By Rachel Whitten
TOPEKA, Kan. – The U.S. Dept. of Education has given McPherson School District permission to hold their students to higher standards than required by the state.
Last week the Education Department granted a waiver to the central Kansas district, which exempts them from having to take state assessments required under the federal law No Child Left Behind. Instead, the district will administer alternate assessments designed by the testing company ACT to measure McPherson students’ ability to succeed in college, career and as citizens.
The new curriculum and assessment track, “C3,” which stands for “Citizenship, College, and Career Readiness,” is the first of its kind in the United States, according to federal officials. Until now, they’ve only given NCLB waivers to failing schools who can’t meet the goals laid out in accordance with the law.
But McPherson breaks that pattern, said Randy Watson, superintendent of 418 McPherson Unified School District, which has 2,400 students.
“We’re not failing, we’re exceeding standards and asking to go higher,” Watson said. “They were intrigued, but perplexed by it for a while.”
Currently the state education department is seeking a waiver from the U.S. Dept. of Education because it expects many schools statewide will not be able to achieve the ever rising standards laid out almost 10 years ago. in 2009, the McPherson district met state standards in reading and math according to the KSDE.
The district will still be held accountable for student achievement, Watson said. In the coming months, he and his staff will work with the Kansas State Department of Education to determine what percentages of students will have to score well on the new assessments to constitute success.
“We’re not waiving accountability, we’re just waiving which ones we are being held accountable to, we’re moving much higher,” Watson said. The state will work with us as to what should be the level we’re being accountable to.”
In the meantime, the McPherson superintendent said he’s received calls from at least a dozen Kansas school districts who are interested in implementing the new model.
It didn’t happen overnight, Watson said. Starting in 2009, administrators began asking the McPherson community questions like “What do you want from McPherson students when they graduate?” and “Where do our students go when they leave us?” The community answered, saying they wanted students to be happy, to have a well-paying career, to be good citizens, to go to college. Administrators also found that 78 percent of students graduating went onto college, while most of the rest went into the military or attended vocational school.
Working backwards from those answers, school officials found the method they were using in accordance with No Child Left Behind wasn’t adequately preparing students to pursue those ambitions.
“Quickly it became evident the state assessment doesn’t measure that at all,” Watson said. “What we ought to do is choose assessments that measure those.”
From there, the district set out to find assessments that matched the newly described goals for their students, landing on the company that already produces the tests most college bound students in Kansas already take—the ACT, based out of Iowa City, Iowa.
“When we looked at assessments, we said ‘we’ve got to choose assessments no one will argue about,’” Watson said. “We want to be held to a higher standard, but one that’s meaningful to kids.”
But the ACT company doesn’t write tests that measure character and readiness to be an upstanding citizen, so McPherson is working to develop an assessment for that with the Oceanside, Calif. based Quantum Learning Network.
The district will have to spend $50 in additional money per senior for the new assessments. However, the tests for lower grades are currently covered by a grant through the KSDE. Other than that, Watson said, they’ve rearranged existing resources to fit their new model without a fiscal impact.
“There’s a little bit of additional money, but any district can do this without having additional budget,” Watson said.
The district began teaching its curriculum in earnest last fall, and had planned to measure students using the new assessments as well as the existing state-mandated ones if the waiver was not granted in time.
“We were pleasantly surprised” when the waiver came in last week, Watson said.
Rep. Clay Aurand, a Republican from Courtland and chair of the House Education Committee, said he is excited about what the McPherson system can do for education in Kansas.
“It’s a new way of looking at it, competing models can’t help but push discussion onto which model works best,” he said. “I’m excited for them. It’s good to see people thinking outside of the box.”
Because it’s gotten so much attention from the waiver, Watson said at least a dozen districts have inquired about visiting to learn more about their system. Because of that, he’s considering an information session to address them all at once. He said districts should look to their communities for guidance to determine what their schools should focus on.
“The process is engage the community and ask ‘what you want for your student?’ and when you decide that, then that will determine how you assess it,” Watson said. “The C3-- now that drives everything we do.”
The hardest part, he said is the hard work it takes to completely overhaul curriculum and assessment methods, but it’s energizing as well.
“For many years in our job under NCLB, we worked really hard. We’ve been in a forest, cutting down these trees working hard to do it. Then one day we figured out we’re in the wrong forest; we’ve been looking at the wrong things, kids are going to college and the workforce and our measurements are not right for that,” Watson said. “We’re in the right forest now McPherson and it feels good.”