Superintendent Introduces LEARNS

On September 2, Superintendent Brian Osborne opened the 2010-11 school year with address to faculty and staff. The address, entitled "Pathway to Success," follows.

Welcome back to the 2010-2011 school year!

September is always the greatest time, the most exciting time, the time of promise and possibility. The time to renew our efforts, the time to work hard to get things right, the time to stare adversity in the face and to know that together we can make public education what it needs to be for every single student.

The daughter I've mentioned in these opening day speeches before now has a little sister starting kindergarten. They were playing school while I was working on this speech, and the five-year-old said to the eight-year-old, "Will I like real school?" She didn't know it, but the eight-year-old's simple answer summed up decades of research on the teacher-student relationship. She said to her little sister, "It depends if your teacher likes you." And that was a good reminder to me of the power you have in shaping both the daily lives and the future of our children. I'm honored to be with you preparing to share our enthusiasm for learning and our love with our kids when they return next week.

Please join me in welcoming all new staff. New staff if you are joining us for the very first time please stand up and be recognized. That's right, stay on your feet please. Look around you, know that everyone here, everyone in this room wants you to succeed, wants you to have a fine and glorious career here at South Orange-Maplewood. We are all rooting for you. You have chosen a special and unique place to work. We are so happy that you are bringing yourself to bear on our mission of preparing each and every single student for success for the 21st century.

The fact that you are here shows that you share the five core beliefs that are fundamental to our work here. They are: all students are worthy of intellectual respect; great teaching matters, quality education demands genuine appreciation of difference; we are all learners and leaders and; parents are our partners.

We welcome your sharing these core beliefs and helping actualize them into a continually improving system in the service of all of our kids. Welcome.

Over the past three years we have been on a journey together toward a future of a school system that st makes good on its mission to prepare each and every student for higher learning and success in the 21st century, and one that breaks the links between race, class, and academic outcomes. Last year we talked about a crossroads of the centuries, and the courage it would take to abandon the familiar 20th century trail of success for some, and move our district onto a 21st century pathway of college readiness for all.

There are three main points about this pathway for success that we are building together that I would like to emphasize this morning. First, thanks to your amazing work, we know a lot about success, and that knowledge is helping us build the pathway. Second, the well traveled trail of success for some must give way to a pathway to success for every student. Third, constructing this pathway is our shared work, and together we are building it strategically.

First, we know a lot about success. You have a track record of producing success academically, artistically, and athletically with our students. Through your incredible efforts – your superlative ability to guide, coach, counsel, and teach – you have put so many on a pathway to success.

Academically, thanks to your professionalism and pride in educating students well, we know something about success. Carolyn Johnson put students on a pathway to success. She taught an Advanced Placement (AP) English Language class this past year, along with Joe Lombardo, Lori Martling, Ulrike Wiede and TJ Whitaker, and over 95% of their students took the AP tests and scored a 3 or higher. Along with many of you, Ms. Johnson was part our effort to revitalize English language arts that set new records on the HSPA ELA test: the highest percentage of students ever scoring Proficient or better, the highest percentage scoring Advanced Proficient, the highest percentage of black students scoring Proficient or better, the highest percentage of black students scoring Advanced Proficient, and the smallest achievement gap between black and white passing scores ever. That's a positive step toward raising the bar while narrowing the gap, and I salute all of you involved in the effort. Ms. Johnson's dedication to all our students was clear from the assignments she sought – from the high flyers in the AP classes to those that needed extra time over the summer in the Bridge class to be ready for high school level work. She will be deeply missed.

The kind of success all of you in this room are part of is evident in the tremendous outcomes of so many of our students. You have produced incredible scholars. There were 109 CHS students who received Advanced Placement Scholar awards – this is another all time high – including ten National AP Scholar Awards and one State AP Scholar who was one of only two in the state. Four students were named National Merit Scholar Semifinalists. Over the past two years, we have seen remarkable increases in the numbers of students taking AP classes and achieving success on the AP exams. Columbia High School continues to meet AYP and over the last two years jumped 14 places, from 89th to 75th in the NJ Monthly's high school rankings based on test scores and AP scholarship. Students are going on to the most prestigious colleges in the land, and their superlative accomplishments are attributable to your talent, dedication, and caring as a staff. Their success is your success.

