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- Improve student achievement
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- Make systemic changes to improve student achievement
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- Capture more high impact learning days.
- Work collaboratively to improve teacher effectiveness.
- Alignment of K-16 educational calendar.
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- STUDENT MOTIVATION:
- The proposal enables schools to maximize “high impact instructional
time” to benefit students educationally.
The motivational and performance levels of our students are
greater at the start of the school year (late August and early
September) than they are in late May and early June. The opportunity to
schedule these days for learning prior to “high stakes assessments” will
provide valuable instructional time that is currently not possible to
schedule.
- PREPARATION FOR STATE ASSESSMENTS:
- The proposal provides students additional days (seven to ten) of “high
impact instructional time” with access to the academic standards prior
to “high stakes” state and federal assessments.
- CREATION OF A SENSIBLE, NATURAL SEMESTER BREAK:
- The proposal permits a natural, uninterrupted semester break between
the first and second semesters.
Current school calendars are interrupted by a cumbersome,
unnatural, winter holiday break that requires students to return to
school after the winter holiday break for seven to ten days to complete the
first semester. The proposed calendar schedules the first semester to
end prior to the December holiday break and the second semester to begin
when students return to school following the holiday break.
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- RESEARCH: TIME & ACHIEVEMENT GAINS
- According to the National Center on Time and Learning, on May 5th,
the National Center on Time and Learning, the Massachusetts Teachers
Association, the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, and
Massachusetts 2020 released a policy report, where over 40,000 teachers
identified time as the single most important teaching condition for
promoting learning.
- (www.timeandlearning.org/index.html)
- According to a report titled Prisoners of Time, "in the school of
the future, learning - in the form of high, measurable standards of
student performance - must become the fixed goal. Time must become
an adjustable resource." (www.ed.gov/pubs/PrisonersOfTime/Prisoners.html)
- A briefing paper prepared by the National Education Commission on
Time and Learning, (April 7, 1992) indicated that among the strategies
listed for increasing productive academic time was the suggested
strategy of restructuring the school day. Specifically noted was
that "a set of time-related strategies involve reshaping the
schedule of the school day in order to reduce fragmentation and provide
more time for sustained, interdisciplinary instruction."
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- RESEARCH: TIME & ACHIEVEMENT GAINS
- The National Education Commission on Time and Learning (April, 1992)
identified key aspects that impact student results - time, motivation,
and instructional appropriateness.
- TIME relates to the calendar structure such as duration and length.
- MOTIVATION includes involving work and college opportunities, student
teams/teaming, and real world opportunities.
- INSTRUCTIONAL APPROORAITENESS includes quality instructional
practices.
- In the book, Closing the Achievement Gap: No Excuses, Patricia
Davenport and Dr. Gerald Anderson (2002) share that "the goal
is to get each child up to standards. To make decisions, teachers
must ask themselves: What do students need to know? What do I need
to teach? How much time do I need to do it? The calendar is
created in response to these questions by placing the instructional
focus squarely where attention is needed most."
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- SIGNIFICANTLY ENHANCED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES:
- The proposal creates common high quality, on-going job-embedded
professional development opportunities that improve teacher
effectiveness ultimately resulting in an increase in student
achievement.
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- “Teacher effectiveness matters.
Some teachers are much more effective than others. Some of the
earliest and best analysis has been done in Tennessee, where researchers
found that all else being equal,
students assigned to the most effective teachers for three years
in a row performed 50 percentile points higher—that’s on a 100-point
scale—than comparable students assigned to the least effective teachers
for three years in a row. 1”
- “So large was the impact of teachers on student learning that it
exceeded any one thing about the students themselves. The authors of the
study concluded that teacher effectiveness is the “the single biggest
factor influencing gains in achievement,” an influence bigger than
race, poverty, parent’s education, or any of the other factors that are
often thought to doom children to failure. 2”
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- CREATION OF COMMON PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES:
- A common calendar provides many opportunities for quality job-embedded
professional development of educators.
- The consortium districts intend to pool financial, human and
intellectual resources to provide richer, more high quality
job-embedded professional development opportunities.
- MDE has limited resources, but has abundant help for us with regard to
professional development , assessments, data driven decision-making,
research based instruction, etc.
- Consortium schools intend to collaborate with other area schools that
have a common calendar.
- District staff development coordinators will meet together to plan and
schedule common professional development activities for teaching,
paraprofessional and administrative staff on joint staff development
days during the first year.
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- Joint staff development days will allow for networking and sharing of
best practices and instructional strategies that improve student
learning among all teachers.
- Especially helpful to teachers in specialized areas such as math,
science, special education, world languages, technology and
agriculture.
- Five days set aside to conduct common staff development activities.
- Three full days.
- Wednesday, August 18, 2010
- Monday, January 17, 2011
- Monday, March 14, 2011
- Two early out days used for intra and inter-district staff cooperative
activities.
