(Vol. 1, No. 2 - Spring/Summer 1997)
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INTERVIEW:
Middle school leadership duo
pushes high-stakes reform agenda
By John Norton
Sandy Ledford and Sherry DeMarsh will tell you that boosting student
achievement in Louisville's middle schools will require a lot of leadership
-- both from the teachers and principals on the educational front lines,
and from the support team at the rear: the JCPS Board of Education, Superintendent
Stephen Daeschner, and all the folks "in the central office."
And they're right. With half the district's middle schools in "decline"
according to Kentucky Education Reform Act criteria -- and more than half
of 1995-96's 8th graders in the "novice" category in science and
math -- there are ample opportunities for leadership at every level.
But the day-to-day responsibilities for implementing the district's high-stakes
plan for standards-based middle school reform rest mostly on the shoulders
of these two women -- one a 23-year veteran of the Jefferson County public
school system, and the other a nationally recognized principal recruited
from Cedar Rapids, Iowa just three-and-a-half years ago.
As JCPS's "middle school advocate," former Iowan Sandy Ledford
holds a position that might be called "associate superintendent for
middle schools" in another district. She describes her job as representing
"the views and interests of 24 middle school principals and three special
school principals" who now report to her. She's also a key player in
managing a two-year, $1 million grant from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation
aimed at insuring that a large percentage of JCPS middle schoolers achieve
high academic standards by June 2001.
Last October, long-time JCPS principal and teacher Sherry DeMarsh went to
work for Ledford as "Director of Clark Projects," replacing the
retiring Howard Hardin who managed several smaller Clark grants in the early
1990s. DeMarsh began her education career as a 7th grade teacher at Crosby
Middle School and has been a teacher and counselor at five other Louisville
middle schools and principal at Iroquois and Kammerer.
Changing Schools interviewed the two middle school reform leaders
in mid-March, a few months after the devastating results of the 1995-96
state KIRIS assessment shocked the district and prompted a period of soul-searching
among many JCPS middle school educators that continues today. Among other
issues, the pair discussed the district's strategic
plan for middle grades reform.
Changing Schools: While some educators in Jefferson County
have been experimenting with middle school reform for several years, it
seems fair to say that there has not been a general sense of urgency before
this school year. To what extent did the middle schools' poor showing in
last fall's KIRIS results sharpen the focus on the need for change?
Sandy Ledford: I think the awareness of the need to reform
has been greatly, greatly increased. With half of our schools in the KERA
"decline" category, the step from here to real crisis is a short
step. I think in the past some people saw the whole KIRIS thing as a game.
We would do what we needed to do to do well on KIRIS, and we were sure we
knew how to do that. And now there's understanding that it's not a game
and we can't just slip by. There have to be new practices that are real
changes in the way we teach and test in order to make a long-lasting difference.
Superintendent Daeschner has made it clear that we must improve the middle
schools and that we will use academic standards as the basis for those improvements.
It's a top priority for him. In partnership with the Clark Foundation we
are moving standards-based reform front and center.
Sherry DeMarsh: In the past, schools have done different
things to try to stay ahead of the KERA accountability system, but I don't
think many of us dug very deeply into trying to figure out what the KERA
reform is really about and what the reform intends for schools to do. Now
our schools see that what we've tried so far does not guarantee success,
so maybe we need to dig a little deeper into what we need to be doing.
Ledford: And the need for deeper reform applies to all
our schools, not just the schools that are in "decline" this year.
KIRIS is unpredictable. I think even our most successful schools are beginning
to realize that unless we make some real changes in classroom practices,
they could be in decline next year even though they're successful this year.
Changing Schools: Understandably, there's been a lot of
emphasis in the middle schools this year on getting ready for KIRIS testing.
How does the intense focus on KIRIS influence the larger reform agenda?
DeMarsh: I don't think you will find many people in this
district who don't respect what KERA is doing. And KIRIS is the kind of
test that requires kids to know important things and be able to communicate
them. If they don't learn pretty deeply as part of their normal classroom
experience, we cannot rely on them to have the skills and knowledge they
need to perform well on KIRIS. That's the bottom line.
At the same time, if we continue to focus only on the KIRIS assessment,
we will not get where we need to be. It's very important, but it's never
going to give us all the information or direction we need to permanently
improve our schools and permanently raise student achievement.
For the foreseeable future, we will live or die by KIRIS. There's no denying
that. But hopefully people are beginning to see that if we seriously reform
our classrooms based on standards, we're going to be doing the kinds of
things that KERA anticipated we would do from the beginning. Frankly, I
don't think we had the right conversations in the beginning, six or seven
years ago.
Changing Schools: What do you mean when you say "we
didn't have the right conversations at the beginning?"
Ledford: When KERA came into being in 1990 and over the
next several years there were some rudimentary things that should have been
done with our teachers and principals to help them gain a deeper understanding
of the connection between KERA's goals and our JCPS classrooms. If that
had happened, I think we would be further along today in our effort to move
to standards-based middle schools.
When we look at how it has evolved, I think we can see that what KERA really
is calling for is standards-based reform. And that's our goal, too. So for
the next year or so, we're going to be focusing much of our efforts on filling
in the holes, raising the awareness of teachers and principals about how
we can use standards to meet the demands of KERA, and most importantly,
make a positive difference for student achievement.
