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All material is my personal opinion, and not that of any other organization.Copyright 2000. Permission is granted for individual teacher use. All rights reserved. |
Interview with Terry Mazany, Associate Superintendent, OUSD July 16, 1997 Setting: Oakland High School commons High School Curriculum workshop AC: Anthony Cody TM: Terry Mazany AC: The Superintendent has talked a lot about accountability, so, obviously, to be accountable, you have to have a measurement of performance. How do you see measurement of student performance, so we can tell how well we're doing? TM: In general, I see at least three categories of measurement. One are the Terra Nova test results. The second are the performance assessments done district-wide at benchmark grade levels. The third are promotional and graduation projects, like senior projects for all high school students, an eighth grade project, fifth grade, if we focused in on science, for instance, it could be we say "all fifth graders need to be doing a science fair project, that gets assessed according to a rubric and standards." So those categories, and then a fourth area might be in terms of end of course, or end of unit in-classroom tests, that the teachers would develop, so that if you're taking 7th grade English, that across the board, in all 14 middle schools, at the semester break, there would be a common assessment in order to help to kind of calibrate all of the courses. AC: And do you see those as being assessments that would mark graduation? In other words, would you be required to pass them to pass on? TM: At 5th and 8th, yes, and the high school, yes. AC: If you're saying a 5th grade science project, that's not a big huge deal. I mean... TM: That would be nice if that wasn't a big huge deal for all of our students. AC: You know what I mean. It's not like a competency test where you have to, you know, like for example if you had a math competency test, to me that would be a very different thing from something as open-ended as a science fair project. You know what I mean? TM: Mm-hmm. AC: So would you see that type of math competency and reading competency and writing competency test as being required before passing from one grade to another? TM: Not at the fifth grade. I see a series of performances, so we would want to ensure that all fifth graders had engaged their mind in scientific thinking, for instance. But not with that competency label. At eight grade, probably yes. In terms of a eighth grade senior project, as well as the Algebra Readiness test, those two benchmarks there. AC: You mentioned performance assessments. Where are those coming from? TM: I see that as a logical next step of development by the standards groups. AC: That's what we've talked about doing. TM: Mm-hmm. AC: How do alternative assessments such as school portfolios fit into this whole picture. TM: I need to make sure I understand how you're using the term school portfolio. AC: You began a process last year where you were collecting, schools were collecting material. TM: Yeah, ok. That's a portfolio that's about the school, so it's not a student assessment. Because I don't want to mix up the truth and honesty part of a portfolio with the evaluation part, which would tend to taint and confuse what shows up in the portfolio, the only standard I have for the school portfolio is that it gets done. The content of it... AC: So that means in your opinion it will be truthful. It will be a true reflection and it won't be an attempt to impress. TM: Yes. The whole intent is for the portfolio process to rise to the forefront, and it becomes the vehicle for the school-wide inquiry into what are we doing and how are we doing in achieving our performance goals. So the only way that can add value to the school community is if it is an open and honest look at the school. Which means then I can't then apply the content as evaluative of a principal's performance. So the only piece I can apply as towards a principal's performance is, the virtue of it is or is not turned in. AC: That raises a question then of how we do evaluate schools, because the Superintendent has been quoted recently talking about reconstitution and so that raises a whole question of.... TM: Maybe more accurately a board member has been... AC: Oh. Ok, who was it who was talking about that? TM: Jean Quan. At that press conference, and those series of events, the district administration didn't raise those issues at all. It was the last comment by a board member that then created an opening for the press to jump on. That wasn't the focus at all of that. But in any case the word is out there. To me there's a series that we've already defined, a series of student outcome measures, a series of recognition measures above and beyond; student participation in math olympics, it's not mandated, but a quality school would have a large number of students participating. And then the operational... AC: I haven't heard all these parameters. I know we were supposed to turn in, the only thing I heard about was the portfolio. I haven't heard some of the other things that you're talking about. What are all the things that a quality school would have? Aside from Math Olympics? TM: One is a series of student outcome measures; the Terra Nova test scores; attendance; LEP redesignation rates; GPA's at the upper grades, attendance in Advanced Placement courses, things like that. AC: Upper grades meaning secondary? TM: Yeah, middle school and high school. Recognition and participation in the Oratorical, Math Olympics, Fit to Achieve, grants that the schools might get, partnerships recognition awards, teacher of the year came from our school awards, those sort of things. And then the operational issues would be things like, have they got a balanced budget, they've