Thank You & Assignment Plan Meeting, June 1st

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

More than one-hundred in attendance at Thursday's Forum, RAISING EXPECTATIONS, sent the unequivocal message that Knightdale is advocating for resources/programming that lead to strong student achievement. Your involvement is making a difference! A couple of weeks ago Knightdale High School was announced as a STEM School. On Thursday, East Wake Middle School was named a STEM School. Congratulations to Ms. Jernigan and Ms. Allen, principals at these schools. Your hard work made these designations possible. More good news for our schools, as a direct result of Thursday's forum, is coming soon.


WCPSS is working on a new assignment plan that will determine where our children attend school. If you would like to learn more about these plans and provide input, plan to attend a meeting hosted by WCPSS tomorrow night.


Student Assignment Public Information Meeting
Wednesday, June 1, 2011, 6pm
Knightdale High School

Will EVAAS make Wake schools better? Part One

By Bryan LeClaire • May 23rd, 2011 • Category: News, School board
Editor’s Note: In this two-part series, the Record examines the teacher evaluation system in Wake County. In Part One, we answer the question, what is EVAAS? In Part Two we will look at the debate around the program.

Last week, the Wake County Board of Education learned that the district’s most effective teachers are not teaching its lowest-performing students.

Assistant Superintendent for Evaluation and Research David Holdzkom presented board members with several maps showing the distribution of high-performing, National Board-certified and masters degreed teachers across the county.

The maps showed that high-performing teachers were concentrated in more affluent areas, while low-performing students clustered in less wealthy sections of the county.

The reasons for this discrepancy are unclear.

“How do we get those kids in front of those teachers?” said board member John Tedesco, chair of the Economically Disadvantaged Student Task Force.

In a district where the student assignment plan is up in the air, the question begs another:

How does the Wake County Public School System distinguish good teachers and students from the rest?





EVAAS

The Wake County Public School System uses the Education Value-Added Assessment System, or EVAAS, to rate its teachers.

EVAAS is a computer program owned by SAS Institute — a Cary-based, privately-held corporation that develops and sells specialized software for a variety of industries, from education to casinos to oil and gas.

Last November, the Wake County Board of Education voted 5-4 along party lines to dispense with the district’s long-used internal Effectiveness Index in favor of EVAAS.

EVAAS attempts to measure how well students perform in school from year to year. The program tracks student data at the classroom level, making it a tool for administrators to evaluate teachers.

But teachers unions and educational researchers around the country have critiqued EVAAS and other value-added systems across the country for years, raising a host of concerns, including their unreliability and a lack of data to support their widespread adoption.

North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction, or DPI, has purchased a yearly EVAAS subscription from SAS and made the program available for free to all districts in the state since the 2007-08 school year. DPI spent almost $2 million on EVAAS this fiscal year.

How Does EVAAS Work?

The Wake County school system dumps into EVAAS all available end-of-grade (EOG) and end-of-course (EOC) testing data for every student. Based on past test performance, EVAAS establishes a predicted score for each student.

If a student earns exactly the score that EVAAS predicts, then the student achieved no growth that year. Scores below or above the predicted score determine whether the student achieved positive or negative growth.

EVAAS also averages the predicted score for all students assigned to an individual teacher. If that teacher’s students score exactly the predicted average, then EVAAS considers the teacher to have had no effect on the students. Average scores earned above or below the predicted average indicate a positive or negative effect on the students.

But teachers who are “effective” or even “highly effective” by this measure may not be “high-performing.”

That’s because teachers who are “high-performing” must have students who achieved growth above the average for all students in the state.

In other words, EVAAS compares all teachers in North Carolina to every other teacher in the state. In such a calculation, there will always be winners and losers. No matter how high educators push the average, some teachers will always be at or below the average.

While it is mathematically possible for all students in Wake County to achieve growth above the state average, a larger percentage of students — and teachers — in other districts would then have to perform at or below average.

The reverse is also true. The better other school districts do in EVAAS, the larger the number of Wake County teachers that would be considered at or below average.

This dynamic comes into play in the competition for federal Race to the Top funds and could affect any future merit pay system based on EVAAS ratings.

In addition, EVAAS ratings can be part of a teacher’s evaluation.



