For the People: Visioning Committee Final Report, April 2014

Visioning Committee Final ReportApril 2014

OKLAHOMA VISIONING 2014 FINAL REPORT 1

www.forthepeopleok.com

Conveners

Oklahoma State School Boards Association The Oklahoma State School Boards Association (OSSBA) is leading the way to transform and strengthen public education for Oklahoma’s students. By supporting school boards and advocating for educational progress. OSSBA impacts and influences issues from the classroom to the state capitol. With an emphasis on local control and local decisions, our membership – 2,700 strong – focuses on policies, partnerships and programs that promote excellence and success for all Oklahoma children. In addition to trainings and workshops, OSSBA features a slate of business and legal services for school districts and boards of education. OSSBA’s mission is to provide services that support, safeguard, and advocate for Boards of Education in order to improve public education. The beliefs of OSSBA include: • Quality public education in a safe environment is a fundamental civil right for every

child. • Public education is an essential foundation of our democracy. To learn more or join our army of advocates, visit www.ossba.org

Cooperative Council of Oklahoma School Administration Cooperative Council of Oklahoma School Administration (CCOSA) is an incorporated, not for profit organization, which establishes close and continuous communication and cooperation among educators, taxpayers and legislators to improve the effectiveness of professional school administrators for the good of Oklahoma schools. Through collective representation of the Oklahoma Association of School Administrators, the Oklahoma Association of Secondary School Principals, the Oklahoma Association of Elementary School Principals and the Oklahoma Directors of Special Services, CCOSA is an umbrella association representing school administrators, other professional education leaders and all of the children they serve. The mission of CCOSA is to promote quality administrative leadership for Oklahoma schools through professional development, legislation, and member services. This mission is actionable through providing: • Services and benefits to school administrators and professional education leaders. • High ethical and professional standards. • Quality education for students. • Information, networking opportunities and quality professional development programs. • A forum for discussion of educational issues. • A strong voice and representation in all appropriate forums.



Acknowledgements CCOSA and OSSBA Executive Directors acknowledge the many contributions of others to OK Visioning, including our boards of directors and staff, the OK Visioning coordinating team and steering committee, and larger committee and association members. We extend our gratitude to OK Visioning's facilitator, as well as the University of Oklahoma's K20 Center report writer, graduate research associates and the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education faculty. We would also like to thank McREL International and other friends of public education for their critical review and feedback that helped to shape this report and OK Visioning as a whole.



Table of Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 4

Culture, Climate, and Organizational Efficacy .......................................................................... 10

Learning, Teaching, and Assessing for Student Success ....................................................... 24

Early and Expanded Learning Opportunities for Student Success .................................... 46

Governance, Leadership & Accountability ................................................................................ 57

Partnerships for Human Capital and Organizational Development ................................. 75

Physical Resources ............................................................................................................................ 94

Financial Resources ....................................................................................................................... 105

Concluding Thoughts ..................................................................................................................... 115

Contributors ..................................................................................................................................... 116

References ......................................................................................................................................... 120



Introduction

Coming together to deliberate about mutually justifiable educational practices can best serve the education of our children.

Responding to External Reform Efforts

Community control of schooling was previously the norm in education policymaking. In recent decades, the politics of education have moved away from local control to state and federal control. Over the past 50 years, the federal government’s role in local school policy has increased dramatically, culminating in The No Child Left Behind Act, the 1958 National Defense Education Act (NDEA), and the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). As local control diminishes, our democratic basis of policies and democratic participation are declining. Fullan and Hargreaves (2009) propose five priorities for educational change:

1. An inspiring and inclusive vision. 2. Public engagement. 3. Investment in achievement. 4. Corporate educational responsibility. 5. Students as partners in change.

These priorities establish the means of improving the professionalism of educators and

bringing coherence, not standardization, to our schools to achieve positive changes for the common good.

OK Visioning provides a distinct vision for public education around which public dialogue shall be held. In 2012, the leadership of Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration (CCOSA) and Oklahoma State School Boards Association (OSSBA) joined forces to take a proactive lead in state and national discussions about the future direction of public education. By using our collective initiative to develop and communicate a clear and effective vision for the future of our public schools, we can now focus our energies into building consensus and support for a vision founded on research-based initiatives that can positively impact student learning. Public education in a representative democracy requires the preparation of individuals to participate and deliberate in that democracy (Guntman, 1999). In a democracy, local control is valued and is based on a trust in the people to use their collective judgment to govern themselves without external controls (Howe & Meens, 2012). By deliberating together about mutually justifiable educational practices, we can best serve the education of our children. Through OK Visioning the leaders of public education propose strategies for propelling forward education in Oklahoma. Our Vision for Oklahoma Public Education



In 2012, CCOSA and OSSBA initiated OK Visioning, and we set our vision during our first several meetings. Our vision is:

All Oklahoma public school students will learn in an environment that maximizes their potential and develops them as leaders who will contribute to a meaningful life in a democracy, propelling our state forward into a competitive, global society.

- OK Visioning Steering Committee

Two main goals guide our work together: • To build support for an educational vision that is founded on research-based initiatives

that are proven to positively impact student learning. • To develop a document that educators, parents, business leaders, and policy makers will

embrace as a proactive, positive educational vision.

These goals are guided by a shared set of beliefs:

• All students deserve a free, appropriate, comprehensive high-quality education with equality throughout the educational process. This includes development of the whole child that provides appropriate learning experiences and allows for creativity and the arts. This means maximizing the development of each individual student, providing needed supports regardless of their needs.

• All students deserve to be educated in a democratic educational system that supports them through mutual acceptance and respect and in becoming independent thinkers.

• A strong foundation of public education is one that is established through encouraged parental and community involvement.

By taking our vision and applying our goals and beliefs, the Vision Steering Committee

consisting of fifteen school superintendents and board members, identified the following seven key themes to comprise the visioning document:

• Climate, Culture and Organizational Efficacy. • Learning, Teaching, and Assessing for Student Success. • Early and Expanded Learning Opportunities for Student Success. • Governance, Leadership and Accountability. • Partnerships for Human Capital and Organizational Development. • Physical Resources. • Financial Resources.

CCOSA and OSSBA members were invited to join the Steering Committee to work on

these seven themes. During 2013, 50 administrators and school board members from across Oklahoma formed seven committees, each representing one of the above themes. These committees met regularly to participate in a structured, facilitated process organized by a planning team. University of Oklahoma and K20 Center research assistants documented these meetings. They also provided research, articles, and examples in practice for the committees to review. Faculty from the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education at the University of Oklahoma reviewed the draft documents. Following the completion of final drafts from the committee, an external review and validation of content and coherence was conducted by McREL International.



Their suggestions were incorporated into the revised draft and presented back to the Steering Committee for final review and feedback. See the Appendix for a listing of all who were involved.

A specific format was provided for the committee work and their reports to ensure clarity

and consistency. Each committee report includes an introduction, guiding principles, key issues, transformational practices and recommendations. The introduction to the committee section provides a rationale for the system component and its inclusion in the report. Second, each committee report lists several principles that provide guidance to their review of issues and research about that topic. The guiding principles are based on fundamental truths or general values that remained over time. Third, key issues are identified. For each key issue, the question was asked: If this issue was at a high level of quality, would it make a difference for our schools and transform public education? Key issues include those topics that research has indicated or practitioner experiences have shown could have a major impact on educational systems in diverse contexts. Fourth, promising and transformational practices being implemented in schools, districts or states are identified. Most of these practices show evidence of success or effectiveness, while some show promise, yet need more evidence. Finally, recommendations that would help transform and change education are presented. These recommendations are listed in no particular order of priority and are not mutually exclusive. Taking Action

OK Visioning has been established to add the voices of educational leaders to the deliberations on public education in our state. Our hope is that this report will provide opportunities for public engagement about the future path of education in our state and re-energize our commitment to the increasing number of students who attend public schools in Oklahoma.

Over the past several decades, many educational reform efforts have focused on

increasing student performance measures. High school graduation tests, third-grade reading requirements, teacher and leader evaluations based on student performance, school report cards, and new state standards and assessments have placed increased pressure on school leaders, educators, and students. These reforms increase the demands on schools, yet do not provide strategies nor allow flexibility and support mechanisms to meet the demands. To change the conversation about public education, we must first change our dialogue. School leaders and school board members have a unique perspective to bring to the deliberation on public education.

Why must we act now?

• To ensure the voice of local public school leadership drives public school policy. • To rebuild trust and support for public education. • To promote meaningful engagement of community stakeholders with their public schools. • To communicate a clear and effective vision for the future of public schools in our state.

Change is needed in public education. Our challenge is identifying which changes will

result in transforming education and sustaining our democratic way of life. We agree with Fullan



and Hargreaves (2009) that educational change can be achieved by people working together toward shared and compelling moral purposes established through public engagement and with personal and public investments.

Oklahoma’s public school enrollment has steadily increased over the past six years. And

although public education receives a large share of the state budget, the monetary support for education has been declining in terms of percentage of the state budget and in terms of dollars. In fact, our state has made the largest cuts in the nation in per pupil funding, slashing 22.7% since the beginning of the recession in 2008. The accountability system is focused narrowly on student performance on multiple-choice tests and is misunderstood. State and federal mandates overwhelm local educational governance in our schools. Communities are changing, as are many aspects of the world in which we live and work. OK Visioning is designed to foster productive public dialogue about how to improve our schools for the more than 680,000 students enrolled.

Reforming Education

CCOSA and OSSBA have long advocated for legislation and policies in Oklahoma, yet this is the first time they have joined forces to present a united direction for public education. We established OK Visioning to add the voice of professional educators and local board members in the national and state reform movements. It is important to consider this project in the context of national and state reform movements over the past decades.

Over the past several decades, cries for public school reform have been heard from a

variety of national think tanks, organizations and task forces. Competitive factors in the world economy, demands of a diverse student population, dissatisfaction with the school bureaucracy, school effectiveness research findings and lessons from the corporate world have thrust educational reform to the forefront of the national agenda. In 1983, President Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk. It was highly critical of public education and launched numerous other commissions and studies (Education Week, 2004; Orlich, 2000). Politicians focused on the issues raised by the report, rather than on its recommendations (Goodlad, 2003). In contrast, evidence that public schools were not failing was published in The Sandia Report (1993), finding instead that performance on standardized tests and other performance indicators were improving, except in populations of minority and urban students. Still, cries for reform continued.

In 1990, the National Center on Education and the Economy’s America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages report projected the need for fundamental change in the approach to work and education based on new high performance forms of work organization. The same organization’s follow-up, Tough Choices or Tough Times (2006), proposes further dramatic overhaul of the educational system. These reformers cite how students in the United States have been falling short in their comparison with other countries on international benchmarks like the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Data from the 2012 PISA showed 15-year-old students’ in the U.S. ranked below average in math performance with science and reading performance close to average in comparison with other countries (Kelly, Xie, Nord, Jenkins, Chan, & Kastberg, 2013).



In the past two decades, the chant “Excellence for All” has developed as a rallying point for school reform, bringing the appearance of consensus. Yet the meaning of that slogan is viewed differently among reform leaders. For some, excellence for all means developing a competitive edge. For others, it means equity of opportunity (Schneider, 2011). During this same time period, Schneider (2011) reported that the school reform focus on choice and accountability have not resulted in promised reform due in part to the lack of high-quality school data and the narrowness of what is being measured. Public schools should be accountable to achieve the goals set forth by their constituency through democratic processes. Yet to this point, accountability systems have focused largely on test scores from multiple choice tests, neglecting the need for schools in our democracy to produce students who have developed strong citizenship, social skills, or appreciation of the arts as well as critical thinking and problem solving skills (Rothstein, Jacobsen & Wilder, 2008). From Reforming to Transforming Education

School improvement and community building are reciprocal endeavors (Schlechty, 2011). Removing local control from public schools undermines democratic participation. Rather than turning schools into larger bureaucracies, policies should be enacted to return control to local communities to address their own issues. Transformation of our public schools will require school and community leaders to repurpose and reimagine schooling, not just reform it.

For more than a century, the American system of schooling based the success of a few on

the failure of others, sorting kids by intelligence and background. Instead, let’s reimagine schools to develop the full potential of all students, focusing on transforming education and not merely reforming it. Reform efforts address effectiveness and result in a tweaking of processes or procedures, while transformation entails changing the context and culture as well as rules and responsibilities, radically changing the way things are done (Schlechty, 2011).

To accomplish transformation of schooling, disruption in how and where we learn may

occur (Christensen, Johnson & Horn, 2010). We need to reimagine systems and policies that support learning for all students, rather than retrofit innovations into the current system. We need to create supportive conditions and broaden the space for innovation and experimentation around schooling, rather than manage issues and crises. We need more flexible policies and funding, rather than legislative and regulatory control over where and how each dollar is used (Richardson, 2010/2011). Visioning In Other States

At the state level, governors, state officials or commission generally establish initiatives with little involvement or input from educators. A growing trend has been for state educational leaders to convene to conduct visioning projects within their state. Recently, school board members and school leader organizations in several states have joined together to review the current status of their state’s educational systems and to suggest changes for transforming those systems. Examples from Georgia, Missouri and Texas were reviewed as part of OK Visioning.



Georgia. The Georgia Vision Project was initiated in 2008, and the report was completed in 2010. It was launched to add the voices of educational leaders and school board members to the dialogue about school reform. Learn more: http://www.visionforpubliced.org/

Missouri. The Missouri Vision Project began in 2010, and the report was released in

2011. The goal of the project was to identify unifying transformational practices around which to build coalitions, provide guidance for local school districts in strategic improvement, and to build trust and support for public education. Learn more: http://www.visionformopublicschools.org/

Texas. The Texas Visioning Institute began their visioning project in 2006, completing

the work in 2008. The Texas project was in response to the lack of professional educators’ voice in the state reform efforts. Learn more: http://www.tasb.org/legislative/documents/vpevi.pdf The OK Visioning Committee reviewed the work of these three states, which informed our effort. During the committee’s work, a representative from the Georgia Vision Project visited and shared lessons learned from their project. Reaffirming the Purpose of Public Education in Oklahoma

The purpose of schooling has been debated among scholars, politicians and educators. Eleanor Roosevelt (1930) said the answer for a democracy is to produce good citizens. Building on the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey links democracy and education (Glickman, 1998). Dewey (1916) explains that democracy is more than a process of governing but is also a type of associated living with shared experiences. Glickman (1998) deepens Dewey’s work and advocates for “democracy as education” (p. 8) based on the capacity for learning with and from each other and active participation in the process of teaching and learning. Public education is being bombarded with economic pressure to produce a quality work force. The broader conviction for public education must be to democracy and quality learning and citizenship for all (Goodlad & McMannon, 1997). Our vision is to reaffirm this conviction for a democratic and quality education in Oklahoma while preparing students for college and career.

Moving Forward

This joint endeavor between school leadership organizations, Cooperative Council of State School Administration and Oklahoma State School Boards Association, is the first of its kind in Oklahoma. The time has come for us to join forces to create space for community and state dialogue for what we believe about our schools and how to best achieve our goals. We hope that this enumeration of recommended actions for improving the public education experience for all students who attend Oklahoma public schools will serve as a basis for beginning this dialogue.

We need to reimagine systems and policies that support learning for all students

rather than retrofit innovations into the current system.



Culture, Climate, and Organizational Efficacy

The capacity to provide meaningful opportunities for all students resides in a healthy culture, climate and efficacy.

The true value a community places on education is observable through district culture,

climate and efficacy. Fullan (2001) argues a society's success depends on whether its leaders see education as a cost or an investment -- how much its children are valued. Culture embodies the shared values, beliefs and norms a community holds for education, while climate represents stakeholder perceptions of the structures and processes used to coordinate teaching and learning (Gruenert, 2008). Organizational efficacy is the shared belief that a school district has the capacity to meet the learning and developmental needs of the children and families it serves. The capacity to provide meaningful learning opportunities for all students resides in a healthy culture, climate and efficacy. The purpose for review and study of this topic is to focus on practices that allow communities to enhance the value a community places on public education as evidenced by a district’s continuous improvement of their culture, climate and organizational efficacy.

Healthy culture, climate and organizational efficacy combine to form the social and

psychological drivers of effective human and system performance. These intangible “drivers” of performance do not emerge by chance; they require nurturing and purposeful action by school and community leaders to unite interdependent actors in the pursuit of a shared vision. As argued by the Center for Comprehensive School Reform (2009), “creating a positive school climate takes the work and commitment of the entire school community” (p. 1). Student learning thrives in strong, supportive environments.

Guiding Principles

The following principles were used to guide and inform the vision of what an effective culture, climate and organizational efficacy means to education:

• Learning “outside the school walls” deepens student knowledge and cements his/her understanding of important concepts and skills.

• Student choice in curricular decisions builds autonomous motivation and drives self-regulated learning.

• Meaningful student learning occurs in a safe and supportive environment. • Engaging all stakeholders in the educational process is essential for optimal

learning opportunities. • A school climate characterized by trust enables teachers and students to thrive. • Effective organizations hold high expectations for all members through shared

accountability. • Effective leadership is crucial to creating organizational climates conducive to learning. • A healthy culture encourages all stakeholders to find solutions to challenges. • Sustaining effective performance requires school organizations to learn from their

experiences and adapt practices to identified performance needs.



Key Issues

Even as we held up these guiding principles in our work, we also recognized educational opportunity and access for these differs across schools and among children and their families. For example, children living in poverty may have limited access and opportunity for learning outside of school. Their families may have difficulties attending school functions, not because of a lack of interest but because of a lack of time and resources (Gorski, 2013). Oklahoma is noted as one of the states doing the least in education to improve the impact of poverty (Huffington Post, 2011). We considered ways to increase the opportunity and access for services and resources for underserved students.

There are several key issues facing Oklahoma public education in the area of culture,

climate and organizational efficacy. First, rather than focusing on statewide mandatory programs and initiatives, school districts should invest time and resources to build the capacity of people within the system. Additionally, schools and communities should communicate to ensure the needs of both systems are met. Furthermore, parents, students and teachers should work together to create a personalized learning pathway for each student. Schools must continually assess and improve throughout the year, thus engaging in continuous improvement cycles as well. Schools should also strive to build a safe culture that promotes physical health and mental well being. The final issue is that schools and communities should embrace and celebrate their diversity and use diversity as a learning opportunity. Investing in People Rather than Programs

Today’s reforms require complex and sophisticated changes that occur first at the people level, then at the innovation or program level (Hall & Hord, 2011). Yet, this does not always happen; some schools tend to focus on programs rather than developing the individuals within the system to build their knowledge and skillfulness and to create a focused direction (Fullan, 2001). Effective schools collaboratively establish nonnegotiable goals and collaborate to achieve these goals by encouraging formal and informal teacher networks as a means of fostering shared commitments as well as teacher learning (Eck, Stringfield, Reynolds, Schaffer, & Bellamy, 2011). When educators, staff, and parents learn and work together, they positively impact students and their learning. Making Schools the Hub of Engaged Communities

Throughout Oklahoma, many schools drive the economies of their communities and serve as the glue of their social networks. Schools thrive when they are connected symbiotically with the community. Howe (2012) avers, “Increasingly, a consensus is emerging that what is needed to improve schools is an active citizenry, invested in solving educational problems through public deliberation” (p. 11). Active democracy requires a citizenry skilled in defining and deliberating about common issues and problems. Schools can promote active democracy and become hubs of their communities. Community engagement is a two-way commitment that requires communities to keep their children safe, healthy, nourished, and prepared to learn, while schools have the responsibility to the community for the students’ academic success.



Although strong partnerships can increase student learning and improve the well being of students and communities, development of these partnerships requires a large social investment. Partnerships with schools can range from universities and local community colleges to business and industry to agencies and nonprofits. Interest in community schools is spreading as more communities see the benefits of turning schools back into hubs of the community. Blank, Melaville, and Shah (2003) argue:

Many educators and policymakers believe that the community schools approach can lead us to the answer. A community school is a place as well as a set of partnerships between the school and other community resources. Its integrated focus on academics, services, supports and opportunities leads to improved student learning, stronger families and healthier communities. Schools become centers of the community and are open to everyone. (p. 1)

There are several national organizations that promote community schools. Twenty-seven states are a part of the Community in Schools network, but Oklahoma is not. The Tulsa Area Community School Initiative [TACSI] is the only Oklahoma community that is a part of the Coalition for Community Schools. In early 2014, one elementary school in Oklahoma City was approved to become a community school. Engaging Parents and Students in Personalized Learning Pathways

The focus of engaging parents is to partner to support each child’s personalized learning pathway. Successful practices in education take into account the needs and perspectives of students and parents in order to facilitate optimum learning in each classroom. Repeated studies show family engagement impacts student achievement (Weiss, Lopez, & Rosenburg, 2010). Still, too often school personnel treat parents and community members as bystanders rather than partners.

In inclusive schools and classrooms, instructional decisions are based on students’ needs

and passions. In this environment, skillful professional teachers engage their students to ensure students are learning and developing. Teams of teachers, instructional leaders and principals collectively decide how best to structure classrooms and learning spaces to maximize learning. Classroom learning is guided by rigorous standards, data, and technology through student-centered learning (USDE, 2013).

Personalized learning pathways allow students to progress through the learning goals

based on what they know and can do. This may require dynamic grouping or differing learning times to meet student needs, which in turn requires that a teacher’s instruction varies with the student population (USDE, 2013). Technology can support personalization of learning, supplement classroom instruction when accompanied by additional classroom support and facilitate timely information and feedback to students and parents.

Even though Oklahoma has established initiatives to increase the availability and

effective use of data (Data Quality Campaign, 2013), the timely availability and effective use of data is unrealized to date. Oklahoma schools and districts need to consider personalizing the



learning for students to better meet their needs.

Working Together for Continuous Improvement and Encouraging Innovation

Continuous improvement is a process of aligning actions to a school’s mission and goals to focus on bringing about incremental betterment of practices and products. This requires implementing action plans, gathering and analyzing the data, and establishing structures and processes for monitoring progress.

Internationally, the highest performing schools set and meet nonnegotiable goals for

instruction in every classroom (Marzano & Waters, 2009). Beyond establishing nonnegotiable goals, highly reliable organizations are guided by a commitment to resilience that allows quick responsiveness and consideration of alternatives, allowing them to adjust and innovate nimbly (Eck et al., 2011). Continuous improvement toward quality is the act of integrating quality improvement into the daily work of individuals in the system (Park, Hironaka, Carver, & Nordstrom, 2013).

Too often, continuous educational improvement is more of an espoused goal than a

practiced process. When administrators partner with their staff and other stakeholders in a collaborative inquiry process to implement changes, these are more likely to take hold. When teachers view innovations as temporary, it can be problematic and generally results in little change in their classrooms (Ferriter, Kline, Kuklis, & Zmuda, 2004). Combining strong leadership, teamwork, clear standards and goals and accountability produces rapid and substantial improvement in schools (Schmoker, 2006). Not all Oklahoma schools have adopted effective, continuous improvement processes or professional growth plans for teachers. Embracing and Celebrating Diversity

In education, embracing and celebrating diversity focuses on inclusion and appreciation of all. The legitimacy of citizens across cultural, social, political and other differences is more readily accepted when personal contact with cultural diversity is sustained in a safe and healthy environment (Howe & Means, 2012). Yet when disparate achievement outcomes exist among disadvantaged and minority students, a generalized and passive discrimination for these students and their families may remain (Howe & Means, 2012).

Gorski (2013) proposes rejecting a deficit view with a focus on fixing the

disenfranchised, instead recognizing and drawing upon the resiliencies and inherent knowledge accumulated by diverse communities and the individuals within it. Viewing the achievement gap instead as an access and opportunity gap for children of poverty may help us better address student needs (Gorski, 2013). When viewed from a lack of opportunity or access, the gap has little to do with student effort, intelligence or family attitude; thus, the issue can be addressed with enriched learning opportunities for all learners.

Oklahoma educators need additional strategies for meeting the needs of diverse learners.

More attention to the skills development; diagnosis and prescription of needs; and development of targeted lessons based on student needs enhance student learning. There are best practices for



educating students with diverse needs, whether they are poor or minority students from diverse racial, ethnic, and language backgrounds. Some teachers and some successfully educate students from diverse populations daily. However, Oklahoma as a whole is not successfully implementing these practices. Building a Culture of Safety, Physical Health, and Mental Well-being for All Children and Adults

Students are the heart of the school. Student health and well-being must be at the forefront of all involved in education. A culture of safety, health and psychological well being requires strong social ties among individuals and organizations that serve children, families, and youth. A community engaged in common goals can support safety and health initiatives for students and families (Weiss, Lopez & Rosenburg, 2010). Allowing students to develop and stretch intellectually within safe physical, emotional and social boundaries must be the top priority of school districts.

It is essential that school leaders and policymakers ask the tough questions about how to

create the social conditions that enable every child to succeed (Blank, Melaville, & Shah, 2003). Opportunities exist to enhance the collaborations to support students; however, Oklahoma has no clear strategy for facilitating these collaborations to increase student learning and well being. Monitoring and Enhancing a Healthy and Welcoming School Culture and Climate

According to Beaver and Weinbaum (2012), the capacity of a school system is comprised of four components: human capital, social capital, program coherence and resources that analyze capacity for better targeting of school weaknesses and improvement strategies. Likewise, Freiberg (1998) suggests that gauging movement toward a healthy, vigorous school climate by using benchmarks of the progress toward educational reform goals is helpful. Creating a positive communication initiative is essential to successful 21st Century district leadership. Highly reliable organizations create and maintain conditions through which challenges and issues are monitored and addressed (Eck, Stringfield, Reynolds, Schaffer, & Bellamy, 2011). While a positive school climate provides safety, pride and respect, a climate of distrust and disrespect hinders student and staff growth, potentially limiting student achievement (Center for Comprehensive School Reform, 2009). Thus, providing ongoing assessment of school climate and remaining receptive to feedback in schools provides one aspect of progress toward school improvement.

Oklahoma does not have a clear definition of school culture or school climate. A valid

and reliable measure is not provided for schools to measure their school climate. Summary of Key Issues These key issues focused the committee work and guided the research for transformative practices and committee recommendations. Through active participation of students, parents and the greater community, student learning and engagement can be enhanced. Power lies in the abilities of communities, made up of individuals bound together by common geography,



resources, problems and interests, to collectively determine the policies that govern their lives. When local schools and communities work together to create supportive conditions for students both in and out of schools and to understand the culture and needs of their students, communities and education mutually thrive.

Promising/Transformational Practices

The Culture, Climate and Organizational Efficacy committee researched schools implementing best practices in order to enhance the learning experience of students, teachers and families. Some of the best practices of individualized student learning involve students and their families, including early childhood health screening, parental involvement, and parent-teacher teams to support student learning. Other examples include evaluating the progress of students through formative and benchmark assessments and career experiences for students. In addition, some examples entail advocating for students by providing before- and after-school care for secondary students, community schools, foreign language immersion programs and care for students with severe behavioral concerns.

Investing in People Rather than Programs The professional capacity of the faculty and staff includes their knowledge, skills and dispositions as well as their ongoing learning and professional growth. Collaboration and cooperation among teachers, parents, and community members provide social resources for school improvement (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu & Easton, 2010). Rather than having resources for their own learning needs based on their professional goals, teachers have received standardized programs and one-size-fits-all professional development sessions. Below are some possible approaches to build the capacity of the entire school community.

Teacher and Student Advancement [TAP]. This program supports professional growth of teachers in teams and as individuals. It provides educators with opportunities to try different roles and responsibilities, small group and personalized professional development, and differentiated evaluation. Learn more: http://www.niet.org/niet-tap-system-overview/.

The Coalition for Community Schools. Building capacity for community schools

provides a series of monographs to support members in a local school partnership. Learn more: http://www.communityschools.org/resources/capacity_building.aspx.

Making Schools the Hub of Engaged Communities

Schools in communities with strong social capital (i.e., active religious participation,

collective efficacy and extensive connections to outside neighborhoods) are more likely to exhibit support systems for school improvement (Bryk et al., 2010).

Community schools. The Tulsa Area Community Schools Initiative [TACSI] engages

students in learning connected to their community. The community members are active within and beyond the school day, and families support the school and its programs. Through this initiative, outcomes for at-risk students are improving (Adams, 2010). Learn more:



http://csctulsa.org/content.php?p=29. Learn more: http://www.communityschools.org/aboutschools/national_models.aspx.

Community-in-schools. Community-in-schools partners with schools to determine

needs of students and build relationships with local agencies, businesses, health care providers and volunteers to provide resources to support improved student learning. Learn more: http://www.communitiesinschools.org/. Engaging Parents and Students in Personalized Learning Pathways When parents and teachers share in the development of expected learning outcomes for their students and for the school, they contribute significantly to school improvement (Bryk et al., 2010). Learning pathways are one way to share these expectations. This year, educators in 35 states can view data about individual students from multiple years, which helps inform their pathways. In 14 states parents can view data about their students. Data Quality Campaigns provide steps for states to create a culture for using data. Learn more: http://www.dqcampaign.org/.

CCSSO Partnership for Next Generation Learning. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) set forth critical attributes for student learning experiences. Through the Next Generation Learning-Innovation Lab network, they promoted personalized learning with data-driven goals and progress monitoring with appropriate supports for student academic and developmental growth. This framework engages and motivates all students for college and career readiness. Learn more: http://www.ccsso.org/resources/publications/partnership_for_next_generation_learning_overview.html.

Poway, CA. The Poway School District in California has a learning approach that uses

regular assessments to measure student growth and encourage students to set goals for their own learning. Parent workshops help parents to create family goals. Since implementation, schools have seen an increase in student learning, the community has passed a school bond, and students are more motivated to engage in academic tasks (National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group, 2010). Learn more: http://www.k12blueprint.com/content/getting-great-head-start-poway-ca.

High school career tracking. In Olathe, Kansas, the high schools integrate 18 strands

for students to focus on career fields of interest. Each student has core classes, yet participates in several hours of specific classes in a selected area of interest. Classes include projects and internships at local businesses that allow students to authentically apply what they are learning. Learn more: http://schools.olatheschools.com/buildings/21stcentury/program-overview/.

State and district pathways. Several states and districts allow students to progress

through the curriculum as they master academic content, providing flexibility for students. Learn more: http://www.ed.gov/oii-news/competency-based-learning-or-personalized-learning.



Working Together for Continuous Improvement and Encouraging Innovation

Examples from a state, districts, and a network of schools are included. Georgia data link. Beginning in 2009, Georgia state education leaders joined with local

administrators to collaborate on a virtual “tunnel” to link state-level data directly to district-level student information systems. Allowing district educators to access state education data through the district’s existing data systems, local educators can view and compare state and local performance data. Parents also have access to longitudinal data to support their child’s learning. Learn more: http://www.dqcampaign.org/success-stories/state-stories/georgia-information-tunnel-linking-district-ingenuity-with-state-resources-to-make-data-matter/.

District-level continuous improvement efforts in Jenks. Using continuous

improvement strategies, Jenks schools decreased its teacher turnover, increased its student performance and launched innovative programs. They developed a Chinese cultural exchange and also a community partnership that provides childcare within a nursing home. The continuous improvement strategies guide the work in academic achievement, staff and teacher training, student safety, and collecting and analyzing data. Continuous improvement, strong quality leadership, customer focus and a whole-system involvement comprise the four pillars for the district. Jenks administrators use a Pathway-Do-Study-Act [PDSA] process to review and adjust procedures and practices around key measures. With teamwork being a core value, school sites and departments have working committees to share the discussion and decisions. Learn more: http://www.jenksps.org/vnews/display.v/ART/4c59c290053f0.

Menomonee Falls. The village of Menomonee Falls [MF] is located in the greater

Milwaukee area with a population of approximately 32,600. Its mission is to provide the best personalized and comprehensive education. In 2011, MF had a 100 percent graduation rate and high academic achievement. The district added instructional coaches and partnered with consultants to provide technical assistance to implement cycles of Pathway-Do-Study-Act [PDSA]. After two years, the district demonstrated both reasonable success in implementation as well as results in instruction and operation performances. Learn more: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/sites/default/files/carnegie-foundation_continuous-improvement_2013.05.pdf.