got their instructional minutes correct. AC: This is all on the principal, then, it seems like. TM: No, these are features of the school. AC: It seems like the principal's the one that's on the dime, that's on the ball for this stuff. The principal's the one that's really being held accountable. TM: The school community is, because many of these, like the attendance issue, that is as much directly the responsibility of parents as it is anybody else. AC: Well, nobody from the District goes and hollers at parents. TM: But now we have the data in place... AC: I mean, you can't fire a parent. You can't reconstitute a parent. TM: No, but we can identify, as this fall we'll be doing a public report card, school by school, on measures such as these. It'll show up, those schools that have high attendance and low attendance, so then when people want to grump about schools, we can look at, you know, is the whole village doing its job or not. AC: In the course of that unwanted controversy over reconstitution it was said, I think the superintendent said that there would be a lot of efforts made to boost a school before reconstitution was imposed. TM: Yes. AC: What would you say would be done, how would you see accomplishing that? TM: We've defined it in terms of intensive support. So the first step of that intensive support would be an analysis of the data, all these multiple measures, to see exactly where is it that the school is falling short of the characteristics of being an exemplary school, and then identifying -- it could be as simple as, here's a principal who's new and doesn't understand the operational routines, to how to get a school functioning. Or it could be that the school is simply devoid of an instructional vision. Now there's one school in particular that I'm aware of from the recent principal interviews that the school is out of control, and the teachers don't believe that they can institute good classroom management to bring about an instructional environment. Then we target resources towards that in terms of teacher training, in terms of putting one of the grade level directors at that school site the first week with the principal, to coach the teachers in the classrooms, to make sure the school starts out with a healthy environment from day one, and establishes that pattern. Maybe the only area of downfall is really the test scores, and so then it becomes making sure there's a staff development expert attached to the school, taking them through all their minimum days to focus on improvement strategies. AC: How does the work of the Efficacy Institute fit? TM: It plays a very important role and when I look in terms of a series of concentric circles, in the center are the high standards, right around that center circle is the measurement, and that's the first couple of questions you asked. How do we measure that? I've personally shifted in my look at standardized achievement, in terms of, to me, they're not the measures that I would like, in a kind of a Grant Wiggins world, and I'd buy into that perspective, but from a whole systems perspective, and especially with the Terra Nova, it's better than having nothing. So I'm comfortable there, and what I'm hoping is, as people utilize this set of measures, then that will actually give motivation to say, "But Terry, it doesn't test this, or this or this" -- great, that's exactly where we need to develop that performance assessment, to get a more balanced and complete assessment of student performance. Then the next circle around that becomes Efficacy. Efficacy establishes the belief system, the principles, and the concrete strategies for all students achieving at a high level. To my dismay, we have, to me a sizable, 30, 40% of our population, and this is just a guesstimate, that not even are consciously aware of sorting and selecting students into those who simply will not perform, because "I've been teaching for 20 years, and I can tell, the first day of class, this group of students is not going to succeed." AC: I want to make sure I'm understanding you. You're saying there's 30 to 40% of the teachers who are... TM: Yeah. The adults, not just the teachers. AC: Who are consciously selecting, is that what you said? TM: No, unconsciously. Some are consciously. AC: Well, the person who just said that is obviously conscious. TM: Well, but they may be conscious of the fact, it's simply... AC: They don't believe that they're imposing it on their kids. They just think that's an observation that their 20 years of experience has taught them, that these kids aren't going to hack it. TM: Exactly. So it's no longer a conscious decision process of walking into a classroom and knowing with absolute certainty that all of these students are going to master the subject matter by the end of the year. They've had too many experiences with the students not. AC: I understand, I understand. TM: And we have to undo that. And when we undo that, we also have to put in place a set of practices which will deliver a greater number of students who are successfully mastering and achieving what we want. AC: Ok. Do you think that those kids in that class are failing to achieve primarily because of the action of those teachers? Or the inaction of those teachers? TM: I don't want to say that it's as simple as that. I think that there are a lot of dynamics at work, and that there is a parent responsibility, for instance, with that. But in terms of classrooms that I've visited, and looking at the pedagogy in place, looking at specific instructional techniques, going through in this setting, with the high school teachers developing their curriculum, things that I would expect that they would have in their reportoire of skills, and basic classroom practices -- good cooperative learning strategies, like they're teaching here, a book in an hour or