(Originally published as a Newton Tab Guest Column June 10, 2009)

The momentum is building.  The data is piling up.  Is it enough to get our attention?  Is it enough to get our heads out of the sand?  Our nation is falling behind.  Massachusetts, one of the leaders in the United States, recently added a mathematics section to the elementary school teacher licensing test and 75% of aspiring teachers failed that section (Boston Globe, 5/19/2009).

We are in crisis – even in Newton.  Our teachers are inadequately prepared to instruct in math.  Our elementary and middle school math curricula are not working.  We pay curriculum coordinators who do not teach.  We pay math coaches to cover the short-comings of both the curricula selected by the coordinators and our teachers’ ability to teach that curricula.  

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 Massachusetts 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. 

Other communities have embraced the STEM challenge and pioneered innovative and effective programs to nurture STEM interest in their student populations.  They have measured and refined these programs.  Some involve public/private partnerships; some are grants and some are wholly funded within the schools.  I join others in applauding the success of our Lego Robotics and FIRST Robotics teams this year.  We need more and better coordinated programs such as these – driven from the top down.

How can we be underperforming by such a wide margin?  It is explained in one word – apathy.  The current School Committee and NPS Administration do not consider the state measures to be meaningful and have only recently begun to pay attention to this issue at all thanks to the stalwart efforts of advocates like Geoff Epstein.  In the mean time, we are falling further behind.  We are challenged to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in mathematics across the populations in our middle schools and there is widespread dissatisfaction with the mathematics programs in our Elementary and Middle Schools among parents, teachers and students.

I am an Engineer and attended Newton Public Schools.  As a student in Newton I learned from my teachers and I learned from my textbooks.  I learned math facts, problem solving strategies and I learned how to learn on my own.  Watching my children attempt the same today is alarming.

The textbook used in our Middle School curriculum, Impact Math, is very poor.  In helping my son (and occasionally his friends) with their homework, we don’t even bother with the book anymore and go straight to Wikipedia to get explanations for concepts such as negative exponents.  This has been confirmed to be common practice by other parents of middle schoolers I have spoken with.  Is this the best we can do?

We need significant change in how we approach mathematics education in Newton.  We need to formally pilot alternative curricula.  We need to identify the teachers who excel in teaching math and make them “master teachers.”  We need to give them the authority (and accountability) to take over the mathematics instruction in our elementary schools supported by their Principals.  Unlike coaches, dedicated mathematics instructors have been shown to improve student performance in elementary schools (pg 43, The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel).  

We appear to resent the “interference” of Massachusetts Education Reform, but we haven’t earned the right to ignore it or look down on the data it provides – especially in the area of mathematics.  It tells us we need to focus on nurturing student interest in STEM and that is right.  It tells us our teachers need to be better prepared to teach math and that is right.  It tells us that some of our schools can do better in math and that is right.  It is up to us to tackle this issue head on with real solutions (backed by data) that address the causes and not the symptoms.

Prior to initiating a search for our next Superintendent, we must have a clear vision for NPS.  We must back this vision with examples of how it will be measured.  We must ensure that we limit the vision to the “vital few” and that they be specific, logical, measurable and focused.

This is a difficult task and one which the entire community should involve itself in.  To start the conversation and to put my money where my mouth is, here is my proposal.

Vision/Goal #1 – NPS returns to the top ten nationally recognized public school systems

Outcome Measurements:
 o Graduation rates, college matriculations
 o Advanced Placement test participation, scores
 o MCAS, other standardized test results
 o STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) career metrics
 o Extra curricular participation (both breadth and depth), including success in competitive events
 o Effective School Councils in place at every school
 o School Improvement Plans in place and tracked regularly at every school
 o Parent satisfaction surveys
 o Student satisfaction surveys
 o Teacher satisfaction surveys
 o Administration satisfaction surveys
 o National rankings (lagging indicator)
 
Vision/Goal #2 – NPS operates in a fiscally sound/sustainable manner

Outcome Measurements:
 o Multiyear financial plan is in place and reviewed at least annually that supports ongoing operations within constraints of reliable funding assumptions
 o Multiyear facility plan is in place (accounted for in financial plan) and reviewed at least annually that supports restoration of all facilities to minimally acceptable standards and then maintains or improves from that basis
 

Vision/Goal #3 – NPS has a special education program that meets the needs of all students