Strive, an area network example in Cincinnati. In 2006, Strive was a coordinated

effort by community leaders in the greater Cincinnati area to address the lack of coordination among organizations in the community. The Strive network facilitates conversations among community-based partner organizations to develop a shared understanding of issues and collective solutions. Strive provides data tools to support the districts’ work toward shared goals. Learn more: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/sites/default/files/carnegie-foundation_continuous-improvement_2013.05.pdf. Embracing and Celebrating Diversity

Examples of how a school supports diverse families and foreign language programs are included.



Parent-teacher teams that support student learning. Arizona’s Creighton Elementary

School District K-8 schools with a large poverty population. Many English Language Learners have organized academic parent-teacher teams as an alternative to the traditional parent-teacher conference. Teachers share student performance data and work with parents to set parent-student academic goals (National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group, 2010). Learn more: http://www.creightonschools.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=180085&type=d&pREC_ID=374885.

Foreign language immersion. Foreign language immersion schools offer students an

introduction and understanding of different cultures, languages and an awareness of our global community.

Eisenhower International School in Tulsa. This school has a full immersion program

that begins in kindergarten. Students are taught in either French or Spanish, with the English curriculum increased each year until there is an equal balance in fifth grade. Learn more: http://eisenhower.tulsaschools.org/magnet_program/program_description.

Tulsa’s Zarrow International School. This school immerses children in the Spanish

language. Learn more: http://zarrow.tulsaschools.org/OurMagnetProgram/ProgramDescription/tabid/23129/Default.aspx.

Norman Public Schools. One school implemented a foreign language partial immersion

program starting with kindergarten students and continuing through fifth grade at a new school site. They are taught half the day in English and half the day in French. Learn more: http://www.norman.k12.ok.us/index.php?immersion-‐pilot-‐program. Building a Culture of Safety, Physical Health, and Mental Well-being for All Children and Adults

Early childhood health screening and parent involvement. Project EAGLE Community Programs of the University of Kansas Medical Center provide families with children birth to age 4 answers to their two most important questions: “Is my child developing normally?” “What can I do to help her become more school ready?” Routine child screening and parent engagement support for healthy child development are included (National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group, 2010). Learn more: http://www.projecteagle.org/.

Before- and after-school care for secondary students. The schools in Olathe, Kan.,

keep students before and after the school day to keep them safe and engaged in learning activities. The schools have divided the care into several interest zones. Learn more: http://www.kidsrkids.com/school-locations/KS/after-school-program-Olathe.php.



Interagency agreements to serve students with severe behavioral concerns. Several states have implemented interagency agreements to serve children and families with needs beyond the capabilities of traditional public schools.

Florida. A multiagency agreement for children in Florida was signed in 2012 to

coordinate services for those served by more than one agency. Learn more: http://www.floridaschildrenfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Inter-Agency-Agreemt-ALL.pdf.

Vermont. Act 264 in 2005 was implemented to serve children and adolescents

experiencing severe emotional disturbance. The interagency agreement between the Vermont Department of Education and the Vermont Agency of Human Services expanded the target population. Learn more: http://mentalhealth.vermont.gov/cafu/act264. Monitoring and Enhancing a Healthy and Welcoming School Culture and Climate

A most basic requirement for students is a safe and orderly environment that supports academic work (Bryk et al., 2010). Schools that consistently scored better than predicted on standardized tests showed substantially more positive levels of school climate than other schools did. Thus, climate improvement should be a part of the solution for school improvement (Voight, Austin & Hanson, 2013).

School Climate Standards. The National School Climate Council has established

national standards for school climate and developed a toolkit for assisting schools in implementing the standards. The Council offers a five-step school climate improvement process. Learn more: http://www.schoolclimate.org/guidelines/schoolclimateimprovement.php.

School Climate Surveys. The Center for the Study of School Climate conducts practical

research on strategies for assisting school and community leaders to improve the learning climate in schools. They offer the American School Climate (ASC™) Survey Series. Also, they partnered with the National School Boards Association’s Council of Urban Boards of Education to conduct the What We Think survey. Learn more: http://www.schoolclimatesurvey.com/index.html.

Summary of Transformational Practices

The initiatives identified in this section exemplify some of the transformative practices across the country that help build a culture, climate and organizational efficacy to support meaningful learning opportunities for all students. These transformational practices provide examples from urban, suburban and rural schools and districts. By extending meaningful roles and involvement to teachers, parents and community members, trust, communication, services and resources are improved, thereby enhancing student achievement.



Culture, Climate and Organizational Efficacy Recommendations

An active school community, through public deliberation, can address educational issues and improve learning for all students. These recommendations should be viewed within that framework. To progress and improve in the area of culture, climate and organizational efficacy, we propose the following recommendations: RECOMMENDATION 1.0: Grow the capacity of educators with a focus on results and evidence, rather than implementing programs. Provide support mechanisms for partnerships through which the collective capacity of the school or district may be built.

Partnerships may include universities, businesses, agencies or nonprofits with expertise in target areas. Working with partner groups not only provides support for growing capacity of individuals and the organization but also may serve to maintain and expand these opportunities. School-university partnerships can create supportive structures for professional communities within and across schools (Lieberman & Miller, 2007).

Professional development time should be structured for collaboration, reflection and

research, which may include summer paid time, early-release time throughout the year, and/or after-school paid time. Districts might establish a time frame within which each teacher needs to have completed certain strands of professional development with a variety of ways to accomplish these strands. Partnerships with local universities or community groups can assist in supporting ongoing learning for teachers.

When communities, made up of individuals bound together by common geography,

resources, problems and interests, collectively determine the policies that govern their lives, they can be responsive to the needs of the community (Howe & Meens, 2012). Through these processes, educators can become lifelong career learners. Their ongoing learning can be organized and supported through engaging leaders and teachers in authentic, job-embedded learning and leveraging community resources, expertise and activities. Expanded learning opportunities can be accomplished not only when local school boards, community members, and citizens have the flexibility to allocate resources to meet the needs of the local schools, but also when state policies are implemented that support local districts’ initiative capacity-building strategies.

In the past, many large-scale educational change efforts failed to reach their intended results.

This failure was in part because these initiatives focused on innovation, not the school context or culture or the shared meaning needed for individual and social change (Fullan, 2007). Fullan asserts that adaptive approaches with embedded accountability provide more promise for large-scale educational change. Many programs have been made available through state grants to a limited number of schools and districts in Oklahoma. This model of school improvement needs to be reviewed and redesigned. Refraining from mandating additional programs and focusing instead on capacity-building collaborative methods with accountability may be a better means to support needed change.



Oklahoma leaders should review current programs and mandates to determine which ones are effective and which ones can be removed. Furthermore, these leaders should study how to replicate successful change through capacity-building initiatives and how these might be effectively shared across the state so all schools and districts can benefit. A recent needs assessment of Oklahoma schools recommends teachers set individual learning goals for instructional improvement (Marzano Research Center, 2011).

RECOMMENDATION 2.0: Review policies to ensure that they provide and encourage supportive conditions and structures to engage parents and students through personalized learning initiatives.

As a part of this review and revision process, it’s necessary to ensure policies provide support for diversity and flexibility to address engagement and personalized learning challenges .

Organizational structures and resources for collaboration among stakeholders to address the academic diversity of their students need to be in place. Parents can address their students’ specific needs and progress with their own ongoing and incremental learning opportunities. Access to student learning information and online resources may be made available through community wi-fi sponsored by businesses, government agencies, parks and libraries.

Extended-learning opportunities for all students, such as foreign languages and/or cultural classes that integrate global world concepts and introduce students to other ethnic groups, should be available and encouraged. There are many ways to accomplish this. These vary from the stair-stepping of culture integration by introducing other cultures at the elementary level to taking local trips to see other cultures in middle school or culminating in a virtual or actual trip to a foreign country in high school. Classroom and extracurricular learning resources should be structured and planned to maximize learning during in-school and out-of-school time. Cultural integration should be authentic for each school community to celebrate the communities’ unique cultural wealth (Yosso, 2006). Policies should be flexible enough to allow for differences in context in rural, suburban and urban communities. Policies should be established with input and support of the people they serve and school governance should reflect the composition of the community the school serves. RECOMMENDATION 3.0: Revise policies to ensure supportive and flexible structures for continuous improvement and innovation.

A recent study in Oklahoma recommended schools find ways for teachers to work together (Marzano Research Center, 2011). Policies should ensure supportive conditions for continuous improvement in schools and mechanisms to draw from the community’s cultural wealth. Ways in which this might be accomplished include:

• Restructure the day and year to provide time and structures for collective inquiry into school practices.

• Build intervention time into the school day, after school, and/or before school. • Use students’ growth data to evaluate teachers, rather than only end-of-year tests.



• Allow teachers to share knowledge of current trends and researched-based strategies with other teachers to ignite passion for continuous improvement.

• Establish goals, expectations and support for teachers to integrate their professional learning.

• Create avenues for parents and community members to be involved in the local school. • Regularly gather input and ideas from students, parents, and community.

o Ask all stakeholders to complete a survey at registration, parent-teacher night and/or community event (athletic games, choir concerts, etc.) to gather data to evaluate stakeholder perception. Then, address the issues identified by the survey.

o Regularly host a representative advisory group comprised of parents and community members to seek input and ideas.

o Examples of student surveys may be found in the appendices of a recent study in Oklahoma (Marzano Research Center, 2011).

• Provide adequate, consistent data sources at minimal or no expense to support ongoing review of data by teachers and school leaders.

RECOMMENDATION 4.0: Establish policies to provide a system of support for the safety, health, and mental well-being of all students and adults.

All students should be able to learn within a safe environment. State interagency services and financial support are required to care for student needs. The community schools model that has been implemented by Tulsa-area schools should be expanded to serve other high-need schools and districts. Facilities are needed for those children with severe behavioral health concerns.

Behavior care facilities could serve multiple systems of care and preserve a safe place of

learning. They might be located in technology centers or connected to higher education facilities. Cooperative agreements among schools, businesses and communities could provide education-focused care for students after school. Resources for continual maintenance and cleanliness of school buildings and safety measures, such as cameras, safe rooms, controlled access, and communication systems, need to be available for all schools. RECOMMENDATION 5.0: Extend policies and seek ways to ensure access to equal educational opportunities and the diverse contexts of learning that all students need for the inculcation of democratic character.

Public education should prepare future citizens for active participation in the democratic process by providing them with the knowledge, skills and dispositions to deliberate and problem solve within a community (Howe & Meens, 2012). All students should have this opportunity. Safeguards need to be in place to prevent marginalization of groups of citizens from involvement in school reform. Greater attention needs to be placed on the schools’ roles in cultivating citizenship of students and families as well as on revitalizing the participation of the local citizenry in school (Howe & Meens, 2012). Service learning should be considered as a way to prepare students to become engaged in our democratic society (Verdi & Berson, 2012). Also, there needs to be a greater focus on and support for best practices in meeting the needs of



Oklahoma’s growing number of English Language Learners, high-poverty students and other students who are falling behind in school.



Learning, Teaching, and Assessing for Student Success

To ensure the learning needs of each student are met and that each is provided the tools and knowledge to lead a productive life, teachers and school leaders

must work with parents and the broader community.

Every school-age child in Oklahoma deserves a high-quality early childhood experience and education that prepares him or her to be a responsible citizen and successfully pursue a postsecondary education or a viable career. To ensure the learning needs of each student are met and that each is provided the tools and knowledge to lead a productive life, teachers and school leaders must work with parents and the broader community.

Students face greater challenges and global competition than in the past. To prepare our

students for a complex and competitive world, they need schools, communities and political leaders who “think globally and act courageously about issues that promote positive education reform, leadership growth, development, and learning” (Normore, 2010, p. xii). These challenges provide a unique opportunity for educators to rethink what it means to be educated. These challenges require educators who possess different knowledge and understandings than in the past. To meet these challenges, a “comprehensive, integrated and long-term approach to transformation is needed” (USDE, 2013b, p. 2). In the past several decades, a new science of learning, based on research conducted in real schools and classrooms, has added to what we know about learning and has provided practical applications of what needs to happen in the learning environment to better support student learning (Sawyer, 2012). Using learning sciences theory, How People Learn (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000) proposed new views of what is taught, how it is taught and how it is assessed. It also has provided new strategies to improve people’s ability to understand complex content through active learning. From the development of the learning sciences came strategies for learners to relate new ideas with previously learned knowledge, looking for patterns and externalizing and articulating their developing knowledge as well as reflecting and moving from concrete to abstract for deeper understanding (Sawyer, 2012).

It is now time for Oklahoma educators to focus on students’ learning needs, using what has been gleaned from the learning sciences. The Learning, Teaching and Assessment for Student Success Committee focused on recommendations to meet the needs of Oklahoma’s students and assist teachers and schools in supporting their success.

Guiding Principles

The underlying tenets guiding our work in the area of teaching, learning and assessment

for student success include:

• Educators are one of our nation’s most valuable resources. • All children, regardless of family structure, socioeconomic status, or ethnic background

deserve excellent, high-quality early education to make a difference in their lifelong academic and social success.



• Early implementation of Personalized Learning Pathways increases the potential to ensure all students graduate college and are career ready.

• An educational culture that exhibits a shared responsibility and leadership, and one in which educators take collective ownership for each student’s learning, can provide what is best for each student.

• A critical priority for successful student learning is the attraction of a high-performing and diverse pool of talented individuals to become teachers and principals.

• Classrooms of the future require teachers who demonstrate strong content knowledge and a repertoire of instructional strategies with the ability to select and use them appropriately.

• Effective teachers and leaders engage in continuous growth and professional development.

• Effective educators have high standards of professional practice and demonstrate their ability to improve student learning.

Key Issues

The review of literature, research and practices illustrate the most critical issues facing public education in the areas of learning, teaching, and assessing learning. These issues focus on the needs of the learner and personalizing their learning, readiness and technology as well as on the learning needs of teachers.

Engaging Students in Their Own Learning

Students need to be involved in their own learning and focused on problem solving in a variety of ways (Hattie, 2009). According to Hattie (2009), instructional practices of teachers are what make a difference for student learning. From early childhood dramatic play to making models or other products to demonstrate understanding, students who are engaged in their own learning support increased learning (Hattie, 2009; Goodwin, 2011).

To support student learning, effective teachers activate students’ prior knowledge, assist

students in organizing and connecting their ideas, and provide ongoing feedback to students (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). Effective teachers engage students in the building of knowledge, help students reflect on their own thinking and assist them in learning new ways of thinking about the content (Magnusson & Palinscsar, 2005). Effective classroom pedagogy entails use of effective instructional strategies, management skills and curriculum design strategies (Marzano, 2007). Marzano (2007) proposes that teachers establish their learning goals with an accompanying rubric for each lesson, as well as support their students in establishing their own learning goals, for which they provide frequent feedback on their progress and help them chart their progress.

Research has established a strong relationship between student engagement and student

outcomes. Student engagement is a powerful indicator of student achievement (Bryson & Hand, 2007; Lee & Smith, 1995). Classroom engagement contributes to student cognitive development



(Wu & Huang, 2007) and correlates with performance on standardized tests (Weiss & Baker-Smith, 2010). Student engagement is associated with higher grades (Goodenow, 1993; NSSE, 2009; Willingham et al., 2002) and lower dropout rates (Croninger & Lee, 2001; NSSE, 2009). Debate continues about the advantages of adoption and development of 21st century skills (Kreber et al., 2007). Findings show that there is a general gap between proven strategies and actual teaching practices, as most teachers still employ lecture as their primary instructional technique (Yair, 2000). Some researchers and practitioners suggest that the adoption of new teaching methods is difficult, and there are many obstacles, such as planning time and the ease of designing “rote” lessons that continue to widen the gap.

Oklahoma has adopted new standards, and updating instructional strategies will facilitate

their implementation. Improvement of student learning means improving the quality of instruction, reducing the variability of instruction from classroom to classroom (Eck at al., 2011). Teachers need improved quality and increased opportunities for professional development that includes ongoing support, expanded time and pertinent resources to fully implement these new standards and practices into their daily teaching practice. A recent assessment conducted in Oklahoma schools recommends that teachers set personalized instructional strategy goals, and student engagement should become a school-wide focus (Marzano Research Center, 2011). Personalizing Learning

Educational equity is not simply equal access or funding but also includes ensuring that educational pathways, curriculum and instruction needs for each student are met (Wolf, 2010). Mandated personalized learning pathways help to ensure students are on track to graduate. Most pathways possess these characteristics and more: an academic planner; identification of academic, career, and personal goals; a validated career-exploration tool; a resumé builder; and regular updates (Bloom & Kissane, 2011). Many high-performing countries have established clear learning pathways for students that promote independence and lifelong learning (Schleicher & Stewart, 2008).

Personalization of student learning is based on work by Comer (2004), Gardner (2010),

and Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) that is focused on recognizing and addressing the unique needs of each learner. Personalization requires “a major shift in focus from an institution/teacher-centered approach to an authentic, student-centered approach,” and is customized to address the abilities and interests of the learner (Wolf, 2010, p.12). Taking into account the need to develop 21st Century skills, personalization makes use of digital technologies and other comprehensive learning supports to provide relevant learning experiences in real time and is predicated upon ongoing, embedded assessment of learning. Thus, students have the opportunity to take control of their learning with a teacher acting as facilitator (Wolf, 2010). Preparing Students from Early Childhood Through Preparing for College and Career

This section addresses a continuum of the school-readiness needs of students from early childhood to college and career preparation. Schools and districts need to provide a culture in which the use of time, approaches to staffing, use of technology, deployment of support services, and engagement of families and communities support strong outcomes for the students they serve (USDE, 2013b).



Effective school leaders collaborate to establish nonnegotiable goals for achievement and instruction (Marzano & Waters, 2009). High-performing countries provide multiple academic and social supports and interventions within and outside of classrooms to ensure each student meets the high standards set for learning and responding early to struggling learners (Schleicher & Stewart, 2008). Students and families have very different needs throughout their learning and maturation processes. School readiness is divided into two main components, early childhood and college and career readiness.

From early childhood. Several decades of research demonstrate the positive impact of

high-quality, developmentally appropriate early childhood programs (NAEYC, 2013). Young learners need immediate interventions and scaffolding supports (Goodwin, 2011). However, Marzano (2000) found that the majority of the variance in student learning can be attributed to the home environment, prior knowledge, interest, motivation and aptitude. Young learners can develop self-regulation skills as they engage in dramatic play (Goodwin, 2011).

Oklahoma has made strides in early childhood education, but we must continue to

develop an integrated system of early childhood care and education that includes comprehensive approaches directly involving families and communities in program design, implementation and evaluation. If we do not invest in our children and families, we will continue to see increased delinquency, greater educational failures, lowered productivity, less economic competitiveness, and fewer adults prepared to be effective, loving parents to the next generation of Oklahoma students.

An early study of Oklahoma’s Early Childhood Four-Year-Old Program showed

statistically significant impacts on children’s early literacy and mathematical development and showed evidence of an enhanced program effect for print awareness skills for children in low- income families (Lamy, Barnett, & Jung, 2005). In recent years, an Early Childhood Pilot Program was enacted to provide comprehensive services for at-risk children ages zero to four, partially supported by state appropriations by the legislature with a private sector match. By 2010-2011, all Oklahoma school districts were required to offer full-day kindergarten. In addition, the legislature initiated the Oklahoma Parents as Teachers [OPAT] grant program, a home-visitation program for families with children ages zero through three. The State Department of Education administers the grant program, yet funding remains inadequate to meet the demand and needs of participants.

Even with Oklahoma’s recently recognition for having the highest-ranked state-led early

childhood initiative, recent budget constraints have lowered per capita spending for pre-K and full-day kindergarten and other supports for these early childhood programs. In fact, many Oklahoma children are still not being served among those most in need. Oklahoma City Public Schools only recently began to offer pre-kindergarten, and full-day kindergarten is still unavailable for all families who would like to enroll. Since the program is a half-day only, some families have not been able to take advantage of it. Since 2005, there has been a shortage in Oklahoma of early childhood teachers (USDE, 2013a). Effective, specific early childhood professional development is needed.



The consideration and understanding of readiness for young children must be based on the knowledge that young children develop in different ways and at different rates. All areas of children’s development and learning must be included in the definitions of readiness. Early learning tends to be multidimensional, complex and influenced by individual, cultural and experiential variations. This knowledge places the responsibility for student success on our schools and teachers, requiring that they be thoroughly prepared to meet the educational and individual needs of our youngest students (NAEYC, 2009).

Through college and career readiness. As children move from novices to experts and from concrete to abstract reasoning, they need scaffolding and materials that address their misconceptions appropriately and allow them to begin to construct their own understandings and knowledge (Sawyer, 2012). How People Learn (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000) proposes a framework centered on knowledge, learners, assessment and community. Knowledge-centered classrooms clearly articulate what students need to know and do. Learner-centered classrooms cultivate students’ interests and are based on their needs. In assessment-centered classrooms, student learning is made visible, and adjustments are made based on learning needs. Community-centered classrooms provide a safe place for students to take academic risks and collaboratively work toward their learning goals. When these complex and interrelated elements converge, students are able to move their understanding from that of a novice to a higher level of expertise.

Children are able to successfully meet learning challenges even in the early elementary

grades (Magnusson & Palincsar, 2005). Students need their teachers to set challenging learning goals, be clear about what success looks like and employ learning strategies that develop their conceptual understanding (Hattie, 2009). Learning sciences propose that in order for deep learning to occur, students should engage in developmentally appropriate processes and activities similar to those of practicing professionals (Sawyer, 2012).

Linn (2012), in working with middle school students to understand how they process

knowledge integration, found that students need to compare what they are learning to previous knowledge and understandings, develop criteria for their new learning by making it more visible, and hold it up to others and receive feedback. Learning is scaffolded when students engage in making models, artifacts, experiments, simulations or construct an argument that can help lead them to deeper understanding (Linn, 2012). Collaborative argumentation, not oppositional argumentation, that is based on a need to understand, has appropriate scaffolding, and is explicitly socialized is an effective learning strategy for students to begin to elaborate, reason and reflect, thus deepening their conceptual understanding (Sawyer, 2012).

All students need a rich curriculum in the arts, history, science, literature and other

subjects that engage them (Ravitch, 2010). Eisner (2004) asserts, “The last thing we need is a one-size-fits-all curriculum with one single set of goals for everyone. Diversity yields richness, and diversity in schooling is a source of richness for our culture (p. 8).” Students learn better when what they study in one class complements what they study in another class and when they see a real connection between the school curriculum and their lives (Wraga, 2009). A coherent, connected curriculum provides students with educational experiences that build on one another, recognizes the reality that all experiences are connected and prepares students as future citizens capable of making decisions about social issues that transcend conventional subject divisions



(Tanner & Tanner, 2007). All students need access to curriculum and resources that support their academic success. Too often, the interest in going to college is greater than the quality of preparation in schools for going to college. Only five states have high school standards fully aligned with college admissions and career readiness standards (Kuh, Kinzie, Buckley, Bridges, & Hayek, 2006). Integrating Technology

Technology integration that focuses on the four Cs - critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration - can transform teaching and learning, especially when facilitated by a technology-rich classroom (Blair, 2012). For personalized learning environments to support students in reaching their potential, access to a variety of technology tools and engaged learning activities is needed. In a technology-enriched classroom, students can begin to learn what it means to be a mathematician, a scientist or a literacy designer or author, which brings about in-depth learning. Richardson (2013) proposes, “Real learning that sticks is about allowing students to pursue their interests in the context of the curriculum and technology” (p. 14). Thus, technology can facilitate learning through the development of individual passions, inquiry and sharing.

For schools, technology-integration processes can contribute to the development of

collaborative cultures in professional learning communities (Burns & Dimock, 2007; Dexter, Seashore, & Anderson, 2002; Riel & Fulton, 2001; Williams, Atkinson, Cate, & O’Hair, 2008). A school’s capacity to change can increase when technology-integration training is embedded in an overall reform effort (Roschelle et al., 2000). Culp and others (2003) confirm this belief and assert that technology can catalyze other changes in the content, methods and overall quality of teaching, such as triggering changes from traditional teaching styles to methods that engage students. Technology integration can enhance teacher and student learning (Atkinson, O’Hair, O’Hair, & Williams, 2008; Burns, 2002; Dexter, Seashore, & Anderson, 2002; Riel & Fulton, 2001; Williams, Atkinson, Cate, & O’Hair, 2008). Thus, students are better prepared for post-secondary education.

Technology access and high-quality technology integration professional development is

limited and unequal across Oklahoma. Lack of sufficient technology infrastructure and funding to maintain and replace technology remain issues in Oklahoma. Adopting a Coherent and Connected Curriculum

Oklahoma students need the support of a strong, connected curriculum and the collaboration of higher education with common education to ensure they are college, career, and citizenship ready. Even though new state academic standards have been adopted in Oklahoma, implementation that results in students in each classroom receiving a high-quality education with complex literacy and numeracy strategies is limited thus far. Students need curriculum materials that support their learning, such as manipulatives and computer simulations (Sawyer, 2012). The curriculum needs to have an adequate balance of surface and deeper learning sufficient to teach specific skills and ensure conceptual clarity with planned, articulated learning strategies to help students construct meaning (Hattie, 2009).



A quality curriculum includes greater depth than breadth, a problem-solving focus, the

mastery of essential skills, subject knowledge and a coordinated, multi-year, sequential course of study (Glatthorn & Jailall, 2008). A quality curriculum should emphasize both academic and practical knowledge. Schmoker (2011) establishes the three tenets of essentials in schools as being a reasonably coherent curriculum, sound lessons and purposeful reading and writing throughout the disciplines. Rothman (2012) asserts that a large proportion of high school students are not being well prepared for college or careers, but that updating state standards can help with this problem. He further suggests that standards alone do not solve the problem, but valid and reliable assessments to measure the standards are needed, as well as effective teachers who are well prepared and well versed in the standards.

Standards and curriculum are different; standards establish the outcome, while

curriculum sets the direction or purpose of learning. Instruction directs the delivery (McTighe & Wiggins, 2012). High-performing countries set high academic standards with clear articulation of learning outcomes reduce variability in instruction for each student (Schleicher & Stewart, 2008). Oklahoma is poised to update its state standards, and there is much more needed to ensure that students are learning the content standards. Districts remain in control of the curriculum and instructional direction. Effective schools and a commitment to teacher and school growth and development are needed to ensure implementation and teaching of the new standards. Also, the Oklahoma Legislature passed HB1038 during the 2013 legislative session, changing course requirements to allow students to demonstrate competencies in core curriculum content. Assessing Learning with a Balanced Approach

To improve student learning, curriculum and assessments must define how knowledge is related to problem solving and developing cognitive skills. Also, they should define the abilities needed to find and organize information for solving problems, for framing and conducting investigations, then analyzing and synthesizing the data. Assessments must support these abilities. Assessments should be school based and embedded in the curriculum, having students complete complex assessment exercises that provide teachers with data for continuous improvement. Assessments are closely aligned to the curriculum and authentically measure student performance. Teachers need to be engaged in the assessment process, working together to develop, review, score and apply the results to their teaching.

When students work with teachers to assess their own learning, they experience

significant learning gains (Popham, 2008). Providing feedback to students on their work products is a critical part of student learning (Koedinger & Corbett, 2012). Black and Wiliam (1998) conducted a synthesis of research, finding evidence that formative assessment improves learning, regardless of the strategy or teaching style. Formative assessment is an instructional process that engages teachers and students in providing feedback for adjusting teaching and learning (Popham, 2008). When formative assessment is embedded in daily activities and throughout each assignment, substantial increases in the speed of student learning occurs (Leahy & Wiliam, 2009).



Assessments are part of an integrated system of rigorous standards, curriculum, assessments, instructions and teacher development (Darling-Hammond, 2011a). A study of 10 states that were a part of an effort to implement classroom assessments reported that although states faced numerous challenges, many of the teachers reported changes in their practice, even in some of the most reluctant participants (Weinbaum, 2009). The study showed increases in the use of student self-assessment, extended response and classroom discussions to measure student learning (Weinbaum, 2009).

The development of state test systems that assess deeper learning, measuring mastery and application of academic content to complex thinking, communication, and problem solving, is not without technical, fiscal and political challenges (Herman & Linn, 2013.) Even though new Oklahoma standards were adopted starting in 2010, assessments have yet to be updated to align to these standards. The plan is to change the state testing program by the 2014-2015 school year. Also, formative and diagnostic assessments are not available for all Oklahoma schools, although benchmark assessments from CTB/McGraw Hill are available free of charge for grades 3 through 8 in reading and mathematics and end-of-instruction subjects of algebra I and II, geometry, and English II and III. Oklahoma has established actions for the availability of data (Data Quality Campaign, 2013), yet a timely, consistent and useful source of assessment data is lacking in Oklahoma. Preparing Teachers and Supporting Induction

The quality and work of teachers determines the quality of education a student receives

(Schleicher, 2009). Effective teachers increase student performance, graduation and college-going rates, civic participation, as well as career earnings (USDE, 2013b). A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that “[t]eaching all students for problem solving, invention, and application of knowledge requires teachers with deep and flexible knowledge of subject matter who know how to represent ideas in powerful ways, [and] organize a productive learning process for students” (Darling-Hammond, 2006, p. 20). National surveys of teachers published by the Education Trust (Almy & Theokas, 2010) indicate that 14.7 percent (US: 15.6 percent) of Oklahoma classes are taught by teachers without either a major or a certification in their field, an improvement of only 0.2 percent (US: 1.6 percent) since 2003-2004.

Finland and Singapore, for example, have built a high-performing teaching profession by

providing access to high-quality preparation programs. Many of the students from these preparation programs go on to earn master’s degrees and receive a salary as they prepare to enter the classroom. In the program, they learn research-based strategies and are mentored by expert teachers in model schools connected to the university (Darling-Hammond, 2011b). Beginning teachers are well paid, similar to doctors and are mentored while working a shortened workday so they can learn from and plan with others. Additionally, they work in schools that are equitably funded and well-resourced with the latest technology and materials.

Educators in the United States should be highly regarded professionals who work in an

intellectually demanding and complex system and should receive a competitive salary. According to USDE (2013b),:



Of course, the work of transforming the profession cannot be shouldered by our nation’s teachers and principals alone; parents, students, educators, policymakers, business and community leaders, elected officials, and other partners [are needed]. (p. 2) To transform schools in the United States and in Oklahoma, we need schools that are

collaborative and innovative workplaces that foster building the capacity of educators to improve student-learning outcomes. Oklahoma needs to attract top candidates as well as offer preparation programs with high-quality curricula aligned to today’s student needs that allow opportunities for clinical preparation experiences that help teachers gain the skills to be successful in the classroom.

Teacher preparation is a cornerstone for effective teaching and student learning.

Oklahoma has 12 universities with unique and varied teacher-preparation programs. The certifications and degrees offered in these programs lack consistency. The admissions requirements also vary. The state only requires 45 hours of clinical experiences for teacher-preparation candidates, yet does not require student teaching or clinical experiences for alternative-preparation routes (AACTE, 2010).

To support and retain beginning teachers, NCTAF and the Teaching Commission

strongly recommend states develop and adequately fund beginning teacher induction and support programs (Corcoran, 2007). While induction programs require increased attention to funding, mentoring and aligned professional development, simply adopting broad regulations requiring districts to provide mentors is unlikely to produce the benefits associated with the multifaceted, well-designed programs adopted or piloted in states such as Connecticut, California, Texas and New Jersey (Corcoran, 2007). Pre-service teachers who have field placements in easier-to-staff schools are more likely to become effective teachers and are less likely to leave the profession after five years. Recent research highlights the positive effects of school context on new teachers’ practice and career decisions (Rondfelt, 2012). This suggests initial school placement determines teacher longevity.

