The detailed form used by Normandy school administrators when they visit a classroom to observe district teachers starts out by saying: “It was a joy to be in your room today.”
How widespread that joy will be as the school year progresses is hard to judge.
One month after classes started, the state-appointed board running what is now the Normandy Schools Collaborative has adopted an ambitious agenda from Missouri education officials that calls for steep, steady improvement by students in the next three years.
Considering that Normandy earned no points at all for academic achievement in the latest annual evaluation by the state – and its overall grade of 7.1 percent was the lowest in the state – Superintendent Ty McNichols admits the targets set by the new accountability blueprint are a stretch.
“It’s a plan that I think has a lot of moving parts,” he said after last week’s meeting of the Joint Executive Governing Board, which adopted the plan unanimously. “With the dedication and commitment of our staff, we can reach for those goals.
“It’s always been said shoot for the stars and you’ll hit the moon. I’m hoping to hit the moon and move on. Progress is what we have to do on the academic side.”
The two weeks of intensive training for teachers that preceded the opening of school on Aug. 18 concentrated heavily on making sure teachers were immersed in the subject matter they would be presenting. McNichols acknowledged that some of that time may have been better spent on another skill that teachers need – classroom management, which is education-speak for making sure that students behave.
At the district’s middle school and high school, discipline has been a problem so far this year, with large numbers of students being called out for behavior problems. A decision made during the summer to cut Normandy’s security budget in half because of a financial squeeze will also be getting another look soon, McNichols said.
“Our focus was really on the academic side,” he said of the professional development sessions before classes started, “and we erred in not thinking about the other side of that. Now, we are resetting in many aspects and making sure what it is we missed so we can do that.”
Besides their time spent in front of students, Normandy teachers spend two days a week in 90-minute after-school training sessions. McNichols says those meetings give the district the opportunity “to make those kinds of adjustments and modifications to meet our staff needs.”
But not all teachers who started the school year will be around to benefit from those changes. McNichols said a handful have already left, for a variety of reasons – family concerns, failure to pass the necessary exams, health problems or just the difficulty of the task in front of them.
“I think people thought it would be easier than it is,” he said during a recent walk through Normandy Middle School. “This is heavy lifting.”
Observation, evaluation, results
Just how heavy can be seen in the details of the ambitious accountability plan presented by McNichols to the board last week.
It calls for:
- A rigorous and relevant instructional program
- Ongoing, high-quality, job-embedded professional development
- Increased instructional time
- Social-emotional and community-oriented services and supports
- Use of data to inform instruction
- Continuous focus on results
That continuous focus, McNichols told the board, means no one will be sitting around waiting for the end of an academic quarter to assess how students are doing. Instead, student performance and growth will be assessed regularly, and a Regional Student Improvement Team from the state will check on progress monthly, to keep Normandy’s attention fixed on improvement goals.
Principals are expected to give teachers weekly feedback and visit each classroom at least five times to put together observation reports, so performance can be judged before and after observations and suggestions are made.
Twice a month, in addition to other meetings, teachers are scheduled to take part in collaborative data team sessions based on a six-step data team process.
All classrooms are expected to show increased student engagement and depth of knowledge. And by next spring, the plan says that 80 percent of Normandy students should meet growth targets in literacy and math.
McNichols told the board that instruction will be more individualized, based on where students are starting out and where they should be at certain times.
“Some kids are going to be on grade level,” he said. “Some kids will be above. Some kids will be below….
“We’re not going to give them all the same book and have them all ready at the same level. The expectation is that they’ll all have a year’s worth of growth.”
Noting that the plan has four major components – leadership, collaborative cultures, curriculum/assessments and effective instruction – McNichols acknowledged that Normandy is expecting a lot.
“They’ve never done all four of these things,” he said of the teaching staff, “so they can be overwhelmed…. It’s all happening at once. It’s not like we phase in this initiative, then phase in that initiative.”
Exponents and terrorism
Recent visits by McNichols and GeNita Williams, the second-year principal at Normandy Middle School, provided a glimpse of how the new system works.