something. I'm amazed when this is like new stuff to teachers. Then when I trace back the roots, like I did a day with one of our intern programs, where I did the staff development for them on the final day of this year's session, and I pulled out the Miss Toliver video, and I was stunned to discover that they had never seen that, and that terms like "constructivism" were new to them. AC: Who is this you were working with? TM: Some of our intern programs, through local universities, where we have teachers working, and then they're given their credential during weekend courses, and so there are these big gaps just in terms of when teachers are coming to the district with, that they have these gaps in what I would consider basic professional reportoire. To me, it's no wonder that teachers are able to be highly effective with one group of students, but there are other groups out there. AC: So when you describe this 30 or 40%, do you see that as being any particular group of teachers? Is that the old-timers, or, now you're talking about interns, is there any ...? TM: To me, there are some extraordinary senior teachers, 25, 30 years, that (unintelligible). There was some great development for that generation. Then, there's this kind of in the middle gap, where it's like, it probably relates to whatever happened in the state in the '80s. People sort of lost their focus. AC: And what groups of students do you see this particularly affecting? TM: All levels. AC: Any particular nationalities affected by this? Any particular ethnic groups? TM: No. And some ethnic groups have responded, like the Vietnamese community has this wonderful tight community, and they just did a weekend awards assembly, for Vietnamese achieving students, and they had like 400 award receivers, and this was after they had to raise their benchmark standard to 3.8 instead of 3.75, because they had too many students. That's a strong, powerful message from that community, so I think some communities have to kind of step forward like that. It's stuff like, I observed one elementary classroom, and the teacher's classroom management technique was to snap her fingers at the kids, and badmouth them, and say stuff like "Isn't so and so being a bad boy," and stuff like that, and the kids just chattered. They would stop for the ten seconds, actually the three seconds the teacher focused on them, and as soon as she moved to the next brush fire, and I see too much of that. At middle school and high school as well. AC: Are there particular schools where this is tolerated more than others? TM: Yes, absolutely. That starts to show up in the portfolios, the quality of principal leadership, to tolerate such things and not to tolerate them. So it emanates from that. And I don't want to absolve the District from responsibility. The District has not had in place curriculum frameworks, curriculum materials, the staff development sequences, the standards in places -- it was just this past year that we had the published standards, which may not be the best in the world, but we didn't even have that. It's important that this isn't coming off as a blaming, it's just simply that our system has, from my perspective, been running amok, and teachers have not had clear direction, except on a specific school basis, where a principal may have a vision, and will put into place with the teachers, the standards, the curriculum sequences, but now we're catching up as a district, getting those in place. Now the challenge becomes, the individual doing their own thing doesn't work, and we all need to support some general standards of best practice. AC: Is there any pattern of where those schools fall geographically in the city? Where this is tolerated more? You know what I'm getting at. TM: Some schools have a geographic advantage in terms of fewer problems coming into the school, a differential ability to attract and retain the appropriately credentialled staff, and so that causes a number of other problems to go away, and so that can support mediocre principals. Here's what I say about some of our high-performing hill schools. In my mind, they're not high performing. If we're an exemplary school district, the top middle school, it's test scores should be in the 90th percentile. AC: They have no excuse, in other words. TM: In our top, they're only in the mid sixties. So, yeah, that looks great compared to everybody else in the thirties, but you can't consider yourself an exemplary school because you would be in the nineties, so everybody has... AC: Lowered their standards, in effect. TM: Yep. AC: You talked about... TM: Can I answer that one? (points to this question: How do you balance the need to give autonomy and initiative to the school site, with the drive for accountability? What should school sites control, and what must the District dictate?) AC: That's the one I was getting to. TM: What I see is going on in the District right now is a pendulum shift, from a district that actually had a lot of site autonomy, because there were no guideline structures and standards in place. The last two years has been a very deliberate centralizing of decision-making to establish some guidelines, establishing the features of quality schools. Now we've got all of these features rolling out and we're now at the point as all of this comes online this fall, now the pendulum, to me, should legitimately start to shift back to within these standardized frameworks, sites have a lot of room to create their own particular visions, directions and all of that. So the timing is perfect to move back to a site autonomy focus at this point, because now we've defined, you know, what are the boundaries of that playing field, and now within those boundaries, schools have a lot of luxury to do what they want to do. AC: I think you've addressed most of the issues I'm