Friday, April 1, 2016

Picnic with Parks

Today we had our first "Picnic with Parks" and had a small, yet enthusiastic crowd, gather to ask questions about Miramonte.  The purpose of this event, which I hope to do monthly, is to provide students with an open forum to discuss issues impacting Miramonte, concerns, or, simply, just catch up on topics of interest (if anyone cares to discuss either CrossFit or Game of Thrones, I am always happy to weigh in).  So, after gathering some publicity ideas for next month, I am hoping to see increasing numbers of students come by on these days to check in.

I did feel that summarizing some of the topics discussed today might be beneficial.  I have included some of the questions, and their corresponding answers, below:

Is it true that we are having a block schedule this year?

It is!  For the last two weeks of May we will have a block schedule.  The purpose for this is two-fold.  First of all, we have Smarter Balanced testing (the state testing in math and literacy) for all 11th graders during this time and, with a block schedule, we can accommodate more instructional minutes for each student.  Let me explain. If we shorten the day for most students (9th, 10th, and 12th graders) to accommodate testing for some students (11th graders), everyone looses instructional minutes (duh).  If we block the time to create longer periods, students needing to test (11th graders) can test during some instructional time, while all other students (9th, 10th, and 12th graders) continue to have the same number of minutes, missing zero instructional minutes.  While some would undoubtedly have been ok with the reduced school time, this is a far more ethical approach (after all, student learning is kind of a priority around here).  

The second reason for the block schedule is to give a little trial to the idea of block schedule.  Some of you may be aware that there is a District committee looking at the concept of having a block schedule.  There is a lot of interest in this right now.  The committee is comprised of students, parents, teachers, and administrators.  We have been making visits to similar schools with block schedules and bringing back data to share.  We are on schedule to make a recommendation to our Governing Board.  Stay tuned.

Do we have to take Smarter Balanced test?

The good news is that the Smarter Balanced test is only given to 11th graders.  That's right.  With the old STAR test, kids were tested 9th, 10th, and 11th grades.  Now, under the new standards and new testing systems, 10th graders still take the relatively short life science test and only 11th graders take the literacy and math tests.

Now, if you are an 11th grader, I realize that this is still something extra.  However, I am very happy to report that last year we did extraordinarily well!  I'm certainly not surprised, but it was great to see that our scores are much higher than the average for the state (although, of course, we still have work to do).  

Taking this test allows us to show what we know, and identify the areas that we need to work on.  For example, our lowest "strand" on the literacy test was in listening and speaking.  This is not particularly shocking, as this was an entirely new area for testing.  However, knowing this has led our teachers to consider other forms of instruction that allow students opportunity to exercise their skills, like Socratic Seminars, debates, and presentations.  We use these scores to grow our practice.

In addition, this next year our scores will count toward our Academic Performance Index (API), the score our school gets that ranks us in the state.  This is an important data point for us as a community.

So, do you need to take the test?  Yes, because it is the right thing to do for you, your school, and your community.

What are you doing over spring break?

Playing with my kids (I have two boys, ages 6 and 3) and probably going to a lot of CrossFit (see, I got this into the discussion, after all).  I'm hoping all of you have a really restful week and enjoy the great spring weather.