This will require us to do things differently in the classroom. Teachers
will need to stretch themselves and make changes in their instructional
practices and strategies and the way they assess student progress. As we
talk with small groups of people, I think lightbulbs are beginning to go
on.
Changing Schools: Can you describe some of the strategies
you are putting into place to build momentum for standards-based reform?
Ledford: Much of what we're going to be doing will be in
the area of professional development. One thing we are doing is building
a network of ambassadors, teachers from each school who will help us spread
information and ideas about standards-based reform in our middle schools.
One set of ambassadors will be what we call the "teacher leader cadre"
-- a pair of teachers from each of our 24 middle schools who will meet with
us regularly as a group. They will go back and serve as re-
sources in their schools, spreading the word and modelling for teachers
within their own buildings (see "Teacher
Cadre" story).
We will also take advantage of existing teacher groups and we'll hold large
group meetings to help get the message across about how the pieces of reform
fit together. And then there's that other major group, the principals. They
must be leaders. I've seen a lot of growth in the awareness of principals
about what we need to do to make standards-based reform work. Until that
happens thoroughly, of course, we have a ship being driven without a captain,
to use a bad metaphor.
Changing Schools: How will teachers need to change to meet
the standards-oriented agenda you've described -- to be able to use standards
effectively?
Ledford: I think first of all, teachers need to really
believe that all children are capable of achieving the standards. Certainly
not at the same time, but that all kids can learn and achieve and meet challenging
standards. And that it is their responsibility as instructional leaders
in their classrooms to empower kids to do that. We still have some teachers
who I feel are not at that point.
DeMarsh: I think we're seeing more of a schoolwide and
districtwide focus on the question of what we should be teaching than ever
before. We've been doing that in some schools at some levels for a number
of years, but at the same time, the buy-in from everybody hasn't been what
it could be. And that's due, in part, to the fact that we haven't had a
strong underlying structure like the academic standards to guide us and
help us make the most sense of what we're doing. Also, with standards we're
going to have more accountability for what each teacher does in his or her
classroom.
Changing Schools: What does it mean to have more "classroom
accountability?"
Ledford: One of the things our superintendent has talked
about since he came here is the question a parent might ask: How will I
know as a parent, if I talk to a teacher, where my child is relative to
where my child should be? He posed that as a question to a group of teachers
and didn't get any answer. And that's because of the way we've assessed.
We've mostly assessed at endpoints, not as we go along. We haven't been
measuring achievement relative to a standard. Instead, we've said, "We're
at the end of a chapter, or the end of a term, so we're going to measure
what we've learned." But that's not where we need to be. We have to
be able to track each student's progress toward each standard on an on-going
basis. There are ways to design our testing and assessment so it is an integral
part of every lesson, so that teachers and students understand what quality
work is.
Changing Schools: Could you name one or two areas where
you would most like to see teachers advance during the next year?
DeMarsh: I would want teachers to have a clear understanding
of -- and a better ability to implement -- the whole teaching-learning process,
based on standards. They would first look at what we have clearly defined
as what we want kids to know. Then they would look at what we want students
to do with that knowledge. And then teachers would track back through their
lessons to make sure that the instruction supports that happening. The teachers
need to understand why they're teaching what they're teaching, beyond the
simple fact that it's what's in the textbook. And they need to communicate
to the students what standards they're learning.
And then I think the other thing is that teachers need to come together
as professionals and look at the work of their students together, asking
what they can learn from what they see kids doing and how they can improve
their teaching and their assessments. If we can help teachers really connect
to this cycle through our professional development, through our one-day
institute this summer and through our teacher leadership cadre, we'll have
really made some progress.
Ledford: We also need to have more dialogues about what
is being taught by whom and when. And how does that all relate to the standards
we should be achieving?
DeMarsh: People have their own thing about what they want
to teach. There's a lot of ownership. I didn't realize this as a principal
until I went down the hall one day and came to the 6th grade rainforest
display, and then continued my walk and there, in the 8th grade hall, was
the rainforest display again. And I thought, hmm, I wonder if we're covering
the rainforest in the 7th grade too!
When you don't bring teachers out of their classrooms and have conversations
about what we should be teaching as a school, then you have folks picking
the things they like to teach. And to get people to let go of some of their
favorite things takes some real work.
There are different ways you can go about aligning teaching and learning
from classroom to classroom. It could come from the state level, or the
district, or the school. But based on where we are, and our experiences
with KERA reform, if we don't find ways for teachers to discover the important
questions and answers through their own work, then we are not going to have
people who really understand how to raise student achievement. It can't
be dictated from on high.
Changing Schools: How will you know when reform is beginning
to take hold?
Ledford: When a critical mass of our teachers truly believe
that kids can achieve the standards, and they communicate that belief to
students. In our desegregated, diverse district, it's a moral imperative
for teachers to do that. Because we have all kinds of kids -- "have"
kids and "have not" kids sitting in the classroom together, and
I don't think we've gotten to the point where that message is communicated
to each child individually on the same basis in every classroom.
##
You can contact Sherry DeMarsh by
e-mail.