concerned about. I want to just back up and pose a few questions and see if I can get explicit about some of the issues. One thing that concerns me is when you establish standardized things, standardized levels that you want everything to achieve to, obviously you're not imposing them on a level situation, so there's real inequalities between the schools. The real question is how do we really make sure, I've been reading, I don't know if you've read the reports about Arizona, on the CRESS website, there's a report that was just released in March, about Arizona standards, the statewide standards they imposed, and then they backed down, eliminated them. But they had statewide, very progressive, kind of like the ones in California, the CLAS test type things. Well what happened was, they imposed these standards on the state, and a few of the districts were really positioned to take advantage of them, and I feel like Bret Harte is in that place. We're really in a good position, y'know? That's one of the reasons I'm going back to the classroom. I'm really excited about what's going on. But then when I look around at some of the other school sites, that have had, like Frick, or some of these other school sites that have had rotating principals, I don't see where they're going to get their needs addressed. Could you address that? TM: Yes. I think we need to look at Arizona versus say, Kentucky, in how these things come about -- and even the California example. Kentucky's strategy was brilliant, in terms of creating the legal basis and the authority to have to create a system, not only of student outcome standards, but curriculum standards across the state. The key to that was the redistribution of funding as well. So it was directly tied to equalizing resources across districts, so I don't know about the Arizona situation, which was kind of like Michigan, in its reform, it brought the low end up some, but it didn't create, there're still districts in Michigan that are $12,000 ADA, and $6,500 for Detroit. In some ways, that's, even though there's a fractal of the district to the schools, I think the district is maybe an appropriate level to do that, though it would take a lot of heat off of me, if the state was expecting these standards, rather than me expecting them of the district. But in terms of, one thing is, without standards, we'll never know, and we can never say, "Well, Frick is this far below, it's in need of resources, vs. a Bret Harte," because we have no comparison. To me, it's critical to start the inquiry into inequitable resources, because now we have the basis... AC: The inquiry begins at the point of looking at inequitable outcomes. TM: Yes. AC: And then the search for solutions reveals possibly inequitable distribution of resources. TM: Yes. Until we define what those expected outcomes are, then we can never say that they're inequitable. So I'm agreeing with you that we start with the outcome picture, so that's why that's in the center there. Then we can address the resource issues. AC: You mentioned the community report card. As you know, I went to the Mayor's Summit, and I went this spring to the followup, which was really disappointing, you know, in terms of what the community put forward. There was this big response to the strike a year and a half ago, and everybody pledged, and I think the people who actually signed up for committees did what they said they would do, but in terms of the broader community, there was not very much of a sense of a real follow-through. How do you see the community responding to this stuff? TM: To me, I'm still driven by a sense of a community mandate to change. But that community cannot sustain that level of energy and intense focus over more than a six month to a year period, and so the first Mayor's Summit served as a closure as much as a beginning of a new phase, but I think that community is kind of sitting down and having one eye always towards the school district, and if within this next year, we don't deliver something substantial, the community will remobilize itself. There are too many political leaders who have something to gain by getting in front of that parade, that it just takes a spark from our District, like, next year, having a drop in our test scores, from our benchmark baselines AC: But will the community only mobilize in response to bad news? TM: I think at a city-wide level, yes. To me, what's that classic truism about "political action is local action" or whatever. AC: "All politics is local"; Thomas P. O'Neill. TM: That's the one, and I think that all parent involvement is local, would be the corallary of that. AC: How do see parents getting involved in this process? Do you see that happening at the school site level? TM: Let's take Terra Nova as a crystal clear example. To improve student performance for next year, the parents have got to be mobilized this fall. There are things that parents can begin to do. It basically needs to be a school-wide inquiry, studying the data. I've asked, for instance, the year-round schools this summer, for the teachers to begin that process by debriefing with their students in the classroom; "What was your experience with the test? What areas were difficult? What kind of questions did you have to guess at? What were easy?" Let's get some data directly from the student's point of view. Let's feed that into our analysis of the scores. We've got to bring the parents in and look at this. What does this mean for their children? For our community as a whole? What are the things the parents can do to reinforce what we need the students to be mastering? AC: Has Terra Nova completely taken the place of CTBS? TM: Yes. AC: Those are the big things I wanted to ask you about. Do you have any other information on Efficacy? TM: Efficacy, itself, because our focus is, indeed, systemic