Outcome Measurements:
 o IEPs are in place and agreed with all stakeholders promptly
 o Success against IEPs (in aggregate) is reported monthly with corrective action proposed for gaps
 o Focus and reporting on success in moving students closer to “graduating” from special education with emphasis on early and aggressive intervention
 o Non-confrontational and privacy protected process in place for all constituents (special and general education stakeholders) to express concerns
 
Vision/Goal #4 - NPS returns focus to Neighborhood Schools

Outcome Measurements:
 o Long range facilities plan is in place that supports Neighborhood School vision 
 o Enrollment at each elementary school is capped at 400 students (or medium-term plan is in place to reduce enrollment to cap) 
 o Median and mean distance from homes in each school district is actively reviewed and managed with a goal of reverting to 1978 levels over time
 o Percentage of students walking to school is tracked and schools are rewarded for reducing vehicular transportation (bus and car)
 o Parent participation in elementary school communities is tracked and schools are rewarded for higher participation rates


Vision/Goal #5 – NPS encourages and nurtures innovation

Outcome Measurements: 
 o Formal processes in place to identify innovations and opportunities for innovations
 o Formal processes to evaluate and fund innovation pilots
 o Regular assessment of pilots and publication of results (both positive and negative)
 o Regular review of progress of institutionalization of successful innovations
 o Annual “Innovation Report” describing the results of innovation for the year (including what was learned from unsuccessful innovations)


Potential Innovations:
 o Expanded Learning Time
 o “Charter” schools or classrooms
 o Differentiated instruction/tracking by learning style instead of ability level
 o Aggressive use of technology to leverage instructional staff resources
 o Digital classroom

DISCLAIMER:  I work for a health care company (doing Software Product Development – not Sales!).  See my bio for details.  I am not advocating anything to do with my employer.  I just have knowledge of this subject area that I believe is worth sharing.

There has been much discussion of the GIC as an alternative to lower health benefit costs.  I wanted to take the opportunity to expand the discourse in this area.  Since Newton is self-insured, we enjoy the luxury of proposing multiple health care options.  Yes, there are collective bargaining constraints, but we need an accurate view of the health benefit landscape.  The plans offered by the GIC are all traditional HMO or PPO plans.

I wanted to introduce a relatively new option called the High-Deductible, Consumer Directed Health Plan (HDCDHP).  I have recently had my own experience with this type of plan (which saved my family $3200 over a PPO) as our employee health coverage is moving aggressively in this direction.  In fact, this is a trend that is more widespread than most of us realize.  Could Newton get out in front on an issue like this?

The information below (text and charts) is excerpted from a survey of employers conducted by Mercerhealth.

The new plan model’s appeal to employers seems clear: CDHPs delivered substantially lower cost per employee than either PPOs or HMOs in 2008. CDHP cost averaged $6,207 per employee, compared to $7,815 for PPOs and $7,768 for HMOs (Fig. 5). Of the two types of CDHPs, HSA-based plans were less expensive than HRA-based plans ($6,027 compared to $6,420). 

The most obvious explanation for the difference in cost between CDHPs and the other medical plan types is the higher deductible. But even compared to the average cost of PPOs with deductibles of $1,000 or higher ($6,661 per employee), CDHPs still cost less by over $400, even though CDHP enrollees are not significantly younger than enrollees in PPOs with high deductibles and are more likely to elect dependent coverage (which drives up cost per employee). The 2008 cost increase for CDHPs was 4.0 percent, compared to 6.3 percent for PPOs and 9.1 percent for HMOs. 

 “With deductibles in traditional PPOs rising, the CDHP is becoming a more attractive option for employees who have a choice,” said Mr. Bos. “If your employer puts money in the account and you don’t use many services, you can end up ahead.  But it all depends on how you use health care.”

The Citizen’s Advisory Group report on School Cost Structure (draft, January 20th 2009) is a comprehensive, well thought out and well presented document which every stakeholder in the Newton Public Schools should review.  The document, while lengthy at 191 pages, contains excellent shorter summaries supported by five detailed reports and associated appendices.
 
I know that many syntheses of the report will be forthcoming, including the formal presentation by the CAG next week (Tuesday March 24th at 7:00 pm presented by the League of Women Voters at the Longyear Musueum in Chestnut Hill).  I will not duplicate those efforts here, but I did want to note some highlights that warrant extra attention and consideration in advance of the formal presentation of the final report.
 
