Newcastle schools not impressed

Weston County School District No. 1 Superintendent Brad LaCroix said in a phone interview on June 30 that he’s concerned that the Wyoming Department of Education will add more work for students, staff and parents amid an already stressful education environment, and he is urging the State Board of Education to avoid steering Wyoming schools in that direction.

His comments followed the state board’s annual retreat, which occurred on June 20 and 21 in Newcastle, part of which was focused on the “Profile of a Graduate” project. According to the SBE’s website, the Profile of a Graduate is “an ideal vision of a Wyoming graduate that can guide the board and the state in matters of education policy.” The board is using the project, which involves collaboration among Wyomingites, to define its vision for Wyoming education and set graduation standards.

A July 2 WDE news release said that through the Profile of a Graduate project, citizens indicated that seven competencies are key for graduates and the state’s future. In response, the state board has developed graduation standards and plans to release draft rules for public input in the fall.

The profile’s competencies, according to a document in the state board’s meeting packet, are “master, apply and transfer foundational knowledge and skills”; “think critically and creatively to solve complex problems”; “communicate effectively to various purposes, audiences, and mediums”; “identify and use credible sources of information to build knowledge and make decisions”; “demonstrate strong interpersonal and collaboration skills”; “cultivate curiosity, self-awareness, resilience, and a growth mind-set”; and “practice effective work habits, including organization, time management, attention to detail, and follow through.” Competencies are under four columns: learn, work, contribute and thrive, and during their retreat the SBE was introduced to an assessment that is intended to measure the progress of students in these areas.

Riverside Insights presented the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment system, or DESSA, to the board on June 21, and WDE Chief of Staff Dicky Shanor said that the company has figured out a way to measure Profile of a Graduate programs in other parts of the country, so he wanted the board to learn what the company is doing.

According to the company’s slide show, their “resilience system” helps students “develop resilience for long-term success” with “more effective stress management,” “healthier social behaviors and attitudes,” reduced substance abuse and more empathy and teamwork.

LaCroix said he’s concerned about the social-emotional piece of the Profile of a Graduate, and predicted a lot of push back from Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus. According to the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’s website, its members “champion Republican values such as smaller government, strong family values, and the protection of individual freedoms and liberties as outlined in the U.S. and Wyoming constitutions.”

Social-emotional learning, according to LaCroix, has always been something deemed to be the domain of parents’ education of their children.

“Schools should be able to be there to do some of the education, but some of the education can really be done at home,” he said.

LaCroix anticipates he will hear from parents who view that piece as “profiling” children and a movement toward “diversity, equity and inclusion” education.

“My office phone is going to be hot,” he predicted.

LaCroix is also concerned that the WDE is proposing to add another assessment to the plates of students and teachers when he believes many families in his district believe there is already too much testing in education.

He said that about four or five years ago, he started hearing from a lot of people who questioned the use of assessments. Most people were understanding when he informed them of how the results would be used to help children, but this year, the number of parents who opted out of the  National Assessment of Educational Progress test was the largest he’s seen “in a long time.”

Riverside Aperture’s proposal would add more to the requirements for children, according to LaCroix, who said he can’t recall a single requirement that education leaders have removed.

LaCroix said at the retreat that he wants state officials in education to consider the amount of stress placed on young people, staff and parents by adding requirements and not removing any. He believes this is driving parents to decide to home-school instead of sending their children to public schools.

“People are angry,” he said. “People are frustrated.”

Dr. Lisa Micou, the DESSA’s director of program implementation, said during the demonstration that the mini version of the assessment should only take one minute per student, but some students may need the full DESSA, which takes about five minutes. She suggested the best way to incorporate this would be in alignment with existing structures, such as staff meetings or professional learning communities, “so that you’re not asking teachers to do something additionally,” but LaCroix objected to the assumption that teachers have time to implement this new type of assessment.

He said that adding this assessment into PLC time is “the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“PLCs are basically set to help kids with recovery and the WY-TOPP (Wyoming Test of Proficiency and Progress) scores,” he said, noting that staff members use PLCs to discuss and strategize how to aid students who are struggling with certain aspects of their learning in their earlier years or need to recover credits at the high school level.

But Micou said that having data to identify programming to build students’ life-ready skills is crucial for students who “may need more support,” and she indicated that students will be able to practice recognizing their strengths “in real time in context.”

“If we’re going to go to such great lengths to define what success looks like, we need to be certain that we’re measuring growth on that path to success and are at the ready to support students in building those skills in a very targeted way, using data-driven recommendations to identify explicit instruction to support students’ existing strengths and to build on their opportunities for growth,” Micou said.

LaCroix said he believes teachers are capable of understanding, by the time students are in second or third grade, whether students are meeting the Profile of a Graduate criteria.

“I think teachers get very frustrated when we continue to add and we never listen to them or …  value their opinion about what a kid really knows,” he said.

LaCroix believes assessment companies benefit from the state requiring more from students, and feels that it is “crazy” that the state judges a student’s progress based on the “snapshot” results of a one-week assessment, instead of relying on the judgement of a teacher that has spent 180 days with the student in the classroom.

SBE Chair Bill Lambert said in a phone interview on June 30 that the board made no decisions about the third-party group that the WDE brought to the board, but noted that he did not see support for the social-emotional part of the project.

“The vocal board members are not too interested in going down that road at this time with an outside vendor,” he said.

Lambert said that he believed the presentation was going to be about how to take the seven Profile of a Graduate competencies and use them for graduation standards, and he admitted that a lot of aspects of the competencies are difficult to measure from an accountability standpoint.

Lambert said he was initially opposed to the Profile of a Graduate because he believed it would be a lot of work and not end up being used, but noted that he’s seen several districts in the state use the profile as “their north star.” He said the board is trying to respond to what Wyoming citizens said they would like to see from graduates, and he understands that people in Wyoming believe that  “life skills” are just as important as academic skills.