respectful. In other words, he was a “good kid”. He graduated from school in 2004. After graduation he got a job and became a “good man”. He joined the United States Marine Corps in February 2009. He shipped out to Afghanistan in March of 2010. He was killed in action on June 9th, 2010. My wife (who taught him in class) and I went to the funeral yesterday. What a sad event. The funereal was simply heartbreaking for a lot of reasons. I was impressed with the outpouring of support from the community. People lined the streets as the funeral ended and the funeral procession made its way to the cemetery. It is the least we could do to show our appreciation. I often hear the word “hero” bantered around quite a bit. I am particularly upset when I hear the word used to describe athletes. I have never really tried to devise my own definition of “hero”, but I am going to try now in an attempt to describe the late Lance Corporal Michael G. Plank. A hero is someone that is willing to sacrifice their comfort (or their life) for the betterment of others in their society or community. By that definition, Mike is hero. Rest in Peace Mike.




The funeral offered my wife and me a chance to see and talk to some of the students that we taught in Elkland. Many of our ex-students that we saw at the funeral were the students that easily slip through cracks in school. They did not get into too much trouble, but they do not thrive in the school system either. These are good “kids” who just did not see a benefit to schooling the way it was offered to them. I feel sad that our school system in the United States does not meet the needs of a lot of our students. Michael Plank was one of those students that the school system could have done a better job to try to reach. Many of his friends were also in the same category. I think of the book Hallowing Out the Middle where the authors point out that rural school systems in the United States often put a majority of their resources into programs for students who will not end up living in the community. In other words, a school’s resources are spent on students who will go away to college and never come back. The authors argue that a rural school system should spend their resources on the students (like Mike) who will stay in the area and contribute to the local community. It is an interesting concept and one that I think needs to be explored further. If we do not start this conversation then there will continue to be those students who simply do not thrive in our school systems.

Food Insecurity

This summer RASD is providing a "hot" lunch for all of the participants in the summer parks program.  The summer parks program meets three days a week at the three different parks in the borough.  The program is operated by teachers and aids and the students spend the day doing different crafts and other fun activities.  The program is a huge success and there can be close to 100 children participate on any given day.  This year our food service director, Rena Urmann, discovered that the school district qualified for funding from the Federal government to provide a hot lunch during the summer parks program.  The school district qualified for the program because our elementary school climbed over the threshold of 50% of our students who qualified for a free or reduced lunch.  The government will reimburse close to $3.00 a meal for every meal that we serve.  At this rate, the school district plans on serving up to 100 lunches a day that will be free to all the children.  The district will have to hire two people to cook and serve the lunches.  This cost will be reimbursed by the government. 

I am very grateful that Rena discovered this program and that the government recognizes the importance of providing food for children during the summer. Making sure the children and their families have a certain amount of "security" knowing that good, nutritious food will be served is reassuring for me.  The opportunity to provide a nutritious lunch for students during the summer is something I believe is an appropriate service for the school district.

Interesting conversation

On Sunday I was purchasing tires for our vehicle when I had an interesting conversation with one of the managers of the tire store.  As he was ringing up my sale a mechanic from the garage came in and asked him a question about a car.  Without seeing the car, the manager asked two simple questions; what year is the vehicle and what sound did it make when the brakes were applied when he took it for a test run.  Based on that information, the manager was able to limit the possible problems, and offer solutions for the problems.  I was amazed.  The amount of knowledge and information in the manager's brain was spectacular.  I asked him how long he had been working as a mechanic and he told me 20 years.  He then went on to say that he wished he would have paid attention in school so he would not have to do his job.  He said that statement in such a way that it took me by surprise.  I told him that  most people who paid attention in school would not be able to diagnose a problem like he had just done.  He just kind of looked at me.

My point in telling the story is that formal schooling often just reflects what the dominant culture views as "smart" or "good".  This man has an amazing amount of knoweldge and he can apply that knowledge to unique situations.  A worthy goal for all educators.  It is too bad that all of the people out there that have all of this wonderful information feel that they are failures because schooling did not engage them.  Our goal at RASD is to try to engage all students.  This is a big goal, and we are not there yet.  However, we have an obligation to keep trying!