In past years, Oklahoma funded and monitored a teacher residency program, and the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation funded statewide mentoring training. The New Teacher Center (2011) reviewed all state teacher-induction programs and reported that Oklahoma has placed a moratorium on several key components of teacher induction. They also report Oklahoma lacks formal teacher-induction standards that govern the design and operation of local or state programs as well as a system for monitoring quality.

Improving Teacher Learning and Professional Development

Teacher learning is enhanced when professional development is sustained over time, and

teachers have time to study, to experiment and to receive feedback on the innovation (Newmann, King, & Youngs, 2000). Reform-style professional development includes a variety of strategies and is adaptable to needs of teachers in each school environment yet includes sufficient follow-up support and time for learning and experimentation with new knowledge, processes and



assessments (Loucks-Horsley, et al., 2010). Thus, for professional development to impact student learning, it must be intensive, ongoing and connected to a teacher’s own practice, focusing on specific academic connections, making connections to other school initiatives and supported through collaboration (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009). Teacher learning needs to be designed to help students master their content, apply effective teaching skills, evaluate their own and their students’ performance, and address overall changes needed in their school. It is important for educators to receive on-the-job learning opportunities as well as sustained learning from experts in content and pedagogy.

Yet many teachers work in isolated classrooms with few opportunities to collaborate with

one another and lack meaningful professional development. Often, educators pay for their own quality professional development (Darling-Hammond, 2011b). Other fields, such as medicine and the military, provide ongoing learning opportunities and support for their professionals. In education:

[P]rofessional learning in its current state is poorly conceived and deeply flawed. Teachers lack time and opportunities to view each other’s classrooms, learn from mentors, and work collaboratively. The support and training they receive is episodic, myopic, and often meaningless. (Darling-Hammond et al, 2009, p. 2) In high-performing nations, an investment in professional learning provides ongoing,

sustained teacher development and collaboration into teachers’ work hours. In the United States, educators spend a greater amount of their work time teaching students. Professional development and collaboration often occur outside of contract time.

Even though research has demonstrated that professional communities of teachers can

have a large and positive impact, few teachers get to experience such communities (Collier, 2011). School-based professional development benefits teachers as individuals as well as the whole school community (Grodski & Gamoran, 2003). Professional communities provide teachers much more than simply sharing teaching tips; they allow teachers to share their expertise in a reciprocal, sustained and ongoing fashion. In the U.S., teachers typically have three to five hours per week scheduled for individual planning. In most high-performing European and Asian schools, teachers have 15 to 20 hours a week for a combination of individual collaborative planning during which they engage in lesson study, action research, peer study and collaboration.

Although teachers in some states do receive support for ongoing professional

development, teachers in many states, including Oklahoma, do not receive support that allows them to participate in additional professional development of their choosing (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orfanos, 2009). The content of professional learning in many of the high-performing countries is determined by local needs and is embedded in the work of the local schools. School context has important consequences for teachers’ ongoing professional development throughout their careers (Johnson, Kraft, & Papay, 2012).

More professional development is a worthy cause, but just requiring hours or

participation for state recertification requirements does not facilitate high-quality professional development for all educators (Corcoran, 2007). Oklahoma Regulation 210:20-19-3.



Professional development program management states: “All certified and licensed teachers and administrators shall accrue at least 75 professional development points within a five (5) year period with at least some points completed each year.” Local school boards are responsible for the organization and implementation for their own plans with certain required components. In the past several years, Oklahoma’s professional development institutes [PDIs] were offered through the state’s commission on teacher preparation to emphasize content and professional teaching practices. Oklahoma boasts that 7.3 percent, or about 3,000 of its educators, hold National Board Certification [NBCT], which ranks ninth in the nation for NBCTs. There is a legislative moratorium on scholarships for attaining NBCT status, but incentives for those receiving the National Board Certification before 2010 have been restored. Teachers working in more supportive professional environments improve their effectiveness more over time than teachers working in less supportive contexts (Johnson, Kraft, & Papay, 2012). Summary of Key Issues

Student engagement and personalization of their learning, school readiness, curriculum, assessments, technology, as well as teacher preparation and induction, teacher learning, and professional development were identified as key issues. HB1017 moved Oklahoma education forward through various reforms related to student performance, teacher compensation and training, accountability and funding. Yet today many of these reforms are unrealized, and issues prevail. Oklahoma lags behind the nation in recent advances in reforms for teaching and learning.


To achieve a national and global competitive edge, it is essential that all students in

Oklahoma have an effective teacher in their classroom, that teachers address the learning needs of every student with multiple learning strategies, and that a strong curriculum with grade-appropriate assessments frame the learning goals for all students. Based on a study of the literature and practices both in Oklahoma and across the nation, practices that have the potential to transform public education for teaching, learning, and assessments for student success have been identified. Curriculum, early childhood, college and career readiness and technology support also have been reviewed.

Engaging Students in Their Own Learning

Project-based Learning [PBL]. These experiences involve students in meaningful inquiry that meet an educational objective (Larmer & Mergendoller, 2010), while Authentic Learning Experiences [ALE] is a very similar program (Newman, Bryk, & Nagaoka, 2001). Project-based learning starts with a motivating question, proceeds with inquiry and collaboration with curriculum materials, and culminates in student products. Authentic learning has many of the same facets, focused on the construction of knowledge that arises from deep inquiry and discourse around a relevant or real-world topic (Newman, Marks, & Gamoran, 1996). Using the core of learning sciences to develop LeTUS science’s PBL lessons, students showed significant learning gains (Krajcik & Blumenfeld, 2012). Both PBL and ALE increase student engagement and achievement by helping students answer deeper questions in the context of their learning and by allowing student voice and choice. As students conduct a deep inquiry into the content, these



innovative ways of teaching encourage 21st Century skills, such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking and the use of technology. For more information on PBL, see the Buck Institute at http://www.bie.org/ or Place-based Learning at http://www.ruraledu.org/articles.php?id=2758. Examples include High Tech High or ACE Leadership High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Authentic Learning. In this instructional strategy, students delve deeply into content,

explore relationships among concepts and make connections to the real world. For more information and free resources, see http://k20alt.ou.edu, and the lesson and video example at http://k20alt.ou.edu/groups/sweeping-down-the-plains/. Also, Mayo Demonstration School in Tulsa and Howe Public Schools have had success with use of these interactive and authentic learning experiences for their students.

Expeditionary Learning. This involves students in relevant problem-solving challenges

similar to PBL. An example is King Middle School in Portland, Maine, at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june13/learning_05-06.html.

The aforementioned student-learning strategies are used to varying degrees in schools in

Oklahoma, yet are not widespread. Teachers need professional development to implement these strategies as well as upgraded technology infrastructure in all schools. The research base on many of these practices is limited but growing, as is the advancement of technology.

Personalizing Learning

Partnership for Next Generation Learning. The Council of Chief State School Officers has partnered with the Stupski Foundation to create a system that supports personalized education to engage and motivate students, regardless of their circumstance and prepare them for life, meaningful work and citizenship. Learn more: http://www.ccsso.org/resources/publications/partnership_for_next_generation_learning_overview.html.

Personalized Learning Initiative. Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia mandate individualized learning plans for students to promote college and career readiness. For example, Rhode Island implemented an Individualized Learning Initiative to provide personalized mentoring and graduation plans for all secondary students. Learn more: https://www.ride.ri.gov/StudentsFamilies/RIPublicSchools/DiplomaSystem.aspx.

Philadelphia, PA. The Graduation Coach Campaign is an initiative of the mayor's office through which adults in the community receive training to become mentors for students. Learn more: http://www.phillygradcoach.org/.

Adams District 50. Adams County School District 50 in Colorado has committed to a system-wide vision for personalized learning. In 2008, the district moved to a competency-based reform model for the elementary and now serves students in all grades. Personalization occurs through goal setting, choice and voice with appropriate instruction as learners are supported in a



differentiated learning environment integrating a blended services model to meet individual needs. Learn more: http://www.cbsadams50.org/.

Oklahoma Career Technology. The Career Technology System provides both Individual Career Plans and Career Academies. Career Plans are documents that show the course sequence a student will take as he or she pursues a Career Pathway and Career Major. Career Academies offered include pre-engineering and biomedical academies, biotechnology, information security, nanotechnology and other emerging technologies. Preparing Students from Early Childhood through College and Career Readiness

From Early Childhood. High-quality early childhood programs improve academic outcomes, reduce crime and delinquency and enhance future employment success.

Scaffolding Early Learning (SEL). This evidence-based early learning literacy program

from McRel is aligned with current theory on early literacy development and that positively impacts student readiness. SEL professional development improves student outcomes as described in the U.S. Department of Education’s Doing What Works Clearinghouse for Early Childhood Education. Learn more: http://www2.mcrel.org/scaffolding-early-literacy/.

Oklahoma. This effective state-funded, half-day preschool program requires each

classroom have a lead teacher with a bachelor's degree and that teachers receive ongoing professional development. A rigorous evaluation of the program provides feedback for continuous improvement (Karoly, 2013).

The Chicago Child-Parent Centers (CPCs). This program establishes comprehensive

educational support and family support to economically disadvantaged children and their parents, providing a school-based, stable learning environment during preschool in which parents are active and consistent participants. Parental participation is required for this child-centered, individualized approach. Evaluation data showed that CPC preschoolers outperformed non-preschoolers, with the largest impact of the program on cognitive readiness at kindergarten school entry and showed a statistically significant impact on achievement in reading and math gains through grade six. For more information about this program and other successful preschool programs, see http://www.promisingpractices.net/program.asp?programid=98.

With reduced state funding for education, the quality of Oklahoma’s preschool programs

may suffer. In an effort to continue to provide transformational educational programs for our youngest students, we must be vigilant in adhering to the critical factors affecting successful, high-quality early childhood education. These factors include the following key elements: small class size; an adult-to-student ratio of one to 10 with a maximum of 20 children; well-trained, adequately compensated and qualified teachers; strong links to health and social services; adequate and appropriate supplies and materials; appropriate indoor and outdoor space; and the involvement of families (Barnett, 2011).

Through College and Career Readiness. Oklahoma students need the support of a strong, connected curriculum and the collaboration of higher education with common education to ensure that they are college, career and citizenship ready. New standards have been and are



being adopted in Oklahoma, but implementation that results in students in each classroom receiving a high-quality education with complex literacy and numeracy strategies is limited thus far. Examples of schools that are preparing students for the world of college and career include those identified by U.S. News and World Reports and others.

Tennessee. With significant increases in its high school graduation rate, Tennessee

efforts continue and include: design and implementation of policies to prevent students from dropping out of school; establishing an early warning data system; and working with districts to identify and implement best practices such as individualized graduation plans. The state utilizes the Achieving Graduation for All: A Governor's Guide to Dropout Prevention and Recovery. Learn more: http://www.tn.gov/education/safe_schls/dropout/doc/DropoutPreventionToolkit.pdf.

U.S. News Top-ranked Schools. Annually, U.S. News ranks the nation’s and state’s top

high schools based on serving of all of its students well, not just those who are college-bound; student performance on state proficiency standards; and how well the school prepares students for college (Sheehy, 2013). Three of the top four schools identified were public schools located in or near major cities. These schools provide academic challenges and opportunities to explore their interests and include, in order: School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas Independent School District; BASIS Tucson, Arizona; Gwinnett School of Mathematics, a charter school in Lawrenceville, Georgia; and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. Learn more: http://www.usnews.com/education/high-schools/articles/2013/04/23/us-news-releases-2013-best-high-schools-rankings.

The Effective Learning Program (ELP). Ballard High School in Louisville, Kentucky, is a two-year program to raise students’ internal locus of control. The program is designed to improve students’ skills in building relationships with peers and adults and increase graduation rates. ELP students are arranged in blocks for English, math and humanities taught by trained ELP teachers in small “team” atmosphere classes. The ELP students showed a higher graduation rate. For more information on this program and other proven or promising high school programs, see http://www.promisingpractices.net/programs_topic_list.asp?topicid=8.

High Schools That Work [HSTW]. HSTW is a nationally recognized school improvement initiative to help students make academic transitions into high school and into career/technology centers. HSTW is supported in Southern Regional Educational Board states like Oklahoma to improve student readiness for college and careers. Learn more: http://www.sreb.org/page/1078/high_schools_that_work.html.

The Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education. Oklahoma has a

nationally recognized model that offers numerous opportunities for middle and high school students and adults needing specialized career training. They are a national leader in the development of Career Clusters. These career clusters group common occupations and training. Students can use the career clusters to organize their goals and identify career pathways. Learn more: http://www.okcareertech.org/.



Integrating Technology

With the prevalence of technology, individualizing and differentiation of instruction is more easily facilitated. Online and blended learning experiences vary widely but include some level of online delivery of content or instruction with some student control over where or when they access the instruction. Although a recent meta-analysis of research found the results were mixed, it tended to indicate potentially favorable results in the use of blended and online learning (Nagel, 2009). Flipped classrooms are a form of blended learning in which students are provided online resources or videos to view before coming to class or as homework that then allows the teacher to provide more personalized guidance or experiences for students during class time. Flipped classrooms are being touted as transformative, yet little conclusive research has demonstrated this yet. Examples of transformative technology-integration practices include:

Cincinnati Public Schools Virtual High School. This virtual school brings students

together during regular school hours, but students work primarily with online content while having face-to-face access to teachers. Two highly qualified teachers in each subject share a lab with two intervention specialists (for students with an Individual Education Plan), a reading specialist, a school social worker, a guidance counselor, a technology support person and a security staff provide support to the students when they attend the computer labs in two groups every day for three hours in the morning or afternoon.

The Commonwealth Connections Academy (CCA). This K-11 Pennsylvania public

school hosts a mostly online delivery system, yet provides a face-to-face component through a drop-in center where online students work with highly qualified teachers in person. The academy is mostly for struggling students. It also conducts events such as Craft Days and invites all students to attend with their teachers.

Virtual Schools and Kentucky Virtual High School (KYVS). Through a common P-

20 course management system (CMS) platform, local school districts across the state receive this blended learning opportunity. KYVS provides teacher access to a “course shell” for a year and includes professional development, technical support, a student help desk, and the KYVS online content and mentoring for the classroom teachers. Teachers enroll students in an online course to work both inside and outside the classroom, or they can use the CMS to bring online content into the classroom.

Henrico County, Virginia. Schools in this county teamed up with Apple and Dell to deploy a laptop to each secondary school student and staff to close the digital divide and to support a new paradigm for 21st Century teaching and learning. The schools contracted with a local service provider to offer low-cost internet access for students and teachers who did not have access and partnered with text and software publishers for resource materials. Each secondary school had its own technical trainer to support integration of the technology with ongoing staff development. Learn more: http://www.classroomconnections.k12.sd.us/information/training/Teaching_Learning_Initiative.pdf.



Technology can support differentiated student learning. Two technology initiatives that demonstrate how technology can change schools include:

NC 1:1 Learning Technology Initiative [NCLTI]. This project is a strategic plan to

support North Carolina high schools achieve the mission established by the NC State Board of Education: Every public school student will graduate from high school, globally competitive for work and postsecondary education and prepared for life in the 21st Century. NCLTI provided a wireless computing device for every student and teacher as well as technology infrastructure, policy, professional development, community engagement, funding and organization for a sustainable model. Learn more: https://www.fi.ncsu.edu/project/nc-11-learning-technology-initiative-planning/.

Michigan Freedom to Learn (FTL). This statewide education program assists schools

in creating high-performing, student-centered learning environments. The goals of the project are to enhance student learning and achievement in core academic subjects and 21st Century skills, improve access to technology and wireless connections, professional development for educators, empowering parents and support of innovative structural changes in schools. A comprehensive evaluation has gauged the impact of the program as successful. Learn more: http://guide2digitallearning.com/files/Michigan.pdf.

Although some of these strategies have been implemented in some schools across Oklahoma, no statewide support for professional development or technology integration and infrastructure is available to ensure their full implementation in all schools in Oklahoma.

Adopting a Coherent Curriculum

Standards differ from curriculum and instruction in that standards are an outcome, while curriculum sets the direction or purpose of learning and the instruction directs the delivery (McTighe & Wiggins, 2012). These authors propose that the goal of a curriculum is to develop thinkers who can apply what they learn to complex situations, thus becoming college and career ready.

Understanding by Design. This popular curriculum design framework from Wiggins and

McTighe (2005) is a curricular planning and school reform approach, providing a set of curriculum design tools and design standards to produce a higher standard of achievement for students.

Curriculum 21. Curriculum 21 is a widely used curriculum strategy that encourages

curriculum mapping strategies that support a collaborative inquiry process among teachers centered on curriculum, instruction, and assessment (Jacobs & Cloud, 2010). Assessing Learning with a Balanced Approach Several national assessment consortia are developing assessment systems; most notable are those Common Core State Standards assessment partnerships, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia. Other consortia, such as National Center and State Collaborative Partnership and Dynamic Learning



Maps Alternate Assessment Consortia, are developing assessments as well. See http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Programs/Learn_More_About_the_Assessment_Consortia.html.

Massachusetts. Prior to the aforementioned consortia, most states had developed and administered their own assessments. The states showing the greatest increases in test scores over time along with a closing of achievement gaps were Massachusetts, New Jersey and Maryland (Anderson, 2011). Massachusetts has been reportedly taking a significant leadership role in the design and development of the PARCC Assessments.

Longitudinal Growth Data Systems. In Oklahoma, an Oklahoma State University

researcher is collaborating with Western Heights Schools to implement a growth model assessment system that provides teachers, parents and students with timely data three times a year, tracking student growth as well as a variety of factors that can impact student learning. Learn more: http://education.okstate.edu/about-the-college/news/806-mwavita-student-growth.

Formative Assessment for Students (FAST) SCASS. This project is a part of the Council of Chief State School Officers with the purpose of advancing formative assessment implementation in the states. FAST SCASS is developing resources to support the implementation of formative assessments in states.

Delaware. The state partnered with the Council of Chief State School Officers to

implement a comprehensive and balanced assessment system. State teams in the study used the text and workbook, Classroom Assessment for Student Learning (CASL), a DVD professional development package, as well as facilitator guides and internet support. For description and study results, see http://www.cpre.org/images/stories/cpre_pdfs/cpre_ten-state_assessment_web%20copy.pdf. Preparing Teachers and Supporting Induction

High-quality clinical preparation of teachers is key to producing students’ success and is being recognized as such across the country. Examples of strong clinical preparation initiatives include:

Clinical rounds. Commonly known as the Rounds Project, this has significantly

revamped the preparation of secondary history and social studies teachers based on increased authentic literacy. Moje and Bain (2011) developed cross-course and cross-semester coordination of curricula and activities with a spiraling program of study that allowed instructors in one course or field experience to refer to and build on lessons learned in another. The interns are placed in five different classrooms in five different school settings over two semesters in order to see a variety of contexts and practices. Learn more: the article at http://www.soe.umich.edu/files/rounds_story.pdf.

PDS NEXT Project. Arizona State University and the Arizona Board of Regents is

among the 28 Teacher Quality Partnership grants, receiving the largest award of all USDE grantees to provide a statewide, school-university teacher education partnership that includes Arizona State’s College of Teacher Education and Leadership, its College of Liberal Arts and



Sciences, the Vice President’s Office of Educational Partnerships, the Rodel Foundation, and 15 high-need urban and rural partner districts representing 230 schools with a goal to reform 25 historically struggling schools in the urban and rural partner districts. Contact: Scott Ridley, Project Director, [email protected]; see http://asunews.asu.edu/20090930_pdsnextgrant.

Initial Professional Teacher Education Program. University of Colorado Denver has used an extensive professional development school (PDS) clinical model to prepare graduate and undergraduates for urban schools. Education teacher candidates experience four internships, exceeding the state’s required 800 hours of field experience, completing the licensure program in a 12- or 18-month format. Learn more: http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/SchoolOfEducation/Pages/Home.aspx.

Oklahoma examples. Several induction examples in Oklahoma stand out, including: Norman Public Schools [NPS]. After participating in the Oklahoma Mentoring Network

professional development institute sponsored by the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation, NPS has continued to train teacher mentors to work with beginning teachers. The University of Oklahoma’s Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education provides university mentors to their graduates to support this effort in their first year of teaching.

Urban Teacher Academy. The University of Central Oklahoma has partnered with

Oklahoma City Public Schools to provide mentors for student teachers and first-year teachers who aspire to teach in their schools. Mentors and mentees received professional development and ongoing support through the student teaching and beginning year for the teachers. This cooperative has expanded to partner with the University of Oklahoma’s Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education.

Partnerships such as these could be expanded and supported across the state. In Oklahoma, universities could work individually to create coherence in their offerings and include more authentic literacy, such as occur in the reader’s and writer’s workshop models, as a cornerstone of teacher preparation. To support the implementation of strong clinical practices, there is a need to collaborate with schools to give systemic support for adjustments. This effort might be led by the Regents for Higher Education in conjunction with the Oklahoma State Department of Education and the Oklahoma Career Technology Department. Improving Teacher Learning and Professional Development

Professional development schools. Demonstrate meaningful collaborative partnerships between P-12 and higher education. School-university partnerships provide multiple examples of high-quality teacher learning and professional development. These partnerships across the nation are shaping educator leadership and practice. Learn more: http://www.napds.org/.

Clinton Public Schools in Oklahoma. Technology can support differentiated student learning as well as teacher professional development. Clinton Schools implemented a 1:1 technology initiative several years ago. By 2013, they have more than 2,000 iPads in the district, with pre-k through 4th grades at a 2:1 iPad ratio and 5th through 12th grades at a 1:1 ratio. To



support the implementation of technology integration, Clinton Public Schools’ Professional Learning Days allowed teachers to showcase innovation and best practices in the classroom. Teachers prepared short presentations to share innovation and best classroom practices, and teachers rotated through various sessions. Teachers overwhelmingly endorsed this approach to professional development. Learn more: contact Beth Richert at [email protected]. Summary of Transformational Practices The selected practices demonstrate some of the advancements that are being implemented across the state and country. Student-learning strategies, supports and standards are changing to address the current learning research. Schools need collaborative and innovative workplaces in which teachers and leaders have the capacity to focus on student learning. Addressing students’ personalized learning needs is essential to propelling Oklahoma to the forefront in student performance. Teachers and leaders “should be treated as members of a highly regarded profession” (USDE, 2013b, p. 2).

Learning, Teaching, and Assessing Recommendations

The recommendations result from the research and information gained about the key issues and transformational practices and are divided into similar areas, as are the key issues and transformational practices. RECOMMENDATION 1.0: Develop instructional pathways allowing students to progress at their own pace to graduation.

Possible action steps include: • Incorporate technology into the classroom that expands learning opportunities for all

students, prepares them for college and workplace and aids in self-paced learning. • Develop learning pathways that incorporate community, business leaders, etc., and make

learning relevant and authentic. • Create Personalized Learning Pathways that provide individual graduation goals and

mentoring for each student. ACT-EPAS [EXPLORE & PLAN] currently is provided by the Oklahoma Higher

Regents to support secondary student growth and learning goals. ACT is developing ACT Aspire, which will be a digital assessment that can connect student performance from elementary schools through high schools. Implementing an assessment system such as Aspire can help educators identify the knowledge and skills that students are lacking so that targeted interventions can be provided. Working with families and regional industries, each student would meet with a mentor to help guide him/her to reach academic, career, and personal/social goals. The implementation of this process might be led by the Regents and supported through cooperative efforts among the Regents, the Oklahoma State Department of Education, and the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education. Also, see Culture, Climate and Organizational Efficacy.

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Furthermore, these recommendations fit well with the Oklahoma Business and Education Coalition’s initiatives to graduate all students from high school ready for college and work, especially developing interventions and support systems to ensure success and decrease dropouts, while increasing graduation. RECOMMENDATION 2.0: Promote early learning and foster school success to prepare for college, career readiness, and citizenship.

RECOMMENDATION 2.1: Develop an integrated early childhood system that includes effective and specific practices. Support efforts to increase the quality of all preschool programs in the state, to align preschool and K12 education, and to evaluate long-term impact through longitudinal data (Rand, 2009). Provide adequate funding so that all students have access to high-quality early childhood programs. RECOMMENDATION 2.2: Require all early childhood teachers to be well trained and competent in best practices. Incentives may be needed to recruit and retain early childhood educators, as there is a current shortage. RECOMMENDATION 2.3: Provide adequate and equitable access, support, and guidance to prepare all students for college, career, and citizenship readiness. This recommendation is compatible with the Oklahoma Business and Education Coalition’s initiatives to graduate all students from high school ready for college and work, especially developing interventions and support systems to ensure success and decrease dropouts, while increasing graduation. After assessing the needs of schools in Oklahoma, the Marzano Research Center (2011) recommended that student engagement should receive school-wide emphasis.

RECOMMENDATION 3.0: Revise Oklahoma policies to align with the requirements of the new Oklahoma standards and its assessments.

Possible actions include: • Design and implement a statewide system of balanced, formative assessments to improve

student learning (assessing problem solving, finding and organizing information, framing and conducting investigations and analyzing and synthesizing data).

• Align formative and summative assessments to state-adopted standards.

This recommendation is compatible with the Oklahoma Business and Education Coalition’s initiatives to raise standards by improving testing and developing valid and reliable tests that measure greater depth of knowledge.



RECOMMENDATION 4.0: Develop a balanced statewide assessment system that measures individual student growth providing real-time data that is readily available to teachers and others, easily understood, and assists in diagnosis of individual student progress. Assessment is important, but it should not drive curriculum and instruction. Assessments should yield timely, targeted, valid and reliable results that can provide understandable data for teachers to diagnosis individual student progress through an ongoing growth model with multiple indicators included. Assessment data should be easily accessible, easily understandable and able to be manipulated into charts and graphs for sharing with students and parents. Strong assessment and data systems support schools in determining their school strengths and weaknesses as recommended by the Marzano Research Center (2011). A balanced assessment system includes periodic summative assessments with frequent teacher-generated formative assessments and ongoing student self-assessment (National Forum on Education Statistics, 2011). A robust growth measures data system includes not only test performance but also other factors such as attendance, mobility, discipline and demographics. Alignment between the state assessment system and the benchmark assessments is needed to provide a coherent system, and both state and benchmark assessments should be aligned to state standards. Also, see Governance, Leadership, and Accountability Recommendation 5.1. RECOMMENDATION 5.0: Provide technology integration that will enhance teaching and student learning.

RECOMMENDATION 5.1: The Oklahoma Department of Education and Oklahoma Legislature will provide adequate infrastructure to sustain a variety of technologies designed to support student learning and facilitate assessments. Possible action steps include:

• Develop a statewide plan to provide students access to technology on a 24/7 basis. • Develop statewide partnerships to provide equitable access to internet connections for

low socioeconomic demographics to reduce the information gap. Also, see Physical Resources Recommendations 1.0 and 2.0.

RECOMMENDATION 6.0: Revise the guidelines for teacher preparation to require substantial and adequate clinical experience during pre-service teacher preparation and all routes of teacher preparation.

RECOMMENDATION 6.1: Require and support a change in requirements to include clinical experiences (for a minimum length of one semester) for all entering the profession. A minimum of 450 hours (15 weeks at 30 hours per week) should be required of and provided for each candidate for clinical experiences. This would include a system for



those who wish to change their careers from a field such as engineering to transition to teaching through clinically based preparation tailored to adult learner needs. RECOMMENDATION 6.2: School districts and universities will jointly design and supervise strong clinical practice collaborations and will offer incentives to schools that act as clinical settings for teacher candidates. Teacher preparation assessments that include more than subject matter and pedagogical

tests and that are based on a multidimensional portfolio review for all teachers entering the profession, including alternatively certified teachers, can provide a strong foundation for the teaching profession (Darling-Hammond, 2012). These recommendations are compatible with the Oklahoma Business and Education Coalition’s initiatives to ensure standards of teacher preparation are competitive and aligned with professional requirements. See Partnerships for Human Capital and Organizational Development. RECOMMENDATION 7.0: Reshape Oklahoma policies and strategies related to professional development and instructional improvement to support teachers’ engagement in effective and sustained professional development.

Support teachers in their own professional development (Wei, Darling-Hammond, & Adamson, 2010). Find ways for teachers to work together, and encourage them to set their own personal learning goals regarding instructional strategies (Marzano Research Center, 2011).

Possible actions include: • Provide personalized professional development for teachers based on teacher needs and

evaluations. • Provide collaborative time for professional development and subject-area curriculum

planning. • Use student-learning data to assess the effectiveness of professional development. • Create personalized professional development plans for teachers based on teacher needs

and evaluations. • Establish research-based state standards for high-quality professional development. • Create an incentive-driven professional development initiative for teachers to acquire

advanced skills. • Develop and target resources for equity in professional learning. • Adequately fund comprehensive professional development for all educators.



Early and Expanded Learning Opportunities for Student Success

High-quality, early and expanded learning opportunities play a vital role in the production of positive outcomes for students.

Introduction

Learning opportunities and experiences for Oklahoma students should not just occur

within the traditional school day and traditional classroom models. Expanded learning opportunities should begin at birth, extend through graduation, and expand outside of the school into the community and beyond the school day. This committee focused on early childhood needs from birth to four-years as nearly three-quarters of Oklahoma’s four-year-olds are served in public schools. These students show improved pre-reading, pre-writing and pre-math skills, as well as social-emotional skills (Blagg & Tepe, 2013).

Expanded learning time offers a range of activities and programs to support improved

learning within and outside of the school day, redesigning the conventional school day and school calendar model. Learning should be student-centered: emerging from student interests and experiences that enhance teaching, learning and connecting to community resources. John Dewey proposes that communities should want the same kind of educational experiences as the best and brightest parents would want for their own child (Boydston, 1980).

The U.S. poverty rate is higher than in any industrialized country participating in the

international PISA tests, and America’s poor has been struggling for some time, heightening the need for additional supports and interventions for learning (Strauss, 2013). Nationally, nearly 22 percent of America’s children live at or below poverty, and half live in low-income families that struggle just to meet their family’s basic needs (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2012). School reformers have dismissed the impact of poverty on school achievement, arguing that schools use it as an excuse for not improving learning. Yet not only have federal funds dropped in 2011 (Isaacs, Toran, Hahn, Fortuny & Steuerle, 2012), but Oklahoma was ranked as one of the states doing the least to assist children in poverty (Huffington Post, 2011). Oklahoma spends the fourth smallest amount on education per pupil, the third least amount in employee benefits for those in the education system and the second least amount in teachers’ salaries relative to the number of students in the state (Huffington Post, 2011). Children in poverty have inequitable access and opportunity to participate in high-quality early and expanded learning opportunities, such as physically enriching activities, community and social services, quality childcare, early childhood experiences and cognitive enrichment resources (Gorski, 2013). Children in all schools need and deserve equitable access to receive high-quality early and expanded learning opportunities.

High-quality, early and expanded learning opportunities play a vital role in the

production of positive outcomes for students. They not only support academic achievement, but also connect students with community resources, an array of interests and possible careers. Early and expanded learning opportunities provide a high economic value, increase academic achievement, lower dropout rates, reduce crime, prevent teen pregnancies and prepare students to earn high wages (Redd, Boccanfuso, Walker, Princiotta, Knewstub & Moore, 2012). High-



quality expanded learning experiences show increased academic achievement, increased school engagement and improved social and emotional development, making them a sound economic investment in the future (Wimer, 2007; Little, Wimer & Weiss, 2008).

Guiding Principles

The following principles served as a guide to inform the vision of what effective early and expanded learning opportunities for student success might entail: • Responsibility for children’s readiness depends on the adults who care for them and the

communities, organizations and agencies that support and provide services for them. • All children must be given universal opportunities to high-quality early and expanded

learning regardless of the spoken language, family structure or socioeconomic status (SES) of their parents. Geographical location or the background of families should not be a barrier to needed life skill experiences.

• Children develop through interrelated domains requiring different levels and types of support for physical well-being and development, social and emotional development, approaches to learning, language development, and cognition and general knowledge.