- Wednesday, October 20, 2010
- Friday, February 18, 2011
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- CREATION AND EXPANSION OF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES
- The proposal creates common job-embedded professional development
opportunities by combining limited financial resources among the
consortium school districts.
- Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) will be developed across and
within consortium districts. The
professional learning communities will focus on student learning, data
driven instruction and will utilize technology to communicate
effectively. We intend to tap
the expertise within our school districts to lead and share with each
other.
- The potential to create job-embedded professional development is
greater working with other districts than it is working alone.
- We intend to develop “cross-district” professional learning
communities that focus on student learning and evaluation of student
work.
- PLC teachers will be able to share student data, instructional methods,
and curriculum resources being used to increase student achievement in
each of the districts. Teachers
will be able to access the wealth of knowledge and experiences that do
not exist without collaboration with the other schools.
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- GREATER POTENTIAL FOR SHARED STAFF MEMBERS:
- A common calendar provides consortium schools with an enhanced
opportunity to share part-time staff members or “hard-to-find subject
area teachers” (i.e., special education, math, science, industrial
technology). Consequently, this will save consortium schools
critical funds, provide opportunities for consortium schools to retain
full-time positions for high quality teachers who otherwise leave the
area for full-time employment.
The positive benefits this provides consortium students is
obvious.
- In addition the consortium districts view the opportunity to develop an
inter-district mentor induction program for new teachers in specific
subject areas as a positive way to increase new teacher effectiveness.
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- COMMON START DATES: K-16:
- Consortium students’ educational needs will best be served when K-12
schedules are aligned with area post-secondary institutions. All of our schools have university
contracts for student teachers to be placed in our school districts and
the current calendar makes this more difficult. In addition, practicum experiences for
college students will be better aligned.
- A start date that is common to post secondary consortium schools
enables us to align the schedules and programs of K-12 and post
secondary schools to better meet the needs of students in both
institutions. (Currently, Minnesota statute sets the school start date
as September 6, 2010 or later.
The start date for area post-secondary schools in the area is
August 23 or 24, 2010. )
- This will also facilitate collaborative opportunities between the
university staff and K-12 staff in each of the consortium schools. (The STEM grant currently has college
professors working with our staff in the area of mathematics.)
- Minnesota State University (Mankato) - Start Date: August 23, 2010
- Minnesota West Community Colleges (All campuses) - Start Date: August 23, 2010
- Southwest Minnesota State University (Marshall) - Start Date: August 23, 2010
- Bethany Lutheran College (Mankato) - Start Date: August 24, 2010
- South Central Community College (Mankato) - Start Date: August 24, 2010
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- Consortium schools hypothesize
that, within three years, this proposal will result in increased
student, family and staff satisfaction and increased student learning
and achievement. The consortium
schools will conduct the following measurement activities:
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- Capture more high impact learning days
- Stakeholder satisfaction and student motivation
- Measure the perceived benefits of the proposed plan.
- Perception surveys will be administered to the following stakeholders:
- 1) Teachers
- 2) Students
- 3) Parents
- The perception survey will be created by SWSC and administered by each
participating consortium school in the spring of 2010.
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- Capture more high impact learning days.
- High Stakes State & National Assessments
- The following are the goals based on the Minnesota state assessments and
national assessments. Besides
this data, each consortium school may be using other formative and
summative data to monitor student learning.
- In each consortium school district, the AYP index rates in math and
reading on the Minnesota State Assessments (MCA-II/MTELL/MTAS) for all
students will increase from the Spring 2010 to Spring 2013 school year.
- The Minnesota State Assessment Growth Model will be used to measure the
percent of students in each category. The percent of students making
medium and high growth in the not proficient and proficient categories
will increase from 2012-2013 as compared to 2009-2010 in the consortium
schools.
- The percent of students proficient on the Grad Test of Written
Composition will increase from spring 2010 to spring 2013 in the
consortium schools.
- The composite score on the American College Test (ACT) will increase
from the 2010 to 2013 year for
the consortium schools.
- The percent of students proficient on the MCA-II/MTAS Science
Assessments will increase from 2010-2013 in the consortium schools.
- The percent of students scoring 3 and above on the AP exams will
increase from spring 2010 to spring 2013 in the consortium school.
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- Work cooperatively to improve teacher effectiveness
- Measure the perceived benefits of the teacher effectiveness efforts.
- Perception surveys will be administered to stakeholders:
- Teachers
- Paraprofessionals
- Administrators
- Records will be kept of the activities conducted to improve teacher
effectiveness.
- Were PLC’s developed across and within consortium schools?
- Were professional development activities planned and held among
consortium schools?
- Were professional development funds spent on high quality professional
development activities as compared to how the funds are currently
spent?
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- Alignment of K-16 educational calendar.
- Measure the perceived benefits of students participating in post
secondary programs.