By the way, I am at the beach having a great time!

Preliminary PSSA Scores

I have the very raw numbers from the PSSA tests…I am very pleased. I will offer you a brief review. I have spent about four hours looking through the data today, but I need another four or five to really get a deep understanding of the data.


For a recap:  The PSSA tests are a required test under the No Child Left Behind law (all public schools must take them).  Students can score in one of four categories: Advanced, Proficient, Basic and Below Basic.  Schools must have  63% of the students   in the upper two categories in Reading, and 56% of the students in those categories in Math.  Those percentages will increase next year.


Overall, 83% of our students (students in grades 3,4,5,6,7,8, and 11) on the Math test scored advanced or proficient (an increase of 9% compared to last year). 70% of our students scored advanced and proficient in Reading (an increase of 1% compared to last year).

The largest increase in scores occurred in 11th grade.  Last year 43% of the students scored proficient or advanced on the test, while this year 75% scored that high.  In 7th grdade, 93% of the students were advanced or proficient in math...a really good number!

The staff and the students worked very hard this year to achieve these results.  I am very proud of them.  I also believe that the focus the school board has placed on student achievement and instruction has helped
immensely. 

RASD Graduation

The Ridgway Area School District held graduation on Friday night June 4th.  There were 59 graduates.  The ceromony went very well and lasted for just over an hour.  The graduating class will now enter the "real world".  I believe that Ridgway has done a good job preparing our graduates for the 21st Century.  Time will tell how well the school district did in this endevour.  Some vital statistics about the graduating class: 53% of the class will attend a 4 year college; 22% will attend a 2 year college; 5% will go into the military; and 20% are undecided.  The school district has some work to do to make sure the percentage of "undecided" students is not quite so high in the future.

Since it is summertime, I will only be updating the blog on Monday and Thursday.  There may be times when I update more often if there is something important to add.  Speaking of which, the school district hopes that the preliminary PSSA results will be available to the district on Thursday.  I will have those numbers for you when they arrive.

Grace and Responsibility

Last night a baseball pitcher for the Detroit Tigers came within one out of a “perfect game”. A perfect game is when the pitcher faces the minimum number of batters in a game. In other words, the pitcher faces 27 batters and all 27 do not reach first base for any reason. To pitch a perfect game is very difficult. As a matter of fact, there have only been 20 perfect games thrown in the history of baseball (over 100 years). There is a great honor for a pitcher to throw a perfect game and will often be the highlight of that pitchers entire career. Why am I talking about baseball and perfect games?




The pitcher last night, Armando Galarraga, was one out away from throwing a perfect game. On the last (27th) out of the game there was a close play at first base. Replays showed that the runner was out. However, the umpire called the runner safe. Thus, Galarraga lost his attempt at a perfect game through a bad call by the umpire. Galarraga got the next batter out ending the game. His teammates and manager accosted the umpire as he was leaving the field because they had seen the replays in the clubhouse that showed the batter was out. Galarraga, said nothing.



This is where I believe the story gets interesting.



In an interview after the game, Galarraga simply said “He (the umpire) probably felt more bad than me," Galarraga said. Smiling, he added, “Nobody’s perfect.” A blown call had just cost him a chance at baseball immortality. His name would be included with the greats of baseball and it was taken away from him. But he did not complain; he did not trash the umpire; he did not throw a fit; he simply responded with grace and dignity. That tells me more about the man than a baseball game. To show grace in that situation is a wonderful example for all of our children (and adults) within the school system. On the other side of the coin, the umpire responded with incredible forthrightness. After the game, once he saw the replay he immediately went and personally apologized to Galarraga and his manager. He then faced the national media and admitted his mistake; “I just cost that kid a perfect game,” Joyce told reporters in Detroit. “I thought he beat the throw. I was convinced he beat the throw, until I saw the replay. It was the biggest call of my career.” He took responsibility for the call and admitted his mistake. His reaction tells me more about the man than one bad call. By taking responsibility and admitting a mistake the umpire set an example for kids to follow. How the pitcher and the umpire handled this situation isa model for behavior that all of should follow. I hope that RASD will teach students grace and responsibility through actions by the adults in the system and not merely in a theoretical sense.