Artistically, we know something about success. Thanks to what you bring to our students, so many of them are on a pathway to success in the fine and performing arts. We heard from five of them – Theo Walentiny on piano, Spencer Pontus-Courtney and Ian Kenselaar on bass, Ari Finkel on guitar, and Cameron MacIntosh on drums – in the lobby this morning playing some jazz to welcome us back. As staff, you are artists and musicians in your own right, and because of your love of the arts, you nurture student talent. One of your students found his calling in the trombone, and because we are a place that encourages our young people to pursue their passions, this student grew up believing that he could play the trombone as a career, and he did so successfully. Reflecting on what made this possible for him, Tony Mazzocchi realized it was his teachers here in South Orange and Maplewood, and now he's returning as our supervisor of fine arts, to make it possible for others to find their passion in our great schools. Welcome Tony.

Athletically, too, we know something about success. Our cutting edge and world class physical education program emphasizes the mind/body connection and teaches every young person to be active and make healthy choices. With funding from the PEP grant, the program just keeps getting better and better, and this year CHS will see the opening of a new fitness center.

In competition, you have pushed our teams to experience great success. The Girls Track Team won the New Balance High School National Championship, setting NJ state records and 11 team members achieved high school All-American status, all under the coaching of Lisa Morgan, a CHS graduate and track star. The Boys Fencing Team won the State championship, its fourth in seven years. The Football Team reached the state playoffs with a winning 8-1 season and the Girls Basketball Team won the first round of the Essex County Tournament. The Boys Swim Team finished second in the county swim meet, breaking records in the 200 medley and 200 freestyle relays. The Girls Varsity Soccer Team placed second in the Liberty Conference and reached the state sectionals and the Boys Varsity Soccer Team reached the semifinals in both county and state sectionals. Not bad for a community that is known for its pride in the arts!

Thanks to you, success abounds. The numbers of students taking high level courses is on the rise, failure rates are falling, the rates of suspensions and disciplinary incidents continues to fall, and our schools are safe, orderly places to learn. And they are becoming more aesthetically pleasing environments as well – with courtyard renovations and partnerships to add the kind of touches that brighten our workplace.

Our classrooms are becoming more supportive of 21st century learning, with technology infused throughout and, I am so happy to say, so many more of you are using technology in innovative ways. Our kids are digital natives, and they need for us to be digital learners, and to teach them with tools and in environments that reflect the 21st century world of learning.

So we know something about success, and these few accolades are only a tiny slice of the day to day successes and victories that you make happen in our classrooms and studios, and on our stages and fields. And it should go without saying but unfortunately after this last year it has to be said: you are valued and your work as educators is meaningful.

And as awesome as all this is, this trail of success for some is not enough. Our well-traveled trail of success for some cannot be mistaken for the pathway that we are building together. We have so much more to do.

On the outdated trail of success for some part of the role of schooling is to judge a student's capability and then label and sort the students accordingly. On our pathway to success for every student, our mindset must be different than the old trail of judge/label/sort.

Our new pathway demands an efficacy mindset. One that reflects the constructive belief that intellectual capacity is neither fixed nor given; rather, it can be built - to the highest levels - through the sustained application of effective effort at challenging tasks. In other words, smart is not something you are, smart is something you get through hard work. And we must believe that virtually all of our children can achieve high standards in school if they have the right tools and supports. This means it is the primary work of caring adults not to judge the capacity but to develop the intellectual capacity of every child. This is why our first core belief is that every child is worthy of intellectual respect. And if you are an educator and you have intellectual respect for a child, then you are going to look for ways to motivate that child to persevere on rigorous tasks every day, with the belief that that child must be prepared for success in college.

