Dan Proskauer: Vision and Leadership for Newton Schools!

Areas that are of immediate concern and are short-term opportunities for improvement. 

 

Mathematics curriculum – The math curriculum, especially in the elementary schools (Everyday Math) and middle schools (Impact Math) is a subject of significant concern to the parent community.  People are looking for action to be taken to improve this situation.  In the spirit of being a learning organization, one proposal is to pilot three alternative curricula to a targeted population and track their performance against peers using Everyday Math over a three year period.  Potential alternative curricula are Russian Math, Singapore Math and Saxon Math.  Each has strengths and weaknesses as well as supporters and detractors.  However, a quantitative data driven experiment should be satisfactory to all.

Kudos to those teachers who have proactively "augmented" the Everyday Math curriculum and to those communities of educators who have collaborated to "despiral" where that helps our children learn more effectively.

 

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STEM – STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) refers to the focus, not just on academic subject learning, but in fostering a long term interest in these important 21st century skills.  In Massachuestts progress in STEM is measured through a survey taken during the administration of the SAT test.  The state has a target of reaching 26% of students reporting that they are considering a career in STEM (the state average is currently 20.5%).  Newton’s result of only 15% of students considering a career in STEM is extremely poor and should be a wake-up call.  We need to create STEM initiatives (with appropriate measures in place) to focus on improvement.  Today, NPS does not consider our 15% performance to be a problem. 

For a deeper discussion of this issue, see the Newton Tab guest column that I co-authored with Geoff Epstein.  For more background and other ideas, check out the MIT STEM program  or the Museum of Science "Engineering is Elementary" program.
BRIM – The BRIM (Breaking Ranks in the Middle) initiative is opaque at best and a disaster at worst.  A search of the NPS web site does not yield a concise description of the program, what it is intended to achieve, how the success (or failure) will be measured and what the current performance against that measurement is.  The visible aspects of the program – schedule chaos, canceled electives, degradation of an award-winning school newspaper, and copious early release days are negatively impacting our children every day.  There needs to be some frank and open discussion about BRIM, how it is being executed and whether it is working.  There needs to be measurement and accountability in this area right away.  An Oak Hill specific posting, search item #45 came closest to explaining BRIM.



Special Education – In recent years we have squandered opportunities to improve our early intervention through the Integrated Preschool. It has been proven that early identification and intervention can significantly improve outcomes for students with disabilities.  Not only does it help children, but it reduces costs in later years for student services.  These savings can be channeled into improving the quality of special education programs. For example, in the past two years we have overloaded our inclusion coordinators to the point that they cannot be effective in fulfilling their critical roles.  Special education programs are a state and federal mandate and a moral obligation of the community, and we must be smart about how we fulfill both the mandate and the obligation.  The costs of Newton’s special education programs have been increasing faster than any other portion of the school budget, but we lack evidence that the effectiveness of the programs has measurably improved. We need to re-evaluate our program implementation so that we can deliver the promise of the programs while stabilizing program costs.  It is important that we remain focused on a common goal- that of achieving the best possible education for ALL our students.