Five Year Budget Projection

The school board directors will have a final vote on the school district budget next Tuesday. I have written quite a bit about some of the outside forces that impact the school budget. You can find those here, here, and here. Today, in a very brief blog, I will discuss what the school district's budget will look like in five years if the school district keeps the status quo. The school district purchased a budget planning model so the board would be able to see how different scenarios impact the budget over the next five years. The budget planning model was provided by Education Financial Decisions. The model allows the school district to input different budget scenarios by controlling inputs in different areas of the budget. For example, the school district can input what we anticipate the insurance increase will be over a few years and then evaluate how that affects the budget. There are many areas of the budget that we can control. The problem is the areas that the school district does not control. The two biggest are the increase in the pension fund and the anticipated decrease in state funding. I am sharing with you the scenario that just keeps the district at the status quo. Keeping the status quo means not raising taxes and maintaining the present staffing level. As you can see when you open up the file, the school district will have a deficit of almost 7 million dollars if the school district does nothing different. That number reflects using the school districts entire fund balance of over 2 million dollars. Obviously, there will have to be changes in the way the school operates and how the community funds the school if RASD will stay viable. The school district will meet this financial challenge while increasing student achievement over the next five years.

Chicken Tractor

I had the pleasure to listen to a band that was in Ridgway on Saturday night. The band was called Chicken Tractor and they played traditional Americana music. They were invited to Ridgway because of Ridgway’s burgeoning reputation as a place for artistic creativity. In other words, someone believes that different kinds of bands playing different kinds of music would be well received in Ridgway. I have discussed in a previous blog posts how I think Ridgway is becoming an artistic community. Being known as an artistic community is a very positive thing. Being artistic implies creating something. Whether it is a piece of art or music, when someone can start with nothing and end with something they have created that is almost magical. The creative process should be used in everything that we do every day. Practicing the creative process in the schools, or in the community at large, will benefit the schools and communities.  And besides, the band was great!

RASD Cafeteria Information

I want to discuss a “hidden gem” in our school system. Our cafeteria serves breakfast and lunch to our students that exceed the current nutritional guidelines for school breakfast/lunch. The school district has a very high participation rate for lunches with almost 85% of our students purchasing lunches from the cafeteria. Approximately 250 students buy breakfast from the cafeteria and around 850 students buy lunch every day. The cafeteria offers a wide variety of choices to our students every day including fresh fruit and vegetables. 51% of our students qualify for a free/reduced rate based on the income of their parents.

The cafeteria employs 11 employees with 6 full-time and 5 part-time. The school district gets reimbursed from the federal government for every student that qualifies for a free meal. The school district is reimbursed $2.78 for every lunch served to a student that qualifies for a free lunch and $1.56 for a breakfast. The price of a breakfast for a student is $1.00 in the high school and .90 in the elementary school while lunch is $1.60 in the high school and $1.35 in the elementary school. You will notice that the school district is reimbursed more from the Federal government than what we charge our students. There is a proposal in Congress to force all schools to charge all lunches at the reimbursement rate for a free student. If that passes, that would force the school district to increase lunch prices for all students. I am very proud of our cafeteria. The food is nutritionally sound and tastes good. There is a variety of foods for students to choose from and the cafeteria exceeds the State nutritional guidelines.

Student "Growth" this year

I want to share some data that the school district has gathered concerning student growth through the school year. There are many forms of data that a school system can use to judge how well they are doing. Benchmark assessment data is one of these forms of data. Other forms of data that a school can use are alumni surveys, student surveys, SAT scores, college admittance information, and analysis of budgetary expenses relating to student instruction. I have included a presentation that I shared with the school board last night that shows the growth that students have made according to benchmark data the school has collected. The data helps inform decisions teachers make when considering instruction and curriculum. Overall, the district has shown remarkable growth of its students. This is a reflection of the hard work of the staff, the focus the district has placed on curriculum and research-based instructional strategies, and a Board focus on student achievement. I am hopeful that this kind of benchmark data will continue to show dramatic growth over the next few years.  Although this data analysis in not too in-depth, it does show that the district's concentration on student achievement is starting to pay off.

