Pflugerville ISD | July 2008

Pflugerville ISD | July 2008

Written by Amy Stansbury Thursday, 03 July 2008

Changes in the District

In his second year as superintendent, Charles Dupre said the Pflugerville Independent School District is going through a transformation.

“During the past year we have built a solid leadership team, and we have made substantial strides in creating and aligning the systems that are required to operate an outstanding school district,” Dupre said. “I don’t like to say we are ‘evolving the district’ because Pflugerville has always been a good district, but with today’s new levels of accountability — the state and federal requirements — we are transforming the district.”

One of the more obvious ways the district is doing this is by implementing a vertically aligned curriculum. Approximately 180 PISD teachers and math, science, social studies and English language arts subject coordinators have been working to create the new curriculum over the past year. Teachers will be trained on the curriculum Aug. 19 so it can be implemented district-wide when school begins this fall.

What this means for students is that they will be taught concepts that build upon material that was presented in the grade prior and with less redundancy.

“For everything from the achievement gap [the difference in academic performance among groups] to student performance, you’ve got to have a guaranteed and viable curriculum in place,” Dupre said. “Pflugerville has not always had that. We have had teachers who were doing a great job, but not a curriculum that says in kindergarten, this is what you learn, and in first grade, this is what you learn.”

The Texas Education Agency’s academic standards are called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, but Dupre said the TEKS are known for being vague and broad, simply not providing teachers specific enough direction.

“In the end it comes back to the TEKS, which is mandated by the state, so we need to design a curriculum that supports that,” Dupre said.

The curriculum has always supported the TEKS, but the new one will provide more detailed guidance to kindergarten through 12th grade teachers on what to teach within three-week periods, or bundles, throughout the school year.

PISD Chief Academic Officer Keith McBurnett said the vertically aligned curriculum is good for students because it will reduce gaps in learning and eliminate redundancies in teaching. He said he thinks it will be good for teachers, too, because it will allow them to be more creative in their instruction.

“One of the major benefits that we believe our teachers will receive is that they will spend less time trying to define what they are supposed to be teaching,” McBurnett said. “We want to help define for them the ‘what’ is to be taught.”

New curriculum

Teachers from each grade level who volunteered to work on the curriculum met several times over the past year, split up into groups by subject: math, English language arts, social studies and science. After determining specifics that needed to be taught to support the TEKS, the teachers and subject coordinators wrote a curriculum. Then they literally cut the written curriculum into pieces of paper and laid them out to align the TEKS and specific concepts that supported them, grouping them into bundles to be taught throughout the school year.

Chris Kincaid has been a social studies teacher at Park Crest Middle School for two years. He and the other social studies teachers spent approximately five days working on the social studies curriculum under the direction of coordinator Sara Lucas.

Kincaid said that if the new curriculum had been in place when he started teaching, it would have been easier for him to prepare for his lessons.

“My first year of teaching, I wondered if I was teaching the right things and was just hoping I was on the right track,” Kincaid said. “For example, when I taught sixth grade social studies, I was supposed to be teaching about Australia for the first four to six weeks. We didn’t know what about the continent the state wants students to know. ”

Kincaid said now, teachers can go online before the year starts and see what needs to be covered so they can begin thinking about how to teach that material creatively.

Progress ahead

“There have been good things happening in the district in the past, but now we’re just trying to align our arrows,” McBurnett said. “We know we can make more progress, and everything is focusing on student achievement.”

Dupre said one of the negative reputations of school districts is that they often jump from initiative to initiative, but he does not plan to do that.

“The promise I have made to the entire staff is we’re going to be a district that sets out goals, gets moving and stays on track,” Dupre said. “The teachers will be trained in August and will begin teaching the new curriculum.”

And as for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tests and ratings given to schools by the TEA, Dupre said that is not his primary concern.

“I am never going to beat up principals on their rating,” he said. “But we are going to make sure that we have every child making progress every year.”

Source: Katey Arrington, secondary math coordinator, Pflugerville ISD

Susan Oglesbee, PISD assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction

Response to math TAKS scores

Pflugerville ‘s overall high school math scores were lower this year on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test.

“We do feel it points out the need for a vertically aligned curriculum because it defines specifically what teachers are to teach,” said Susan Oglesbee, PISD assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. “We have found that teachers are not teaching to the depth and complexity of what is called for in the [Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards.]”

Oglesbee said the district is putting systems in place to address problems.

“In addition to the new curriculum, we are also putting in a system to monitor its implementation,” she said.

However, Oglesbee said a bright spot was Connally High School’s ninth grade math scores, which were higher this year.

“They used a form of academic teaming in which students have a common core of teachers who know them well,” Oglesbee said. “The teachers collaborated and blocked two periods for algebra one, and they had gains in every category. We see that as a good model for our other campuses.”