Wednesday, November 14, 2007

State Official Says City School District Shouldn’t Be Required To Sign Contract For Excellence

By S. Alexander Gerould agerould@post-journal.com

11/14/2007 - After methodic research and the lobbying of Gov. Eliot Spitzer and New York state representatives, Lonnie Palmer has a point to prove.

The New York State Association of Small City School Districts representative said, after examining more than 300 pieces of data, he and his organization came to the conclusion the Jamestown Public School district should not be required to sign a Contract for Excellence from the state. Districts who must sign a contract are required to increase student performance, improve programs and examine reducing class sizes, enhancing staff development and providing more before- and after-school academic help.

‘‘Our research shows Jamestown and a bunch of other districts that have been identified as Contract for Excellence districts probably shouldn’t have been, and there’s other districts that should have been,’’ Palmer said. ‘‘The data shows pretty clearly Jamestown is a high-performing, high-poverty district in the state when compared to other districts like it.’’

Palmer said he examined districts with similar enrollments and poverty levels as Jamestown and placed the district on a prediction line of where students should be.

‘‘It’s a pretty tight prediction line,’’ he said. ‘‘We can say if you’re at 50 percent free lunch and have a certain amount of consensus poverty, we can tell you what we would predict tests scores would average out to for your district. So, we’ve done that for Jamestown and Jamestown is performing well above the prediction line.’’

Palmer said Jamestown has five-year graduation rates which are among the highest in the state, along with strong Regents results. He also said the district could improve on its fourth and eighth grade English language arts and math assessments, tests results by Hispanic students and requiring more teachers to hold master’s degrees.

‘‘Jamestown has areas that can improve,’’ Palmer said. ‘‘We look at 300 different data points — everything from how much are you spending on operation and maintenance per pupil, how much you are spending on transportation per pupil, how are your fourth grade English/Language arts tests, how are your eighth grade tests scores for Hispanic students. We look at everything across the board and compare it to districts that have similar characteristics. We feel the Contract for Excellence has misidentified Jamestown and it should really by looking at other districts.’’

Ray Fashano, district superintendent, said the results of the study indicated to school officials some area which need to be improved which were not found in the districts own internal audit.

‘‘What we were trying to do is look at a data audit for the whole district,’’ he said. ‘‘You can look at data so long ... but then you want somebody from the outside to take a look at that data and say is it saying what you’re interpreting. That’s really the approach I took.’’

Fashano said the reason the district was placed under a contract was because they did not have the required amount of students taking a certain test. He said district officials worked to correct the problem.

‘‘We solved our participation problem. We went after it. We looked at it. We got the kids in to take these tests ... very, very minor infractions as opposed to saying every school within the district is on some sort of lists,’’ he said. ‘‘You have to admit your weaknesses, look at your strengths, but you’ve still got to still look at your weaknesses before you can improve. You can’t just bury your weaknesses because it doesn’t ever come out then. So we’re taking a strong look at this data ... and the we’re going to try and improve just like we have been doing for the last nine years that I’ve been here.’’

According to information provided by Palmer, the district has three options now available to it. It can work by itself to remedy the problems, hire an experienced consultant, or work with a consultant who can mentor officials in the district.

‘‘We’ll help direct them to districts that are achieving high with those kinds of things right now so they can go in and say what’s going on,’’ Palmer said, ‘‘or is there somebody on their (the other district’s) team who we might bring in for our staff to learn more about how they might do this.’’

Fashano said he was pleased with the results of the study.

‘‘I do feel validated,’’ he said. ‘‘If a student comes to Jamestown and their motivated, they have more opportunities in our school system than anywhere else ... I would think this whole town is behind our kids trying to make them successful. I think this is a validation of all those organizations and the school district working together. It’s a nice snapshot to look at, to see where we are and does it match up with the data analysis we’ve done.’’

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