change, and this session is a great example. Take a career academy, when it's a group of Anthony Cody's of the world, you and a group of your colleagues who are supercharged about things, you create a wonderful academy, and you have built-in standards for excellence. Those that popped up over the last ten years in our district, and every one is correlated with a set of great teachers who are passionate and knowledgeable about that subject area. When we take the move to go systemic with this, system-wide, we have to put into place a different mechanism to grow strong course curricula in those areas. So that's what this is for, is, now we have to put in a step of actually designing the course curriculum, and those will change. With Efficacy, they've never run into a district that is as committed to a district-wide approach, and they've actually changed their curriculum as a result of experiences with us over the last two years, so that schools are now getting a different kind of version, a different strategy for how to help teachers rediscover that success in school is a factor of effort, and how a teacher can create... AC: ...the learning environment to foster that effort. TM: Exactly. To be supportive. And the instructional strategies so that a student won't run into a brick wall and give up, versus achieve enough success to continue to work at the problem. AC: The one philosophical concern I have related to Efficacy is, as a teacher who, as you said, "popped up" in the District, I'm concerned when we, you know, the District has a tradition of calling in these experts to come in and tell us how to fix things, and there tends not to be much ownership, so one of the things I hope to find out from my survey is, what are teachers' responses to Efficacy. What are the pros and cons of bringing in something like Efficacy as kind of an expert thing? TM: I'm operating off of a change model right now that the more you do simultaneously, the more is actually going to happen; that it creates a synergy of momentum, in that any one particular strand of reform may get resisted til it falls off, or may prove unworkable or something. But the whole momentum will carry along a lot of these things. From a positive, Efficacy is consistent with the fundamental values, beliefs, vision and standards that the district has, so it's another strategy, another support, to achieve that. For some teachers it clicks, and it makes perfect sense, and they get almost zealous... AC: Religious. TM: Yeah, religious. So at a minimum, I would guess that it has that religious experience for about 30 to 40% of the teachers, then there's another 20 to 30% who are more practical, pragmatic, "well, I can use it." And then there's another 20 or 30% that absolutely hates it. "It's some cultism..." AC: It's a teacher-blaming thing, also. Now, would those teachers be the same 30% that you referred to earlier, that are categorizing the kids? And therefore are you preaching to the choir? TM: I don't have data on that. That would be a very interesting observation. Because I could also say that its the Anthony Cody's of the world, who actually are already successful with the vast majority of their students, who are saying "this is common sense. Don't waste my time. I need to learn new science curriculum, because I'm at the point now of enriching my content, because I know how to reach the children." I'm not sure if you're doing that kind of research, it'd be interesting to find out exactly the basis for that. AC: I'm trying to figure out how to reach the kids, too. I don't feel like I have that solved. TM: And that's where I know we'll be successful, when all of us can say those sorts of statements and that, from your perspective, you feel that what the District does for you is help you solve that problem, and it doesn't beat on you, and there's this risk taking question. You don't feel afraid that you can take a risk, or that you can have a down time with some students where they're low performing because you're trying something dramatically new, and there's just that dip of performance before the new system kicks in, and you know that you are providing the evidence and all that. I think we're still about two years away from recalibrating our district with a set of standards and practices, where people will know exactly where they stand. A good example is the principal's selection for this year. Principals should have had a better inkling than they've ever had about whether or not they were secure in their jobs this year. One thing, that we didn't do a blanket March 15th letter for everybody. And we had clear indicators for principals, so if they were paying attention, they would know. This next year, we're going to have even crisper, more refined measures for principal's performance, so it should be no surprise to any principal when the March 15th letters come out, of why I got one, and it should be no surprise in June if I didn't get reassigned a principalship, because the objective data are going to be there on which those deciosions are made. I think once we reach that level, where you will know, I'm doing all things that it takes to be considered a professional in this district. I don't need to have any concerns about my professional standing. But we're about two years away from that fully in place. This next year is an important year now, putting into practice everything, and it's a learning year for a lot of things. It's a learning year for the middle grades curriculum. We'll make adjustments during the year, and at the end of the year, but then for the '98-9 school year, I would expect fairly high-performing, successful middle schools in place. Still recognizing we're on a learning curve, but I think that all in all....we're on the right track. |
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