• Working together as partners, parents, health professionals, educators and others can nurture children through their growth and development to reach their full potential.

• The family and community’s involvement in early and expanded learning is critical to the student’s success in school and college and career readiness.

• All school-age youth, regardless of their geographical location, background or socioeconomic status, deserve to spend their out-of-school hours in safe and nurturing learning environments.

• When adults in the home, school and community work together to support the healthy development of all children, including those with special educational or health care needs, this environment helps to meet their children’s social, emotional and educational needs.

Key Issues

This section is a discussion of the components needed to provide extensive opportunities for Oklahoma student success. This component focuses on early and expanded learning opportunities that exist outside the regular school day, including readiness for early childhood education, before- and after-school programs, summer programs, career and college-readiness experiences for secondary students, and parent and community engagement for the success of expanded education.

Transitioning from Early Education Opportunities into Schools

Students have a more successful educational experience when they have adequate early and expanded learning opportunities. What occurs before a child enters the school system and the experiences they have outside the school day greatly impacts the success they have through their school years. These experiences, plus the level of parental involvement and engagement with other positive adult influences, can contribute to successful career and college readiness. RAND researchers (2005) reviewed successful early childhood programs and found significant benefits, including “cognition and academic achievement, behavioral and emotional



competencies, educational progression and attainment, child maltreatment, health, delinquency and crime, social welfare program use, and labor market success” (p. 2).

Children who attend early learning programs have greater success in education and future academic endeavors. In order for a child to enter the education system prepared to learn, it is dependent upon not only the children, but also the adults and community resources that support them. There are many challenges that may prevent families from adequately preparing their children for school, including language, socioeconomic status, geographic location and family diversity. The availability and consistency of early learning readiness education programs should be universal. These challenges are addressed through an increased and continual collaboration between the education system and the family, addressing the student’s needs on a holistic level, as well as through local, county and statewide organizational partnerships. More successful early childhood programs can be costly, suggesting more money may need to be spent to receive greater benefits. These programs result in a $1.80 to $17.07 return for each dollar spent (RAND, 2005).

The Oklahoma Parents as Teachers [OPAT] program is an example of an innovative and effective program that is utilized by some families within the state. In areas where OPAT is available, this program provides education and resources for parents to improve their parenting skills, which then contributes to the positive emotional, social and cognitive growth of their children from birth to three years of age (Pfannenstiel & Seitz, 2007). Nationally, Parents As Teachers has been found to reduce the achievement gap for children entering kindergarten when combined with quality preschool education (Pfannenstiel, Seitz, & Zigler, 2002; Zigler, Pfannenstiel, & Seitz, 2008). Research indicates that all children, regardless of their family’s socioeconomic status, benefit from additional educational supports through third grade (Pfannenstiel & Seitz, 2007). An evaluation study of OPAT showed improvements in children’s cognitive, language, social and motor development (OTAC, 2011). Yet, in Oklahoma, access to this program is limited. For example, in 2012-2013, the Oklahoma State Department of Education reported funding a total of $1,001,500.00 to 37 grantees (Barresi, Axtell & Reeves, 2013).

As a result of the national recession, pre-K programs continue to suffer, while the number

of families without the means to provide high-quality preschool education programs increases (Barnett, Carolan, Fitzgerald & Squires, 2012). As a part of the state’s funding formula having a per-pupil weight, these state pre-K programs have received proportional cuts with all other public school grade levels.

Providing Before-School, After-School and Summer Learning Opportunities

Expanded learning opportunities [ELO] improve student outcomes. ELOs provide expanded academic enrichment and engagement while connecting youth with their community (Afterschool Alliance, 2010). In addition to providing additional learning opportunities for our students, out-of-school programs also provide a safe environment for children beyond the school day. According to the Afterschool Alliance (2009), 29 percent of Oklahoma’s K-12 students are on their own after school and are in need of a structured environment to learn and interact with their peers. After-school programs provide enriched, authentic learning opportunities, including but not limited to: the arts, physical activities, science, technology, engineering, mathematics and



the arts projects and life-enrichment experiences that students may not have access to in their daily life. These expanded learning experiences are a great opportunity for the development of partnerships with local businesses and organizations. The Educational Research Service (2002) asserts that connections with others in the school and community can play a key role in creating safe schools as well as enhancing student development and academic achievement. Although afterschool programs can be highly impactful, many children do not have access to them. Oklahoma provides flow-through funding for 21st Century Community Learning Centers Competitive grants from the United States Department of Education authorized under Title IV, Part B, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. In 2013, there were only 13 schools and communities awarded funding. The Oklahoma Afterschool Network exists, but Oklahoma does not provide funding, as do most other states, which places the burden on individual Oklahoma schools and communities to find their own funding so they can support the needed efforts for these before- and after-school or summer learning experiences for students. Expanding Learning Opportunities for Career and College Success

Students of all ages need targeted support to ensure their readiness for college and their future careers. Not only do afterschool programs keep students safe in supervised activities, but they also help students academically and socially. Expanded learning opportunities that are school-based and school-linked can increase academic achievement (Redd, Boccanfuso, Walker, Princiotta, Knewstub, & Moore, 2012). Through these opportunities, students of all ages can engage in constructive activities with peers and connect with caring, competent adults in the community and in a monitored digital world. Younger students may learn about community resources and explore careers in addition to extended academic activities and support, service learning, or mentoring activities.

Although many afterschool programs are directed towards K-8, older students also gain

from expanded learning experiences in a safe, positive environment. Despite the research that indicates the need for positive socialization and mentorship in secondary education, generally we do not have after-school opportunities for our high school students (Afterschool Alliance, 2009). Secondary students also have unique opportunities that may not be available to elementary and middle school students, including job shadowing, career technology centers and military preparation. Many after-school and summer learning programs partner with community agencies and universities to expose youth to the college experience by taking them on visits to college campuses, identifying and providing assistance in the college and financial aid application process and encouraging students who do not see themselves as college material. Other after-school and summer learning programs provide youth with opportunities to explore careers, intern or participate in community service projects. Partnerships among schools, expanded learning programs and the greater community can offer students a complementary learning environment in which they can truly thrive. By aligning after-school programs to school learning, student performance and the achievement gap can be addressed (Metlife Foundation, 2011).

In Oklahoma, there are many school-age children who lack access to after-school and

expanded learning opportunities. For example, the Afterschool Network (2009) only reaches 1



out of 100 of the 5- to 18-year-old students, according to their 2009 fiscal report. Many states provide legislative funding for after-school networks, but Oklahoma does not.

Engaging Parents and Community

The focus of engaging parents and communities is to build partnerships that support all students within the community. Students of Oklahoma deserve the most innovative, integrative education possible, which requires support from all members of our community. A common theme throughout this document is family and community engagement. Harvard Family Research Project and United Way World Wide (2011) asserts that family engagement benefits students by improving school readiness, increasing achievement, improving social skills and behavior and preparing them for high school graduation.

Family, school and community engagement are essential components of preparing

students to be college and career ready. Research shows correlations between family engagement and student achievement (Henderson & Mapp, 2002); thus, a systematic and integrated approach to family and community involvement is needed to leverage improvements in student learning. Too often, family and community engagement is not connected with instructional practices and school reform, but rather as a separate add-on (Weiss, Lopez, & Rosenberg, 2010). School personnel often treat parents and families as bystanders rather than partners. Instead, family engagement should be a shared responsibility that continues from birth to adulthood and occurs in multiple settings and contexts throughout the child’s life (Weiss et al., 2010). When parents are aware of the developmental needs and milestones of their children, they can better support their learning.

Rural schools and communities have different strengths and needs from their urban and

suburban counterparts; however, family and community engagement remains important. In a study of high-performing, high-need rural schools, supportive relationships with families were shown to impact a school’s success (Barley & Beesley, 2007). Some studies indicate that rural schools have not effectively engaged with families (Witte & Sheridan, 2011). Rural students feel connected to their communities and even describe their communities in terms of its small businesses, such as convenience stores and gas stations (Herzog & Pittman, 1995). In rural communities, the basis for family and community engagement can be built on these established connections (Witte & Sheridan, 2011). Examples of successful community schools do exist in rural communities (Williams, 2010).

A research -supported model for all Oklahoma schools to engage families does not exist nor do laws to promote family and community engagement. Most states encourage family engagement through legislation, emphasizing public policy to expand opportunities for educators and parents to work together as partners for their students. Oklahoma is one of 11 states that lack specific family engagement laws (Belway, Duran, & Spielberg, 2009). Oklahoma can do more to meet its potential in bringing together communities in support of the needed expanded learning opportunities for student success in rural, suburban and urban communities.



Summary of Key Issues While Oklahoma has made great strides in early education, specifically through the

creation of a nationally recognized pre-kindergarten program, access to this program remains limited for many children. In addition, many other needs exist in early childhood education, before- and after-school timeframes for all ages and support during students’ transitional periods between elementary and secondary education. Special attention should be paid to practices that may improve our students’ readiness for success in career and college. Parent and community engagement in rural, suburban and urban school districts throughout a student’s educational lifespan can support the above needs and ensure academic success.


Many examples of transformational practices exist across the country and in Oklahoma.

This committee found transformational practices in the areas of early education, outside of school time, high school opportunities and parent and community education. Several of these are highlighted in the following examples.

Transitioning from Early Education Opportunities into Schools

Harlem Children's Zone Project [HCZ]. HCZ provides an enriching environment of college-oriented peers and supportive adults, beginning with The Baby College, a series of workshops for parents of children ages zero to three. An increase in frequency of reading to their children was shown by 86 percent of attendees. Harlem Gems is an all-day pre-kindergarten program for kindergarten readiness. The results show that participating students increased their school readiness. Learn more: http://www.hcz.org/.

Educare. This national network of early childhood schools provides full-day, year-round

schools for at-risk children from birth to five years. It ensures school readiness for at-risk children through early education practices. Three centers in Tulsa and one in Oklahoma City serve at-risk children. Learn more: http://www.tulsaeducare.org/ or http://www.educareschools.org/home/index.php.

Smart Start Central Oklahoma. Smart Start Central Oklahoma’s mission is the

mobilization of the community to build an early childhood system that supports young children and their families in the most effective and efficient way possible. They provide free programming and/or resources to fill the gap in school-readiness services for young children and their families. Their goal is to increase positive outcomes for children and families in the areas of family support, early care and education, physical and mental health and public awareness and engagement. There are 18 Smart Start communities that are implementing strategies to support young children from birth to age six and their families across Oklahoma. Learn more: http://www.smartstartok.org/communities.

Oklahoma Community-Based Family Resource and Support Program. This

program was developed by rural county health departments to improve maternal and child health



and development. The program meets the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for being evidence based. Learn more: http://homvee.acf.hhs.gov/CBFRS_Short_Report.pdf.

Providing Before-, After-school, and Summer Learning Opportunities

Oklahoma Afterschool Network [OKAN]. The Oklahoma Afterschool Network [OKAN] is part of the National Network of Statewide Afterschool Network funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The OKAN mission is to ensure that all children and youth in Oklahoma have access to safe, enriching learning opportunities during their out-of-school time. Recently, OKAN developed quality standards for after-school programs in Oklahoma. See the standards at http://www.okafterschool.org/quality-standards. These standards can be used to assess after-school program strengths and opportunities for improvement. Learn more: www.okafterschool.org.

New York State Afterschool Network: Maximizing Website Impact. This website for

after-school programs serves as a strategy to inform policy and practice by sharing consensus-based documents and tools. Many of these tools can help others advance connections between expanded learning opportunities and education. Learn more: http://www.nysan.org/.

Expanding Learning for Career and College Success

Harlem Children's Zone Project [HCZ]. Although starting with an early childhood initiative, HCZ includes best-practice programs for children of every age through college. The network includes in-school, afterschool, social service, health and community-building programs. The purpose of HCZ is to help kids in a sustained way and to create a critical mass of adults to help them be successful. Learn more: http://www.hcz.org/.

The Literacy Lab. In Washington, D.C., a nonprofit is working to close the literacy gap

by providing low-income children with direct reading instruction. The nonprofit partners with Target and Minnesota Reading Corps in launching the Metro DC Reading Corps. The Reading Corps replicates Minnesota’s highly effective literacy intervention program for children ages three to grade three. Through literacy lab, identified students receive daily literacy interventions by full-time, trained tutors and have shown a 1.5-grade level increase in reading. Learn more: http://education.uschamber.com/promising-practice/literacy-lab-opens-doors-dc.

Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection (HW-SC). This innovative program intervenes

early with seventh-grade students who meet the criteria for being at risk of academic failure and connects these students to supports within their community. The identified students are matched with a professional, school-based Youth Advocate serving as a long-term mentor who also assists with finding specific resources needed by the student. Learn more: http://education.uschamber.com/promising-practice/youth-development-program-increases-graduation-rates-risk-students.

Virtual Job Shadow. The website VirtualJobShadow.com was launched in 2003 with

the goal of preparing students for the 21st Century economy. The website provides individual accounts for all students in the district, allowing each student to login to their “locker,” which



contains information about what they have viewed, their saved “favorites,” and saved documents/quizzes. Currently, initiatives include the creation of a résumé builder for students. OKC Public Schools has helped thousands of Oklahoma City teens explore careers in national, regional, and local career options, providing interactive video interviews from real-world people in various careers, information pertaining to the educational background and experience necessary to attain the desired position, and tracking services for teachers and program coordinators to monitor student activity. Learn more: http://virtualjobshadow.com/.

Engaging Parents and Communities

Families and Schools Together [FAST]. FAST is a nonprofit agency that focuses on family strengthening and parent-involvement programs to help kids succeed in school and in life. FAST uses evidence-based parental involvement programs and prevention/intervention programs to empower parents and their children to meet the many challenges they face. Using a collaborative framework of local support, the mission of FAST is to help the community create a strong family-accountability infrastructure and reduce the amount of risks children face. FAST programs have been tested clinically and refined in the marketplace of schools and service facilities and have received longstanding support from Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin Center for Educational Research (WCER). Learn more: www.familiesandschools.org.

Strengthening the Families 10-14. Parents and youth attend separate skill-building

sessions. Evaluation results show a decrease in substance use and behavior problems and an increase in resistance of peer pressure with an increase of support, affection, and effectiveness for parents. This curriculum is supported by Iowa State University and is a seven-week curriculum-based program that can be implemented in ones’ community following training. Effective results have been shown in Caucasian, African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian, Alaskan Native, and Hispanic families, for both girls and boys, and in rural, urban and suburban settings. Learn more: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/sfp10-14/.

Schools of the 21st Century. The Schools of the 21st Century (21C) is a model for

school-based child care and family support services including a year-round, multiservice center providing high-quality, accessible services from early morning to early evening that supports parents as their child’s first teacher and establishes a nurturing environment for pre-school and school-age children during non-school hours. Learn more: http://www.yale.edu/21C/index2.html.

Tulsa Area Community Schools Initiative [TACSI]. In Tulsa, schools and community

leaders partnered to create Tulsa Area Community Schools Initiative [TACSI]. They built a collaborative leadership structure to share responsibility for meeting their goals. Together, the school districts, city, community agencies, OU-Tulsa and other community partners operate 31 community schools. Research shows that students in high-implementing community schools outperformed non-community schools in math by 32 points and reading by 19 points. Learn more: http://www.communityschools.org/results/results.aspx.



Owsley Elementary, Booneville, KY; Molly Stark School, Bennington, VT; and Noble High School, North Berwick, ME. These three schools provide examples of effective rural community schools. These three low-resource rural communities responded to their students’ academic needs as well as the adults’ needs to improve student learning. Learn more: http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2010/09/pdf/ruralschools.pdf.

Broader, Bolder Communities. Communities across the country have embraced a

range of comprehensive strategies to improve educational opportunities to increase student learning. Communities such as Tangelo Park, Fla., Douglas and Sarpy County, Neb., and Humble, Texas, have benefitted from the community-wide initiatives. Learn more: http://www.boldapproach.org/comprehensive-strategies. Summary of Transformational Practices Transformational practices in early education, outside of school time, high school opportunities and parent and community education were highlighted. Those operational in Oklahoma are limited to a few districts or schools.

Early and Expanded Learning Opportunities Recommendations

Based on the key issues and the transformational practices reviewed, the following recommendations are made.

RECOMMENDATION 1.0: Create a statewide initiative that supports and promotes all districts with their community partners in providing free, equitable, early and expanded education opportunities to all children and families.

We propose that this initiative allow for multiple approaches and be multifaceted. It should provide not only academic learning opportunities, but opportunities for positive physical, social and emotional development for all children as well. Community engagement and ownership should be encouraged throughout the initiative.

RECOMMENDATION 1.1: Review and implement the Oklahoma Afterschool Quality Standards and Assessment Tool for new and existing programs to ensure that our students are receiving rigorous and authentic learning experiences within an environment that promotes education, health, and safety. Provide training for schools and communities on use of the standards and establish supports for achieving the standards. RECOMMENDATION 1.2: Provide adequate funding for continuation of Oklahoma’s strong pre-school and full-day kindergarten programs with access for all children.



Research is clear on the benefits of early childhood education, yet funding in Oklahoma has been declining. Through adequate funding, all children can access strong pre-school and full-day kindergarten programs. RECOMMENDATION 1.3: Secure financial sustainability for effective early and expanded learning programs for all children in Oklahoma, such as Educare, Smart Start and the Oklahoma Afterschool Network. Though Oklahoma has made a commitment to early education and provided some funding for expanded education efforts, it has not dedicated sustainable funding to high-quality programs around the state. Community commitment, combined with grants, community partnerships and local revenue, can provide the funding necessary to create, sustain and improve early and expanded learning programs in Oklahoma. Leaders need to assess the supports present in communities and the potential to provide additional support, as well as identify the necessary funding (Ackerman & Barnett, 2005). According to the Oklahoma Afterschool Network, Oklahoma is one of only 11 states that do not provide funding support for a network.

RECOMMENDATION 2.0: Establish a statewide family-engagement initiative to ensure our families have the support to develop partnerships with school and community resources necessary for student success.

It is important to engage the family in the whole process of their child’s academic career, social endeavors and extracurricular activities. Many states have laws mandating parent engagement. Oklahoma educational leaders and the state PTA should review these laws and make policy recommendations (Belway, Duran, & Spielberg, 2009). This effort would promote the USDE Blueprint for R.E.S.P.E.C.T. (USDE, 2013) vision for an Engaged Community that addresses the linkage of schools and their communities.

RECOMMENDATION 2.1: Create collaborative networks amongst counties that provide accessible and equitable education, social services and resources to all families, regardless of income or geographical location to coordinate services for children, starting with zero- to four-year-olds. Oklahoma has been a national leader in early childhood initiatives (vanden Heuvel, 2013), establishing the first state-sponsored quality-rating system for accreditation of early childhood programs and is the second state in the nation to offer free, voluntary access to preschool programs for all four-year-olds in 1998. Early childhood funding needs to be restored to adequate levels to ensure access for all students. Also, highly successful early childhood programs, such as Educare and SmartStart, need additional funding outside of the per-pupil funding formula so that access can be expanded.

RECOMMENDATION 2.2: Create public-private partnerships in local communities between local businesses and educational and human services organizations to provide authentic, expanded learning activities for students during out-of-school time.



Establishing partnerships with local, county and statewide entities including higher education, social service agencies, faith-based programs, business partners, retired teachers, parks and recreation, police leagues and technology centers can be helpful in providing authentic, expanded learning activities for students in an after-school setting. Collaborate with community agencies on communication with parents about available resources, such as providing space and time during enrollment, job fairs or career-exploration exhibits, parenting tips and support. As an example, The Lights on Afterschool initiative provides public awareness of the importance of high-quality afterschool programs and the need for accessible locations, as well as stressing the importance for sustained funding for schools and after-school programs to provide high-quality education programs for our students. RECOMMENDATION 2.3: Encourage districts to adopt policies and guidelines to provide year-round building access to allow schools and other agencies to provide before- and after-school and summer programs. In Oklahoma, schools are exempt from liability when outside groups use the school building. All districts need to adopt policies for this purpose. Opening up schools is a good way to help the community learn more about the schools in their community begin forging new partnerships and collaborations. RECOMMENDATION 2.4: Expand grant funding for Oklahoma Parents as Teachers so that more districts have access to this successful program. Use funds outside of the funding formula for these initiatives.

RECOMMENDATION 3.0: Integrate career counseling and teacher-student mentorship into all schools to ensure exposure to positive connections and guidance for secondary students.

Financial constraints and geographic availability explain the lack of an on-site career counselor at many Oklahoma schools. All schools should establish a teacher-student or community member-student mentorship program to ensure all secondary students are provided opportunities for positive connections with adults who will promote career and college exploration. Strengthening partnerships with area career technology centers can help meet this need.



Governance, Leadership & Accountability

Schools and districts across Oklahoma have faced many governance, accountability and leadership changes and implementation challenges.

The purpose of this committee was to ensure the rules, regulations, policies and laws that

govern public education enhance the educational process and the accountability systems and leadership promote trust, fairness and high expectations for student learning. Historically, four competing values of quality, efficiency, equity and choice have impacted school policy perspectives (Kirst & Wirt, 2009). The tensions between these competing values mean that each value may dominate policy at various times. For example, efficiency dominated early schooling through the 1950s, when equity became the emphasis. In the 1980s, excellence rose to the dominant policy perspective, with choice moving to the forefront in the 1990s. In addition, economic values of efficiency and economic growth interplay with the four competing values of quality, efficiency, equity and choice. These governance values interact with the theoretical frameworks of accountability including bureaucracy, performance, market and professionalism.

Research shows that strong district leadership positively impacts student achievement

(Waters & Marzano, 2009). These researchers found that effective district leaders collaboratively set goals, establish non-negotiable goals for classroom instruction and student achievement; create school board alignment with district goals, monitor achievement and instruction; align needed resources to support; and steward district goals. Waters & Marzano’s (2009) findings provided evidence that effective district leadership involves all school stakeholders in establishing and implementing nonnegotiable goals for achievement and instruction. These effective district leaders and board members work closely together to provide needed focus, support and monitoring of these goals.

Over the past two centuries, locally elected men and women have governed public

schools. This uniquely American institution has its roots in the locally controlled schools of the New England colonies (Hess, 2005). School board politics differ depending on district size, with larger district boards being more consumed with politics, special interests, and campaigning. Still, most board members focus on student achievement, funding and school leadership (Hess, 2005). School boards that collaborate with school leadership in focusing on student achievement and funding of resources to support learning are an effective governance structure (Dervarics & O’Brien, 2011).

The landscape of educational governance is changing. Throughout the nation, both

conservative and liberal advocates are pursuing legislation on issues of equity and adequacy to accountability and choice (Ujifusa, 2014). Accountability for expenditure of public funds and progression toward achieving the goals established by the people through democratic processes is needed. Yet, the current accountability policies are based almost exclusively on standardized test scores for reading and math, ignoring a wide array of public expectations for schools (Rothstein, Jacobsen, & Wilder, 2008).

Oklahoma has implemented many educational reforms and accountability measures over

the past several decades. Passage of HB 1017 brought a variety of reforms. Since HB 1017,



numerous additional accountability measures and reforms have been passed in Oklahoma. In 2006, the Oklahoma legislature passed the Achieving Classroom Excellence [ACE] Act, and numerous task forces have since been convened. No Child Left Behind [NCLB] brought more reform. In 2010, the Empowered Schools and School Districts Act passed allowing further options for innovation and deregulation. Recently, an A-F School Report Card for school accountability was implemented. Through these reforms, schools and districts across Oklahoma have faced many governance, accountability, and leadership changes and implementation challenges.

Guiding Principles The underlying tenets that guided our work in the areas of governance, leadership and accountability include:

• Public education is an essential institution in democratic society, quality of life and economic development.

• High-quality public schools are essential for improving business and community development.

• Local communities should possess a high level of control in their local public schools. • School governance, at all levels, works through a continual-improvement model that

adapts to organizational and jurisdictional needs. • Students, families, local communities and their public agencies, businesses and industry

benefit from an effective educational governance structure. • Schools are best governed by well-trained district and school leaders who are

knowledgeable of current educational issues. o Leadership competence is gained through experience and training. o Effective schools are governed by those with a long-term vision and an attitude

that embraces the view of a forward-thinking society. • Instructional time is not only about quantity, i.e., the number of days or hours, but also

about ensuring high-quality instruction. • Accountability and transparency are needed to maintain the trust of the community’s

public support for public education.

Key Issues

Derived from a review of literature, including research and professional practice and influenced by recent reforms, the most critical issues that face public education in the area of governance, accountability and leadership include the areas of school board training, maximizing academic school time, school size and consolidation, educator shortages, accountability and transparency and choices of schools by parents.

Improving Training for Board Members

School boards are designed to provide democratic representation and involvement in schools by community stakeholders. New educational mandates, reforms and accountability measures have created a need for better training of all school leaders, including board members.



Some states do not require any training for school board members, but the movement nationwide has been for more training rather than less. In 2003, only seventeen states required training for school board members; navigating challenging issues to provide good policy decisions requires quality training (Dahlkemper, 2005). The best boards focus on student achievement, target time, money and personnel to those students who need it, and engage the community in the district’s mission (Black, 2008).

Even though most states do not require professional development for school board

members, most state board directors support professional development, believing that it could impact student achievement (Roberts & Sampson, 2011). Research has shown a significant difference in the knowledge and beliefs of school boards in high-achieving districts than in boards in low-achieving districts (Bartusek, 2000). The differences reported in the high-achieving district board members include expressing an elevated view of students and critically assessing their learning needs. Additionally, high-achieving boards showed a greater understanding and influence in school renewal, such as system-improvement goals, a high-quality thinking curriculum, quality instructional practices, appropriate forms of assessment and staff development, with many linking board goals and school improvement initiatives (Bartusek, 2000).

When school board members focus on policy and accountability and spend their time on

governance actions to support student achievement and classroom instruction, they provide added value to the effectiveness of the public education system. Dervaics & O’Brien (2011) found that effective school board members engage in goal-setting for school improvement, monitor to ensure district resources are in alignment and review data for continuous improvement. They also engage staff and the community as well as collaborating with the superintendent. Those findings also supporting the work of Waters and Marzano (2009), who found that in districts that work, school board members are engaged in collaborative goal-setting. Furthermore, effective school board members advance their own learning to increase their knowledge and skills for governance leadership for educational reform (Dervarics & O’Brien, 2011).

In Oklahoma, school board members are required to fulfill training requirements in order

to remain on a school board. Newly elected board members must complete twelve hours within fifteen months of election, while incumbents must complete six hours within fifteen months of election. The balances of the training requirements are to be completed within the board member’s term before he/she files for reelection. The current training requirements include courses in finance, open meeting/open records, ethics, legal issues including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, school employment and other related educational topics. The passage of Senate Bill 91, adopted during the 2013 legislative session and goes into effect January 2014, allows more flexibility in meeting the training requirements. This law mandates that a newly elected board member complete one hour of training in finance, ethics, and open meeting/open records. In the past, the requirements were loosely enforced, but recently board members have lost their seats due to enforcement of training requirements. Although Oklahoma does require training for school board members, addressing the knowledge and skills present in high-achieving school districts as a part of the training is needed.



Maximizing Academic Learning Time

The time that is spent in a learning environment is critical to the development of the student and thus an important responsibility of those who govern schools. Gorski (2013) suggests increased opportunities and access to enriched learning experiences, including music and art, as well as improved classroom instruction as needed. The time students engage in school-based learning is positively related to their level of achievement, and that positive relationship is strong (ECS & NCTL, 2011). Yet state and local financial pressures have made increasing learning time difficult.

While many other states require a minimum of 180 days per year, regional state

minimums range from 174 days per year in Missouri to 186 days for grades K-11 in Kansas. Texas requires 180 instructional days and is up to187 with teacher learning time. States vary even more in the thresholds they set for school day length, with most being between 5.5 and 6.5 hours. Students in the United States spend much less time in school than do students in most other post-industrialized nations; yet time in school has remained almost unchanged in the U.S. (Marcotte & Hansen, 2010). Even though evidence indicates that extending the learning time in school increases student achievement, estimates of costs of extending the learning time have not been well documented (Marcotte & Hansen, 2010). Currently, the school calendar is developed by local school administration and adopted by the school board. In the late 1980s, the State Department of Education was directed to solicit proposals from schools to pilot the extension of their school year to 200 days or more, yet no pilot programs were initiated (McKean, 2013).

Oklahoma Statutes 70 O.S. 1-109, effective 2009, indicates a local district has the option

of choosing an 180-day calendar that includes: 175 instructional days with five professional days for grades 1-6; a 900-hour calendar; and, for grades 6-12, a 1,080-hour calendar with six hours per semester for parent-teacher conferences and a minimum school day of six hours, with some exceptions for early childhood and alternative education programs. Many districts adopted the hours calculation to better manage time with inclement weather. The Oklahoma State Department of Education offers 21st Century Learning Community supplementary grants to enhance school reform efforts, and these may be used to extend the learning time for students. Some districts have adjusted the learning time for students through staggered staff schedules, technology use and community partnerships.

Although there has been no statewide effort to adjust the learning time for students,

House Bill 1038 passed by the state legislature in 2013 allows either a required set of Carnegie units or sets of competencies for high school graduation. This bill seems to allow for cross-curricular teaching and differing course structures. State regulations for House Bill 1038 are forthcoming.

Balancing Quality and Efficiency

The efficiency value is a driver of those who promote consolidation. Recent research does not support widespread consolidation but suggests a case-by-case analysis (Cobb, 2013). Average school size and district size increased five- and ten-fold, respectively, in the 1900s (Howley, Johnson & Petrie, 2011). Research over several decades found that fiscal efficiency and academic quality drove school and district consolidation efforts. However, some schools and



communities can be irreversibly damaged by consolidation (Howley, Johnson, & Petrie, 2011). In fact, some areas of consolidation have reduced efficiency, which suggests the need to undo consolidation.

Optimal school size and consolidation has long been a topic of debate in Oklahoma. Currently, there are 532 common education school districts and twenty-nine Career and Technology Centers in Oklahoma that vary in size and structure. The last major round of school consolidation occurred voluntarily but was encouraged by House Bill 1017 in the early 1990s. The number of school districts dropped by more than 50. By 1999, all districts were required to meet or exceed the school accreditation standards or face closure. A school deregulation committee was formed in 1992, from which schools could request deregulation (McKean, 2013). In 2003, the legislature reactivated the Oklahoma School Voluntary Consolidation and Annexation Act (McKean, 2013) and created the Task Force on School District Administrative Efficiency (Pettigrew, 2004). The task force was established to determine how school administration and operations might be made more efficient through administrative reorganization and consolidation. The task force concluded that “voluntary reorganization within a school district…reorganization or combining of functions with other school districts or other education entities can also prove valuable… [and] can be made easier and less expensive due to the availability of incentive funds in the School Consolidation Assistance Fund” (Pettigrew, 2004, p. 5-6).

Schools throughout Oklahoma vary in their success and achievement, and each is responsible for its own accountability indicators. Each school district has a unique set of strengths, resources, and challenges. Successful districts allocate resources through a range of strategies, including decision-making and management structures that direct resources to support student performance goals; that is, there is no one way to allocate resources that ensures increases in student learning (Pan, Rudo, Schneider, & Smith-Hansen, 2003). Thus, a focus on school success rather than school size or consolidation is more productive than a focus on school size or consolidation alone.

Addressing Educator Shortages

Teacher quality impacts student learning, and No Child Left Behind brought new demands on districts to address this issue. Also, educator shortages impact the educational process in many ways. In this chapter, we consider the governance challenges related to educator and leader shortages, while the broader issues of teacher recruitment and retention are addressed in the section Partnerships for Human Capital and Organizational Development. Educator shortages are a result of increasing student enrollments coupled with teacher retirements as well as attrition of beginning teachers (Ingersoll, 2003). Ingersoll (2003) further asserts that hiring and recruiting practices of school districts contribute to the problem. Ingersoll (2003) notes that higher turnover rates exist more often in high-poverty public schools than in affluent ones. He also found that urban public schools experience a slightly greater turnover rate than suburban and rural public schools.