The world is changing fast, and the world of work has changed dramatically. An important study by ACT found that there is no difference in the kinds of knowledge and skills students need to be prepared to take standard credit-bearing college courses and what they need to be prepared to be ready for entry-level jobs that require less than a bachelor's degree, pay a wage sufficient to support a family, and offer the potential for career advancement.

In other words, all our students must be college and career ready, meaning that all students must be prepared to be successful in college without needing to take remedial courses when they graduate. Of course, students may choose another life course, but it is our job to ensure that each one of them has that choice to make.
Our high graduation rate and high college matriculation rate means that our graduates are choosing to go to college, but the success of our graduates in college is not as strong as you might think. The class of 2004 has been out of high school for over 5 years, and only 43% of them earned a college degree, another 12% are still enrolled, but 27% went to college and dropped out, and some 10% never went at all. Our job is to prepare all of them for success in college, and the success rate should be higher. We must provide a pathway to success in college starting at the very earliest grades, articulate that pathway to everyone, and then educate our students with an efficacy mindset at every grade level so that every one of them is on the pathway to success.

This is all easier said than done, so how are we building this pathway that is now under construction?

This leads to my third point about the pathway. Our building of the pathway must be about learning. Lucky for us, we work in a learning organization.
In this era of so-called education reform on a national and state level, we hear the powerful politicians and pundits speaking constantly about their latest silver bullet, because they are not in the business of school improvement, they are in the business of pushing one-dimensional solutions through oversimplified rhetoric. For example, we're told that if there were just more charter schools, all children would achieve standards. But we know that it is great teaching that makes the difference, whether it's in a charter or a regular public school. We're told that if teachers and principals were just evaluated on the basis student test scores, then children would learn more. But we know that in the education sector there is no equivalent to a corporation's profit and loss statement, and that to truly understand where students are
relative to the standards, yes we need to use test scores, but we need to use multiple measures of student achievement data, including formative and summative common assessments and student work. We're told that if states or schools have to compete for funds, then student achievement will improve. But we know that we are stronger when we work together to problem solve and innovate. Education is not a zero-sum game and policy makers have to stop pitting groups against each other.
Those of us who work in schools and with kids know that it is far more complex than that and it takes a multifaceted effort pushing on many change levers simultaneously. Real change doesn't happen without new learning and that learning isn't one-dimensional. It takes time and requires trial and error. So here in South Orange and Maplewood we are approaching building our pathway to success with a multiple- pronged strategic effort called the LEARNS strategy.

The L stands for leadership for learning. We have developed Professional Learning Communities, which offer an opportunity for everyone to demonstrate positive leadership. I urge you to approach the work with an efficacy mindset, and to lead with your belief that educators have tremendous power to make the difference for every child.

E stands for evaluation of and support for quality practice. We are continuing to implement Frameworks for Teaching, introduced last year, and will be aligning our observation and evaluation process with Frameworks. It is based on reflection, grounded in definitions of effective practice that view the practitioner as learner.

A stands for access for students to rigorous college preparatory coursework at all grade levels. So far we have implemented full-day kindergarten and inclusion of special needs students in the least restrictive environment; expanded step-up classes, summer school and the Bridge to Success program, and increased participation in AP classes. This year I'm grateful to many of you for designing ways to increase access through enhancements to elementary school enrichment; adding more time for core classes in the 6th grade; and leveling UP the 7th grade to deliver the more rigorous Level 4 curriculum to more students. There are strong correlations between course taking and success in college, so our pathway to college readiness for all needs to include learning how to effectively include more students in higher level courses.

R stands for rigorous and consistent standards based curriculum to reduce the variation of what is taught and learned in our classrooms and to ensure that the level of rigor is at a standard that puts students at every grade level on a pathway to success in college. Thanks to your feedback and hard work with our draft ELA curriculum pilot over the past year – and for sticking with it when we hit speed bumps while driving too fast – we now have an ELA curriculum that is stronger than ever before, and job embedded professional development to help us learn to deliver it effectively.