bleclaire@raleighpublicrecord.org

Knightdale 100 Congratulates: SAS EVAAS Value-Added Teaching Teams

Friday, May 27, 2011

Teaching Excellence Recipients

SAS EVAAS Value-Added Teaching Teams

Producing Growth in Student Achievement Above State Averages

2009 - 2010 School Year



Forestville Road Elementary School Fourth Grade Math Team

Malinda Rader, Kenzie Hopkins, Ruth Chay, Scott Wilkins, Michelle Arpey

Community Sponsor: The Killen Family





Hodge Road Elementary School Fourth Grade Math Team

Brittany Kopka, Kim Bolen, Rhonda McFarland, Leslie Blake, Marni Harris

Community Sponsor: The Burr Family





Hodge Road Elementary School Fourth Grade Reading Team

Brittany Kopka, Kim Bolen, Rhonda McFarland, Leslie Blake, Marni Harris

Community Sponsor: The Mills Family



Knightdale Elementary School Fourth Grade Math Team

Jennifer Wendt, Amy Diamond

Community Sponsor: Tan-U





Lockhart Elementary School Fifth Grade Reading Team

Barbara Taylor, Gloria Atkinson, Connie Feldman, Karen Seawell,

Patricia Wells

Community Sponsor: The Chalk Family





East Wake Middle School Sixth Grade Math Team

Tammy Proctor, Jennifer Fekete, Kelly Walker, Pamela Ehlert

Community Sponsor: The Woodlief Family





Knightdale High School Biology Team

Rhonda Rhodes, Caroline Valentine, Sally Combs, Airess Eatmon,

Reginald Stepney

Community Sponsor: The Dameron Family





Knightdale High School Civics and Economics Team

Melody Solomon, Leigh Ann Alford, Jerrod McConnell, LaToya Berry,

Donna Hayes

Community Sponsor: The Knightdale Chamber of Commerce

The Knightdale 100 Education Community Forum

Thursday, May 26, 2011


K100
The Knightdale 100 Education Community Forum

 Thursday, May 26 7-8:45pm
Knightdale Town Hall, 950 Steeple Square Court

 How do we know Knightdale teachers are effective? Can teacher effectiveness be measured through student performance?

Forum Purpose: To inform Knightdale citizens of the uses of EVAAS data to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement.
 

 Speakers

Dr. Dudley E. Flood, Associate State Superintendent, Retired
Dr. Sandy Horn, Senior Educator Support Specialist, SAS EVAAS, SAS Institute
Stefani Barbero, Manager, Educator Support and Training, SAS EVAAS, SAS Institute
Mr. Tony Tata, Superintendent, Wake County Public School System


Forum Agenda

7:00-7:05pm Welcome and Agenda Review – Ms. Shannon Hardy
7:05-7:25pm Raising Expectations – Dr. Dudley E. Flood
7:25-8:10pm Making Data Work for Kids: EVAAS and School Improvement –
Dr. Sandy Horn & Stefani Barbero
8:10-8:30pm Teaching Excellence Awards – Ms. Shannon Hardy
8:30-8:45pm Our Core Belief in Our Students – Mr. Tony Tata

Forum Facilitator:  Ms. Shannon Hardy – Teacher and Knightdale Parent



Blog: http://knightdale100.blogspot.com/
Vision:  Knightdale schools will be the first and best choice for our children.
Mission:  The Knightdale 100 will advocate for the policies, resources, and structures necessary to improve student achievement.

Stop School board re-districting for Knightdale, NC

Sunday, May 15, 2011

If our town is split among three districts Knightdale will hold little power and be of slight interest to school board members because our vote will be diluted among the three districts (candidates).

Additionally, we will need to turn to three different school board members to gain resolution to issues or problems in our town's schools. One of the School Board's guiding principles in re-districting was to respect municipal boundaries. Fuquay Varina was divided into two, but they are a community of 25,000. Knightdale is only 12,000 and chunked into three. Knightdale citizens will have less than 3% of influence in this newly proposed district alignment.

Citizens of Knightdale would be lobbying to their new school board member, but that member would have no influence involving issues for the citizen's base school of assignment.



Please help out by signing the petition located here: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-school-board-re-districting-for-knightdale-nc.html

Don't let the Town of Knightdale lose its voice!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Don't let the Town of Knightdale lose its voice! Please email and call our School Board Member TODAY and let him know that we respectfully request the town of Knightdale not be divided among districts as the new re-districting plan indicates. We request that our town be placed in only one district to ensure appropriate representation.


The current plan splits us between (see attached map):

District 1 (Northeast Wake) Chris Malone

District 2 (Southeast Wake) John Tedesco

District 4 (East Raleigh) Keith Sutton


WE believe we have 4 school members that want to stop this plan. We just need one more member to vote against it. We need Chris Malone to represent us on this one!

School Board Member contact:

Chris Malone: cmalone2@wcpss.net, 919-850-8865

To contact other Board Members: http://www.wcpss.net/Board/boeinfo.html


EXPLANATION:

If our town is split among three districts Knightdale will hold little power and be of slight interest to school board members because our vote will be diluted among the three districts (candidates). Additionally, we will need to turn to three different school board members to gain resolution to issues or problems in our town's schools. One of the School Board's guiding principles in re-districting was to respect municipal boundaries. Fuquay Varina was divided into two, but they are a community of 25,000. Knightdale is only 12,000 and chunked into three. Is this an attempt to squelch our K100 momentum? Why would the school board divide the town working so hard to improve its schools?


The re-districting vote will take place on Tuesday and would stay in place for 10 years! Please contact our school board member quickly. Feel free to use the wording above or create your own email.