State of the school system

What programs do you think are the most important to focus on in the upcoming school year? 

We will continue to do our curriculum work, to be heavily involved with our curriculum work because that’s ongoing. It changes from year to year. We have different documents to look at, different assessments to look at, different best practices to look at. So, it really is a never-ending review, if you will.

How is the school system changing and growing? 

From the standpoint of curriculum and instruction, the undertaking that has been going on for about seven years now has been the creation of our own district-level learning targets, which define what we expect students to know and be able to do at each grade level and at each subject... In doing that, we set common expectations so that we all have an understanding of what mastery looks like and what’s expected to be learned.

How is eliminating the graduation test and replacing it with the ACT going to affect schools? 

You don’t have a high-stakes test for the student anymore. You have the end-of-course test, of course... Passing the course is what matters now, and the end-of-course test is embedded in passing the course. So, there is no separate assessment that one has to pass outside of course work in order to graduate.

Will parents see lower average ACT test scores?

Yes, they will because for the first time everyone is taking it. And in years past, only those students whose parents wanted them to take it or whose aspirations and goals were that they were college-bound...took the test. So you have a pool of students who are entering the ACT arena who in the past were not there.

Under the new system, how are schools going to be ranked, and how are teachers going to be assessed? 

We’re not changing our evaluation instrument. We’ve always analyzed data and looked at every piece of data that we can get our hands on in order to ensure that we’re all maximizing our own potential and also the potential of the students. So, that piece of it is not going to change for us. We’ve been into data analysis for a long time. And while it’s not directly tied to the evaluation process, we all pay very close attention to that.

What differences can parents expect to see in the curriculum with Common Core? 

I think what they’re going to see is more emphasis on process in the mathematical realm and more emphasis on nonfiction texts in the English/Language Arts realm. But, you know, the Common Core does emphasize those two things. Here in Homewood, we’ve been emphasizing that for a long time anyway, so I don’t think there will be a lot of noticeable change.

How will the new College and Career Ready Standards prepare students for the future? 

I think that having an assessment in the Aspire [test], which is linked directly to the ACT, will be helpful in that you’ll be able to see very soon if a student is on the proper trajectory to be college- and career-ready. It’s a barometer, if you will, as to what students will score down the line, and as ACT defines college- and career-ready, you’ll be able to have a little window into that world.

How can parents help their students adapt to the Common Core curriculum? 

I think doing the things that parents have always done. Particularly for us, to look at the learning targets. Our learning targets are scaffolded with ‘I can’ statements, and when you read those ‘I can’ statements, it becomes very clear what students have to be able to do and the skills they have to be able to know and be able to do in order to master the learning target. So, being familiar with that and knowing what’s expected, as has always been the case, is a great help. That’s really the reason we’ve tried to make the language so clear and free from educational jargon...so that parents could be partners with us and partners with their students in understanding what the expectations are. 

What are the differences between the ACT Aspire test versus the Alabama Reading and Mathematics test for grades 3-8? 

The primary difference is the level of rigor. The Alabama Reading and Math test was a basic competency test. It was minimal grade-level standards. The Aspire, because it is a precursor to the ACT and this whole college- and career-readiness arena, has more rigor in terms of a testing instrument.