Due to the length, I will create two separate posts to follow.  One focused on the financial challenges and one on the issue of trust, accountability and transparency.

I look forward to the discussion that the CAG release of the final report will certainly generate and I hope that by sharing these thoughts I have inspired you to follow that discussion more closely than you might otherwise have!

The existing financial structure of the Newton Public Schools is not sustainable over the long term.  This is starkly illustrated by the statistic that over FY 03-07 a 5.9% compound annual increase in cost has been required to maintain level services while only 4.3% compound annual revenue increase has been available.  The CAG projects a compound deficit in school funding of $60M in the next six years.

As if that is not enough, two other factors make the situation even more dire.  In recent years the allocation of overall City revenue to the schools has been increasing as approximately 70% of new revenues go to the schools.  Even with the municipal side sacrificing in this way (which cannot continue indefinitely) we have had to shift costs within the school budget to maintain the most visible aspects of our educational programs at the expense of longer term less visible – but often no less important – cost centers such as facilities maintenance, teacher support and technology.

Taken in total, the overwhelming weight of evidence is that our school’s financial structure is in crisis and we will be unable to sustain the excellence we aspire to without fundamental and structural change.

The table above taken from the CAG report illustrates the key opportunities to moderate cost growth.  Clearly there are two overwhelming problems – benefits and SPED.  The specific report on SPED is quite thorough and unfortunately does not identify any silver bullets.  However, one item that stands out is the overall increase in compensation for aides in the current contract.  This will certainly need to be addressed in the upcoming negotiations.

A potentially controversial thought (not present in the CAG report) is to examine how NPS can turn its reputation for SPED excellence into a profit center by capturing out of district placements from other communities thus leveraging our expertise, infrastructure and fixed cost.  A nod in this direction has been discussed in relation to the proposal to create an alternative high school and generated initial positive response.  Is further exploration warranted?

Benefits are an area that requires a lot more analysis.  I have been dismayed at the “our hands are tied” attitude from the administration and school committee to date on this topic.  Yes – there are real issues within municipal collective bargaining regulations that need to be taken into account.  However, this cannot be an excuse to abdicate the responsibility to thoroughly investigate and propose alternatives.  At least we will know what is being left on the table!

One alternative that has been frequently raised is to join the GIC.  I will tee up another one here and go into detail in a future post.  We could shift from the traditional plans we offer now to a high-deductible consumer driven health plan (HDCDHP).

Other specific items of note:

o  The existing contract makes it very costly to have teachers take on extra administrative or management duties (for which they would be compensated).  This dramatically limits the flexibility of school principals, especially at the elementary level, from leveraging the skills of experienced teachers to provide a better support structure for the rest of their staff.  This restriction should be eliminated from future contracts.


o  The bulk of our professional development funding appears to be going to creating central roles of curriculum coordinators, math coaches, and others who provide indirect support to the teachers rather than directly to the teachers to fund continuing education and skill building.  Has this model been proved to be more effective?  Do the teachers agree?  Have we asked them?

The CAG report highlights multiple important issues, some “hard”, such as the financial picture and some “soft”.  Key among the soft is a recognition that there has been a loss of trust in the administration and school committee due to lack of transparency and inconsistency in both message and outcomes.  I believe that the current school committee has slowly begun to understand this issue, but one of the fundamental tenets of my campaign is that this trust must be restored before we will be able to make substantive forward progress on the urgent challenges facing our schools, thus this must be made an absolute priority.  I am proud to note many similarities between the CAG recommendations and my own thoughts that I have previously written and spoken about.

Specific suggestions that the CAG makes to help restore this trust are:

o Clearly differentiate between the essential vs the desirable in our goals and mission as well as our programs and services.  Document the relationship between fixed costs and programs.  The rationale behind tradeoffs made year to year in the current budgeting practice can appear opaque to the general public.  We need clearer and more concrete prioritization.  A key element in this is also to establish metrics to measure our effectiveness over time at achieving our essential and desirable objectives.


o Program area budgeting where the budget is presented not only by type of cost (salary, etc.) and by general cost center (elementary school, middle school, etc.) but aligned with overall programs across the system against program areas such as mathematics, arts and music, etc.  This will aid in the evaluation of each program area’s cost / benefit analysis.  This will required the allocation of fixed costs equitably across program areas.  Note that the intent is not to identify items to eliminate, but rather to improve transparency of how resources are allocated across the broad range of educational goals.


