Chesterton Tribune

 

 

School board hears results of visit from accreditation team

Back To Front Page

 

By LILY REX

Bailly Elementary Principal Kevin Zeck appeared before the Board to give an update from the District Internal Review Committee (DIRT) at the Duneland School Board’s meeting Monday night.

The DIRT committee focuses on school improvement and accreditation. Other members of the committee are Jim Goetz, Katie Curiel, Bobbi Hall, Christine Bullock, Kristin Reed, Josh Huwig, Greg Guernsey, and Mike Megyesi.

Zeck reported the findings of AdvancED, Inc., a non-profit, non-partisan organization that evaluates schools and grants accreditation with a goal of improving schools. AdvancED sent a team of six experts to conduct an evaluation on the Duneland School Corporation between Jan. 21 and Jan. 24. Zeck reported this was the team’s third visit to Duneland.

Zeck reported the team uses more than 30 indicators to measure the efficacy of leadership and learning at a school district. They do so by conducting interviews with students, staff, and other stakeholders, visiting each building, and observing classes. In total, the team talked to 265 people, 98 of which were students and 34 of which were parents and other community members. They visited 61 classrooms, spending 20 minutes in each and evaluating them with a rubric called Eleot that features a zero to four scale for each indicator. Zeck said the observations have a specific purpose: “They’re not evaluating the teachers--they’re evaluating the learning that’s taking place.”

The best evaluation a school can get for each benchmark is “exceeds expectations,” and Duneland exceeded expectations in some areas. However, there were some aspects of AdvancED’s criteria where the conclusion was that Duneland “needs improvement.”

Zeck said the team said “over and over again” that they were impressed with the respectful environment at Duneland schools. Duneland earned an exceeds expectations tag in the area of students demonstrating knowledge of classroom rules and expectations for behavior. However, an area of improvement was also listed--AdvancED said that while there is a respectful atmosphere, there is no comprehensive effort on the part of the school district to promote empathy and respect.

Zeck said many of the needs improvement tags went to areas where individual schools are working on the goal or have even accomplished the criteria to meet or exceed expectations, but the AdvancED team handed down a needs improvement rating because there was no district-wide effort to accomplish the goal, or if there was, it wasn’t collaborative or consistent enough. “We would have had a lot more exceeds expectations if we did it by school, but it was by district. We asked them to do it that way,” Zeck said.

Duneland also earned exceeds expectations tags for resources provided to students and policy and board leadership, specifically for attempts to engage with stakeholders.

Surprisingly, Duneland got a needs improvement verdict for several of the criteria under learning capacity and received no exceeds expectations marks. Specifically, the criteria for “educators implement a curriculum that is based on high expectations” earned Duneland a needs improvement tag.

Zeck said part of the reason is that the district needs to develop a comprehensive curriculum and develop a process of assessment to determine problems and find solutions. In some cases the team said they saw what they wanted to see, but they didn’t see any district level oversight of it.

Zeck went into next steps the school corporation should take. The AdvancED team provided a list of improvement priorities, which DSC is obligated to address. According to the recommendations, DSC needs to work on having a district-wide comprehensive curriculum that is consistently implemented and has a method for self-assessment. DSC must also bring a systemic approach to creating high expectations for students.

“Our schools are doing great,” Zeck concluded. “Now we need to see that at the district level and control of that at the district level to make sure it’s systemic.”

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 

Posted 8/22/2018

 
 
 
 

 

 

Search This Site:

Custom Search