Quality teachers have an economic impact on communities. Hanusek (2011) avers that a teacher’s effectiveness of one standard deviation above the mean results in increased value in



students’ future earnings. A recent MetLife Foundation (2012) showed a decline in the percentage of teachers surveyed who reported being very satisfied in their jobs, with an increase in those considering leaving education. We agree with Fullan and Hargreaves (2012) that we need to find ways to make education attractive and develop strategies to improve teacher’s professional capital. Turnover varies by teaching fields with math, science and elementary special education having higher rates than social studies and English teachers. For example, it is not the case that there are not enough mathematics educators in Oklahoma; however, those trained as mathematics educators are not working in schools (Bradley, 1999). To attract highly qualified teacher candidates, compensation for the professionals needs to be enhanced.

Administrators and board members in rural schools also face obstacles to teacher recruitment and retention such as low salaries, isolation, housing shortages, schools badly in need of repair or modernization, multiple-subject teaching assignments and limited opportunities for professional development. No Child Left Behind Act’s requirements for highly qualified teachers have amplified these issues, with some holding on to the belief that such federal legislation drives educators away from rural schools (Desoff, 2010). To address the issues in rural districts, Ingersoll (2003) suggests possible solutions such as sharing teachers, providing funding for additional coursework, or team teaching. Gorski (2013) advises adequate resourcing to these schools might help them better address their own vulnerabilities.

By improving the teaching profession and changing hiring practices, schools can lower the rates of turnover and increase school performance (Ingersoll, 2003). Oklahoma is experiencing teacher shortages not only in rural schools, but also in suburban and urban schools for a variety of reasons. According to the Oklahoma State Department of Education (Pemberton, 2013), the current areas of shortage include mathematics, science, elementary and early childhood. The department recently convened an Educator Workforce Shortage Task Force to address the issue.

In addition to teacher shortages, a shortage of candidates with high-level leadership skills

for school leadership positions exists (Roza, Celio, Harvey & Wishon, 2003). Effective school leadership impacts school improvement and student achievement (Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004; Waters, Marzano & McNulty, 2003). Even with adequate numbers of candidates available, distribution of applicants and avoidance of challenging working conditions means that some schools face a shortage of leadership candidates (Roza, Celio, Harvey, & Wishon, 2003). University of Arkansas researchers found many teacher leaders do not want to become principals because of the pressures from testing and accountability (Hewitt, Pijanowski, Carnine & Denny, 2008). A recent study found prospective school leaders are lost along the way to becoming a leader and need for greater support and encouragement throughout the application, position offer and acceptance process is needed in order to improve the situation (DeAngelis & O’Connor, 2012). Aging trends may lead to school leader shortages as more principals near retirement age (Gates, Ringel & Santibanex, 2003). Furthermore, not all principal-preparation programs are preparing teachers to meet the challenges of school leadership (Hess, 2006). In 2006, Oklahoma implemented an alternative path to principal licensure. Well-prepared school leaders are needed in all Oklahoma schools. Leadership preparation will be addressed in the section Partnerships for Human Capital and Organizational Development.



Managing Accountability and Transparency

How a state responds to accountability is influenced by the unique political culture of the state and many struggles to find long-term, substantive improvements (Seashore-Louis, Thomas, Gordon & Febey, 2008). The authors found that while some states address accountability policies through the values of equity and efficiency, others address accountability using the value of quality. Accountability measures demand more rigorous standards and assessments, improved teacher quality and practice and increased student achievement. Testing and sanction-based accountability is not regularly producing desired results (Weiss & Long, 2013). These higher standards require extensive supports for improved student, teacher and school learning (Darling-Hammond, 2000). To achieve the necessary accountability for increased quality of student learning, policies establishing real school improvement are required (Darling-Hammond, 2004). In an extensive study of Chicago schools, researchers found that school improvement is a complex process that requires a combination of essential supports, including strong inclusive leadership, meaningful parental involvement, quality professional capacity, a student-centered learning climate, ambitious curriculum alignment and instructional coherence in a climate of community trust (Sebring et al., 2006). For extensive school improvement, assessments must guide instructional improvements rather than act to narrow the curriculum and reduce instructional quality (Darling-Hammond, 2004). Darling-Hammond (2004) asserts test-based grade retention and graduation denials indicate system failure, rather than support of true school improvement. While holding schools accountable for improving teaching to improve student learning, policies should support capacity-building measures required to produce improved teaching and learning (Elmore, 2009). An evaluation and inspection process in which accountability work includes educational stakeholders and an extensive review process hold promise for facilitating school improvement (Rhya, Ghanda & Ahn, 2013). In addition, Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder (2008) propose an accountability system that holds schools and community agencies responsible for improvements, establishes realistic growth models rather than absolute outcomes, and promotes multiple trait analysis in a balanced system.

One aspect of school accountability is the teacher evaluation process. Papay (2012) argues that teacher evaluation tools should be assessed not only on how well they measure teacher performance, but also how well they inform and support ongoing teacher development. When leaders conduct effective classroom observations and provide feedback, they increase student learning, support higher-quality instruction (Cervone, & Martinez-Miller, 2007; Weller, 2010), and provide more meaningful professional development (Boothe, 2013). To improve student learning, school leaders can enhance teacher learning by developing teacher teams that focus on evidence-based instructional practices (Marshall, 2005; Turnbull, Riley, Arcaira, Anderson, & McFarlane, 2013). When shared leadership and professional community are present, teacher instructional practices improve (Wahlstrom & Seashore-Louis, 2008). The teacher observation and consultation portion of Oklahoma’s Teacher Leader Effectiveness model has the potential to improve teacher quality and student learning.

Although ongoing supervision may help to improve teaching and learning, the literature

on the value-added teacher evaluation models indicates there may be unintended harmful consequences. These consequences may include short-termed improvements, worse student



achievement outcomes and a potential increase in the opportunity gap for students attending the wealthiest and the poorest schools (Lavigne, 2014). While others warn the reliability and validity of value-added measures are inadequate (Callister Everson, Feinauer & Sudweeks, 2013; Konstantopoulos, 2014; Papay, 2012), Braun (2005) asserts that attributing this output as an accurate indicator of a teacher’s impact on student learning is an invalid assumption, similar to making a causal interpretation of a statistical estimate. In addition, Herlihy (2014) cautions that when moving to a broader set of indicators including lesson observation, lesson plans and student achievement scores, there are numerous issues for consideration. These include reliability and validity of the measures, the generalizations tied to observation scores, observer training variables and lesson sampling techniques (Herlihy, 2014). Oklahoma SB426 established 2015-2016 as the time to include student growth measures in teacher evaluation, yet reliable and valid student academic growth measures are currently lacking.

Effective schools keep parents and community members informed through providing

accurate, accessible and wide-ranging information. According to a national survey (NSPRA, 2011), parents want and prefer instant electronic information about their student’s progress, but they also want information about curriculum, events, safety, school performance and performance comparisons to other similar schools. Improving transparency for accountability purposes should be a goal for school leaders. Distrust and disrespect hinders student and staff growth, negatively impacting student achievement (Center for Comprehensive School Reform, 2009). One way to build trust, share accountability findings and be more transparent is to provide adequate information and opportunities for parent and community input. School websites can be an efficient tool to provide accountability information. Too often schools initiate their web presence without identifying goals for the website or a plan for maintaining the site’s content. Websites generally contain notices and general information, social activities, class sites and administrative information (Tubin & Klein). Also, a school should recognize limitations, for instance, if a web master or web team will not be available to update content. Without a commitment and investment for updating of content, websites will not develop a constituency following and may reflect negatively on the organization (Tubin & Klein, 2007). Since websites can increase parent and community communication and other forms of involvement, schools should seek to focus on communication avenues through an enhanced website (Furger, 2006). Thus, websites can be one way to improve communication about accountability yet many others exist. Deciding Among Choice and Competing Values

Parents report being more satisfied when they select a school based on academic preferences. Parents are more involved with their child's education as a consequence of this choice, yet there is mixed evidence regarding improved student achievement (Teske & Schneider, 2001). Parental use of school choice shows some evidence that decisions are based on level of parental involvement and motivation rather than by race or income (Teske & Schneider, 2001). Although some studies show school voucher programs which allow public school dollars to pay for private schooling as beneficial to disadvantaged students and parents who use the vouchers, this evidence may not apply to more widespread applications (Wolf, 2008). Furthermore, Wolf (2008) and Teske and Schneider (2001) both found that the random assignment studies of school voucher programs indicate positive effects on parental satisfaction with schools, while smaller and less consistent positive effects on student test scores.



The technological age, with its fast-paced information highway, brings with it challenges

and opportunities. Business, industry and higher education have increasingly greater expectations for academic readiness and technology preparedness of students leaving high school. From these changes arises the need to blend the traditional school with the flexibility of innovative school choice plans to meet the varying needs of students. These innovative pathways should enhance educational access and opportunity and reach higher learning goals rather than merely provide students with ways to circumvent accountability

In 1999, the Oklahoma Legislature authorized charter schools on a limited basis in certain

geographic locations and through a virtual internet school pilot program known as VISION. Recently, the number of students in virtual charter schools has increased. Since 2001, additional agencies received authorization to sponsor charter schools, and the cap on the number of charter schools established per year was removed (McKean, 2013). In 2012, there were 19 charter schools in operation (Consoletti, 2012). Recent legislation authorized The Empowered Schools and School Districts Act to allow the submission of innovative plans and request deregulation from many accreditation requirements (McKean, 2013). Currently, Oklahoma authorizes charter schools by districts with an average daily membership (ADM) of 5,000 or more. A school can also be authorized under the following conditions: (a) if it is listed on the school improvement list; (b) if there is a technology center in a district of 5,000 ADM or more or a comprehensive or regional Institution of Higher Education in a district meeting the 5,000 ADM requirement; and (c) if the institution has an accredited teacher preparation program. This is in addition to a single charter school supervised by the Office of Juvenile Affairs. Although charter schools receive state funding, they maintain their own governance and are allowed greater flexibility for greater accountability. A recent United States Government Accountability Office (2012) report asserts that charter schools are enrolling lower numbers of students with disabilities than traditional public schools. In these times of decreased state funding, coupled with increased accountability and mandated changes, traditional public schools face grave challenges, whereas charter schools are afforded more flexibility. Summary of Key Issues Issues facing Oklahoma schools were identified as quality and quantity of school board training and qualifications; maximizing quality of academic school time; adjusting for school size and consolidating schools; addressing educator shortages; managing accountability and transparency; and offering choices.


Based on a study of the literature and applications both in Oklahoma and beyond, the practices foregrounded below have the potential to transform public education in the area of Governance, Accountability and Leadership. Each of the transformational practices is described and examples are provided.



Improving Training for Board Members Academic rigor, college readiness and on-time graduation are important to every student. School boards provide governance and oversight for these issues. Waters & Cameron (2007) admit that “with increasing expectations in society and in the workplace for knowledgeable, skilled, responsible citizens, the pressure on schools intensifies” (p. 60). Examples of how these issues are being addressed in schools across the nation provide a transformational practice.

Missoula, Montana. When this district school board realized their high school dropout rate exceeded community expectations, the school board established specific goals, supported administrators in their interventions and initiatives and promoted community-wide awareness (Stover, 2013). In the past three years, the graduation rate has increased to 90 percent. Learn more: http://graduationmattersmissoula.com/ or http://www.asbj.com/MainMenuCategory/Archive/2013/January/Good-Governance-in-Montana.html. Maximizing Academic Learning Time

Extending the quantity of time in school can help to increase achievement; however, quality of extended time experiences impact achievement, and more research is needed to determine the most significant factors contributing to achievement (Redd, Boccanfuso, Walker, Princiotta, Knewstub, & Moore, 2012). Several examples show the impact of allowing flexible time for learning or adding more time for learning:

Brooklyn’s P.S. 186. Leaders from schools and a nonprofit organization collaborated to

extend the school day by three hours for high-quality learning experiences and enrichment. For example, in one expanded portion of the day, the student-teacher ratio is decreased when an educator from the nonprofit joins the teacher to provide extra help for students. Learn more: http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/summer-and-extended-learning-time/summer-learning/Documents/Expanding-Learning-Enriching-Learning-Portraits-of-Five-Programs.pdf.

Balsz Elementary School District, Phoenix, AZ. Taking advantage of an Arizona law

that added 5 percent of state financing to districts and 20 days to the school year, Balsz Elementary increased from 180 to 200 days. Since the transition, the proportion of students passing state reading tests has grown to 65 percent from 51 percent, and math scores are also improving. Learn more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/education/some-schools-adopting-longer-years-to-improve-learning.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0. Balancing Quality and Efficiency

Cox and Cox (2010) found that after consolidation, enrollment and average daily attendance declined, ethnic composition changed, student academic performance did not increase significantly and expenditures actually increased over those of the pre-consolidation districts.



School Size Data. When it comes to school size or consolidation of schools, the answer is “what is the best situation to support high-quality student learning.” For information on school size, see http://www.greatschools.org/find-a-school/defining-your-ideal/528-school-size.gs.

Pennsylvania School Consolidation Checklist. Pennsylvania’s School Boards

Association provided a review checklist for districts to use to evaluate their changing demographics and economics. Using this list as they consider potential discussions among school districts, these span from sharing services to physical consolidation. Learn more: http://www.psba.org/issues-advocacy/issues-research/school-mergers/mergers_PEL-checklist.pdf.

New York Rural Districts. The following New York Rural districts of Argyle,

Cambridge, Fort Ann, Granville, Hartford, Hudson Falls, and Salem are in a single, largely agricultural county of 837 square miles that had been informally sharing services and pooling resources. They commissioned a study to find additional ways they could benefit from their collaboration. Learn more: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rural_education/2013/01/seven_rural_ny_districts_consider_sharing_to_maximize_resources.html.

Addressing Educator Shortages

A key way to improve teacher retention is to address the conditions that cause dissatisfaction, which include attending to and supporting new teachers, offering more generous salaries, addressing student discipline problems, providing resources and classroom supplies and involving faculty in decision-making (Ingersoll & Perda, 2008; Ingersoll & May, 2011).

New Haven Connecticut Public Schools. This school district partnered with the local

teacher organization to maintain effective classroom teachers and eliminate ineffective teachers in order to contribute to the common goal of helping all students succeed (Schacter, 2010).

Rural School Strategies. To address the challenges of teacher retention, along with a

smaller applicant pool, some rural schools have crafted incentives to encourage candidates to consider applying and to retain teachers for longer terms. Examples of incentives include (a) low-cost or subsidized housing, annual salary bonuses for staying beyond the first few years and larger bonuses for subsequent years of tenure; (b) grants to teachers for professional development; and (c) scholarships for district graduates who pursue education degrees in the hope they will return to teach in their schools (Schacter, 2010). Learn more: http://www.districtadministration.com/article/ toward-more-perfect-union. Managing Accountability and Transparency

Improving accountability. Many are considering ways to improve accountability measures and their use for schools.

Western Heights Schools. An assistant professor of education at Oklahoma State

University has been working with the school district to develop and implement a system that maps individual student growth through a pre-test, mid-year test and end-of-year test. The



growth model testing not only provides timely feedback to teachers, parents and students but also data to assist teachers in diagnosing student learning needs and planning appropriate instruction. Learn more: http://education.okstate.edu/about-the-college/news/806-mwavita-student-growth.

Colorado. In 2011, the Council of Chief State School Officers developed principles for

an accountability system that would include more authentic measures of academic growth and broader performance indicators. States approved for NCLB waivers selected one of three types of metrics: percentage of students, proficiency scale score or growth score (Domaleski & Perie, 2012). States that use per-student annual growth metrics address unequal rates of progress for the focal and reference groups ignoring starting points, or addressing minimizing the gap in rate of growth to proficiency, similar to the percentage proficient metric. Colorado is one example that uses student growth and compares the median growth percentile (MGP), a normative measure, to the adequate growth percentile (AGP), a criterion measure, for each subgroup. They use School View to report data through interactive data tables, graphs, and plots. Learn more: http://www.ccsso.org/Documents/2011/Roadmap_for_Next-Generation_Accountability_2011.pdf.

SSE/I in England and the Netherlands. The self-study evaluation and inspection

process allows for the multidimensional nature of school improvement. A self-study model of accountability is operational in 29 countries, mostly in Europe and the Pacific Rim. Learn more: http://internationalednews.com/2013/04/05/school-inspections-in-educational-evaluation-assessment-and-accountability/.

Montgomery County, MD. Instead of focusing on test scores and sanctions, the district directs additional resources, such as smaller classes and intensive professional development in literacy, to support teachers in targeted schools. They provide a holistic, creative curriculum focusing on critical thinking, including the arts, and addressing income-based opportunity gaps through a high-quality prekindergarten, health clinics and after-school enrichment. These measures resulted in higher test scores among minority and low-income students of any district, decreased achievement gaps and increased high school graduation and college attendance rates. Learn more: http://tcf.org/work/education/detail/housing-policy-is-school-policy/.

Broader, bolder approach. A group of educational leaders has proposed further changes

to accountability; that is, states improve their assessments so they can be more useful in the school-improvement process. They recommend an accountability system that brings community support for high-quality education that is valid, transparent, comprehensive, goal-driven and disaggregated. Learn more: http://www.epi.org/files/2011/20090625-bba-accountability-2.pdf.

Increasing trust and communication for accountability. Several mechanisms exist to engage and communicate with parents and community members, and one example is included below.

Robert M. Finley Middle School, Glen Cove, NY. This district ranked in the bottom

quartile of Long Island districts on standardized achievement exams and school safety until they engaged the community by visiting and holding programs in churches and community centers and began building relationships. After a strong investment in human capital development, the school has closed the achievement gap, and students feel safe. Learn more:



http://www.nassp.org/tabid/3788/default.aspx?topic=Robert_M_Finley_Middle_School_Building_Community_Respect_and_Achievement.

Opening communications through school websites. School websites can be effective

communication tools. A middle school in California uses Joyce Epstein’s model for parental involvement, using the school’s website as an integral component of their outreach and support for parents (Piper, 2012). When Hurricane Sandy closed school for nine days, community members stayed connected through the school website (Labbe, 2013). The remotely hosted website was promoted as a community resource before the disaster and provided pertinent community information during the disaster.

School Connect. A mobile app allows districts to communicate information to parents

and community members about school events and emergencies, while it also allows parents to easily locate information about their schools. Learn more: http://www.schoolconnectservices.com/.

Improving teacher effectiveness. Braun (2005) proposes that states and districts implement value-added measures and simultaneously build teacher capacity through effectively assigning positions, preparation, licensure improvements, professional development, mentoring, equitable resources and higher salaries. DiCarlo (2012) proposes each state not only monitor the results of the value-added measures annually but also conduct intensive and independent research evaluation.

Denver ProComp. Denver Public Schools have used a performance-pay compensation

that is similar in some ways to a value-added system. A study by Goldhaber and Walch (2012) showed an increase in student achievement not only for those participating in the program voluntarily but also the teachers who elected not to participate. There was some evidence that those teachers participating in ProComp were more effective. Learn more: http://denverprocomp.dpsk12.org/.

New Mexico’s Three-Tier System. The state-level tiered career continuum system has

locally aligned on-the-job portfolio-based evaluations modeled after the National Board Certification process. Learn more: http://teachnm.org/home/3-tiered-licensure-system.html.

Peer-Assistance and Review [PAR]. Harvard’s Project on the Next Generation of Teachers works with seven districts, including Cincinnati and Montgomery County. PAR combines a rigorous evaluation and identifies practices upon which they can improve. The Cincinnati standards-based evaluation was found predictive of student learning gains and provided teacher learning (Darling-Hammond, Amrein-Beardsley, Haertel, & Rothstein, 2012). Learn more: http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=hgse_pngt Deciding Among Choice and Competing Values

A meta-analysis of ninety studies on the effects of religious private, charter and public schools indicate that attendance at religious private schools is associated with the highest level of academic achievement and no significant difference between students who attend public and



charter schools (Jeynes, 2012). Public schools have begun to provide more choice options through intra-district or magnet schools as well as inter-district or virtual schools.

Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school district provided intra-district transfers and

worked to improve school recruiting efforts and to increase enrollment in schools chosen less often by parents. Learn more: http://www2.ed.gov/admins/comm/choice/choiceprograms/report.pdf.

Florida. In Florida, all districts can access full-time virtual instruction programs for their

public school students in grades K-12. Learn more: http://www.fldoe.org/schools/virtual-schools/districtVIP.asp.

Philadelphia. The Philadelphia district recently established a virtual school to challenge

the loss of students to charter virtual schools, similar to what other urban districts have done. By mid-August, the district reported an enrollment of 118 students. Learn more: http://thenotebook.org/blog/136290/district-enrolling-new-virtual-school-scheduled-open-sept or http://webgui.phila.k12.pa.us/offices/p/philadelphia-virtual-academy.

Options for districts have increased with improved technologies that provide access

across boundaries. Choice can be created within large districts or across counties through magnet schools and virtual schools. Summary of Promising/Transformational Practices These promising/transformational practices address the key issues of this committee. School boards that work with the superintendent to set a vision for the district and to support conditions for a professional learning community can increase student achievement (Bartusek, 2000). School consolidation works best when a case-by-case approach is applied. An educator shortage is growing, especially in rural and urban areas. School accountability measures that provide data on student annual growth and multiple measures of school effectiveness provide parents with a more comprehensive assessment of school quality. District and school websites should serve as school and community communication tools. Added flexibility can allow public schools to offer additional choices to their patrons through magnet schools and consortia.

Governance, Leadership, and Accountability Recommendations

These suggested actions are derived from the study and research of the committee on guiding principles, key issues and promising/transformational practices and include: RECOMMENDATION 1.0: Examine the training requirements for board members to determine if the current system is best for school governance, including additional filing requirements like a pre-orientation for prospective board members.

The traits of effective schools boards have been researched and should be the foundation for training of all board members (Dervarics & O'Brien, 2011). According to Dervarics and O’Brien, effective boards provide a vision and goals for high expectations and quality instruction and possess a strong belief that schools can teach all students; focus their time less on operations



and more on policies to improve student performance, while maintaining a collaborative relationship with staff and the community; use data to focus on continuous improvement, aligning resources to district goals; and work as a team with the superintendent and participate in ongoing professional development that furthers their effectiveness and collaboration. Positive correlations appear between the length of superintendent tenure and student achievement in addition to the alignment with and support of local boards of education with the district’s goals (Marzano & Waters, 2009).

Consideration should be given to providing a pre-filing orientation or a review materials with a candidate needing to certify the orientation or review, as well as a realignment of board training protocols to what effective boards do to collaborate for high expectations. RECOMMENDATION 2.0: Review the appropriate amount of instruction with flexibility to select days taught or hours taught and incrementally add five more days or 1,200 hours to the school calendar.

To increase the opportunity for rigor and applicability of classroom instruction, it is recommended school districts complete a minimum 175 days of instruction (excluding catastrophic or weather-related events), regardless of whether or not a local district chooses days or hours taught for instruction time calculation and 180 days with addition of teacher professional and record days. The regional average of instructional days is 178.83 and 183.6 with addition of teacher days. Also, the addition of flexible ways to meet the minimum need to be considered and deregulation may be required in some instances. Support should be provided for schools and districts to collaborate to test innovative practices in adjusting time for improving student learning.

It is imperative to investigate ways to reduce the loss of instructional times, while considering adding hours to the overall school calendar. By calculating school time in hours, more flexibility is allowed. Increasing the school calendar over the next five years would give additional learning time for students and provide a combination of instruction, collaboration and professional development time for educators. Allowing flexibility as to whether these are days or hours added to the school calendar is of importance as well. Extended time not only can provide increased educational opportunities for students to thrive in school but will also allow time for teachers to improve their instructional practice through continuous improvement through on-site, job-embedded professional learning (Kaplan & Chan, 2012).

Providing resources and flexibility for increased learning time to meet the academic needs of all students is recommended as well. Underprivileged students may benefit from extended opportunities engaged in formal educational activities to maintain and enhance learning during holiday and summer breaks, whereas more resourced students may be engaged in informal learning activities that enhance their academic growth when they return to the classroom (Alexander, Entwisle, & Olson, 2001; 2007; Cooper, Valentine, Charlton, & Melson, 2003). See Learning, Teaching, and Assessment for Student Success and Partnerships for Human Capital and Organizational Development for additional information and recommendations on school calendars and teacher professional development.



RECOMMENDATION 3.0: Support research-based ways to improve efficiency or educational attainment when considering school size and consolidation issues.

Support research-based ways to improve efficiency or educational attainment rather than using a statewide mandate to consolidate schools or require a minimum size for schools and districts. School size and consolidation decisions should be determined on a case-by-case basis, keeping in mind what best meets the learning needs of the students.

The values of quality and efficiency are competing factors in the decision of whether or not to consolidate schools. Consolidation or mandated minimum sizes of districts are arbitrary decisions that can produce unintended consequences for students and families; again, these should be decided on a case-by-case basis (Howley, Johnson & Petrie, 2011). Efficiency might be improved through purchasing agreements, local consortiums for distance learning or professional development. Offering incentives and support for sharing of services and pooling of resources might improve efficiency as well. RECOMMENDATION 4.0: Review state regulations and policies regarding hiring practices for districts and, if needed, propose revision of these policies to provide more local control and flexibility in governing of districts, including hiring and district fiscal efficiency. Adjust policies to allow for sharing of teachers and resources as needed or provide mechanisms to support districts to provide fast-track certification methods.

Due to the limited pool of applicants for various disciplines, particularly in the math, science and special needs disciplines, local school boards need latitude to make decisions concerning personnel placement in shortage areas and hire the best possible available candidate for that teaching position. An example of policy review findings might lead to the revision of state regulations to account for the needs of small districts and schools, especially in the area of recruitment and retention of experienced teachers for low-wealth districts. Flexibility to share teachers, provide blended or virtual learning, team-teaching, or providing funds to support coursework or intensive test-taking mentoring to prepare for the subject-area test should be available to schools.

This recommendation could be considered in light of the components of the vision of the USDE (2013) Blueprint for R.E.S.P.E.C.T., namely a recruitment and retention of top-notch talented teachers as well as continuous growth and professional development. Implementation of strategies to develop and nurture high-quality teachers as described by Fullan and Hargreaves (2012) should be considered to attract and retain educators. See Partnerships for Human Capital and Organizational Development for additional information and recommendations on teacher certification. RECOMMENDATION 5.0: Investigate revising of the accountability system to include supports for real school improvement, that is, the building of a school’s or district’s capacity to produce the improved teaching and learning needed.

Policymakers should investigate ways of moving from a testing and sanctions model of performance accountability to a growth and support model. A growth-model assessment would



assist teachers in diagnosing students and providing data for improving classroom instruction and district improvement. Allowing community stakeholders to serve as reviewers and providing constructive feedback for a self-evaluation process could promote relational trust. Consider ways to build a more participatory accountability model that engages local communities in local reform efforts. Investigate a model that provides support for improving teacher and leader practice as well as incentive strategies that engage excellent teachers in mentoring their peers rather than sanctions. See Learning, Teaching, and Assessment for Student Success and Partnerships for Human Capital and Organizational Development.

Many states have adopted growth models for assessment data and have made these a part of their accountability systems. One of the Oklahoma Business and Education Council’s [OBEC] initiatives is to improve accountability and transparency for results. OBEC has supported the P-20 state longitudinal data system and the tracking of progress toward improvement of academic achievement and educational attainment. These should be a part of the accountability system. OBEC also supports monitoring the implementation of accountability policies and making the results available to the public. These initiatives could be included in the investigation of revisions of the accountability system. The vision of the USDE (2013) Blueprint for R.E.S.P.E.C.T. proposes that the fate of the community and their schools are intertwined and to make schools stronger, educators need to acknowledge community resources and expertise. An accountability system that helps to improve schools through community input, action and review can provide this support.

RECOMMENDATION 5.1: Conduct a study to evaluate the amount of reduced classroom time due to standardized testing and to determine other strategies for gaining accountability measures of student performance. This issue should be examined in light of overall academic performance impact. Finland, which touts high Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores, shifted from an emphasis on external testing to a more local teacher-designed curriculum and assessment (Darling-Hammond, 2010). That is, Finland invested in its teachers and schools to meet the needs of all students. Timely, targeted data should be available for teachers to use for diagnosis of student learning. Increasing academic learning time and moving to teacher assessments and feedback can improve student learning. See Learning, Teaching and Assessment for Student Success. RECOMMENDATION 5.2: Establish guidelines and technological resources for district websites as a means of communication with the community, parents, and students, allowing for openness and transparency. Although accountability information and stakeholder input can be addressed in multiple ways, one mechanism for communicating accountability information is through the website. In addition, school websites can be effective communication tools for parents and the community. By providing much-needed information and feedback mechanisms, they can support parental and community engagement. For small districts, costs may be prohibitive, and a state subsidy is needed.



RECOMMENDATION 6.0: Establish policies and support for innovative approaches by which public schools can provide additional choices for optimizing learning for all students. Limit the privatization of public resources through supplemental services and school choice.

Blending the traditional school with the flexibility of innovative school choice pathways can address the varying needs of students. In order to enhance access and educational opportunity, investigating innovative pathways can provide students additional routes to reach higher-learning goals. Rather than allowing some schools to circumvent accountability, provide a fair playing field for accountability across all schools. It is also imperative to limit the appropriation of public funds for private school initiatives.



Partnerships for Human Capital and Organizational Development

Preparing, recruiting and retaining effective teachers and leaders are critical to a high-quality education for all of Oklahoma’s students.

Effective teachers and strong leaders impact student learning. Preparing, recruiting and

retaining effective teachers and leaders are critical to a high-quality education for all of Oklahoma’s students. Although Oklahoma has been addressing this issue, we focused on additional strategies to ameliorate the shortage of high-quality teachers. The committee focused on how to make the appropriate investment in the people who support the educational process for the continually increasing number of students in Oklahoma’s schools. Building partnerships among universities, colleges, organizations, agencies and schools provides additional support for pre-service and other teachers.

Teacher regulations and laws have been continuously reviewed and adjusted. The

Teacher Reform Act of 1980 or House Bill 1706 brought changes to teacher preparation, teacher certification, professional development and increased pay. In the 1990s, House Bill 1017 added alternative teacher certification processes, minimum salaries, specific professional development and due process for teachers. In 1992, Senate Bill 986 and House Bill 2246 established greater rigor for teacher licensure and the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation [OCTP]. By 1995, competency-based teacher assessments had been developed, national board teachers were certified and given a bonus and certification requirements for middle school math teachers increased. In the past decade, additional avenues for teacher certification were opened, including American Board for Certification of Teaching and Teach for America. The teacher-evaluation process was replaced with the Teacher Leader Effectiveness system that includes data on student assessment performance. The federal No Child Left Behind required teachers to be highly qualified. Professional development requirements also were adjusted.

Well-prepared teachers with an in-depth understanding of their content and research-

based strategies challenge students in critical thinking in order to engage a diverse population of students and establish high expectations for successful learning for each student. Proper preparation also lends itself to better prepared school leaders who guide their districts toward continuous improvement for student achievement and growth, while nurturing teacher growth and a positive climate and safe school environment for all stakeholders. Teacher growth and development derives from opportunities throughout their career to reflect and collaborate on continuous improvement in a supportive culture that is focused on advancement of student learning. Whether Oklahoma finds ways to make education a more attractive profession will make a difference in student learning.

Guiding Principles

Improving teacher quality is the most promising way to improve educational outcomes, especially for classrooms that have been taught by the least-effective teachers (Darling-Hammond, 2010). The underlying tenets or principles that guided our work in this area include:

• All citizens of the state of Oklahoma have a stake in public education.