o An open and honest discussion of the METCO program and its objectives and financing.  There is great confusion about this program within the community at large.  Is it funded by the state?  Are we paying for it?  How much does it cost?  The CAG report goes into depth in analyzing the cost and financing of Metco from two perspectives (incremental and full cost).  Which is right?  The truth probably lies somewhere between the two.  The key here is to have the discussion.  (For the record, I am a supporter of the METCO program.  I attended NPS and experienced what our participation means from the student’s perspective.  I believe that the social benefits outweigh the costs, but I too have many unanswered questions about the program, how it is financed, what it truly costs us and how we measure the results).
 

Many other suggestions that the CAG has made will also contribute to restoring trust, but those items resonated the most for me.

In reaction to coverage of the Superintendent's FY2010 budget proposal...  

As working with the superintendent to arrive at an approved budget is one of the most important functions of the School Committee, I wanted to share my thoughts on the budget recently proposed by Dr. Young.

First of all, we must recognize the challenge and hard work that goes into creating a budget for an organization as complex as the Newton Public Schools.  It is a significant effort and one which, unfortunately, is seldom rewarding or fulfilling.  That being said, I do have some concerns and suggestions.

My immediate reaction to the budget proposal was that it is more of the same.  What do I mean by that?  This budget is presented in comparison to prior years’ budgets.  Each section describes the change from prior year and justifies why the change (up or down).  This approach, while easy to follow, does not in any fundamental way solve the structural financial problems facing our schools.  This budget misses an opportunity to do one or more things differently.

The first opportunity is to throw out last year’s budget and start from scratch using a top-down, priority based budgeting approach.  In this method you establish the amount of money that is available (in this case dictated by the mayor), then establish the priorities of what you want to achieve (in this case outlined by the school committee).  From there you examine how much money you are willing to allocate to each priority and continue until you run out of money to allocate.  This is obviously an iterative process as once the list of what falls off the table is known priorities may be revised.  Even if this approach does not drive the budget to completion on its own, it can lead to surprising conclusions that might not otherwise be discovered.

The second item that I was surprised to see omitted from the budget proposal was explicit discussion of the upcoming contract negotiations.  I had read through nearly the entire budget document before I saw in the press that the budget proposal called for wage freezes on the contract.  I quickly went back to the document and searched for “contract”, “freeze”, and “COLA” and found nothing relevant.  Why were the assumptions used in the budget not explicitly stated in the document?  Why were the potential budgetary impacts of varying contract scenarios not explicitly described?  I remember the passionate and vivid comparisons made in both text and tables of the “Override Budget” compared to the “Allocation Budget” last year.  Why the reticence to be equally explicit now?

The final point I will discuss is the opportunity to demonstrate data driven decision making.  This is something that the School Committee has been requesting for some time and as such should be a priority within the budget.  The example I will use is the proposal to expand the math coaches program on page 41 of the document.  This comes enticingly close to using data.  2008 MCAS test results are cited as is industry research.  However, the description of the pilot program that placed coaches at the six elementary schools with the lowest MCAS scores doesn't describe the change in MCAS scores at those schools compared to the changes at the schools without math coaches (*1) -- it is clear that the point has been missed.  This seems like an obvious way to measure the success of the program.  Instead the proposal says:

“Experience to date indicates that the presence of a coach – a strong, competent, and caring colleague whose focus is on mathematics teaching and learning - has a powerful effect on teachers’ willingness to make improving their mathematics instruction a priority. Conversely, schools without math coaches have had a much more difficult time improving mathematics teaching and learning, though they have benefited from system wide professional development delivered by coaches.”

In general, the budget document is missing the same section for every item.  After "What is the Need?" and "What is the expected outcome of this proposal?", should be "How will effectiveness be measured?", only then does "What is the cost?" make sense.

Although I participate regulary on the Newton Parents listserve and blog, as well as the Newton Tab blog, I thought adding a blog to my web site would be another vehicle for communication about issues important to the upcoming school committee race.  If there are topics you would like to suggest for the blog, please comment to this post!  Otherwise, I will try to start a new topic every week or so as current events warrant.

Dan