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D. Scott Hughes, Executive Director Alliance For Education

Improving public education is a huge task for any community to undertake.  It involves the combined efforts of the education, business and civic communities.  It requires consistent effort and strong leadership.  It also requires a vision on where we are headed.  Over the past decade school reform in Louisiana has been largely driven by increased academic standards, often referred to as “Rigor” in education circles, and through implementation of the toughest accountability program in the country.  The accountability program comes in the form of testing and school performance scores (SPS), most notably the “high stakes testing” in the 4^th and 8^th grade.  High stakes means pass or you repeat the grade.  Many argue that this has led to over focus on teaching to the test and not enough focus on better reform improvements than simply testing.  While these reform efforts have helped drive improvements, many other ideas exist that can also help led to improving our schools.  Based on research the Alliance For Education has done, here are five ideas for communities to consider:

Year Round School .  Many models have shown that year round programs increase learning, especially among high poverty children.  In Caddo several schools use a “year round calendar” without placing any more days of instructions into the year.  They simply take a shorter summer break and add in a few breaks, called “intercessions”, throughout the year.  And while the complete story is still largely untested, there is data that suggests this improves learning cycles of students throughout the year and eliminates the regression of some children over the long summer break.  Surveys have also shown it helps keep teaching morale and retention high since the faculty gets a break every nine weeks to recharge.  And history has shown the intercession breaks offer a great opportunity for community camps and expanded learning sessions without taking away from core teaching time.  An idea worth further consideration.

Extended Year.  Building on year round school, extended year actually adds days to the instructional calendar.  Many schools do this around a year round concept, but the basic idea is simply more time on task.  Around the globe most school children in other country attend school many more days than those in America .  Several area schools, most notably the very successful “high poverty” school Pine Grove Elementary  has used this concept to add instruction time to help catch children up to grade level.  Another idea worth further consideration.

Extended Day.  Much like extended year seeks to add time on task, extended day is a concept built around more instruction time and better alignment of community needs.  Caddo Parish is exploring extended day this year with the eight struggling schools identified in the Caddo Plan.  Extending the school day obviously adds more instruction time.  But extending the day also helps address a huge social issue that currently places children out of school in the middle of the afternoon with little or no adult supervision available in many situations.  It is no surprise to law enforcement and courts that most juvenile crime and troubles occur between 2:00 and 5:00 p.m.  Extended day helps better align the needs of working families with an educational solution that provides more learning time.  And while the focus will need to be on how we better use the extra time, extended day is a concept well worth considering. 

Coordinated School Health.  Simply put, this is about putting more caring people into our school buildings.  More nurses, more guidance counselors and where needed more social workers and security officers.  Developed by Dr. Pat Cooper (Springhill, LA native) for the CDC in Washington , it is a nine component plan to place resources into a school to address the complete needs of both the students and the faculty.  Wellness, nutrition, mental health and physical health and instruction are some of the key areas.  It is a concept built around Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid that simply asks “What do our children need to be at their highest and best learning potential?”  School systems like Sabine that have committed to a Coordinated School Health program have seen tremendous academic gains.  The North Caddo area simply added a nurse through a community partnership and saw out of school check-outs go down over 200%.  Natchitoches and DeSoto are working to implement parts of the plan and Webster Parish is very interested in CSH as a solution to many needs.  It is an idea worth consideration in many other communities. 

Pre-K.  All data shows the best learning time is the early developmental years.  Recent research shows that Louisiana leads the nation in high quality Pre-K programs, particularly with the LA4 Program and many outstanding Head Start Programs.  But in a State that only mandates attendance beginning with the 1^st Grade, the time has come to place more focus on the early years.  A good start would be mandating kindergarten for attendance and placing more funding through the now approved LA4 Program that would provide Pre-K school for all children up to 400% of the poverty level, which is almost all children in Louisiana .  We also now have a STAR rating program for private Pre-K facilities that awards tax credits to private pay students based on the quality level of the service received.  More focus and funding on the early foundation years is a concept well worth further consideration.