By Samaia Hernandez
Record-Journal staff
shernandez@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2266
As published in the Record Journal Tuesday March 16, 2010
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WALLINGFORD — Despite significant time and attention paid to the 2010-11 budget proposal, teachers, administrators and officials across the school district have followed through on the initial implementation of more than a dozen specific goals and initiatives that could revolutionize the way students learn and how educators teach in town.
Regardless of what happens in the coming months, after Town Hall has its way with the education budget, district officials are confident that the town will improve instruction and curriculum.
“Our teachers, at the end of this school year will have more data on their next year students than they’ve ever had,” said School Superintendent Salvatore Menzo, who was selected by the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents as one of 15 superintendents in the state to help design a proposal for transforming education in Connecticut.
The new changes aren’t about pouring funds into new initiatives, but rather taking something that was always there and using it in a different or streamline fashion, Menzo said.
Working with an annual budget for teacher education or professional development of $75,000, funded by federal and state grants, Wallingford, for the first time, has used the money to purchase three computer systems including “AIM-Sweb,” for the whole system and “Scantron” to monitor student performance in elementary and middle school. Since the beginning of the year, most teachers and administrators have been trained to review student achievement with the systems.
Educators have designed five-minute assessments that test students’ skills on anything from mathematics to reading and writing. Data committees have been formed to review information and teachers can identify students who are having trouble in certain areas. Then instruction can be targeted based on the findings. They can compare student knowledge across classrooms, schools and system wide.
Teachers have implemented several assessments and are beginning to learn how to study the information with support from consultants. Lori Farkash, who heads a new data team of fourth-grade teachers at Moses Y. Beach, said she has noticed improvement in the mathematics strand of estimating solutions, which proved to be a weakness across the district on last year’s Connecticut Mastery Test. “From that data we were able to create other assessments to work on other areas,” Farkash said. “It just gives us so much information.”
Menzo said he’s happy that despite financial challenges, the school system has managed to chart a new course in less than a year. “We’re doing what we set out to do; we’re planning for the future,” he said.
Menzo and Farkash agree that common assessments will allow teachers across schools to speak the same language and have the same expectations.
Although pupils will have three less school days next year, as part of the $88.9 million budget proposal, educators will spend that time working on professional development and studying best teaching practices as described by researcher Robert J. Marzano.
Cheshire resident Robert Arciero, first-year principal at Moses Y. Beach, said he’s excited about changes taking place in Wallingford. Similar initiatives were responsible for improving instruction in the West Hartford public schools, while he was an administrator at Smith School.
It’s not that Wallingford didn’t have an improvement plan in years prior, Menzo said, but it was not a system wide or coordinated effort, but rather an individual school decision. “Rather than pockets, we’re trying to make them into a system of success,” said Menzo, the former superintendent of Marlborough public schools.
Menzo does not deny that further cuts to the education budget by Town Hall could be drastic, forcing officials to make further cuts and possibly bringing back a proposal to reconfigure elementary schools. Even if teachers are dealing with larger class sizes and/or an entirely new structure, the data tools and new goals should help the process. Farkash is in agreement. “I’m excited about it,” she said. “I think that no matter what happens next year, it will definitely benefit us as teachers.”
Tags: Board of Education, budget, curriculum, Reconfiguration, Schools, taxes, Wallingford