Random thoughts of an ed admin lifer

This fall, we implemented a program called Structured Support. Structured Support is designed to help students who require additional time or assistance in order to complete their assignments. Students who do not complete assignments on time are scheduled into Structured Support by their classroom teacher. Structured Support is scheduled for the hour before school and for the lunch hour.

This program is not punitive; the student can decide to attend Structured Support or to get the work done on their own. The goal is to get them to finish their work by the next session of the class. We have staffed this program as part of four teachers’ assignments. Other benefits: Students who have missed exams are able to write them during Structured Support, rather than during regular class time. As well, students who wish a quiet place to work or get help, before school or at noon, may choose to attend Structured Support.

Once a student is assigned to Structured Support and still do not complete their work, they begin a process that increases the number of people involved, thus creating accountability to more adults. If a student, who is scheduled into Structured Support, misses their session and does not complete the outstanding assignment prior to their next class the classroom teacher reassigns the student to structured support and discusses the opportunity missed by the student. If the assignment still does not get finished, the classroom teacher sends the student to office for a meeting with principle or vice principal, who facilitate a phone call home. If this does not work, the principal or vice principal arrange a meeting with the classroom teacher, student and parent. After all this, if the student still refuses to do the work, they are assigned to in-school suspension until the work is complete. This program is not designed to be disciplinary in nature, but rather our attempt to eliminate zero’s by creating a school culture where it is no longer acceptable to choose not to hand in work and “take a zero.” To date, we have only had a couple of parent meetings and have not had any in-school suspensions.

In order to facilitate record keeping, we designed a spreadsheet that was kept on a drive on our network to which only teachers had access rights. The teachers could open the spreadsheet and assign students to Structured Support. The teacher in charge of Structured Support could then open the spreadsheet and see who they should be expecting. They would then mark their attendance and read a brief not about the assignment to be completed. The student would then work on the assignment and the Structured Support teacher would support them in their efforts. During the next session of the class, the classroom teacher would check to see if the assignment was complete and would then indicate this in the spreadsheet.

This process wasn’t perfect – of the 1862 instances of students who were assigned to Structured Support, no record of attendance was kept for 534. Furthermore, there was no record of completion status for 539 of the instances. However, for the approximately 1300 instances for which we have attendance and completion data, some interesting trends are evident:

In light of the data, we have decided to forgo the morning session and only hold Structured Support at noon next year. Furthermore, in light of the completion rate of students who chose to attend structured support - 86% vs. that of those who chose not to – 26%. We are going to have to take a stronger stand on encouraging students to attend. I am hesitant to make attendance mandatory as that connotation will really change the spirit of the program from being one of support to one of punishment. One final observation: from the beginning of September to the end of May, we had 957 students accept the second opportunity to complete assignments who may have otherwise decided to “take a zero” . . . on average, that is 5 more completed assignments per day!

I am interested in knowing if the impact of the program has been noticeable to the classroom teachers. . .

Okay, I won’t beat the High School Manifesto dead horse anymore :)!

My New Horse: Assessment

Yesterday I was doing some work with the division’s assessment committee. One of the articles, by Ken O’Conner, made a point that made me go hmmm. The scenario goes like this . . . a student says, “I have to get a B on the final to pass this course.” But does that make sense? If a final examination is truly comprehensive and the students’ scores accurately reflect what they have learned, should a B level of performance on the final translate to a D for the course grade?

I agree that a student should be able to improve their mark by performing well on a final exam. The part that I am unsure about is what does this mean for classes that have a major component of their grade that comes from a major assignment - like a research essay for example? Maybe that begs the question–need there be a final exam in such an instance?

In the previous post I mentioned that the final task of our High School Change Meeting was to develop a list of 10 guiding principles for the high schools in our district - i.e. what do students need to know by the end of grade 12? Our groups were able to generate many different ideas about what should be included on the list. We never got as far as narrowing down the list to 10 principles. Can you help us out . . .what are the top one or two principles (on the list or not) that you believe need to be considered as we help our high schools evolve? Don’t be shy! Any and all input is valuable!!