The N is the need to review and analyze quantitative and qualitative data on a regular basis, crunching the numbers and looking at student work together to make decisions about the educational program and the actions necessary to meet the needs of individual students. It is important that we make data-wise decisions at all levels of the system, especially in grade level and department meetings. The DRA, lexile scores, unit assessments, common midterms and finals all have been introduced over the past two years to give you information to learn from in real time, and make us all less reliant on the state level data that comes only once a year and too late.

And the S is about support for the learning environment. An alignment of resources and technology support operational management that is effective and efficient so that the classroom and teaching and learning are well supported. This is going to be a challenge because fiscally speaking, we're in a different time now.
The economic collapse coupled with sweeping policy changes at the state level hit us hard in the form of last year's budget cuts, and our projections show diminishing resources in the years to come. This isn't a flashing crisis to cope with, this is a long-term sea change in the economic reality of public education that must cause us to change the way we do business. For years to come, we will either see diminished
revenues or such paltry increases that we won't be able to cover the normal costs of doing business. We need to approach this new reality by being more creative and innovative, trying new things so that we come up with ways to provide opportunities to students at less cost. Old norms must change and sacred cows must be forsaken.
And, just like we are all doing in our personal lives, at work we need to look for ways to reduce our expenses by becoming less wasteful, turning out the lights and being thrifty about resource consumption. While we are not going to be able to avoid the hard choices that come with budget cuts, to the extent we can together save money by becoming more efficient and open to creative new ways of doing more with less, then we can mitigate some of the negative impact of the inevitable cuts. In these times, all of us who believe in public education must together put the interests of our children first – their future depends on our willingness to prioritize their needs.
If we are an organization that learns, if we deepen and strengthen our leadership for learning, evaluate and support effective practice through deepened understanding of the Framework for Teaching, increase access to college preparatory coursework at every grade level, implement rigorous core curriculum and decrease the variability of what students are expected to learn across classrooms, make datawise decisions, and creatively and innovatively reinvent the way we do our business so that we do more with less, then we will together build a pathway to college readiness for every single one of our students.

I'm inspired by our opportunity and our direction but here's a story that shows that there is no one better to motivate, inspire, and lead with passion than you as a member of the team.

Three years ago I got a laugh on this stage when I said that "We have a football team that keeps suiting up to dream another day." The team was on a 45-game losing streak, but that did not break the spirit of a group of boys who just kept trying. Our football coach, Dave Curtin, relayed the story about the first game of the season this past year against Kearny. After finally breaking the losing streak in the last game of the previous season, the team members knew how important it was to win this first game. They had to prove that the previous year's win wasn't just a fluke.

At half-time, Columbia was winning 7-0 and the team was very excited, but nervous. The team was very surprised when a usually quiet and shy team member asked if he could speak to the team. He stood on a bench and said "You've got to step up right here. How bad do you want this?"

The team went on to win the game 41-0.

At the end of the game, another team member, also not known for speaking out in public told his team mates, "We're going to make this a special year." And they went on to the State playoffs.

So suit up! Dream another day, and let's make this our special year in South Orange and Maplewood!

And to help inspire us to keep the main thing the main thing, to see past the politics, see through the oversimplification, forego the adult interests and put our kids first, I am so pleased to be able to introduce you to the young lady that at the graduation of the class of 2010 electrified the house with her graduation speech.

Abisola Kusimo will give us some words of wisdom as we start the year, and then she will rush away from here when she is done because she has class this afternoon at the University of Maryland where she is studying Environmental Engineering. Clearly this young lady is on a pathway to success and it is because of the work that you have done, because you have spent so many years shaping her future, shaping her trajectory, hers and so many like her, that she will spend years to come shaping the future of our world and making it a better place.