This is my first trip to the WINNS site, and outside of the painfully long waiting periods, I really enjoyed looking at much of the information. For my first glimpse I focused on the WKCE data and found that we performed about where I expected to. What I was surprised to see is a decrease in our proficient/advanced numbers over the last 5-6 years. It has not been a constant decrease, but it looks to my untrained eyes like a decrease. You can see it HERE.
The next step was to identify the why and my first instinct was to look at the sub groups of race or economic status. The first race/ethnicity probably has not had an impact, while our numbers of students in the Hispanic and Black categories have increased our overall number is still very small and therefore has had a negligible impact on our data.
The second group, economically disadvantaged has grown, and what I noticed was that their scoring has dramatically decreased over that time. It would seem to me that with a group a little over 10% of the overall population decreasing significantly would have the effect of bringing down the overall score slowly, but surely.
Now, there could easily be other, more significant reasons to our decrease, but the fact remains, our economically disadvantaged students are being left further and further behind. Now I suppose we identify the problem, solving it should be easy right?
Last point: We don't really do this in our district. My feeling is that we go on and on about being a data driven district, but I don't recall ever being shown meaningful, straight forward data that made any sense to me. I liked this. I found value in this exercise. I couldn't say the same thing when we have had PD's using data in the past. I wouldn't say we are data driven, but I think I would like to be, as long as we become good drivers.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Leader?
This week's blog deals with leaders in a building, specifically me. Am I a Leader? How do I Lead? Why do some people Lead while others Follow?
The simple answer is that yes I am a leader in my school.
The long answer says not yet.
Am I involved in decisions? Yes.
Do I take active roles in professional development? Yes.
Do I participate fully in committee activities? Yes.
Do I share my views on issues that face my school? Yes.
Do some people value and consider my advice on issues? Yes.
Do I lead our building towards positive and real change? Not yet.
It is this final not yet that results in my long answer being the way it is. I don't view myself as a leader because I have not yet led anyone or any group down a road to positive change. I have been a partner in bringing change, but I would not say I was the catalyst, or the leader. There is hope for me yet, it is early in my career. I'm confident that if I can carry out the visions and plans of my mind I can become a leader in my building, but that is still future tense.
With my current projects in progress for PLP and my MEIT proposal, I see no reason for them not to be ideas that could lead to significant change in our building for both students and teachers. If they are successful and spread, then I would feel more comfortable with the label leader.
My PLP project involves creating online presentation portfolios (sample) for students to reflect and share their work and learning with teachers, parents and other students. Our school previously had these in binder form, and we are actively working to improve the process and bring it and our students into the web 2.0 era.
My MEIT proposal has been discussed in other blog posts, but I feel like it will do for me, as a teacher, what the SLC does for students. It puts my work out there for others, it allows me to collaborate with peers, and it allows my students to expand their understanding of curriculum and their world simultaneously.
As I mentioned before I am excited about both of these ideas. I know it will be a lot of work and there will be setbacks, but I'm excited nonetheless. The last statements go for being a building leader as well.
The simple answer is that yes I am a leader in my school.
The long answer says not yet.
Am I involved in decisions? Yes.
Do I take active roles in professional development? Yes.
Do I participate fully in committee activities? Yes.
Do I share my views on issues that face my school? Yes.
Do some people value and consider my advice on issues? Yes.
Do I lead our building towards positive and real change? Not yet.
It is this final not yet that results in my long answer being the way it is. I don't view myself as a leader because I have not yet led anyone or any group down a road to positive change. I have been a partner in bringing change, but I would not say I was the catalyst, or the leader. There is hope for me yet, it is early in my career. I'm confident that if I can carry out the visions and plans of my mind I can become a leader in my building, but that is still future tense.
With my current projects in progress for PLP and my MEIT proposal, I see no reason for them not to be ideas that could lead to significant change in our building for both students and teachers. If they are successful and spread, then I would feel more comfortable with the label leader.
My PLP project involves creating online presentation portfolios (sample) for students to reflect and share their work and learning with teachers, parents and other students. Our school previously had these in binder form, and we are actively working to improve the process and bring it and our students into the web 2.0 era.
My MEIT proposal has been discussed in other blog posts, but I feel like it will do for me, as a teacher, what the SLC does for students. It puts my work out there for others, it allows me to collaborate with peers, and it allows my students to expand their understanding of curriculum and their world simultaneously.
As I mentioned before I am excited about both of these ideas. I know it will be a lot of work and there will be setbacks, but I'm excited nonetheless. The last statements go for being a building leader as well.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Free the Ning. Or discount if for educators.
Yesterday I was excited to hear the new Ning report on what their new pay structure would look like. Now that I write this, it seemed like a lot of people were excited to find out, I bet they got a lot of traffic yesterday. Anyway, I was pleased to read that some version of Ning would be provided for free to educators. My initial reaction was positive.
You can see from this tweet, that I was initially excited. Just look at my face for proof. After the fact though, I was a little more skeptical.
The Ning that seems like it will be offered for free is the bare bones minimal option, which is not the same as what many of us have become accustomed to since whenever you started using Ning. Problems for me with the free version are the 150 members, no grouping, no interaction with social media. That is the direction I wanted to go with Ning, and why I and my students liked it so much. You can see the side by side comparison here. As I looked at the different levels I can see that the version I would be interested in and would best meed my needs is going to cost me $20/month, or $200/year. That's not cheap. I would really need to have my act together to go in that direction. It also seems like for education the cost is going to be significant enough to discourage many from trying it out. That's too bad.
My only hope is that when we see the effect on educators the $200 dollar option can be brought down to something that is closer to my budget ability. I'm hopeful, but not holding my breath.
Ning Planning to Remain Free for Teachers - http://nyti.ms/cPiI7Y
Jason Symes
jmsymes
You can see from this tweet, that I was initially excited. Just look at my face for proof. After the fact though, I was a little more skeptical.
The Ning that seems like it will be offered for free is the bare bones minimal option, which is not the same as what many of us have become accustomed to since whenever you started using Ning. Problems for me with the free version are the 150 members, no grouping, no interaction with social media. That is the direction I wanted to go with Ning, and why I and my students liked it so much. You can see the side by side comparison here. As I looked at the different levels I can see that the version I would be interested in and would best meed my needs is going to cost me $20/month, or $200/year. That's not cheap. I would really need to have my act together to go in that direction. It also seems like for education the cost is going to be significant enough to discourage many from trying it out. That's too bad.
My only hope is that when we see the effect on educators the $200 dollar option can be brought down to something that is closer to my budget ability. I'm hopeful, but not holding my breath.
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