111: Tearing Down Barriers

We are tearing down barriers in education. We will not let anything stand in the way of student success!

   

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110: School Safety

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109: Changes in Public Education

108: Bullying

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107: The Purpose of Evaluation

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106: Realities of School Safety

I posted this blog on school safety when I was principal at Pinedale High School. However, the topic is still germane and relevant today so I am going to re-post it with a few edits for my new readers.

There is no magic wand that a school board, superintendent, or even a principal can wield to make schools safe. It is a community effort and culture that work together to magnify the importance of the local schools and their legitimate purpose of educating our children in a safe environment, free from distraction. There is no policy or procedure that can stop the purely demonic event of someone entering our schools to hurt kids. There is no system of locked doors, secret codes, signs posted at the front door, or mechanical protocols that are going to stop someone from hurting another human being. Even the physical presence of a law enforcement officer on every campus in America will not guarantee complete safety from such acts of violence. The events of 9/11 are a great example of how a small group of committed individuals can reek havoc when they are willing to sacrifice their own lives to fulfill their objective. However, there is hope. There is training and awareness that schools, emergency responders, and community members can participate in regularly that can reduce casualties in these senseless situations that paralyze us with fear.

A SOFT TARGET

It is my personal belief that schools are singled out as easy targets for mass carnage because they are open to the public, full of students, and a place where opposition to a cowardly assault is unlikely. I do not know if more guns in the building is the answer, however, if a school is perceived as a hard target, these individuals will be less likely to walk in the door with ill intent. Research shows that people who commit such acts do not want to be confronted by an opposing force, that is why they are prepared to take their own life before anyone else does. If a perpetrator knows that a professionally trained peace officer is likely to be in the building they will be less likely to enter. At the end of the day, all of the training, personnel, guns, and locked doors may still fall short of keeping students 100% safe. This is the world we live in, and to tell you anything would not be true.

A HARD TARGET

This is a common view of schools in an urban area and unfortunately, rural areas such as Rawlins, and Baggs, are not exempt from violent incidents. CCSD #1 schools must be viewed as hard targets that will not go gently into that goodnight. What can we do to improve school safety? Contact your legislators and tell them that school resource officers or SRO's are valuable and need to be commonplace in school districts. States should be funding these positions if they care enough about school safety. Monitor your students closely and if you ever hear anything suspicious concerning school safety, let a school official know immediately. CCSD #1 schools have and will continue to implement the latest safety precautions to protect our students. Lock-down drills have been conducted with local law enforcement, and will continue to be a regular part of our safety training. Finally, pray for our schools, our students, and our staff that we are protected from this kind of nonsense. Using a Biblical illustration, a school should be a place of peace, a haven of rest, green pastures, still waters, here kids should have their hearts, souls, and minds restored by loving adults who care for them as their parents do.

School violence is a spiritual problem in our country, and know that my #1 concern as your superintendent is for the safety of our students while they are in my care. Every other piece of school data is a very, very distant second.

As always,

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105: What is Accreditation?

According to AdvancED, accreditation is a voluntary method of Quality Assurance developed more than 100 years ago by American universities and secondary schools, designed primarily to distinguish schools adhering to a set of educational standards. The accreditation process is also known in terms of its ability to effectively drive student performance and continuous improvement in education (http://www.advanc-ed.org/what-accreditation, Oct. 14, 2013).

What is more important about this process is instilling best practices within our educational institution and making sure that we are continuously engaging in the most effective educational practices for our kids. Controversy and discontent with accreditation are usually around cultural differences and community expectations. Some educators and community members advocate that their community is different than other communities so "you can't compare us with others or put us in that standardized box." AdvancED has created a system of standards and indicators that are universal regardless of community culture. Those focus areas are:

1. Purpose and Direction
2. Governance and Leadership
3. Teaching and Assessing for Learning
4. Resources and Support Systems
5. Using Results for Continuous Improvement

Those 5 standards each contain indicators which are scored by an external review team that visits each institution for a period of time to affirm accreditation and leave the organization with powerful practices and areas of improvement to move forward with. Accreditation also leaves a community with the confidence that their local academic institution is fully accredited and their students are leaving with a basic education that will allow them to be successful in a global economy.

At a recent area superintendent meeting, I was discussing with other superintendents our district's accreditation experience with theirs, and although there were many similarities, there were also differences. This is not unusual for evaluation. There is an old saying "a church is perfect until you put people in it." People are not standardized or reliable. They do not see things the same way and every AdvancED accreditation team is completely different. They will have different experiences at different institutions and their view will be different based on their belief systems. Regardless of the matrix of scoring that they hold in their hand, they can make a case for a score based on their personal belief system which is not consistent, standardized, or objective. What does this mean? Take accreditation for what it is; a group of experienced educators from another community, analyzing and evaluating our educational institution according to a set of standards that we can compare against other districts. This process gives us a systematic approach to how an educational institution should run, and drives us to implement a continuous improvement process that will sustain growth for a long period of time. It is not perfect.

Evaluation does not go away, it is used to improve a person, organization, institution, etc. Teachers evaluate students - principals evaluate teachers - superintendents evaluate principals - school boards evaluate superintendents - the community evaluates the board members at election time - the Wyoming Department of Education is supposed to evaluate districts, however, districts also look to outside accreditation teams to give us the most objective view of ourselves possible. Evaluation and continuous improvement should be an ongoing process in any organization. So, with that in mind, what grade would you give our federal government on their performance?



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