School Transformation

Today I will finish the topic of transformation in the school system. Transformation of the system means that public education will “look” fundamentally different then it does today. The basic assumptions that we hold for how students are taught should change. Deep transformation will take some time, but I will briefly explain how Ridgway Area School District will position itself to start the transformation process.

How will Ridgway Area School District start the transformation process?

 

1. Organizations must become more open and transparent and that includes public education. People demand to know how public institutions are operated and demand to have more input then in the past. With that in mind, the elementary school will institute a parent academy next year which will offer a space for parents to interact more informally with the school. The elementary principal, Mrs. Herzing, is also exploring “parent liaison committees” which will be another way for parents to have more input into what goes on in the school. At the high school Mrs. Vargas has started a student advisory group which has been very influential in making suggestions concerning the governance of the school. The student’s suggestions can be found in my blog on May 12th.

2. There must be a focus on student achievement. It goes without saying that a focus on student achievement is also a focus on student learning and teacher instruction. The school district has focused on instruction this year through intense training of the teaching staff on research-based instructional strategies that improve student achievement. The school district is also asking all teachers to create “benchmark assessments”. Benchmark assessments are a fancy name for creating a local test that truly measures what was taught in the classroom. Benchmark assessments are created by grade level or subject area teams of teachers working together so each student will be judged on the same criteria regardless of what teacher they may have had. In the best of all possible worlds, benchmark assessments are used to adjust instruction throughout the year. In other words, if too many students do not do well on the assessment, then the teacher will need to re-teach the concept using different instructional strategies.

3. Fostering student creativity and problem solving must be a focus for Ridgway Area School District. I hear from community members as well as teachers about the lack of problem solving capabilities of students. The school must start to adjust the way we think about being creative and solving problems. Creativity is not something that must be confined to music or art classes. All curriculum areas in all grade levels must offer opportunities for students to show their creative side. The school district shows off our music and art students’ creativity through concerts and exhibitions. The schools must now do the same for the student who finds a creative solution to a problem in math, social studies, foreign language and all curricular areas. Stanford University has a great model in their K-12 lab. The students and teachers all follow “design thinking” which centers on identifying and solving real world problems. That model would be great for Ridgway Area School District. The school district currently uses community resources to try to help students become more creative (Appalachian Arts Studio) but expanding the school’s reach into other community venues is a must.

Transformation vs. Reform

A few weeks ago I was discussing the difference between school reform and school transformation with someone from the Knowledge Works Foundation . I have thought about this difference a lot in the past few weeks and I want to share with you my ideas of school transformation and what I think it means for Ridgway Area School District. I will discuss the specifics of why I think a transformative period in public education is occurring in a later blog; this blog will be concerned about the difference between reform and transformation.

Reform has become a “tired” word in education. Books have been written explaining why reform efforts in public education have not worked. The best of these, in my opionion, is Tinkering Toward Utopia by David Tyack and Larry Cuban . In the past, reforms have been created and developed in a “cookie cutter” model. Usually a well meaning researcher or organization creates programs that works well in one locality then “scale-up” the reform and offer it to the rest of the country. Oftentimes the reforms are forced on school districts through either the state or national departments of education. The result is that there is not a “buy-in” from the local school districts and the reform (no matter how viable it is) is not implemented with fidelity. The end result is a muddled process of reform that does not really change anything within the school district.

The contrast to reform that is forced on a school district is transformation of a school district created by the stakeholders of the school district. It seems obvious that if one wants a system like public education to actually change, then there must be input from the people in the local school district. A community and school district must have leadership that believes that a radical transformation can take place and then nurture the change to make sure it occurs. With transformation there is no “cookie cutter”, one size fits all solutions. Rather, there are thousands of permutations of what change can look like in the school district. I believe that all change must be focused on the question “what is in the best interest of the student”. Transformation cannot occur for the benefit of administrators, teachers or well meaning reformist. The students in the schools must be the focus of transformation. Tomorrow I will discuss transformation more deeply. I hope this blog helped delineate the difference between reform and transformation.  I hope that we are positioning Ridgway to move forward and start the process of true transformation.  Our initiatives that have been implemented will assist in this process.