• High-quality teachers are critical to student learning. • Partnerships with school and community stakeholders are critical to the success of public

education. • Effectively prepared educators enhance the education of our students. • Recruiting and retaining high-quality individuals are essential to ensure excellence in

Oklahoma’s public schools. • School and district structures and processes impact teaching and learning. • Ongoing professional learning opportunities are important for continuous improvement. • A community and culture in which teachers are valued as professionals enhances job

satisfaction and teacher retention.

Key Issues

The key issues addressed in the area of human capital and organizational development were those with the potential for improving the professional status of teaching, including teacher recruitment and retention, preparation programs, induction and mentoring, teacher certification, professional development, teacher retirement, leadership development and supportive organizational conditions. Derived from the review of literature, research and practices, the most critical issues that face public education in this area follow. Recruiting and Retaining Effective Teachers Oklahoma has underinvested in its educational system, especially its educators. The Teacher Supply and Demand Study (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2002) found (1) shortages in some teaching areas were expected or probable, (2) fewer students were choosing education majors, and (3) students with the highest grades and test scores were the least likely to choose a major in education. In 2011, the National Center for Education Statistics data indicated that although 48 percent of our nation’s students are from an ethnic minority, only 18 percent of our teachers are. McKinsey and Company (2007) reviewed enabling factors in the highest-performing countries and found that getting the best candidates into teaching was one of their primary emphases. Oklahoma could benefit from a system that encourages the best and brightest to choose the educational profession. We should also encourage those with a diverse background and offer a continuum of recognition for progress and contributions to the field as incentives to keep effective teachers in the profession. Linda Darling-Hammond (2010) asserted:

Improving teacher quality is one of the most direct and promising strategies for improving public education outcomes in the United States, especially for groups of children who have historically been taught by the least qualified teachers. Teachers can have large effects on student achievement, as suggested by a recent large-scale study in North Carolina, which found that the differences in achievement gains for students who had the most qualified teachers versus those who had the least qualified were greater than the influences of race and parent education combined.

According to Allegretto, Corcoran, and Mischel (2008):



Raising teacher compensation is a critical component in any strategy to recruit and retain a higher quality teacher workforce if the goal is to affect the broad array of teachers —that is, move the quality of the median teacher. Policies that solely focus on changing the composition of the current compensation levels, such as merit or pay-for-performance schemes, are unlikely to be effective unless they also correct the teacher compensation disadvantage in the labor market. (p. 2)

While noting that the calculation of average salaries is complex, NEA (2012) lists the United States average teacher salary in 2011-2012 as $55,418 and ranks Oklahoma 49th among the states with an average teacher salary of $ $44,391 and 40th in starting teacher pay with a salary of $31,600 (NEA, 2012). The average salary in 2011-2012 of bordering states was $47,195.50, making Oklahoma’s average salary for the same year the lowest average salary in the region. Recently, Salary.com (Dugan, 2012) ranked a degree in education the third-worst profession for return-on-educational investment. Teachers earned 15 percent less than workers in other professions with similar educational levels and work experience, and the earning gap increased with each year of work experience (Allegretto et al., 2008). With the recession crisis, some states have discontinued the salary increases for advanced degrees and National Board Certification.

Schools have found it difficult to recruit and retain teachers due to low pay and more attractive positions in other states or other fields (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2002). As of 2000, only 68 percent of graduates with teacher certification were employed in an Oklahoma public school, while there were nearly 6,000 teachers who had credentials but were not employed in an Oklahoma school (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2002). As of 2002, only 39 percent of graduates from an Oklahoma teaching program accepted employment in Oklahoma schools (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2002). Of those who do accept employment in a public school, nearly a quarter of them leave within their first three years (U.S. Department of Education, 2007). Ingersoll and Strong (2011) report that studies estimate between 40 percent and 50 percent leave within the first five years of starting to teach. This is particularly troubling because teacher attrition costs American schools $2.6 million per year (Satin, 2005). Teachers in low-income, urban and/or high-minority areas tend to have the highest rates of attrition (Guarino, Santibañez & Daley, 2006). A teacher shortage looms larger as the pool of highly qualified women and minorities are attracted to higher-paying professions, standards for admission to pre-service programs are opened and as layoff-fueled fears are realized (Tucker, 2011). See Governance, Leadership and Accountability for more on teacher and leader shortages and teacher evaluation systems. Many districts across the country have provided stipends for teachers who work in high-need schools, geographic areas and/or subject areas, although there is little research to support this practice.

Ensuring a competitive beginning and average compensation can attract professional teachers. Increased teacher compensation was associated with decreased likelihood of attrition (Allegretto et al., 2008). Teachers more satisfied with their compensation were less likely to leave the profession (Borman & Dowling, 2008). Arkansas and Florida studies found that teachers in the reserve pool would consider teaching with a salary $8,000 to $10,000 higher (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2002). School districts have gotten creative in



recruiting and retaining teachers. In recent years, Dallas ISD offered signing bonuses and stipends for teachers in high-demand areas, although this practice has been partially discontinued (Oklahoma Regents for Higher Education, 2002). Other districts offered differential pay, retention bonuses, low-interest mortgages and student loan forgiveness to teachers.

An investment in teacher preparation and retention is critical to the well-being of the students of Oklahoma. Preparing Effective Teachers

Teacher preparation varies in academic consistency across colleges in 12 of Oklahoma’s programs. Graduates of some schools tend to disperse, while graduates of others tend to find employment near their alma mater. Thus, strong teacher preparation programs strengthen education across the state (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2002).

Not all regions offer all teacher preparation programs. This is concerning in light of the

fact that the districts tend to employ graduates from local institutions. Many regional universities lack degree programs in areas such as foreign languages, agriculture education, business education, computer education and music. The University of Oklahoma is the only institution to offer an ESL/ELL teacher preparation program despite the fact that other regions of the state have a high and growing ELL population (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2002).

The Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation conducts state approval and accreditation of teacher education institutions and programs. OCTP worked with the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (OSRHE) and representatives from teacher education programs to develop performance-based criteria and assessments, focusing on what candidates can do in the classroom. Each teacher preparation institution is required to have all initial and advanced certification candidates develop a portfolio to document a candidate’s accomplishments, learning and strengths related to competencies, standards and outcomes established by OCTP, OSRHE, SDE and the institution. Teacher preparation delivery remains primarily the purview of the colleges and universities, along with the state agencies.

The skills high school graduates will need to succeed as a citizen, learner and worker

have fundamentally changed from previous generations (Wagner, 2008). Still, current K-12 school leaders play a limited role in the planning and delivering of pre-service education. In addition, more attention to skill development in diagnosis and prescription of student needs and lesson planning based on student needs while under the supervision of master teachers could enhance teacher quality (Tucker, 2011). It is important to address the new skills graduates will need, as well as help pre-service teachers improve diagnosis and prescription of student needs.

Well-prepared teachers in all areas can meet the demands in our schools. University

programs aligned to the needs of K-12 schools can better prepare students for college and careers. Teacher education programs across the state of Oklahoma need to identify and recruit



the best and brightest students into the profession and conscientiously connect theory and practice to adequately prepare them to meet the needs of all students in all areas.

Aligning the Teacher Certification to Research-Based Practices

Teacher preparation programs resulting in graduates who remained in education included

extensive five-year programs, increased liberal arts coursework and increased clinical experiences (Guarino, Santibañez, & Daley, 2006; National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010). Testing requirements for entry into teacher preparation programs may discourage minority students from entering the field (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010). Alternatively certified teachers were more likely to leave the profession than were regularly certified teachers (Harris, Camp & Adkison, 2003). Administrators have found it difficult to recruit and retain effective novice teachers due to their insufficient classroom experience (Guarino et al., 2006).

Darling-Hammond (2012) proposes a tiered licensure system that is framed as a career

continuum from tier one for initial licensing, tier two for the induction and tier three for the professional learning and advancement. Research on the Performance Assessment of California Teachers (PACT) suggested it was a valid measure of individual teacher competence for licensure (Pecheone & Chung, 2006). The PACT model served as the basis of the Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA0. Some states are using performance assessments similar to the National Board Certification process and the Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA). The assessments examine multiple measures of evidence of candidate preparedness, including plans, videotapes, student work and commentary on student work. The assessments were field tested in 22 states in 2012 and are available nationally (Darling-Hammond, 2012). The edTPA assessments are adaptable for use throughout a teacher’s career and can focus teacher evaluation and development on the strengthening of teacher effectiveness rather than sorting and firing teachers. A supportive context for teacher evaluation focuses on teacher growth rather than inaccurate measures of student achievement influenced by multiple measures outside of a teacher’s control, such as home and school factors, peer and prior teacher and learning experiences and a single testing opportunity that may inaccurately measure student learning (Darling-Hammond, Amrein-Beardsley, Haertel, & Rothstein, 2012). Through edTPA, the educational field is meeting the challenge of accountability in a way that supports improvement of teaching and learning and recognizes the teacher as a professional. It also improves the alignment between teacher preparation and teacher certification (Darling-Hammond, 2012).

Revamping the teacher certification process could increase the pool of qualified

applicants and enhance public perception of the teaching profession. High-quality teachers are highly committed, thoroughly prepared, continuously developed, properly paid, well networked with each other to maximize their own improvement and able to make evidence-based judgments together using all their capabilities and experience (Fullan & Hargreaves, 2012).

Implementing Systemic Induction and Mentoring Strategies

Teachers in their first years of teaching are inexperienced and face a large learning curve, resulting in many leaving within their first five years. One of the major reasons they cited for leaving the profession was the lack of school support. Schools with strong induction and



mentoring programs tended to retain teachers at higher rates than those lacking such programs (Borman & Dowling, 2008; Guarino, Santibañez, & Daley, 2006). The more support teachers received, the less likely they were to leave (Borman & Dowling, 2008; Guarino, Santibañez, & Daley, 2006). Schools that encourage and support teacher collaboration tend to retain teachers at higher rates than those that do not (Borman & Dowling, 2008; Guarino, Santibañez, & Daley, 2006). The most effective types of support were those in which novices were assigned a mentor in the same field, had a common planning period with other teachers of the same subject, had regularly scheduled collaboration time with others, and were part of an external network of teachers (Borman & Dowling, 2008; Guarino, Santibañez, & Daley, 2006).

Schools with difficult student populations have trouble recruiting and retaining teachers and too often place novice teachers in challenging work assignments with little support (Guarino, Santibañez, & Daley, 2006). Additional information on teacher shortages is addressed in the section on Governance, Leadership and Accountability. Providing intensive supports for new teachers, such as induction, mentoring, time for additional planning and feedback sessions from master teachers can help. Properly resourcing early support for teachers, such as teacher induction and mentoring strategies, can improve teacher effectiveness and retention.

Two supports for new teachers have been discontinued: the Oklahoma Teacher

Residency Program and the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation’s Oklahoma Mentoring Network. The mentoring network partnered with districts in professional development for mentors and mentees. Currently, limited supports are in place to help support, mentor and retain Oklahoma’s new teachers. Establishing Comprehensive Professional Development

Professional development for teachers can be an important mechanism to improve classroom instruction and student achievement (Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss & Shapley, 2007). More than 1,300 studies have shown positive relationships between professional development and student achievement (Guskey & Yoon, 2009). Students of teachers who engaged in substantial professional development improved their achievement scores by 21 points (Yoon et al., 2007). Studies show teachers who had more than 14 hours of professional development showed a positive and significant effect on student achievement (Yoon et al., 2007). Yoon et al. (2007) admits that even though high quality professional development is needed, a shortage remains in professional development that provides coherence, collaboration, content-focus and active involvement over time.

Research supports the absolute necessity of high-quality, sustained, focused, professional

development, yet little is being funded at the state level. Rural schools have a more difficult time accessing professional development (Seltzer & Hirnley, 1995). It is incumbent on schools and districts to provide ongoing learning experiences for their teachers to ensure they are capable of responding to the changing needs of their students (Zepeda, 2008). Schools need access and support for professional development with a variety of strategies adaptable to teacher needs in a particular school that includes sufficient follow-up support and time for learning, experimenting with new knowledge, processes and assessments (Loucks-Horsley, Love, Stiles, Mundry &



Hewson, 2010). Providing ongoing job-embedded professional growth opportunities was one of the primary emphases in high-performing countries (McKinsey & Company, 2007).

Professional development quality and access is inequitable across Oklahoma schools and

districts. The school calendar requirements provide limited time for teachers’ professional learning. The Oklahoma Department of Education once supported regional professional development centers that provided a statewide system of professional development. Since their closure, school administrators have not had access to research-based materials or support in planning professional development. Administrators report having difficulty in retaining teachers due to insufficient classroom experience, lack of administrative support, difficult work environment, student discipline problems and difficult work assignments for novice teachers. Improved professional development funding, availability and delivery for Oklahoma teachers and leaders are needed for teachers to continue to meet the needs of all students and new standards. Recruiting, Preparing, Mentoring, and Retaining Effective School Leaders

Strong school leadership is essential for increased student learning, especially in underperforming schools. Strong school leadership requires high-quality pre-service and career professional development for leaders. School leadership continues to increase in difficulty, yet studies indicate available principal training does not “do nearly enough to prepare them for their roles as leaders of learning” (Darling-Hammond, LaPointe, Meyerson, Orr & Cohen, 2007, para 1). A heightened awareness of the central role of school leadership in school improvement and a growing shortage of high-quality leaders is making school leadership a focus of school reform (Darling-Hammond et al., 2007). The traditional pre-service programs are being blamed for not adapting their curriculum to meet the current expanded needs of the school leaders. District-based professional development also does not provide ongoing support for reform-oriented best practices or principal-needed problem solving (Darling-Hammond et al., 2007).

Evidence-based preparation programs include significant clinical opportunities being

overseen, mentored and evaluated by highly effective principals, preferably in school environments similar to ones in which the candidates plan to work (USDE, 2013). School leaders who build a coherent direction for their school, develop the capacity of their people, and provide supportive organizational structures in their school can impact the quality of student learning (Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004). Similar to the national trend, Oklahoma school leadership training is dependent upon the proximity of the leaders to a high-quality preparation program or the district in which they work. School leader shortages are addressed in the section on Governance, Leadership and Accountability.

New school leaders face a wide range of stressors, such as position isolation, grasping

technical skills, a wide range of demands from constituency, a fast-paced environment and supervising teachers (Holloway, 2004). Districts should make mentoring of aspiring and new leaders a priority, with a focus on improving student learning and teaching (Daresh, 2004). Trusted district administrators can mentor aspiring leaders (Browne-Ferrigno & Muth, 2004). Because mentoring can produce unwanted consequences, such as perpetuating the status quo, a critical planning and monitoring of these relationships is needed (Grogan & Crow, 2004). In addition to mentoring new school leaders, ongoing professional development is needed for



school leaders. Although leadership academies and seminars are available to school leaders, no statewide funding or support is provided for mentoring new school leaders or their ongoing professional growth. Oklahoma lacks state funding and has limited local funding for a continuum of leadership preparation programs to adequately address needed school reforms.

Sustaining the Teachers’ Retirement System

A strong retirement package is critical for recruiting and retaining high-quality

professionals both in state and out of state. The National Institute on Retirement Security (Boivie, 2011) analyzed the relationship pensions had on teacher retention and overall teacher productivity and concluded teacher effectiveness increases with experience and teacher turnover costs districts time, money and productivity. Education policy literature reveals teacher productivity increases sharply within the first few years of teaching, thus, increasing retention increases average teacher productivity. The study further found that defined benefit plans increased recruitment and retention of effective teachers. Additionally, Boivie (2011) concluded public school teachers turn over less than private school teachers, largely due to their compensation, including pension benefits.

Because tenured teachers alleviate the burden on districts of additional recruiting and

training, the increased retention that defined benefit pensions can bring increases to the overall quality of public education. Because the cost of teacher turnover is substantial, the retention effects of defined benefit pension plans also save school districts money. The study (Boivie, 2011) reported that in 2003, defined benefit pensions saved school districts $273.2 million nationally in teacher-turnover costs and helped retain an additional 22,000 teachers nationwide.

In contrast to defined retirement benefit plans that provide a retiree with monthly benefits

for the rest of their lives, some states provide a defined contribution plan or a combination of the two, defined benefit with defined contribution, known as a hybrid. One form of a hybrid plan is the cash balance plan like one planned for launch in Kansas in 2015. Generally, in states with defined contribution plans, participation is voluntary, with some employer match, and educators exercise their own investments through 403(b) plans. Unlike 401(k) plans, these plans have fees and little protection from commission-paid agents. To address this issue, NEA offers a 403(b) Model Disclosure Form, while states like Arizona simplify the confusion through competitive bidding (Herbert, 2012). When defined benefit plans are compared dollar for dollar to defined contribution plans, the defined benefit plan shows greater retirement benefits of an estimated 46 percent greater retirement dollar (Lewin, et al., 2011).

Based on literature about teacher pensions, compensation, effectiveness and simulated

prediction modeling, a switch from defined pensions to alternative plans is shown to create risks to productivity (Weller, 2011). These risks include decreased average teacher effectiveness due to turnover based on the learning curve and the need to increase initial compensation to provide incentives for entering the profession. A transition cost should be figured for states that switch away from defined pension plans and the possible unintended consequence of increased financial volatility (Weller, 2011). To meet the financial obligations of defined pension plans, many states are raising employees’ and districts’ contribution percentages, while states like Alaska, Michigan and the District of Columbia use defined contributions exclusively for their public employees



(Eisele-Dyrli, 2010). Many state legislatures have increased age and service requirements, and some have increased the eligibility requirements. One way to address the underfunded pension plans is to change the state government requirements to contribute the necessary amount of money to cover past underfunding and normal costs (Weller, Price, &Margolis, 2006).

Although the Oklahoma Teacher Retirement System was once projected never to reach

full funding, recent legislative reforms, along with good investment returns, have begun to strengthen the system (Oklahoman Editorial, 2013). Regionally, retirement formulas for defined pension plans are based on years of service (with varying years required for being vested), final average salary (generally with varying three to five of the highest years considered), multiplier factor and eligibility (comprised of age and years of service). Oklahoma has one of the lowest multiplier factors of 2.0, while Arkansas’ is 2.15, Texas’ is 2.3, New Mexico’s is 2.35, and Colorado’s and Missouri’s are 2.5. Another issue facing retirees is current Oklahoma retirement policies restrict the pay requirements for retired staff, which limits the potential of school districts to attract and retain the best and brightest teachers. There are certain retirement caps in place that limit the ability of school districts to offer an attractive retirement package to prospective teachers. Retirement benefits are a key factor in recruitment, especially in comparison to states surrounding Oklahoma. Establishing and Maintaining Supportive Organizational Conditions To improve schools into systems that propel students to excel academically despite significant challenges, a comprehensive, systemic and long-term approach is needed (USDE, 2013). Student learning gains have been found in systems that embrace a learning community in which teachers individually and collaboratively have opportunities to reflect on and improve their practice (Vescio, Ross, & Adams, 2008). These learning communities not only provide structured time for this collaborative work, a rich array of data, access to internal and external expertise but also develop educators who take collective responsibility for student learning through shared decision-making to do what is best for each student (USDE, 2013). Focusing on the development of school personnel is what Michael Fullan (2011) calls the “right driver” for whole-system reform.

There has never been a greater consensus that learning organizations, commonly known as professional learning communities, are a powerful strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement (Schmoker, 2004). Leadership can improve student learning by providing teachers and others involved with support and training; ensuring ongoing support for learning of students, teachers, and others; and working toward improving the organization’s effectiveness through setting the direction and influencing others in that direction while balancing stability and change (Seashore Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, Anderson, et al., 2010).

Schools with shared leadership structures in place demonstrate greater levels of

professional community (Seashore-Lewis & Wahlstrom, 2011). Participation in collaborative processes builds momentum for school improvement (Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2003). Often through university partners, external expertise facilitates supportive structures for professional communities among schools and interest groups (Lieberman & Miller, 2007).



Although many schools in Oklahoma have begun to implement the professional learning community concept, a wide range of implementation exists across the state.

When schools and communities work together to form partnerships, both are

strengthened. In fact, schools with highly rated partnership programs made greater gains on state tests than schools with lower-rated programs (Henderson & Mapp, 2002). When schools, families and community groups work together to support learning, children tend to do better in school, stay in school longer and like school more (Henderson & Mapp, 2002). Research correlates family engagement with student achievement (Weiss, Lopez, & Rosenberg, 2010). Community organizations not only provide outreach, they also facilitate social relationships and bring together resources to support schools and students (Weiss et al., 2010). Currently, Oklahoma educators are encouraged to involve family and school partnerships, yet no strong systematic effort provides needed resources to help all schools build and maintain these relationships. Summary of Key Issues

Teacher recruitment and retention, preparation programs, induction and mentoring, teacher certification, professional development, teacher retirement, leadership development and supportive organizational conditions are the key issues addressed by the committee studying partnership for human capital and organizational development.


Transformational practices were identified in the areas of teacher recruitment and retention, differentiated teacher pay, professional development, teacher retirement, leadership development and organizational supportive conditions. Based on study of the literature and practices both in Oklahoma and beyond, these identified practices have the potential to transform public education, specifically in teacher and leader preparation, recruitment and retention. Recruiting and Retaining Effective Teachers, Especially for Critical Areas Increasing teacher compensation so that it is commensurate with other similar professions is essential to recruiting and retaining teachers. Fullan and Hargreaves (2012) assert that to retain high-quality teachers and teaching, they need to be “thoroughly prepared, continuously developed, properly paid, well networked with each other to maximize their own improvement, and able to make effective judgments together using all their capabilities and experience” (p. 2). States with well-paid teachers and high student achievement include New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Denver provided incentives. Incentives to work in high-needs schools are successful

because of the value of the stipend. The district found that teachers were not willing to work in high-needs schools for $1,000 but were more willing to consider it for $2,500. They also found that teachers were not willing to put forth the effort to become certified to teach more demanding subjects unless the value of the stipend was significant (Wiley, Gaertner, Spindler & Subert, 2010); however, according to the Economic Policy Institute publication (Mishel, Allegretto & Corcoran, 2008):



Raising teacher compensation is a critical component in any strategy to recruit and retain a higher quality teacher workforce if the goal is to affect the broad array of teachers—that is, move the quality of the median teacher. Policies that solely focus on changing the composition of the current compensation levels, such as merit or pay-for-performance schemes, are unlikely to be effective unless they also correct the teacher compensation disadvantage in the labor market (p. 2).

Denver Classroom Teachers Association and Denver Public Schools. A bargaining

agreement in Denver initiated ProComp in 2005, which was designed to link teacher compensation more directly with the district mission. ProComp was introduced in order to recruit and retain high-quality teachers in an attempt to improve student achievement. Award bonuses were instituted for the following: obtaining advanced degrees or certifications, achieving a rating of “proficient” on the teacher evaluation tool, working in a high-needs school, working in a high-needs profession, meeting classroom learning objectives, exceeding student achievement expectations and working in a school with distinguished student achievement and attendance. Increasing bonuses not only improved retention and effectiveness of teachers, but also gains in student achievement in math and reading were realized. Learn more: http://denverprocomp.dpsk12.org/about/overview.

Illinois Grow Your Own Teacher Education Act (GYO). Illinois enacted legislation

to address the need for diversifying the highly qualified teachers’ pipeline, improving teacher retention in low-income schools, recruiting teachers for shortage areas and increasing community connections by recruiting community-based teachers. First-year evaluations show positive results in the preparation and performance of the GYO teachers (Rasher & Goold, 2010). Learn more: http://www.growyourownteachers.org/AboutUs/.

Oklahoma does not offer competitive pay to all teachers but does provide bonuses,

stipends or differentiated pay in few instances. Preparing Effective Teachers Pre-service programs are needed in content knowledge and pedagogy while grounded in clinical practice. A recent National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education [NCATE] report (Snyder & Lit, 2010) stated:

Most educators, however, have not been prepared to apply knowledge of child and adolescent development and learning and are thus not sufficiently able to provide developmentally oriented instruction. If our children, our communities, and our country are to meet their potentials, then teachers need opportunities to learn, practice, and assess their abilities to provide developmentally oriented instruction. The need is urgent and the time is now.

Experts are also calling for more clinical practice and a focus on addressing the 21st century needs of students and their families.



Bank Street College of Education. Pre-service teachers actively engage with their environment, consider a child’s developmental needs, characteristics and familial and cultural values to create caring, intellectually challenging and democratic classrooms. They directly engage with the environment of people and the material world with sensitivity to the depth and scope of the reciprocal influence of culture on growth and development through fieldwork, conference groups and coursework. Learn more: http://bankstreet.edu/discover-bankstreet/what-we-do/.

The University of California at Berkeley’s Developmental Teacher Education

[DTE]. The university provides a two-year post-baccalaureate program of sequenced coursework and complementary clinical experiences. The program addresses culture, context and diversity issues that form the experiential component of the program. Learn more: http://gse.berkeley.edu/about-developmental-teacher-education-program. Aligning Teacher Certification to Research-based Practices Teacher preparation and knowledge of teaching and learning, content knowledge, experience and qualifications measured by teacher licensure all influence teacher effectiveness (NCATE, 2008). Full certification of teachers shows a positive association with student achievement (RMC Corporation, Buck & O’Brien, 2005). In April 2011, the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC), a program of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), released the revised set of model standards for teachers. The standards provide a common knowledge and skill set for all subject areas and grade levels. Learn more: http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Publications/State_Policy_Implications_of_the_Model_Core_Teaching_Standards_(Draft_Discussion_Document).html.

Network for Transforming Educator Preparation [NTEP]. Seven states have been

selected to participate in a two-year InTASC pilot sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers. The states are: Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Washington. Also, 17 national organizations are supporting the states’ efforts to accelerate change in educator preparation and entry into the profession by helping to communicate with their members and serve as thought partners. Learn more: http://www.ccsso.org/News_and_Events/Press_Releases/Seven_States_Selected_to_Join_Network_for_Transforming_Educator_Preparation.html#sthash.nTGJPFpl.dpuf.

Teacher Performance Assessment [edTPA]. This new performance assessment process examines prospective teachers through an intense review of the candidate’s plans, videotapes, student work and feedback samples. Learn more: http://edtpa.aacte.org/.

New Mexico Three-Tier System. The state-level tiered licensure system has locally

aligned on-the-job portfolio-based evaluations modeled after the National Board process. Learn more: http://teachnm.org/home/3-tiered-licensure-system.html.

Improving Induction and Mentoring



Those countries whose students have shown growth on international benchmark assessments provide extensive support to beginning teachers. Beginning teachers need additional time to observe and gain feedback from master teachers. They also need planning and reflection time. Well-selected and well-trained mentors who have time to work intensively with new teachers improve the effectiveness of new teachers (Barlin, 2010). Too often, new teachers are assigned to the poorest schools and most challenging classrooms, but strong mentoring programs help close the teacher-quality gap to ensure all students succeed. Six states -- Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, and Utah -- require an induction period of greater than two years, typically three (Goldrick, Osta, Barlin & Burn, 2012).

Delaware. The state funds support for all new teachers for the first three years of

teaching and supports experienced teachers who are new to the state or new to a licensure category during their first year of employment. Learn more: http://www.doe.k12.de.us/infosuites/staff/ntmentor/. Providing Comprehensive Professional Development

Evidence-based professional development focuses on subject matter content and pedagogy, actively engaging collective participation, coherence (i.e., is consistent with other professional development as well as the district vision), and ongoing for at least 20 contact hours (Desimone, 2011). School-university partnerships further the education profession and advance equity, shared learning and community engagement.

National Association for Professional Development Schools [NAPDS]. This national

organization supports school-university partnerships that provide collaboration among P-12 and college-university communities to share and build new knowledge that shapes educator leadership and best practice. Learn more: http://www.napds.org/default.html.

NCATE model professional development schools [PDSs]. PDSs are similar to

teaching hospitals in concept. Teaching is similar to medicine, as both practicing professions require a strong content knowledge and intense clinical preparation. PDSs allow teacher candidates to work closely with in-service faculty to increase professional learning in a real-world setting in which practice takes place. NCATE has selected a set of schools to test their new standards. Learn more: http://www.ncate.org/Accreditation/AllAccreditationResources/ProfessionalDevelopmentSchools/tabid/497/Default.aspx. Recruiting, Preparing, Mentoring and Retaining Effective School Leaders

A study conducted by Darling-Hammond et al. (2007) identified several exemplary leadership development pre-service programs that coupled with ongoing district-based professional development. The study concluded that effective school leadership requires a range of practices that may be mediated by the personnel themselves, the organizational context and the school community.

Connecticut. Started in the 1990s, the University of Connecticut’s Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) provides expanded field experiences with graduate coursework.



The preparation program engages principal candidates in data-driven decisions and evidence-based classroom observations. Some candidates receive additional intensive professional development in reform leadership from Hartford Public School District as supported by the University of Pittsburgh. This program has expanded into other districts. Connecticut has been successful in school reform as a state and has supported pre-service leadership development and district in-service principal development, especially in urban areas. Hartford schools have shown improved test scores and have successfully filled high-need leadership positions.

New York City Region 1. The Principals Institute at Bank Street College partnered with Region 1 of the NYC Public Schools to develop a continuum of leadership preparation that moves school leaders through pre-service, induction and in-service support. The leadership experiences focus on improved teaching and learning linked to the district’s instructional reforms. The continuum of support provided complementary and increasingly integrated leadership preparation and development programs and strategies. The state of New York has overhauled its standards for leadership programs, which has resulted in substantial program reforms as well. The partnership of Bank Street College in Region 1 has resulted in improvements in student achievement and decreased the shortage of principal candidates in the area.

Jefferson County, Kentucky. Since the 1980s, Jefferson County Public Schools and the

University of Louisville have partnered to offer a supportive leadership development program tailored to the needs of principals working in the district. The program provides a set of leadership development opportunities that address the needs of the district’s principals and includes a continuum of pre-service to ongoing in-service support. Recently, this partnership focused on developing a pathway from the classroom to the principalship. The state of Kentucky has enacted wide-reaching reforms through the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of 1989, which provides a supportive culture for sustained professional development for school leaders. Jefferson County believes that the leadership development programs are a key variable in school improvement and that investing significant resources into the programs has resulted in improvement on state tests that outpaces its Kentucky peers.

San Diego, California. The Educational Leadership Development Academy (ELDA) at

the University of San Diego and the San Diego Unified School District provide a continuum of leadership preparation and professional development through its partnership. The continuum of support focuses on district instructional reform through internships and coaching/networking. This school-university partnership emphasizes not only the development of principals as instructional leaders but also the development of teachers as instructional experts. The program provides highly coherent efforts in the areas of principal and teacher recruitment, evaluation and professional development focused on instructional improvement. California is an extremely diverse state with a standards-based reform agenda but has experienced many fiscal, programming and philosophy challenges. Graduates of the ELDA improved the quality of teaching and learning in their schools, and veteran principals who participated in the intensive professional development were becoming stronger instructional leaders. Sustaining the Teacher Retirement System



Wisconsin. The state was one of just two states to fully fund its public employee pension in 2009, emerging as a leader in managing its liabilities for both pension and health benefits over the long term. Still, the overall state budget in Wisconsin is strained. Learn more: http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20110427/APC0101/110426197/.

Florida. Starting in 2002, Florida allowed teachers to choose between a defined benefit

and a defined contribution plan. Learn more: http://myfrs.com/portal/server.pt/community/comparing_the_plans/235.

Public Employees’ Retirement Association of Colorado [PERAC]. This hybrid plan

provides retirement benefits to Colorado public school teachers and serves as a Social Security substitute for most public employees. Working members contribute a fixed percentage of their salary to pre-fund the benefits, while the employer also contributes (PERAC, 2013). Learn more: https://www.copera.org/. Creating Supportive Organizational Conditions A growing body of research supports a collective capacity-building approach to school reform (USDE, 2013).

Nashville, Tennessee. Rather than focus on the development of individual skills of educators, the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) takes a systemic approach, focusing on capacity building with intensive professional development and showing improved teaching and learning. Learn more: http://annenberginstitute.org/commentary/2012/05/beyond-individual-skills-collective-capacity-building-nashville.

