April 22, 2008

April 22, 2008
What does the Curriculum Management Audit have to do with Swift Creek? Well let me tell you!
On January 23, 2007, Dr. Del Burns, Superintendent of the Wake County Public School System, called for a comprehensive audit of the school system’s core business: learning and teaching. Approximately nine months later, the results of the Curriculum Management Audit were presented to the Board of Education by Phi Delta Kappa .
Why am I telling you this? Three reasons: 1. Today, at the Superintendent’s Summit, Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Donna Hargens, gave a quarterly report on the audit; 2. The findings of the audit create alignment within the school system that will allow WCPSS and Swift Creek to continue to move from good to great; and 3. The information is too important for me not to share with all of you.
The audit has 8 recommendation areas and 117 action steps that fall under the eight areas. Please read the recommendation area headings below.
Recommendation 1: OPPORTUNITY
Meet students' needs equitably, and eliminate the achievement gap
Recommendation 2: CONSISTENCY
Unite strategic planning -- from the school board to the administration to the school to the classroom
Recommendation 3: GOVERNANCE
Strengthen school board and administrative direction of curriculum management
Recommendation 4: MANAGEMENT
Actively direct and support the curriculum
Recommendation 5: EVALUATION
Increase the use of data in decision making
Recommendation 6: BUDGETING
Tie school system resources to the needs of the curriculum
Recommendation 7: INSTRUCTION
Unify and enhance training and development
Recommendation 8: ORGANIZATION
Clarify roles and responsibilities and increase effectiveness

Of the 117 action steps, six have been completed, nineteen are underway, and a timeline has been established for the final 92! Furthermore, Wake County has created two fabulous resources for members of the community to stay in tune with the audit. The first is a quarterly audit progress report flyer titled Curriculum Matters. This flyer will be available at all schools. The second resource is a curriculum management audit resource center web site. You can visit this site at http://www.wcpss.net/curriculum-management/. Finally, I have arranged for Dr. Hargens to come to the second Swift Creek Principal’s Summit on June 13th to give an overview of the audit and progress the system has made.

I hope this little snippet of information is helpful to you in understanding the progress that the school system is making towards the audit findings. If there are any questions, please feel free to ask me!

Until Next time – Keep on ROARing
Jim

April 8

April 8, 2008
Dear Parents:
I hope everyone had a restful spring break and is ready to have a ROARing stretch run for the 2007-2008 school year. I also hope that everyone enjoyed the March Reading Madness event and dressing as their favorite story character before Spring Break.
Those of you that have been reading my messages for the past three years (by the way – I just had my three year anniversary as Principal of Swift Creek!) realize that I love analogies, metaphors, historical references and comparisons, etc… Anything that helps me tell a story a little better. Instinctively, I knew that drawing similarities and differences would help to weave a good tale and get my point across to others. It also creates an image that helps cement the thought in people’s memories. Well, I definitely had a small smile and moment of satisfaction when I was recently reading an educational research text by Dr. Robert Marzano entitled Classroom Instruction the Works. The book describes nine categories of instructional strategies that have the strongest effect on student achievement. Dr. Marzano has found that the top instructional strategy to improve student achievement is to identify similarities and differences by comparing, classifying, creating metaphors and analogies, and using graphic organizers for comparisons. I was pretty happy that I had been effectively using a research based strategy that truly impacts achievement. SO, the next time you are trying to get your child to understand a difficult concept or if you want them to understand something even deeper – it will be extremely effective to provide the opportunity to identify similarities and differences.
Now for business. This first week back from spring break, you may hear your child talking about Town Meetings at Swift Creek. Administration, teachers, and support staff will sit down with the students and facilitate town meetings with every grade level this week to refocus the students on our ROAR expectations. Our data trends show that discipline referrals spike when spring fever hits. We will be working hard to reinforce our expectations and reteaching them explicitly to our students. It would be great if parents helped reinforce the ROAR expectations at home. You can find ROAR posters for every area of the school under the academic link of our website. Also, if you are really interested, we certainly would not mind for you to pop in and see one of the town meetings!
Until next time – keep on ROARing!
Jim