School official suggests BOE 'get out of our way' on low-performing schools
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on September 27, 2017 6:33 PM
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In this file photo from July, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction Tamara Ishee leads an education roundtable at the Wayne County Board of Education.
The Wayne County Board of Education discussed ideas for improving low-performing schools at a work session Wednesday, with some members of the board and district administration clashing on how to accomplish that.
Tamara Ishee, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, presented a seven-step plan for helping low performing schools improve. The plan would begin with an increase in formative assessments ---- they help determine progress trends down to the individual student ---- and would then identify instructional priorities and work on getting teachers properly trained and aligned with those priorities.
The latter phases of the plan would focus on analyzing data, revising initial plans, and determine a new set of targets to achieve.
Ishee also proposed looking at year-round schedules for some low-performing schools, an optional intensive summer program for high school students, career/theme-based magnet schools and several other ideas.
Board member Raymond Smith said that he was not confident meaningful progress could be made on low performing schools if the board did not address socio-economic diversity through redistricting. He highlighted the fact that many low-performing schools have high rates of poverty, and said that the board had an opportunity to alleviate that problem somewhat by redrawing district lines.
With that in mind, Smith asked Ishee what the board could do to help the C&I department implement its plan. Her answer was frank.
"Get out of our way," she said. "I can't get to the real transformation work as long as I'm spending, at my level, an inordinate amount of time on the day-to-day. I'm going to respond to a board member's request immediately, it takes priority over anything, but I'm too much in the day-to-day to be able to sit down to give devoted time, energy and resources to things that could be truly transformative."
Smith also said that the board should look at moving high-performing teachers from schools which are doing well to those that are failing. Ishee said that doing so could put the district at risk of losing those teachers, because Wayne County does not offer a pay supplement competitive enough to entice them to stay if they cannot work where they want to.
Smith said he did not buy that argument. Without putting teachers where the district needs them, he said, district leaders are handicapping their own efforts to improve low-performing schools.
"When I came here to work for Wayne County Public Schools in 1994, I met with the then assistant superintendent for human resources, and he told me I was needed at the alternative school," he said. "I told him I wanted to teach at Goldsboro High, my alma mater. He told me 'we need you at the alternative school, so if you don't want to teach there you can turn around and leave.' So I chose to teach at the alternative school, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made."
Smith said that the district should not rule out being willing to place newly-hired teachers where they are most needed, and that assuming the strategy would not work without trying would be counterproductive.