First, they went to Adrienne Watkins’ eighth-grade math class, where the lesson of the day was on exponents. She showed a video, featuring actors who obviously hadn’t been in middle school for a long time who were enthusiastically puzzling over the best way to multiply 3 to the fourth power times 3 squared.
They eventually realized that if the base is the same, to multiply the numbers you just have to add the exponents, to get the answer 3 to the sixth power.
Watkins stopped the video frequently and wrote on the board to emphasize the points it was making, then asked questions of the class to make sure they were following along. Students’ desks were arranged in small pods, and she wandered through the room to make sure their attention didn’t wander.
Next, the lesson shifted to division – 3 to the fourth divided by 3 squared. Watkins and the video both showed how to restate the problem as a fraction, then reach the rule that if the base is the same, division means you subtract the exponents, to get the answer of – everyone get it? – 3 squared.
The combination of technology, consistent instruction strategies, making sure students are paying attention and taking notes – those are just some of the items administrators check off on their feedback data form.
Next came a social studies class, where teacher Samada Randels showed a video about what had happened 13 years ago on that date – an ordinary day that turned tragic when, as the video put it, “Terrorists attacked the United States of America!!!”
As the video ended, with the strains of the theme from “Rocky” fading out, Randels asked the class how 9/11 had changed American life. The answers ranged from tighter security at airports and elsewhere to showing how people were able to come together in the wake of adversity.
On the boards in the room were a data wall and a word wall, with vocabulary terms like complex, theocracy and hieroglyphics.
'A different purpose'
McNichols, who said he is in classrooms regularly as part of the new approach in Normandy, compared last year – his first in the district – to this one as being one of diagnosis versus implementation.
“We knew our test scores were not going well,” he said. “Our question was why.”
Having the state take over after months of uncertainty also shifted the burden of survival to Jefferson City, he added, letting him and his team focus more on instruction.
“I don’t have to fight to keep the district alive,” McNichols said.
But that fight may not be over. After the costs for tuition and transportation for students who transferred out of Normandy drove the district to the brink of bankruptcy last year, the state board of education tried to limit how many students could transfer under a state law upheld in 2013 by the Missouri Supreme Court. It also tried to limit the amount of tuition it would pay to receiving districts.
'We knew our test scores were not going well. Our question was why.' -- Superintendent Ty McNichols
But a ruling by a St. Louis County circuit judge, who said the state board had acted improperly when it gave Normandy a special accreditation status, reversed those changes. Now, any student eligible to transfer may do so, and Normandy has to pay whatever tuition receiving districts charge.
Education commissioner Chris Nicastro has said that if the number of transfers increases, the district could again face financial insolvency, perhaps as soon as next month.
As the court issued one order after another, giving students who sought to transfer the right to do so, the only district that has refused to open its doors to any eligible transfer student is Francis Howell. There, the board has said it will only accept students it is ordered to do so by the court.
Eric Seider, president of the Howell board, reiterated that stance in an interview before a board meeting last week. He said he could not discuss specifics because the issue remains in the courts, but he did say:
“The district’s viewpoint on this remains the same. We believe that the resources in Normandy need to stay in Normandy and kids are best educated in their community…..
“The Francis Howell school district will accept any student that we’re required to accept by state law and will put the necessary contingencies in place for the students as we get them from Normandy or anywhere else for that matter.”
McNichols said that he can’t worry about the threat of insolvency. He is more focused on helping to make sure teachers and students are getting what they need to meet state goals. He noted that when teachers at the middle school expressed concerns about conditions, administrators moved to address them.
“They know more than I do and the department does about what’s going on in the actual buildings, despite me being in there,” McNichols said of the teachers. “As we continue to build those skill sets and empower them, I think that kind of speed and expediency to move and to deal with issues will increase, and that will help to reduce some of their stress. Part of their stress is their feeling that they’re not empowered.”
Williams, the principal, concurred. She said that the staff of old and new teachers has meshed well and everyone is working toward the same goal.
“I have a job to do,” she said, “and I have to do it. I have to service these children for as long as our doors are open and they continue to come here.
“It would be unfortunate if the district didn’t make it. That would be heartbreaking of course. But my focus has to be the day-to-day operation of the school and how I’m going to do what I need to support teachers so that they can do every thing that they need to do for kids.”