Lancaster County, Texas. In 2009, the Southwest Educational Development Lab [SEDL] began working with the Lancaster School District on implementing a job-embedded process based on best practices in professional development and school improvement. The process is a systematic approach that includes professional collaboration, the use of data, alignment of curriculum, instruction and assessment, and monitoring of student learning. The process also establishes leadership support systems for continuous school improvement. Teachers began to collaboratively plan standards-based lessons and share instructional practices. Teachers collectively analyzed student work and shared differentiation strategies. These structures changed the culture in the schools, teachers began to accept collective responsibility for student learning and conversations changed to focus on student needs. Learn more: http://www.sedl.org/re/reports/PTLC-Lancaster.pdf.

Summary of Transformational Practices Practices that have been implemented in other states offer promise for ways to transform Oklahoma public education. Addressing and improving teacher and leader recruitment and retention, preparation, certification, induction, mentoring and professional development are keys to enhancing the teaching profession and raising the quality of teachers. Improving teacher quality and effectiveness can help propel our state’s educational system forward.



Partnerships for Human Capital and Organizational Development Recommendations

Effective teachers who have high expectations for all students and develop positive relationships with students produce high-achieving learning for students (Hattie, 2012). Oklahoma students deserve effective teachers and leaders. According to Darling-Hammond (2010), “improving teacher quality is one of the most direct and promising strategies for improving public education outcomes in the United States” (p.1). Oklahoma educators deserve to be recognized as professionals with adequate compensation for their contributions to the profession throughout their career. These suggested actions are derived from the study and research of the committee on guiding principles, key issues, and transformational practices and include:

RECOMMENDATION 1.0: Recruit top high school graduates to become education majors.

According to the Teacher Education Program Admission Study (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2009), the number of undergraduate students entering teacher preparation programs has decreased by nearly 25 percent since 1997. As a result of fewer education major graduates, Oklahoma is experiencing a shortage of teachers in various disciplines and in various regions of the state. These teacher shortages compromise educational quality in Oklahoma. Monetary incentives to education graduates should be considered to help Oklahoma schools in recruiting talented teachers. This recommendation would support the OBEC initiative for attracting, preparing and retaining high-quality teachers.

RECOMMENDATION 1.1: Provide monetary incentives in order to recruit top teacher preparation graduates into the teaching profession in Oklahoma. Studies (e.g., Allegretto et al., 2008; Borman & Dowling, 2008; Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2002) indicate increasing teacher compensation is one of the most powerful ways to recruit and retain a high-quality teaching workforce. In addition to improving teacher compensation to the level of other similar professions, a campaign to raise the status of teaching should be undertaken. Investigation is needed of successful mechanisms for improving teacher compensation and professionalism. Mechanisms to be examined should include across-the-board pay, differentiated pay, supply-and-demand approaches to teacher compensation, stipends for teaching in critical shortage areas, signing bonuses, retention and longevity bonuses, grants for educational loans, low-interest mortgages and college tuition waivers for teachers and their children. Pilot studies should be conducted to determine the efficacy of the selected mechanisms. RECOMMENDATION 1.2: Provide monetary incentives to recruit teachers from other states and other professions, to adjust policies and regulations to allow other professionals to successfully transition into education and to invest resources and align policies to retain teachers. In addition to creating mechanisms for recruiting teachers from Oklahoma’s teacher preparation programs, policies and regulations need to be adjusted to make it easier for



out-of-state teachers to become certified in Oklahoma. This could be achieved by waiving testing requirements for candidates from states with comparable standards and allowing out-of-state teachers to bring in more than five years of retirement. The state should also examine policies for deregulating opportunities from certain professionals who are capable of teaching. Incentives, resources and professional development will assist those teachers entering the profession and help to retain them. According to the Harvard Business Review (Ericsson, Prietula & Cokely, 2007), it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice for an individual to become an expert in any given skill. Educational reformer Larry Cuban (2010) supposes that if it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, it likely takes a teacher approximately 5,000 hours (5.5 years) of practice to become what parents and principals would consider a “good” teacher. Unfortunately, nearly half of all teachers leave the profession before they attain five years of experience (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 2010). Factors that contribute to teacher attrition are more attractive opportunities in other states and fields due to low teacher salaries and difficult work environments (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2002). Another possible strategy to improve recruitment of high-quality education candidates is to form partnerships with high-performing talent sources that could help Oklahoma forecast the availability of and take proactive steps to attract highly qualified candidates who possess critical skills or training, such as science, technology, engineering, math, world languages, early childhood, special education or multiple certifications. Additional strategies to consider might be to make available field-based internships; conduct an analysis of graduates and second-career prospective teachers’ and leaders’ knowledge, skills and dispositions; and develop a process to identify qualities and characteristics that articulate what it means to work as a teacher or leader in an Oklahoma school district.

RECOMMENDATION 2.0: Establish one set of standards to provide more consistency in teacher preparation programs from college to college, focus more intently on methodology, and ensure adequate clinical practice.

When students enroll in a teacher preparation program, they must receive an education

that will prepare them to be successful in the profession. In order to ensure that all education majors receive such a quality education, Oklahoma should establish a set of standards to provide more consistency in teacher preparation programs from college to college, and these programs should focus more intently on methodology. To accomplish this, Oklahoma should implement the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education’s [NCATE] recommendation for revamping teacher education programs so coursework is integrated with extended, embedded school experiences, as opposed to our current practice of requiring student teaching internships as the capstone experience at the end of coursework. In addition, the state should establish professional development requirements for instructors of teacher preparation programs so they are able to stay current with what is occurring in schools. Countries scoring well on the PISA combine strong content rigor with pedagogy for elementary as well as secondary teachers. Pedagogy needs to include strategies for meeting the learning needs of all students.



This recommendation is similar to the OBEC initiative for attracting, preparing and retaining high-quality teachers by ensuring that the standards of teacher preparation are competitive and aligned with professional requirements.

RECOMMENDATION 2.1: Align teacher certification to reflect research-based practices that support teaching that prepares students to think critically and be college and career ready. Consider the actions put forth by CCSO (2012) to develop licensure performance assessments aligned to the revised licensure standards and provide multiple measures of the educators’ performance, including the potential to impact student achievement and growth. Also, consider developing a multi-tiered system that is reciprocal across states. This action supports the OBEC initiative of improving the rigor of the teacher licensure test and adopting rigorous but flexible alternative credentialing programs. In addition, provide intensive induction and mentoring for alternatively certified teachers with in-depth pedagogy support. See Learning, Teaching and Assessment Recommendations 6.0, 6.1, and 6.2 for additional recommendations for teacher preparation.

RECOMMENDATION 3.0: Implement a strong statewide “new teacher” induction and mentoring program that is focused on supporting and retaining teachers in the first three years of their careers.

Comprehensive, multi-year induction programs accelerate professional growth of new teachers, reducing their attrition rate, positively returning the investment, and improving student learning (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011). Although state funding legitimatizes the states’ role in accelerating teacher effectiveness, only 17 states provided dedicated funding for induction and mentoring in 2010-2011. As of July 15, 2011, the text of Section 210:20-15-1, which set forth the rules and regulations for the teacher residency program, was no longer effective. The revoked Oklahoma’s Teacher Mentoring Program focuses only on supporting first-year teachers, but with nearly one-third of teachers leaving the profession within the first three years, it is vital teachers receive support beyond the first year (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2002). Formerly, the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation supported the Mentoring Professional Development Institute provided by a consortium comprised of the Oklahoma Education Association, Oklahoma State University and University of Oklahoma known as the Oklahoma Mentor Network.

RECOMMENDATION 4.0: Incrementally add days into the school calendar for systemic and comprehensive professional development.

Add to the schools’ calendar in increments over a five-year period, adding at least 185 days, which translates to 1,200 hours. Allow flexibility in how schools meet the hours. Most states in our region have more days than Oklahoma, with Texas having 180 student days and seven additional days for teachers. Arkansas has 178 student days with seven additional days for teachers.



Increased time will allow expanded opportunities for professional development and allow districts to create supportive conditions within their organization. Statewide opportunities for building capacity within schools and district should be provided. See Governance, Leadership and Accountability Recommendation 2 for an additional recommendation on expanding school time. Also, see Learning, Teaching and Assessment.

RECOMMENDATION 5.0: To ensure effective school leadership, implement a statewide leadership development program based on successful administrator preparation programs characteristics (may include program redesign, accreditation, recruitment subsidies, internship supports, mentoring, and professional development academies). Provide a sustainable, sufficient funding mechanism to improve the entire system of recruitment, preparation, mentoring of new school leaders, and ongoing development of school leaders.

Include professional development in establishing and leading supportive organizational cultures built on trust relationships and learning principles. Involve higher education and the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation. RECOMMENDATION 6.0: Sustain the Oklahoma Teacher Retirement System so that teachers and school leaders view a career in Oklahoma as a long-term investment.

Many teachers leave the state or the profession due to more attractive retirement options in other careers or states. In order to retain experienced teachers, Oklahoma must offer teachers a more attractive retirement package. Possible adjustments to improve and sustain the system include:

• Continue current efforts to fully fund the defined benefit retirement system. • Consider increasing the multiplier factor. • Consider offering alternatives and incentives that are attractive influences on

recruitment and retention, such as adding voluntary 401(k) or 403(b) incentives. Defined benefits plans are preferred, as they provide more savings than do defined

contribution plans (Lewin et al., 2011). Issues arose with the stability of defined benefit plans during the recent recession and by states decreasing their contributions. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, as cited by Lewin et al., purports that the shortfall is manageable. We propose sustaining the defined benefit plan rather than replacing it since changing plans most likely will result in higher costs, more risks and less human resource management tools available to our state and districts as well as increased financial volatility (Lewin et al., 2011; Weller, 2011). Another benefit of the pension system is that Oklahoma retirees impacted the state’s economy by more than $940 million during fiscal year 2013 (OTRS, 2014).

Oklahoma policymakers have addressed concerns about the sustainability of teachers’

retirements through recent legislative reforms and good investment returns. Oklahoma is one of two states recognized for its improvement efforts (Miller, 2011).



Physical Resources

Facilities need to be adequately resourced to support the learning environment.

School districts throughout the nation are faced with multiple responsibilities. These include the need to finance the construction, renovation or repair of public school facilities; to ensure these facilities have the requisite infrastructure to support increasing educational technology demands; and to provide safe, adequate transportation of students. Several sources have documented the increasing need to address aging educational infrastructure and the difficulty faced by school districts in funding capital needs (General Accounting Office, 1996; General Accounting Office, 2000; Crampton & Thompson, 2003; Crampton & Thompson, 2008). Nearly two decades ago, the General Accounting Office (GAO) estimated it would take $112 billion over a three-year period to bring the nation’s schools into “good” overall condition, that most school facilities do not have the infrastructure to support modern technology and that many schools face classroom shortages (General Accounting Office, 1996).

However, many state legislatures have been reluctant to initiate additional capital support

for school facilities (and to raise taxes to aid in such support), as evidenced by continuing litigation about education facilities funding throughout the states (Lakeview School Dist. #25 v. Huckabee, 2000; DeRolph et al. v. State, 1997; Roosevelt Elementary School v. Bishop, 1994). Problems surrounding funding infrastructure continue to exist and have been particularly acute in states like Oklahoma with substantial numbers of rural districts (Maiden, 2003).

Although Oklahoma has enacted multiple educational reforms in the areas of funding,

curriculum, assessments, teacher salaries and quality and school administration, the resources available to schools for infrastructure repair and maintenance, facilities and technology have not been included. House Bill 1017 did include encouragement for districts to open their facilities for community use during the hours that schools are not in session. This did not include guidelines or mechanisms to support funding for the additional expenses involved in the opening of schools beyond the school day and year.

This committee considered what was needed to ensure schools have adequate facilities

for student learning and that districts can finance the construction, renovation or repair of these facilities. We also considered equity in our discussions of facilities and resources. We defined equity as the condition in which each student has access and opportunity to attend a safe school and aesthetically comfortable facility in which conditions are maintained to support a high-quality education. We further considered what was needed to ensure these facilities have the requisite infrastructure to support increasing educational technology demands and to provide safe, adequate transportation of students.

Guiding Principles

The underlying tenets or principles that guided our work in this area include:



• All Oklahoma students, regardless of background, socioeconomic status or geographic location, deserve to learn in facilities that are clean, well maintained, aesthetically pleasing and safe.

• All students, regardless of background or location, deserve to have access to adequate educational technology resources.

• Students, regardless of background or location, deserve safe transportation to and from school activities.

• The quality of public school physical resources and facilities, technology infrastructure and transportation should be equitable across the state.

Key Issues

The key issues examined by the Physical Resources committee include (1) quality of

school facilities; (2) building quality and equity; (3) technology quality and equity; and (4) transportation quality, safety and equity. The average age of American schools is more than 42 years (USDOE, 2008). With many school facilities over 40 years old, these buildings are “difficult to retrofit and adapt to the needs of today’s educational program and services” (Peterson, 2004, p. 1). Inequality in capital outlay funding creates financial difficulties for school districts even though the upgrade of aging facilities may be warranted (Maiden & Sterns, 2007). Oklahoma is one of only 11 states without an equalization fund for building facilities construction (Verstegen & Jordan, 2009). Although an equity formula for the general fund exists, there is no equalization fund for capital improvements, and limited data about school facilities is available. Updating Quality of School Facilities to Support Academics

The quality of school facilities is one factor that supports a strong academic program in the school and impacts student learning (Blazer, 2012; Duyar, 2010; Uline & Tschannen-Moran, 2008; Yocum, 2006; Schneider, 2002; Maiden & Foreman, 1998; Mwamwenda & Mwamwenda, 1987). Recently, Oklahoma and surrounding states (including Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana) have shown the greatest spending on school facilities when compared to other regions (Abramson, 2013). Of these states, Texas and Arkansas have restructured capital funding to provide state support of school facilities within the last 10 years, while Louisiana and Oklahoma have not made these changes in funding structure (Raya & Rubin, 2006). Nevertheless, most school districts have multiple construction needs necessitated by changing student populations, technology changes and advancements, safety and accessibility issues and decaying and obsolete structures (Abramson, 2013).

In Oklahoma and surrounding states, the current median cost of construction of an

elementary school is $199.73 per square foot or $33,028 each for 457 students (Abramson, 2013). Elementary schools allocate 159 square feet per student, while high schools allow 227 square feet per student. Middle school costs average $20.8 million, but high schools costs are $27 million (Abramson, 2013). According to the Oklahoma State Department of Education, “pre-Kindergarten through grade 12 enrollment for the current school year is 666,150 – an increase of 6,535 students over the 2009-10 school year and 27,128 more students than five years



ago” (OSDE, 2013, para. 1). Clearly, such growth in student population increases the need for school facilities.

All students deserve high-quality learning facilities. Unfortunately, many school

facilities across Oklahoma are deteriorating and in need of repair. As communities change, the availability of resources necessary to meet the children’s educational needs in each community may also change. These resulting changes may shift priorities away from providing a high-quality education and focus instead on maintaining the identity of the community. All students, regardless of their geographical location, deserve school facilities, buildings and classrooms that support their learning needs, including ample space to collaborate and work together on projects. Materials and technology must be available to ensure access to newer mediums of learning. Other states have adopted practices to address issues of equity and quality in response to litigation intended to develop, implement, evaluate and sustain minimum standards for physical resources; this committee intends to do the same (Raya & Rubin, 2006). The Physical Resources committee identified three key issues facing Oklahoma school facilities.

• Building quality and equity • Technology • Transportation

Oklahoma lacks a statewide infrastructure assessment. Using a matching or

benchmarking process, Crampton & Thompson (2008) estimate that Oklahoma needs $2,396,415,132 in school infrastructure funding, which is well below the mean need of states for infrastructure funding, which is $5,092,124,570. Upgrading Building Quality and Providing Equity Across the State

Learning is enhanced when buildings provide safe and secure learning environments that

are comfortable and inviting for students, personnel and community stakeholders. Quality school buildings reflect our Oklahoma Vision, which values students as our most important resource and extends to both existing structures and new construction. Many facility factors impact the learning environment, including spatial configurations, noise, heat, cold, light, and air quality (Uline & Tschannen-Moran, 2008; Yocum, 2006; Schneider, 2002; Maiden & Foreman, 1998; Mwamwenda & Mwamwenda, 1987). The evaluation of building quality spans five components:

• New construction • Additions to existing structures • Renovation • Maintenance and repair • Sustainability

Quality facilities are dependent on adequate fiscal resources (Schneider, 2002) for new

buildings as well as maintenance and repair of older structures. Facilities need to be adequately resourced to support the learning environment. Furthermore, construction of new facilities must be approached in such a way as to not overextend school district budgets. Thus, care must be taken to ensure bonds procured for this purpose do not extend past the useful life of the structure,



maintenance of structures is economical, buildings meet or exceed all existing criteria and building specifications and these facilities incorporate technology-friendly designs to address current needs yet are flexible enough to accommodate future needs. Design and construction should also reflect the employment of sustainable practice and should be technologically accessible and flexible.

Currently, many school facilities across the state are dilapidated and overvalued,

burdened by inadequate infrastructure to support technology and insufficient security measures to meet current requirements. The majority of these facilities were constructed through the Works Progress Administration, between 1935-1937, and struggle to support the changing needs of today’s students (Baird, 1994). Quality construction is further compromised when flooding, tornadoes, excessive temperature change and other factors damage or destroy facilities that were not recently assessed, and cannot be rebuilt with quality materials and design. Building larger facilities with decreasing allocation of funds, along with a growing population of students throughout the state and country, will not support quality school facilities construction. These problems are not unlike those of school districts across the country (Chaney & Lewis, 2007). Studies show that facility upgrades to existing buildings and modernization included most frequently the need for heating ventilating air conditioning (HVAC) work, followed by overhauling electrical systems, then by plumbing, lighting and roofing (Abramson, 2013).

In order to nurture a high-quality education for all Oklahoma students, it is paramount to

establish a process to construct or reconstruct quality, equitable learning environments irrespective of local school district financial condition. Oklahoma provides no state support for capital outlay funding, with revenue for facility construction and maintenance coming from local sources (mostly property tax yield). Johnson and Maiden (2010) found that both rural and non-rural schools were significantly different in net-assessed valuation and capital outlay expenditure. They further found that socioeconomic factors were a significant predictor of capital outlay expenditures (Johnson & Maiden, 2010). Johnson and Maiden (2010) also determined that poverty level was not significantly related to local support for bond issues, yet poverty level had a significant negative relationship to net-assessed valuation and capital outlay expenditure, meaning those in high-poverty communities may be willing to be taxed in order to build better schools but are unable to do so if their community’s tax base is weak. Additionally, they determined rural districts held bond issue elections less than non-rural districts, yet Johnson and Maiden (2010) did not offer a reason for this. Given these findings, small rural districts face much larger impediments to generating the funds necessary for a large construction project as larger urban and suburban districts have a larger tax base upon which to draw. Further, bonds may be passed and paid in a shorter window of time for small rural districts, which must spread their commitment over a longer period of time in order to pay off the bond debt. Johnson and Maiden (2010) also found that socioeconomic status was the most significant variable in student achievement. Thus, they concluded that disparities in education are partially caused by place of residence and level of income.

Maiden and Stearns (2007), in a study of Oklahoma school district capital outlay funding,

found that current General Fund education expenditures were more equitable and wealth index neutral than capital (building fund) expenditures. In general, rural school districts were less equitable in both current and capital expenditures and are more impacted by local wealth than



their non-rural counterpart districts. Maiden and Stearns (2007) conclude that because school districts depend on local property taxes to fund capital improvements, those communities with wealthier residential and commercial property will continue to have more funds available for capital improvements, including newer and better buildings, advanced technology and safer equipment while those in poorer areas lack the tax base to fund capital improvements.

Although mechanisms exist for local funding of capital outlays, the reality is students in

rural and high-poverty schools do not have equitable facilities when compared with students in wealthier school districts with a large tax base (Maiden, 2003). When districts are able to mobilize funds for facilities, many opt to renovate existing structures rather than build new buildings to save money. Yet renovation may not provide sufficient infrastructure for increased technology, communication and safety needs of today’s schools. Too often, technology equipment is housed in existing janitor closets or other partitioned space rather than in a well-designed designated area. This placement encroaches on learning environments and has proven to be a failed practice. Updating Technology Quality and Ensuring Equitable Access

For students to be successful both in school and during their careers, they must be skilled in technology use (Business & Higher Education Forum, 2011; Friedman, 2005). Schools can best support students in developing these technological skills by making significant technology investments to provide interactive learning activities that allow students to take control of their learning and have quality teachers who integrate digital tools into learning (Technology Counts, 2012). The integration of technology in the classroom must mirror our daily lives and prepare students for a world of work that is increasingly mediated by ever-evolving technologies (Bonk, 2009; Ringstaff & Kelley, 2002). Schools need to design, fund, construct and maintain an adequate technology infrastructure to meet current and future technology needs. A frequent need in building construction and maintenance is the upgrading of technology infrastructure through fiber optic cables, LANs and WANs (Abramson, 2013). It is difficult to create technology support systems today that ignore the changing nature of instructional technologies. Thus, access to adequate physical resources to meet the increased need for technology access and infrastructure remains a challenge in most Oklahoma schools. Improving Transportation Quality and Safety and Addressing Equity of Access

Safe and reliable transportation for eligible students is essential to the educational process. Transportation research has focused on safety with little consideration given to the effects of school transportation on student achievement (Howley, Howley & Shamlen, 2001). A few studies have examined the impact of school bus riding on student achievement. The primary focus of White (1971), Lu and Tweeten (1973), and Thibeault and Zetler (1997) was the effect of long bus rides -- over 30 minutes one way -- had on student performance. Yet critical examination of the effects of bus riding on student well-being and performance is missing in the literature. Howley and Smith (2000) propose that the history of school transportation and use of busing to address racial desegregation have discouraged closer examination of the effects of busing. The authors charge that current busing practices should be carefully examined to include questions about the safety and well-being of students being transported as well as practices that



compromise student educational attainment (Howley & Smith, 2000). Some busing practices may warrant closer examination since many schools and communities see a need to provide transportation, even in instances where transportation is not mandated or funded by the state. The current mile-and-a-half rule for state funding of transportation makes sense in many cases, yet safety and parental concerns require reexamination of that rule to allow schools more flexibility.

Oklahoma has more than 500 school districts, the majority of which are in rural areas.

Student transportation provision is pivotal to realizing school attendance for many students (Fox, 1995). School districts across the state and nation face challenges in acquiring, maintaining and operating school buses. Creative approaches to purchasing vehicles, pursuing economical fueling options, training drivers and servicing an aging fleet are necessities. Critical concerns about school bus safety, including potential terrorist attacks that have been featured in the public press, remain largely unaddressed (National School Transportation Association, 2007). Summary of Key Issues The inequities and lack of quality safe facilities, adequate resources for learning, technology infrastructure and resources and safe transportation are issues that impact student performance.

Transformational Practices Drawing upon the experiences of other states that have dealt with extraordinary

educational infrastructure challenges may be beneficial as new possibilities in Oklahoma are reviewed. Across the nation, most facility upgrades have been forced through litigation. Transformational practices can be gleaned from these examples. Other examples of transformative practices are community-school partnerships. The ways in which Arkansas, Ohio, Arizona, Texas and Maryland addressed facility concerns are discussed. Arkansas

Arkansas is a prime example of statewide systematic change in educational facilities and transportation funding and support. Litigation was an important first step toward equitable support of educational physical resources as well as a focus on increased quality of these resources. Lakeview School District sued the State of Arkansas. charging that it violated both the U.S. and Arkansas constitutions. The plaintiff claimed educational facilities in Arkansas were inadequate, unequal and in violation of the state constitutional guarantee of a free, adequate, efficient and substantially equal public education for the children of Arkansas. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and charged the governor and the Arkansas General Assembly with responsibility for correcting the problem (Lakeview, 2000).

However, two years later the school district returned to the Supreme Court since the

required changes had not yet been addressed. Subsequently, a task force under the direction of the Arkansas General Assembly and a group of volunteers (including engineers and architects) developed a common assessment for examining all educational facilities under AR Law: 6-21-



112 Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation. The 2004 assessment included 308 school districts and 5,700 buildings (80 million square feet of floor space). This facilities division developed and implemented an ongoing and uniform process for collecting, inventorying and updating facilities. Additionally, statewide custodial maintenance schedules and support software were deployed to each facility, and a blueprint review was developed to meet all standards set by the facilities division. Bus inspections and bus driver training also fell within the Facilities Divisions purview (Arkansas Division of Public Schools, n.d.).

The Facilities Division as an independent component of the Arkansas Department of

Education created a three-prong program to address facilities inadequacies. First, through an immediate repair program, all sites received one-time funding to address all health and safety standards. The next initiative intended to address new construction only but subsequently provided more funding and a bridge from immediate repair to new construction. Finally, the state created a partnership with school districts to assist with new construction needs (Arkansas Division of Public Schools, n.d.). All standards developed through the work of the facilities division are publicly available and include space requirements, design recommendations and templates for every space in an educational facility for an architect to follow. Additionally, the 2004 assessment laid the foundation for a database of ongoing improvements and qualifying life spans for all systems within a facility (Arkansas Division of Public Schools, n.d.). Support for technology acquisition and infrastructure updates fall under the purview of the facilities division, along with transportation maintenance and bus driver training. Other States

Arkansas is not alone. Lawsuits have been brought against 35 states challenging school-funding practices that failed to provide equitable facilities for all students (Access Quality Education, 2007; Raya & Rubin, 2006). Courts have ruled in favor of plaintiffs in a majority of these cases and required new policies be adopted. Arizona, Ohio, California, Maryland, Texas, New Jersey and Connecticut are just a few of the states that have developed comprehensive programs for facilities funding over the last 15 years (Raya & Rubin, 2006).

Ohio. The state of Ohio claims one of the oldest state-funded educational facilities assistance programs. In 1991, the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, an alliance of more than 500 school districts, filed a lawsuit claiming the funding structure relied too heavily on local property taxes to fund schools and thus could not provide a “thorough and efficient” educational system as dictated by the Ohio Constitution (Ohio Education Matters, 2009). The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in favor of the coalition and charged the Ohio General Assembly to correct the problems through a “complete, systemic overhaul” (DeRolph, 1997). Since 1997, the Ohio School Facilities Commission has provided a comprehensive set of standards for school designs for eligible districts. Property wealth is the determinant of eligibility, and participating districts are assessed for a district-wide K-12 determination of needs, facilities plan and funding-support commitment. Annually, a manual of minimum standards for all educational facilities is published (Ohio School Facilities Commission, n.d.).

Arizona. The Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that the state’s school capital finance system was unconstitutional as it failed to conform to the constitution’s “general and



uniform” clause (Roosevelt, 1994). The court interpreted the state’s constitution as requiring funding to provide school facilities that would enable students to meet the state’s student competency standards (Raya & Rubin, 2006, p. 3). Arizona’s Students’ FIRST (Fair and Immediate Resources for Students Today) capital finance program, funded by appropriations from the State General Fund, was created to address inequities in facility expenditures. Administered by a nine-member board, it is responsible for building renewal; deficiencies corrections, including technology; and new school construction (Hunter, 2010; School Facilities Board, 2009). Additionally, the School Facilities Board developed statewide minimum standards for all schools (Raya & Rubin, 2006). In 2011, Arizona revised Stat § 15-946 to adjust transportation support in an effort to equalize spending across the state.

Texas. The Texas Education Agency administers the Instructional Facilities Allotment program, authorized by House Bill 4 (1997), to provide funding for school districts to assist with debt-service payments on qualifying bonds and lease-purchase agreements of new construction, renovation or expansion of educational facilities. Eligibility is determined based on the property wealth per student. Local districts can receive a percentage of funds toward the payment of their debt from the state’s General Revenue fund (Texas Education Agency, 2013).

Maryland. The Hughes Commission was assembled in 1970 to examine the State Aid Foundation Program for Education and determine if the state could fully fund operating costs for schools. In 1971, the Commission recommended the state fully fund school construction costs. The State School Construction Program was established, and a $150 million bond authorized for Fiscal Year 1972. The State Board of Public Works (consisting of the Governor, State Comptroller, and State Treasurer) determines the organization, structure, rules, regulations and administrative procedures of the program (Bi-Partisan Commission on School Construction, 2011). Maryland’s Public School Construction Program reimburses schools for construction of public schools that provide equalized educational facilities. The reimbursements are funded through the sales of state general obligation bonds and appropriated annually (Maryland Public School Construction Program, n.d.).

Partnering with and sharing the cost of construction with the community can provide extra amenities for schools.

Sedona High School Performing Arts Center. In 2007, the community of Sedona passed a $73 million bond for the school district. Part of the bond included the renovation of the existing auditorium into a state-of-the art performing arts center for 750 people. This performing arts center will not only be used by the district for its events but will be used as a premier performing arts facility for the city of Sedona. Learn more: http://www.owp.com/sedona-red-rock-high-school-performing-arts-center.

Enid Public Schools. The district partners with the Commons Retirement Community

and has a four-year-old program with a teacher and assistant from Enid Public Schools in cooperation with the Commons Methodist Health Care (Retirement) Center. Learn more: http://www.thecommons-umrc.com/about-us/intergenerational-program.



Union Public Schools. The Multipurpose Activity Center (UMAC) facility includes John Q. Hammons Arena, with seating for more than 5,000 and meeting rooms that can be used for a daily fee by the community. Learn more: https://www.unionps.org/index.cfm?id=643.

The UMAC also has a Wellness Center, which the district partners with YMCA to manage. Learn more: http://www.unionps.org/index.cfm?id=470.

Union Collegiate Academy is a new high school wing where students are able to enjoy a facility that emulates a college campus. Learn more: https://www.unionps.org/index.cfm?id=629.

Summary of Transformational Practices Although many states have litigated for improved quality and equity of physical resources, a proactive move to find ways to upgrade facilities for all students is needed. Funding for adequate and equitable access to safe transportation and up-to-date technology remains a challenge as well. Although states have addressed the issue of facilities differently mostly through the courts, lawsuits can be expensive and divisive.

Physical Resources Recommendations

These suggested actions are derived from the study and research of the committee on guiding principles, key issues and transformational practices and include the following recommendations: RECOMMENDATION 1.0: Resolve the inequities in school facilities, technology and transportation within the state of Oklahoma and take actions to fund inadequacies in school facilities attended by low-income children and other infrastructure-related health, safety, and accessibility issues as a state priority.

RECOMMENDATION 1.1: Develop criteria by which all school facilities, technology and transportation will be evaluated in the state of Oklahoma and conduct a statewide school infrastructure assessment. RECOMMENDATION 1.2: Using the criteria determined in #1-1, assess the adequacy of all school facilities, technology and transportation in the state of Oklahoma.

RECOMMENDATION 1.3: Implement a plan to address inequities in school facilities, technology, and transportation for schools in the state of Oklahoma.

Examining Arkansas’ work to determine facility adequacy via a task force provides

guidance. (White paper volume 1: Background on the Facilities Adequacy Study of Arkansas Educational facilities, 2004). Legislation to support analysis of facilities and to provide funding to begin to address conditions of deterioration of facilities can address concerns. Enlightened legislation rather than litigation could more affordably, quickly and amicably resolve these issues.



RECOMMENDATION 2.0: Establish criteria outlining what constitutes an adequate school facility, technology, and transportation, including all necessary components for:

a) Elementary education b) Middle school education c) High school education

RECOMMENDATION 2.1: Establish a method of providing substantially equitable facilities, technology and transportation for all schools in Oklahoma as necessary to ensure equitable opportunity for an adequate education. RECOMMENDATION 2.2: Establish a process to conduct a review and assessment of all public school facilities, technology and transportation in the state to determine which are in compliance with the recommendations of this task force. RECOMMENDATION 2.3: Establish policies and criteria for use in determining renovation, replacement or discontinuation of inadequate facilities, technology and transportation based upon statewide adequacy standards and other requirements necessary to ensure adequate and substantially equal school facilities, technology and transportation. RECOMMENDATION 2.4: Determine the average cost of an adequate, safe school facility in Oklahoma. RECOMMENDATION 2.5: Establish a method of funding the cost of adequate and substantially equitable school facilities, technology and transportation. See Financial Resources Recommendation 4.0. RECOMMENDATION 2.6: Establish a method to assess, evaluate, and monitor the school facilities, technology and transportation across the state to ensure that adequate and substantially equitable facilities are and will continue to be provided for Oklahoma school children.

