The good thing about a fresh face is that it comes with a new set of eyes.
Such is the case with Jack Koehn, USD 257 superintendent of schools, who almost from the beginning of his three-year tenure here said he could see the need for more collaboration among teachers in how to teach and assess students’ progress.
At Monday night’s board of education meeting Koehn brought board members up to date on the years-long process.
The first red flag came in 2009 when the Iola district was identified by the Kansas State Department of Education as one of 17 school districts struggling to meet Adequate Yearly Progress — a yardstick for student achievement.
The state then hired education consultants Cross & Joftus to analyze the districts’ teaching methods and then craft goals on how to change student outcomes.
What quickly came to light for USD 257 was that it had no unified plan on how to teach the course load.
“When it comes to curriculum … we all do our own thing,” one teacher was quoted in the report.
Other red flags included:
1. Classwork was inconsistent among the district’s three elementary schools;
2. Assessment of student outcomes were inconsistent, and
3. Teachers lacked the initiative to try new teaching methods to accommodate students with different learning styles.
To change the course of direction, the district adopted the CLI Process, based on the Curriculum Learning Institute developed at Emporia State University.
Koehn was familiar with CLI not only because he had implemented it at other school districts but also because its designer, Dr. Stu Ervay, was a former professor of his.
“But what I was struggling to figure out is why did CLI look different here as against other districts where I had worked,” he said. Koehn and his wife, Kathy, moved to Iola in 2013 from the Canton/Galva school district just east of McPherson.
“That everyone was doing their own thing sent shock waves,” he said, enforcing the need to get “everyone on the same page,” as to how material is to be taught and how students’ progress is to be measured.
Subjects were revamped one at a time, math, language arts, science, social studies, etc. Every few years the cycle repeats itself. Currently the curriculum for science classes is being evaluated. Next year, English is up for review.
“You look at the gaps and through a collaborative process make the needed corrections,” he said. “It gets easier once you go through a second or third cycle.”
Another glitch was that not all teachers were assessing student outcomes on a regular basis, perhaps because they viewed the process as too intimidating.
Shorter quizzes or writing assignments on a more frequent basis are better tools of measuring comprehension, Koehn said.
“Teachers are also encouraged to be risk-takers,” in trying different teaching methods if current methods aren’t successful, he said.
The changes are yielding positive results, he said.
“The teachers have made a lot of progress,” Koehn said. “There’s no ‘going back’ to 2009 in which USD 257 had virtually no curriculum process in place. The collaboration and the culture are so much better now.
“The key is for everyone to buy in and realize this is part of being a professional and this is how we do it. Resistance can slow things up.”
At the beginning, the state paid for the district to participate in the CLI Process, but because of budget cuts the district has had to pick up the tab of about $10,000 a year. The money comes out of its professional development budget.
IN OTHER news,
1. Scott Crenshaw, assistant principal at Iola High School, was named Assistant Principal of the Year, by the Kansas Association of Secondary School Principals. He will be officially recognized Nov. 8.
2. Twenty students are enrolled in a construction class out at the tech center in LaHarpe. “They’re starting on floors and walls this week, the meat and potatoes of building,” Koehn said. “We have projects on the horizon. We just have to get the skills to get there.”