The Invention of Air

Today I want to talk about a book that I read over Christmas called The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. The book is about Joseph Priestley and the origins of modern chemistry (basically, Priestley started modern chemistry). What I find fascinating about the story is the interconnectedness between what Priestley accomplished and the people he associated with and the times in which he lived. I don’t know if he would have been able to accomplish what he did if those two factors were not in play. I will blog about connections and networks on Monday and Priestley’s life story is a testament to the power of interconnectedness. One of the ideas that comes from the book is how to use “conversations with self” to allow ideas to form and change over time. Writing ideas down on paper is a great way to remember them so you can go back and change them and adjust them to new frameworks and information. We spend so little time today as a society allowing ourselves to just sit and think. We believe that we always have to be entertained or working and we do not allow our own genius to develop. Einstein “Any man that reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking”. Now, I may disagree with the reading too much part of this quote, but not using our brains enough is an interesting point. Priestley and his colleagues would meet at a coffee house (Ben Franklin was part of this group while he lived in London) and discuss topics and debate ideas. The end result was a revolution in science. This is a fascinating book and I highly recommend it. I wrote a summary of the book and framed it for rural education leaders. One last interesting note, Priestley moved to the United States and is buried in Northumberland, PA.

Dr. Butler Goes to Washington

I apologize for not blogging over the last two days. I was in Washington DC and I forgot how to mobile blog. Today I want to talk about my testimony in front of the House Committee on Education and Labor. You can find the link to the testimony here. You can view the testimony by clicking on "Archived webcast". My written testimony was more detailed than my verbal testimony. Each witness only has five minutes to speak so you have to cut your official written testimony down to a five minute mark. I will have my verbal remarks for you later. I was asked to offer a small, rural school district perspective about the reauthorization of ESEA (No Child Left Behind). Please read my written testimony to better if you want to better understand my point of view. I will provide a short overview of the testimony below.



The major theme of my testimony was that collaboration and teacher professional learning is a key component to any successful school reform. I feel that Ridgway Area School District has had a long history of stakeholders working together to improve student learning. I also stressed the importance of teacher professional learning and that school districts should encourage professional learning on the part of the teachers. I believe that the school district’s teacher supervision plan is a good example of something that was created to encourage collaboration and teacher professional learning. I also recommended to the committee that broadband service is a must for rural school districts. Beyond broadband access, school districts also need the technology infrastructure within the schools to take advantage of the high quality broadband service. Broadband service begins to level the playing field for rural school districts as we can provide better learning opportunities for our students and high quality professional learning for our teachers. I will have more pictures from the trip after I download them from the camera.  The picture today was taken from my smartphone. My goal for the trip was that people in Washington would know about Ridgway Area School District and about the great community that we live in, I feel comfortable that I accomplished this task.


One final note, the hospitality and assistance that Congressman Thompson’s office gave to my family and me during the trip was impressive and appreciated. The Congressman spent time talking with me about education and the reauthorization of ESEA, but more importantly took his time and talked with my kids. He now has a new (younger) fan base! I also want to thank the staff from the Congressman’s office (Deborah Pontzer, Darrell, and Matt) for helping me through the testimony process and making sure that I only had to concentrate on my testimony.

Tree Cutting and a Physics Lesson

Okay, yesterday my family (and other interested by-standers) was entertained by watching a huge red oak tree near my house being cut down. Normally, this may not seem to be such an educational lesson, but this picture will probably help you see how physics and other physical sciences came into play in this event. I was fascinated by the amount of calculation required to determine where to place the ropes to assure that when a big limb was cut, it would hang harmlessly above the ground. My wife was explaining to our children how pulleys work. One man could lower a limb that weighed over one thousand pounds and place it on the ground without leaving a mark. I encouraged my children and any other kids that were around to watch because they were witnessing a perfect physics experiment in “real life”. Other than the fact that this work is very demanding physically, one has to be sharp intellectually to do well. I am happy to report that there was no major damage to anything as a result of taking the tree down.


On another note, I will attempt to “mobile blog” again over the next two days. I am going to Washington DC to testify before the House Committee on education and Labor. I will be offering a “rural perspective” on turnaround schools and the proposed reform models from the US Department of Education. I am looking forward to the opportunity to have a voice for rural school systems across the nation.