Changes in funding support for educational facilities are being made across the United

States, often in response to litigation dealing with naturally occurring inequities that are a byproduct of varying levels of local economic wealth and funding structures that exacerbate these inequities by relying on local property taxes to provide the bulk of funds for capital development. Oklahoma is one of only 15 states that have not yet experienced this type of litigation; thus, it is necessary to consider the consequences of failing to examine the quality and equity of Oklahoma school physical resources (Raya & Rubin, 2006). Furthermore, Oklahoma is one of a few states that do not have a building equalization fund. The issue is becoming even more critical given rapid changes in technology and the concomitant need for school infrastructure to keep pace with these rapid changes. Crampton and Johnson (2008) recommend a partnership with the federal government.



Our committee prefers to follow a planned set of steps to meet the needs of our school facilities and maintain local control of physical resources. By 2015, we suggest that criteria for school infrastructure and an assessment process be identified along with development of a funding plan and guidelines for implementation of the much-needed work. Crampton and Johnson (2008) include a reference list of state assessments of school infrastructure and related materials.

A closer look at a facilities construction scenario for two districts working to address the

needs of Oklahoma students is instructive given the burden to pass a building fund bond is experienced differently depending on local wealth. Based on 2010-2011 data, one district in the state had about $2,000 per student in property tax generated, while a wealthier district in the state was able to generate over $200,000 per student. As Oklahoma statutes stipulate, districts can only vote 10 percent of local tax base for a bond issue; small poor districts struggle harder to generate the funds to make capital improvements. In reality, districts with a low tax base have to vote more millage on their patrons and pay bond debts out over a longer period of time to generate comparable revenue to a district with a large tax base.



Financial Resources

For all students to maximize their potential, adequate resources must be distributed throughout the state to support high-quality programs that help students increase their learning.

The ultimate responsibility for providing and funding public education rests with the

state, according to the Oklahoma Constitution. Specifically, the Constitution states that “[t]he legislature shall establish and maintain a system of free public schools wherein all the children of the state may be educated” and provides the legislature the authority to establish appropriations for education (Ok Const. art. XIII sec. 1.). Fundamental to the committee discussion is:

• What are the components of a free public education system that educates all

students? • What programs are necessary for this system? • How are schools supported in the offering of these programs?

Oklahoma is not the wealthiest among the 50 states. Historically reliant on the petroleum

industry, the state economy suffered substantially with the financial decline of that industry beginning in the early 1980s. Additionally, as seen in other states, the Oklahoma economy has suffered various periods of fiscal stress, most notably during the national economic downturn of the late 2000s and early 2010s. State and federal mandates, including the initiation of massive statewide education reform during the late 1980s and early 1990s and federal reform initiatives of recent decades, have resulted in continuing struggles to provide adequate funding to support the children’s education in Oklahoma common schools. Unfunded mandates and increased cost of living, goods and services are additional factors that impact school funding.

Figure 1. Student Enrollment and School Funding Since 2008

Even though Oklahoma has passed legislation for multiple education reforms, the state education budget continues to be downsized. For FY 2014, the state of Oklahoma appropriation was $7.1587 billion, an increase of $285 million, or 4.1 percent, from the final FY 2013 budget (Oklahoma Policy Board, 213b). The common education was appropriated 33.8 percent of this

$1,600 $1,700 $1,800 $1,900 $2,000 $2,100

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009

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School Funding Decreases

Funding (in millions)*

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total, down from FY 2013 and FY 2012, which was 34.4 percent and 35.3 percent, respectively. This is the lowest proportion of the budget for common education since FY 2000. The state formula funding for public schools was $213 million below FY 2008, even though school enrollment has increased more than 30,000 students (OK Policy Institute, 2013b). Oklahoma public education per-pupil funding is down 22.8 percent from FY 2008, the largest cuts in the nation (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2013). In addition to a decrease in per-pupil funding in the educational funding formula, the federal funding for Oklahoma decreased as a result of the sequestration agreement and additional across-the-board cuts (NEA, 2012, NEA 2013). This means that Oklahoma schools have less money to spend but have additional students to support. See Figure 1.

This committee considered the cost of a free public education for all students. Also, the adequacy of funding to support a quality education in all schools regardless of location, size, demographics or community wealth and resources were also taken into consideration. A lack of consensus on what comprises a free public education and what quality and adequacy mean are underlying issues to this topic (Baker, 2005). Some states have considered the proposed funding strategy by Odden (2006) that shifts the orientation of the education system from inputs to outcomes, specifically based on student achievement with rigorous performance standards and accountability at the school site, shifting the broader school financial focus from “equity” to “adequacy,” for both litigation and policy. A universally accepted definition of adequacy has been somewhat difficult to articulate precisely, which may account for the litigation over adequacy of funding for public education to address the interpretation of relevant language in state constitutions. Even more difficult has been setting universally accepted cost estimates for ensuring an adequate level of education for all students.

The purpose of the committee was to consider actions to provide adequate and equal

funding to support each student in reaching their potential with existing educational practices and to implement transformational practices identified by all of the vision committees. The committee focused on what it would take to properly resource all schools to provide a high-quality education for every student. For all students to maximize their potential, adequate resources must be distributed throughout the state to support high-quality programs that help students increase their learning. The committee first reviewed financial resources needed to support required expenditures to support increased learning. Next, the committee considered the cost of additional resources to support transformational practices for schools.

Guiding Principles

Three principles guide the work of this committee (see Ladd, 2008):

• Adequacy: Free and appropriate education for every child. • Equity: A high-quality education and equity for all children, regardless of their locale,

whether they live in an urban, suburban, or rural district. • Understandable: Terminology and formulas that all stakeholders can understand.



Key Issues

Key issues for this financial resources committee were based on a review of relevant research and literature from state and national experts in the field, key informants, and practitioners. Key issues were identified in the area of adequacy of funding, needed formula changes, capital funding and inequities that result from line item funding. A survey of the state finance systems showed that although the systems had been in place for almost a century, no new funding distribution models had emerged (Chambers, Levin, Wang, Verstegen, Jordan, & Baker, 2012).

General Funding

Adequacy of funding lacking. According to Mathangi Shankar, CPA, Director of Financial Services at the Oklahoma State Department of Education, the per-pupil funding for Oklahoma for 2011 and 2010 was $7,454 and $7,760, respectively. Per-pupil expenditure per NCES report was based on average daily attendance (ADA) and calculated after a few exclusions.

The decrease in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) funds coupled with increased ADA in 2011 accounts for the decrease in per-pupil funding (NCES, 2012). The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Oliff, Mai & Leachman, 2012) provides data showing that only two states have cut their per-pupil school budgets by a bigger proportion than Oklahoma. The report notes that Oklahoma per-pupil spending has dropped $706 between 2008 and 2013, or 20.3 percent, using inflation-adjusted dollars, and that these cuts may disproportionately impact those in high-need, less-wealthy school districts and undermine educational reform efforts (Oliff, Mai, & Leachman, 2012). Investigating school finance indicators, the Editorial Projects in Education (2012) Research Center found that Oklahoma ranks above average in the relationship between district funding and local property wealth and the difference in per-pupil spending levels at the 95th and 5th percentile students, yet lower than average in the other areas.

Typical of education systems in most other states, Oklahoma includes a tripartite funding relationship among the federal, state and local levels of government. Federal dollars typically flow to schools through various entitlement programs, such as Title I of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004, and other federal initiatives. The state of Oklahoma provides funding to local school districts primarily through a two-tiered equalization system as well as through a variety of categorical programs. Local districts derive the remainder of the revenues used to support education through county and local district sources, the majority of the local funding derived through ad valorem taxation.

As stated earlier, providing and funding public education rests with the state, according to

the Oklahoma Constitution (Ok Const. art. XIII sec. 1). Fundamentally, the state is responsible for providing adequate financial support for public education. Though the state Constitution does not require equalization of funding among districts, the Oklahoma legislature, as specified



in the state statute, has established the maintenance of a degree of inter-district funding equity as a goal (70 O.S. sec. 18-101).

To fund per-pupil spending balances, the ideal educational finance system balances state and local revenues and compensates for differences in local capacity to raise revenues (Baker & Corcoran, 2012). Revenues differ by poverty concentration in predictable ways. In other words, general state aid provides equal-dollar inputs across districts with varying fiscal capacity. The state policies for the ways in which general and need-based aid are integrated to finance education vary greatly across the nation. In practice, New Jersey and Ohio come closer than most in achieving a progressive distribution of resources across districts. Based on 2009 data, Oklahoma ranks 23rd when the inequality in local revenues is examined (Baker, 2012). Regional data from 2009 Kids Count per-pupil expenditures adjusted for regional cost differences show Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas in the lowest funding tier, while Arkansas, Missouri and New Mexico ($7,217-$9,708) are in the next lowest tier ($9,709-$11,472) (The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012). Kansas and Louisiana are in the second tier ($11,473-$13,959). No regional states are in the highest tier.

Shortfalls since 2008 have resulted in reductions in educational expenditures, causing schools to shorten school days or hours, increase class sizes, reduce faculty positions and limit purchases of instructional supplies (Rebell, 2012). Considering most state constitutions guarantee all students the right to an adequate or sound basic education, these cuts raise constitutional-level issues and have even resulted in court cases against states. National and regional comparisons indicate Oklahoma has a dire need for additional financial formula support for schools to maintain a free public education for all students.

Formula changes needed. State general funding aid formula for Oklahoma school districts includes a two-tiered equalization formula implemented in 1981 which will be examined in this paper. The Oklahoma Legislature annually appropriates state aid for both formulas in a single line item. State-dedicated and local revenue supplement appropriated state aid (Maiden & Palliotta, 1999). The formula was established to adjust the cost of delivering educational services to provide differential funding for various groups of special needs students and isolated districts.

To determine the state foundation aid per district, multiple factors are considered. Oklahoma’s funding formula is comprised of student counts by grade level and student characteristics (Hull, 2004). The formula also factors district calculations for small schools, isolated population areas, and teacher salaries. The weighted student count or weighted average daily membership (ADM) is calculated for each district, then multiplied by a foundation aid factor (which differs annually), which becomes the foundational aid. The foundational aid is multiplied by a teacher salary incentive factor, which results in the state salary incentive amount. Thus, the weighted ADM includes the pupil grade level, pupil categories, district calculation and teacher index. The weighted ADM for the current year is calculated as of the first quarter and then compared to the previous two years’ weighted ADM. The calculation of state aid for each district is determined as the higher of the previous year or the second previous year’s weighted ADM, with the final allocation of state aid based on the higher of the three counts. Finally, state aid is the balance remaining after the local effort is determined. Consequently, when the total



revenue from various local sources is greater than the foundational funding multiplied by weighted ADM, then the state foundation aid total is null. State aid for transportation is separate from state formula assistance through the calculation of transportation for students who live further than 1.5 miles from their school, called the average daily haul. In addition to foundation aid and transportation aid, state general funding aid includes salary incentive aid, which accounts for differences in teacher pay because of experience and training, total number of teachers in the district and the adjusted assessed valuation. Most local school revenues are derived from ad valorem taxes. The last revision to the state aid formula was in 1990 when the weight for full-day kindergarten students was added. The state minimum teacher salary was also increased in 1990.

The state appropriation for common education funding increased from 33.2 percent in

1990 with the passage of House Bill 1017 to a high of 38.5 percent in 1995. By 1999, the share of state appropriations received by common education decreased, ultimately to 35.5 percent. For the next several years, the annual appropriation increased and decreased intermittently. In 2007, a School Funding Formula Task Force was established to address issues with foundational aid. The work of that task force has informed much of the work of this committee (San Pedro, 2007). It should be noted, however, that the number of students in Oklahoma public schools has increased by more than 34,000 students since 2007. That being said, there is less money to support additional students.

By 2014, the percent of state funds going to common education was 33.8 percent

(2,407M), a decrease from 34.4 percent in 2013 and 35.3 percent in 2012 (Perry, 2014). The 2014 state funding for common education is the lowest portion of the budget since at least FY 2000. As shown in Figure 1, the state formula funding for public schools remains $213 million below FY 2008 levels, even as enrollment has increased by more than 30,000 students.

The general formula is needed to maintain equity. To date, the resulting common

education funding is inadequate to help all students reach their potential. Also, the complexity of the formula does not allow the public to understand the funding formula intricacies. Therefore, there is a need for a more transparent formula for legislators and school administrators.

Capital funding. Oklahoma is one of only 11 states that do not have an equalization fund for the construction of new buildings. Although an equity formula for the general fund exists, there is no equalization fund for capital improvements. If passed by a majority of voters, districts may pass a five-mill fund levy to cover capital costs; however, these proceeds are not equalized by the state. If passed by a supermajority of voters, districts may pass a sinking fund levy to cover building debts. The State Finance Technical Assistance booklet on the Oklahoma State Department of Education website states:

The Constitution provides that each school district may levy up to 5 mills for the purpose of erecting, remodeling, and repairing school buildings, or for purchasing furniture. In the early history of the state, it was envisioned that the 5 mills might be sufficient to provide the money necessary for building facilities for the many school districts. However, it became unrealistic for most districts a long time ago (Garrett, 2009 p. 7).



Each school district in Oklahoma is authorized to borrow money up to an amount that does not exceed 10 percent of its total assessed valuation. Money is borrowed through the issuance of bonds after the voter’s approval. Districts may, with the approval of a 60 percent supermajority of voters, pass a sinking fund levy to service debt (Maiden & Pattiolla, 1999). The State Finance Technical Assistance booklet on the Oklahoma State Department of Education website states:

A Sinking Fund levy is determined following the approval of the bond issue to yield enough money to pay the principal and the interest on the bond issue. In other words, the number of mills levied will vary from district to district in terms of the size of the bond issue, the term of the bonds (how long until they are paid off), and the interest rate. Many districts have no Sinking Fund levy, and others have levies exceeding 30 mills (Garrett, 2009 p. 7).

Two studies, one in small rural high schools and another in urban high schools in

Virginia in the early 1990s, found that test scores rose with the quality of the building (Crampton, Thompson, & Vesely, 2004). This article reports additional studies to support these findings, including one in Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee. A report from the U.S. Department of Education (2008) states, “Decaying environmental conditions such as peeling paint, crumbling plaster, nonfunctioning toilets, poor lighting, inadequate ventilation, and inoperative heating and cooling systems can affect the learning as well as the health and the morale of staff and students” (p. 1).

Thus, the quality of the facilities and building maintenance are important to ensure that the learning potential of all students is maximized. See Physical Resources chapter for additional details.

Line item funding does not benefit all school districts. Different state financial systems exist for distributing educational funds to school districts through funding formulas comprised of two parts, “foundational” (or base) and “categorical” funding. In most states, the foundational funding is intended to cover the basic cost of education; while categorical funding programs finance specific parts, such as special education, reduced class size and summer school programs. Even though foundation is intended to cover basic educational costs, this is not necessarily the case. Instead, in Oklahoma, the support for schools has been based on available funds and politics.

To address this issue, some states, such as Maryland, Ohio, and Wyoming, have begun to

use research-based studies to determine the necessary funding (ECS Research Studies, 2012). Categorical funding varies from state to state, with most states having fewer than a dozen categorical programs, yet others have more than 30 (ECS Research Studies, 2012). The number of funding adequacy studies has resulted in fewer categorical funding programs. For example, Maryland eliminated 27 categorical funds in 2002. The reduction of categorical funding may increase flexibility to school districts, but it also may eliminate some programs. Best practices are those that allow local school districts flexibility in addressing broad standards to ensure maximum learning for all students (Schlechty, 2008).



The FY 2014 budget in Oklahoma has more than $40 million from the Common Education budget that will go to State Department of Education vendor-based programs or special projects, an increase of over $10 million from FY 2013 budget. These programs impact a limited number of schools and do not necessarily impact fiscal equity or adequacy, as do general fund formula allocations. Summary of Key Issues

The overall issue is that general funding is inadequate. Issues that create the

inadequacies and inequities are related to the current funding formula, capital funding mechanisms and line-item funding that shifts money out of the funding formula.

Promising/Transformational Practices for Financial Resources

Many public educational finance programs, strategies and activities are currently being

implemented across the nation. In this section, those practices that have shown promise for potentially transforming the financing of public education are described. How States Are Addressing Inadequacy and Inequities in Funding The committee reviewed several state examples. Included are Kansas, Texas, and Georgia. A study conducted in Nevada is also included.

Kansas. Recently, a Kansas court ruled the state’s school funding cuts unconstitutional. In an extensive decision from Gannon vs. State, the district court held that the reductions in state aid adopted by the legislature since the Great Recession were unconstitutional. In 2013, the court held that the state had violated prior orders of the state supreme court and enjoined the state from reducing state aid. Learn more: http://schoolfunding.info/2013/01/kansas-court-holds-school-funding-cuts-unconstitutional/.

Texas. Texas adopted changes to its state school finance system in 2006 (H.B.1) for its 1,000-plus school districts, focused specifically on using state aid for tax relief (to buy down or “compress” local property tax rates). Texas was already operating a system with a need- and cost-adjusted foundation level. That system was retained in the modified formula. The Texas State Supreme Court ruling in 2005 did not pertain to inadequate funding. Instead, the court ruled that by effectively forcing school districts to levy their maximum property tax rate, the school finance system had created a statewide property tax, which is impermissible under the Texas Constitution. The court ruled that the system no longer provided “meaningful discretion” for districts to raise additional revenue for their schools. Thus, the Texas legislature set out to correct those aspects of the formula, which limited meaningful discretion but set aside concerns over the equity or adequacy of funding (Edgewood VI, 2005). Recently, the judge ruled that the Texas school finance system was unconstitutional. Learn more: http://schoolfunding.info/2014/03/texas-trial-concludes-decision-expected-shortly/.



Georgia. In 2011, the Georgia legislature passed House Bill 192, which established the State Education Finance Study Commission and charged the commission to study core student funding, funding equity, state/local funding partnerships and other issues. The Commission produced and prioritized recommendations. When sorted into categories, the recommendations included: classroom technology and technology infrastructure, school counselors, student support services, professional learning, central and school administration, equalization, capital outlay, formula simplification and changes specific to Georgia laws (Georgia State Department of Education, 2012). Nevada Study. Nevada used best practices identified by Chambers and Levin (2009) to review their financing of public education for adequacy and equity. The review considered four areas: the overall plan; the development of an inventory of state finance systems; an analysis of how comparable states addressed student needs and district characteristics; and recommendations for improving the funding model. For more information, see http://leg.state.nv.us/Interim/76th2011/Committee/Studies/FundingSchools/Other/NVFundingStudyReportFINAL20120822.pdf. Summary of Promising/Transformational Practices States like Kansas, Texas and Georgia are implementing policies to address inadequacies and inequities in funding mechanisms. Litigation has been one way that states have been forced to revise their funding, but litigation can be expensive. Many states are reviewing and redesigning their funding strategies to address issues of adequacy and equity.

Financial Resources Recommendations

Based on the review of the current status of the financial resources available for an adequate and equitable quality education for all students in Oklahoma, a thorough review of the key issues, and an analysis of what is happening in other states to address the financial resources available for public education, the committee identified several key recommendations for implementation in the state. RECOMMENDATION 1.0: Provide adequate and equitable funding needed for all students, regardless of locale or background.

RECOMMENDATION 1.1: Conduct a comprehensive review and revision of the Oklahoma Common Education State Aid Funding Formula with implementation of recommendations into state policy. The following are suggested processes and topics to include in the review: 1. Reestablish a similar representative committee to analyze these recommendations

along with new data to propose legislation to update the equalization formula. 2. Review, update and implement the School Funding Formula Task Force

recommendations. In 2007, School Funding Formula Task Force made specific recommendations that can serve as a starting point for the review (San Pedro, 2007).



3. Build a more transparent formula and specifically recommend changes to Weighted Pupil Category, then implement into state policy.

4. Review and update all disabilities to reflect current federal designations. 5. Review and update the weights to reflect a proportion of the actual cost to educate a

student based on their disability. 6. Review and make recommendations on the four state requirements that exceed IDEA

to include caseload and class size. Specifically, adjust the grade weight to 1.0 for all students and the change for kindergarten and prekindergarten to .6 for half-day students.

7. Inequities exist in current weighting for developmentally delayed, gifted and economically disadvantaged students requiring additional study and review. The occupational and physical therapy caseloads need to be reviewed. See the Wyoming Model, in which 85 percent of costs are reimbursed by the state as a possible option (ECS Research Studies, 2012).

8. Update the wording in the formula from “Bilingual” to “Language Other than English Spoken in the Home” and other areas of need.

9. Review and recommend an alternative education funding mechanism using examples from other states as a basis for creating a new funding formula that uses current data.

10. Review current adult education funding and collaborate with the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education and the Oklahoma community colleges to determine the best fit for adult education, then implement the recommendations into state policy.

This recommendation corresponds with the action items proposed by the Oklahoma

Policy Institute (2013b) to restore funding levels to address the needs of Oklahoma’s students and suggests a series of actions that can accomplish the needed funding. It is time for Oklahoma to reaffirm its educational priorities. Funding education will improve the state’s economy. This recommendation also would support the Oklahoma Business and Education Coalition (OBEC, 2013) funding initiative to distribute funding so every child has an equitable chance to learn and access to high-quality teachers and curriculum.

Public school finance literature provides multiple criteria for optimal funding

mechanisms. Chambers and Levin (2009) provide best practices for developing new state funding formulas to meet adequacy and equity in school finance that might provide additional information for the process of updating the state formula.

RECOMMENDATION 1.2: Conduct a thorough review of the current mechanisms and potential modifications that would allow for diversification of revenue support for local districts. Several states have revised funding mechanisms for public education to allow more local options to increase the funding for their students. Allowing local school districts flexibility in addressing broad standards to ensure maximum learning for all students is becoming a recognized best practice (Schlechty, 2008). Currently, Oklahoma statutes limit these options.



RECOMMENDATION 2.0: Provide greater flexibility to local school districts to exercise a high level of decision-making authority about the most effective strategies for the expenditure of funds to enable all students to graduate successfully, yet maintain accountability for efficiency in expenditure of public funds.

Flexibility in educational financing allows local schools to meet the needs of their students. An increase in the ability for local districts to pass millage for operational costs and ongoing expenses would allow local districts to meet the needs of their students. Also, include funding and mechanisms to provide appropriate evaluation methods for assessing success and for implementing interventions when needed should be included. This flexibility should include strict accountability measures to support the expenditure strategy. This recommendation should support the OBEC (2013) funding initiative that encourages innovation with a requirement for accountability.

RECOMMENDATION 2.1: Provide monetary incentives to recruit teachers from other states and other professions, to adjust policies and regulations to allow other professionals to successfully transition to education, and to invest resources and align policies to retain teachers.

See Partnerships for Human Capital and Organizational Efficacy. RECOMMENDATION 3.0: Initiate an ongoing process for reviewing and revising state and local policies to allow districts to work together to create financial efficiencies.

Although some policies do exist to support efficiencies, additional efficiencies may be possible. For example, procedures for purchasing any contract services (e.g., food, custodial, supplies) should be based on efficiency rather than an accountability report. In addition, IT services should be studied in this way, looking for the most effective and efficient way of providing services at the district or state level.

RECOMMENDATION 4.0: Create a capital improvement formula and mechanism to fund the Oklahoma Building Equalization Fund. Develop and implement a state capital improvement equity formula and determine the academic effectiveness of the formula implementation. See Physical Resources.



Concluding Thoughts

As school and communities, we need to come together to establish public education policies that protect our democratic values, such as voice and equality.

As educational leaders from CCOSA and OSSBA joined together to deliberate about our vision for public education, we were concerned that we had lost our voice in the educational reform and accountability movement. We have since come to the realization that our local communities collectively have had little agency in the politics influencing reform efforts in public education.

For the sustainability of our public school system, we need to reestablish the

interconnection with the public, bringing together diverse groups to redefine our shared interests, based more on the community interests rather than on the schools, and develop a type of public capital through community-building and boundary-spanning organizations that focus on a larger purpose, such as teaching our youth. As school and communities, we need to come together to establish public education policies that protect our democratic values, such as voice and equality.

Through this visioning process, we as educational leaders and as citizens of our local

communities hope to join together with other citizens and governing bodies to deliberate about the purpose of public education in our communities and state. We are not just talking about schools but also about community services, youth organizations, religious groups, museums and public and private businesses. There is no prescribed way for how we might join with other citizens to co-create a new vision of public education. But we are compelled to articulate and share our vision and listen to the vision of others as we work together as communities and as a state to find ways to make our tradition of public education more responsive to the needs of future generations. Building strong interdependent schools and communities that support and strengthen children and families is a complex process.

We hope to start by bring together those who have a positive attitude toward schools and think of them as partners, rather than consumers in a marketplace. These deliberations may not result in consensus or one particular action, but rather they can begin to help us find a shared sense of purpose and direction, allowing local citizenry to shape the future of their community and the role of their schools within those communities. We invite you to join us.



Contributors Visioning Coordinating Team Members Mr. Steven Crawford, Executive Director, Cooperative Council of Oklahoma School Administration Mr. Shawn Hime, Executive Director, Oklahoma State School Boards Association Dr. Joe Siano, Superintendent of Norman Public Schools Dr. Jean Cate, Associate Director, K20 Center, University of Oklahoma Ms. Stephanie Hyder, Project Facilitator, Oklahoma State School Boards Association Visioning Steering Committee Members

Climate, Culture and Organization Efficacy Dr. Cathy Burden, Superintendent Union Public Schools Dr. Dan Snell, Board Member Norman Public Schools Teaching, Learning and Assessing for for Student Success Dr. Ann Caine, Superintendent Stillwater Public Schools Willa Jo Fowler, Board Member Enid Public Schools Beth Schieber, Board Member Okarche Public Schools Expanded Learning Opportunities for Student Success Sandra Park, Deputy Superintendent Oklahoma City Public Schools Roger Sharp, Board Member Indian Capital Technology Center Governance, Leadership and Accountability Dr. John Cox, Superintendent Peggs Public Schools Dustin Tackett, Board Member Caddo Kiowa Technology Center Partnerships for Human and Organizational Capital Development Sean McDaniel, Superintendent Mustang Public Schools Dr. Kent Shellenberger, Superintendent Bethany Public Schools Physical Resources: Jerry Needham, Superintendent Oktaha Public Schools Rodney Schilt, Board Member Adair Public Schools Financial Resources Shawn Hime, former Superintendent Enid Public Schools Glen Cosper, Board Member Moore-Norman Technology Center



In Memory

Our profound gratitude goes to Dr. Jeff Mills, OSSBA’s former Executive Director and a proud supporter of public education in Oklahoma. Dr. Mills lost his battle with cancer in September 2013 while this project was ongoing. His support, encouragement, leadership and vision helped to shape this capstone document, and his passion and desire to provide the best education possible for all Oklahoma students can be found throughout its pages. Visioning would not have been possible without him, and we are deeply grateful for his involvement.

Committee Members and University Research Assistants

Rob Armstrong, Superintendent, Oologah-Talala Public Schools Michael Broyles, Superintendent, Braggs Public Schools Dr. Ann Caine, Superintendent, Stillwater Public Schools Eddie Coleman, Superintendent, OKACTE - Kiamichi Technology Center Glen Cosper, Glen, School Board, Moore-Norman Technology Center Dr. John Cox, Superintendent, Peggs Public Schools Rebecca Damron, Graduate Student, University of Oklahoma Dr. Tom Deighan, Superintendent, Lawton Public Schools Scott Farmer, Superintendent, Sallisaw Public Schools Willa Jo Fowler, Board Member, Enid Public Schools Dr. Jim Glaze, Superintendent, Chickasha Public Schools Derald Glover, Superintendent, Ft. Gibson Public Schools Terry Grissom, Superintendent, OROS - Asher Public Schools Dr. Kirt Hartzler, Superintendent, Union Public Schools Melonie Hau, Assistant Superintendent, Enid Public Schools Shawn Hime, Superintendent, Enid Public Schools Kevin Hime, Superintendent, Clinton Public Schools Amanda James, Graduate Student, University of Oklahoma Jim Lamer, Superintendent, OSOS - Garber Public Schools Cheryl Lane, Board Member, Frontier Public Schools Tamara Love, Graduate Student, University of Oklahoma Jim Martin, Superintendent, ORES - Robin Hill Public Schools J. Michael McClaren, Superintendent, Claremore Public Schools Jackie McComas, Board Member, Anadarko Public Schools Dr. Sean McDaniel, Superintendent, Mustang Public Schools Dr. Jarod Mendenhall, Superintendent, Broken Arrow Public Schools Dr. Marc Moore, Superintendent, Shawnee Public Schools Jerry Needham, Superintendent, Oktaha Public Schools Jimmie Nolen, Board Member, Mid-Del Schools Sherri Pankhurst, Graduate Student, University of Oklahoma & Cordell Schools Sandra Park, Former Deputy Superintendent, Oklahoma City Public Schools Alita Reynolds, Campus Director, OKACTE - Central Technology Center Beth Schieber, Board Member, Okarche Public Schools Rodney Schilt, Board Member, Adair Schools



Kate Shannon, Graduate Student, University of Oklahoma Roger Sharp, Board Member, Indian Capital Technology Center Dr. Kent Shellenberger, Superintendent, Bethany Public Schools Karen Shuey, Board Member, Moore Public Schools Dr. Jason Simeroth, Superintendent, Durant Public Schools Dr. Dan Snell, Board Member, Norman Public Schools Paula Squires, Superintendent, Boone-Apache Public School Jason Sternberger, Superintendent, Kingfisher Public Schools Dustin Tackett, Board Member, Caddo Kiowa Technology Center Tom Thomas, Superintendent, OKACTE - Great Plains Technology Center Robert Trammell, Superintendent, Snyder Public Schools Nicki Watkins, Graduate Student, University of Oklahoma Brian Wigginton, Board Member, Oologah-Talala Public School Brandi Williams, Graduate Student, University of Oklahoma Dr. Greg Winters, Superintendent, OKACTE - Canadian Valley Technology Center

University of Oklahoma Faculty Reviewers: Dr. Curt Adams, Assistant Professor, Educational Administration, Curriculum and Supervision Dr. Bill Frick, Associate Professor, Educational Administration, Curriculum and Supervision Dr. Rhonda Goolsby, Assistant Professor, Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum Dr. Jeffrey Maiden, Professor, Educational Administration, Curriculum and Supervision Dr. Holly Mackey, Assistant Professor, Educational Administration, Curriculum and Supervision K20 Project Advisors: Dr. Gregg Garn, Dean of the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education and K20 Executive Director, University of Oklahoma Dr. Leslie Williams, Director of the K20 Center, University of Oklahoma. The K20 Center for Educational and Community Renewal is a statewide education research and development center which promotes innovative learning through school-university-community collaboration. The K20 Center is located on the South Research Campus at the University of Oklahoma and is a University-wide Strategic Organization. Learn more: k20center.ou.edu : www.K20Center.ou.edu McREL Reviewer and Facilitator Jim Eck, Ph.D. McRel International is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan education research and development corporation. With headquarters in Denver, Colorado, McRel International was founded to turn knowledge about what works in education into practical guidance for educators and has become an international organization. Learn more: www.McRel.org



A Note About Timing This report was initially completed in April 2014, before the Oklahoma Legislature had completed its session. Consequently, changes implemented during that session are not reflected in this documented. Likewise, the positions and employment of some committee members also have changed.



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