- Perception surveys will be administered to stakeholders:
- Seek letters of endorsement from the following area post secondary
leaders:
- Minnesota State University (Mankato)
- Minnesota West Community Colleges (All)
- Southwest Minnesota State University (Marshall)
- Bethany Lutheran College (Mankato)
- South Central Community College (Mankato)
- A record of the collaboration opportunities will be developed.
- Common sense supports the idea that creating a common start date
between K-12 schools and post secondary institutions is beneficial to
students and student performance.
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- 1.The term of the Flexible Learning Plan proposal will be three years: 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13.
- 2.Districts must be willing to make a three (3) year commitment,
beginning in year one (1) of the proposal. Districts may not opt in or out after
year one.
- 3.Districts must agree that the number of minutes of student contact
time in the 2010-2011 calendar must be equal to or greater than the
number minutes of student contact time in the 2009-2010 calendar.
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- 4. Districts must adopt the
common calendar template for 2010-2011 with corresponding dates in each
of the two succeeding years. The
eight common calendar dates Districts must agree to are as follows:
- The first day of school for the 2010-11 school year is tentatively set
for Monday, August 23, 2010.
- The first day of school for the 2011-12 school year is tentatively set
for Monday, August 22, 2011.
- The first day of school for the 2012-13 school year is tentatively set
for Monday, August 20, 2012.
- The end of the first semester will be December 22 or 23, 2010.
- The beginning of the second semester will be January 3 or 4, 2011.
- Three full Joint Staff Development days will be:
- Wednesday, August 18, 2010
- Monday, January 17, 2011
- Monday, March 14, 2011
- Two “Early Out” professional development days will be:
- Wednesday, October 20, 2010
- Friday, February 18, 2011
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- 5. Districts must be willing to
reallocate a portion of staff development funds or district funds toward
consortium staff development activities.
- 6. Districts must be willing to
provide a professional development contact person to plan, schedule and
help implement professional development activities with the other
consortium schools.
- 7. Districts must be willing to commit to
the development of Professional Learning Communities (PLC) structure
within and across consortium districts.
- 8. Districts must be willing to commit to
prepare and share data (testing,
schedules, MARRS, funding, etc. . . all data relevant to the consortium
goals and efforts), in the format required, and be willing to submit the
data to the person/people collecting the data for the consortium.
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- Task Task Completed By
- Write Outline of Preliminary Plan
October 8, 2009
- Present Outline to Interested Superintendents October 14, 2009
- Make Plan revisions--Create Final Outline October 16, 2009
- Meet with MDE Commissioner to Determine Plan Merit October 19, 2009
- Revise plan outline—broaden or refine-- or choose to abandon
- Write MDE Flexible Learning Year Application November, 16, 2009
- Investigate and identify research to be used in MDE presentation
- Present Revised Draft of Flexible Learning Year Application to
Superintendents November 18,
2009
- Meet with MDE Commissioner to Make Final Plan Revisions w/input from
MDE December 1-4, 2009
- Each School District –Conducts three Community Hearings January 25, 2010
- Each School Board Makes Final Decision Adopting Resolution of
Commitment January 31, 2010
- Submit Final Flexible Learning Year Application to MDE February 1, 2010
- Respond to MDE revisions February 26,
2010
- Receive Final Decision from MDE Commissioner of Education March 15, 2010
- Each School Board Adopts Final 2010-2011 School Calendar March 30, 2010
- School Districts Begin Implementation of Flexible Learning Year
Plan February 1, 2010
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- Adrian – Roger Graff
- Brewster – Harold Prior
- Canby—Loren Hacker
- Cedar Mountain – Bob Tews
- Comfrey – Allen Hoffman
- Edgerton – Leroy Domagala
- Fulda—Luther Onken
- Hendricks – Bruce Houck
- Hills Beaver Creek – Dave Deragisch
- Ivanhoe – Dwayne Strand
- Jackson County Central – Todd Meyer
- Lakeview – Chris Fenske
- Luverne – Gary Fisher
- Lynd – Bruce Houck
- Marshall – Klint Willert
- Milroy – Bill Delaney
- Minneota – Dan Deitte
- Mountain Lake – Bill Strom
- Pipestone Area– Jim Lentz
- Redwood Area – Rick Ellingworth
- Round Lake – Harold Prior
- Russell Tyler Ruthton – Bruce Houck
- Sleepy Eye—John Cselovszki
- Springfield—Keith Kottke
- Tracy—Dave Marlette
- Westbrook-Walnut Grove—Loy Woelber
- Windom—Wayne Wormstadt
- Worthington—John Landgaard
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- The mercenaries will always beat the draftees, but the volunteers will
crush them both.
- Chuck Noll
- People who are forced into something will be least effective,
- while those with an external motivation will be effective to a point.
- However, those with internal drive,
- who have signed onto the endeavor because their hearts are in it, will
rise to the top.
- Tony Dungy—Uncommon
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Notes