District Administration - February 2012 - (Page 36)

What Can U.S. SChoolS Learn from foreign CoUnterpartS? CoNTINuED rigor does occur.” The rural schools in the program are figuring out how to handle situations in which students aren’t meeting benchmarks but can’t stay after school because they don’t have home Internet access. The state is addressing this on a school-by-school basis. “We’re all feeling our way through this since this is the first semester in the state,” Trotter says. College Readiness That challenge is also on the docket at Medical Professions and Teacher Preparation Academy, which opened its doors in the 2010-2011 school year to sixththrough ninth-graders and will expand each year until it includes all four years of high school. The academy is one of 15 charter schools operated by Capital Region Education Council (CREC) in Hartford, Conn., an education service agency. CREC had been investigating how to benchmark using PISA testing when the organization heard about NCEE’s pilot and applied to participate in spring 2011. Impressed with its depth and emphasis on inquiry and critical thinking, administrators at Medical Professions decided to use the Cambridge curriculum and testing system, says Anne McKernan, assistant superintendent of CREC. The program already has produced higher expectations for this year’s freshman class, and it has given the schools’ 24 teachers access to an Students in Kentucky’s Paris High School, which is part of the pilot program, study for their semester final in biology. At the end of the course, students take the ACT QualityCore exam. If they fail to meet the benchmarks, they will get additional instruction to help them master the subject. lyze their scores and put together a customized program designed to bring them up to standards the following year. Some students might take two years to do so; others will take three and even four. This contrasts with the systems in the countries that provided the program’s inspiration, where college is not an option for those who don’t make their marks in the first two years; such students are tracked into a technical college or just sent out into the workforce. “In most other countries, the exams are used to sort them out,” Tucker says. Interactive Collaboration The state of Kentucky has enrolled six schools in five districts, five of them rural and the sixth in the state capital of Frankfort, says Pat Trotter, staff assistant in the division of innovation and partner engagement in the Kentucky Department of Education, which has a two-year budget of about $400,000 for the program. Some schools have accepted their entire freshman classes into “Excellence for All,” while others, the program’s name notwithstanding, have enrolled only some “cream-ofthe-crop-type kids,” she says. In the early months of the program, students and teachers across the state definitely feel challenged, Trotter reports. “It 36 February 2012 has really ramped up the expectations for them,” she says. Kentucky chose the ACT QualityCore curriculum and testing, and the state held a five-day teacher workshop last summer followed by online webinars to shore up areas where they’ve had additional needs in either instructional practices or basic knowledge. Trotter likes the ACT’s problem-solving approach to learning. “It’s asking the kids, so what? How are you going to apply it?” In a biology class, rather than simply learning terms, students are told, “Here’s “Part of our challenge is how to change these classrooms so this rigor does occur.” —Pat Trotter, staff assistant, Division of Innovation and Partner Engagement, Kentucky Department of Education a problem that might occur in the world. How would you bring what you know to the problem?” Such questions are explored in interactive, collaborative fashion rather than individually. “There’s a lot more critical thinking involved in this [curriculum]—what they’re calling 21st-century skills,” Trotter says. “Part of our challenge is how to change these classrooms so this extensive amount of proprietary professional development resources online that guide them through how to inculcate the new learning style, according to Principal Andy Skarzynski. McKernan figures the district is spending “at least $25,000 to $30,000” this school year to start up the program, including time for planning curriculum, District Administration

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

District Administration - February 2012
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Conversations
Product Focus
What Can U.S. Schools Learn From Foreign Counterparts?
A New Prescription for Fighting Drug Abuse
The Game Changer
The Legal Implications of Surveillance Cameras
CIO News
Mobile Devices Drive Creative Instruction
Products
Crisis Response
Professional Opinion
Problem/Solution
New Directions

District Administration - February 2012