Long updates on changes

“School is a business now, and we have a product called education,” Jay Schools superintendent Tim Long told a gathering of teachers and staff Wednesday in a State of the Schools presentation at Jay County High School.
Long always addresses the teaching staff at the beginning of the school year, but sweeping changes — including the impact of vouchers, new evaluation systems for teachers, and an increased emphasis on the use of student data — have created a degree of uncertainty and anxiety in public education.
That atmosphere of change led to Wednesday’s session.
“There are so many things (that) are changing so quickly,” Long told 100-200 teachers gathered in the JCHS auditorium. “It’s not the same education system we had in Indiana even two years ago. … We’re making a shift to … an accountability, data-driven system.”
Long noted the changes are not unique to Indiana.
“Ninety-nine percent of the initiatives you’re seeing in Indiana are happening in other states,” he said. “Very, very few of the ideas you’re seeing are just Indiana ideas.”
Long has been the driving force behind the adoption of “data walls” in Jay Schools, tapping consultant Shirley Hall to help launch the program.
Data walls visually chart individual student progress on standardized tests in the areas of math and language arts. By using the wall charts, teachers and administrators can quickly identify student needs and respond to help improve student performance.
“It starts to map a way to having greater success in your building,” said Hall. “It ought to act as a catalyst. … The data wall can have an impact across the school. … The product we’re after is student achievement.”
Hall helped General Shanks Elementary School and East Jay and West Jay Middle Schools implement data walls in 2011. They are now in various stages of being implemented at other schools in the system as well.
“We’re just trying to create a culture of accountability,” said Long.
 He noted that Jay Schools received a grade of A last year from the Indiana Department of Education as an exemplary school system based upon improvement in student performance.
He attributed part of that success to the Acuity program, a series of standardized tests prepared by McGraw Hill that can boost student scores on the ISTEP test.
The improvement in Jay Schools test scores is currently being touted on McGraw Hill’s web site as an example to other school corporations.
New state teacher evaluation requirements have been a source of anxiety and uncertainty for teachers, Long noted. Assistant superintendent Wood Barwick has been working with the state on its new RISE evaluation system, which the Indiana Department of Education considers to be “rigorous, accurate, and fair.”
But it’s not clear what model for an evaluation system will ultimately be adopted. “RISE is one of those options we’re looking at,” Long noted.
There’s also uncertainty about how to deal with the state’s new requirement that all third graders meet reading competency levels before being promoted to fourth grade.
Judge Haynes Elementary School principal Trent Paxson, who has been dealing with those issues, said third graders will be given the reading competency test in mid-March. Those who don’t pass the test at that time will be re-tested in June. But it’s not clear what will happen to those who don’t pass.
“What are we going to do with those students?” said Paxson, noting a number of options are available, including multi-age groupings of students.[[In-content Ad]]