Current Projects

I. Business Education Compact's Collaborative Teacher Development Initiative

Project Description
The Business Education Compact has formed a coalition of public and private universities, school districts, state education agencies and businesses to lead a statewide teacher development initiative. The Collaborative Teacher Development Initiative is a five-year statewide project to create new models for teacher preparation and professional development that align with Oregon’s plans for high school reform. The project has the full support of the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, the Oregon Department of Education, the Oregon Education Association and the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators.

Project Goals:

• Develop and test 5 or more new teacher preparation models
• Develop and test 5 or more new models of professional development for current teachers.
• Identify and propose new required competencies for teacher licensure in Oregon
• Secure state and federal funding for statewide implementation of new requirements

II. Portland Public Schools Professional Development Committee

Vision/Purpose of Professional Development

Excellence, Equity and Accountability for student success

Build capacity for high quality teaching, learning, and leading to increase each student’s personal and academic achievement and close the achievement gap.

Guiding Principles

• Must have a direct positive effect on student achievement and success.
• Must support a culture for high quality teaching and learning.
• Must be coordinated and integrated to achieve maximum effectiveness and efficiency. This includes professional development activities, how time is used, and how dollars are spent.
• Must result in a positive relationship between the corporate expectations and local stakeholder expectations.
• Must build a culture of respect and responsiveness.
• Must be aligned with the core values and mission of the District.

Environmental Scan: Date Driven Assessments

• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Challenges
• Opportunities
• Align policies and practices to support high quality teaching and learning for staff and students

Strategic Priorities for Professional Development

• K-12 Literacy
• Redesign of middle and high schools
• Integrated professional development
• Support for high priority students and schools
• Integration of technology
• Recruit, Retain and Support high quality staff

Strategies and Action Plans

• Enhance professional practice for teachers, administrators, and classified staff at the district, elementary, middle and high school levels and cluster areas.
• Develop Strategies for effective communication with all stakeholders and at all levels of the organization both internally and externally.
• Develop collaborative partnerships internally and externally with universities, businesses, the Foundation, public and private agencies etc.
• Improve programs, align curriculum, integrate instruction and assessment.
• Develop respectful relationships for a culture of professional inquiry.
• Initiate collaborative research practices using data to improve teaching and learning.
• Evaluate professional development to assure increase student achievement

Project Plan: Assure alignment of budget and personnel to support the implementation of priorities, strategies, and action plans.

• Assess available professional development resources including time, money, and personnel.
• Develop an implementation plan with processes and tools for evaluation of professional development.

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III. Leaders Roundtable High School Summit

Purpose
The purpose of the Community/High School Summit is to enhance the understanding of the community (to include educators, community members, business members and others) in thinking about:

1. How to ignite system-wide change in transforming high schools.
2. The conditions that need to be in place for high school reinvention efforts to succeed.
3. The new roles and responsibilities in supporting each student’s success in the high school of the future.

Background
While it can be said that high schools across the nation educate many students well, it can also be said that high schools fail to educate many students well. Research on the wasted senior year, data regarding high school dropouts, attendance and graduation rates, and remedial courses required in college to name a few, all point to the need for significant education improvement measures in high schools.

High schools across the nation have struggled and continue to struggle with the implementation of education improvement measures that personalize education for students and result in each student’s success. There are pockets of success however, where some high schools have achieved significant results, Julia Richman Education Complex and Urban Academy in New York City and the Met, in Providence Rhode Island to name a few. Through successful schools like these and the advances in technology, educators have realized that it will take the coordinated efforts of an entire community, and dramatic changes in how we think about our roles and responsibilities, to provide an educational opportunity for each student to be successful.

While Oregon high schools are not as low performing as those in many states, Oregon does nonetheless, continue to be challenged by the implementation of significant education improvement measures in high schools.

In recent years the Oregon State Board of Education has adopted policies that provide high schools the flexibility and the necessary accountability tools needed to challenge and provide each student with the following kinds of learning opportunities that lead to success:

• Personalized, Active and Meaningful Learning
• High Academic Expectations
• Learning for Understanding and Application
• Learning beyond the Classroom
• Student-Centered, Standards-based Teaching

In order to achieve success, these learning opportunities must be aligned with individual student interest and pursued outside the schoolhouse in each community as well as inside the classroom. Advances in technology raise the question, where does a high school student’s community begin and end? High school is no longer an end it itself but a bridge to the future.

The leaders, educators and community members of Multnomah County are people of courage and vision, and people who have a strong desire to see that each student has the opportunity to be successful in high school and in their next steps.

Therefore we are proposing that the Leaders Roundtable sponsor, along with other key partners, a local community summit (Multnomah County) that would focus on the community’s role in supporting high schools of the future.

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IV. West Linn-Wilsonville School District Charter High School

Project Goals
The proposed O’Brien Center Charter School (OCCS) will address the educational needs of secondary students who are at risk or have exited school without a high school or general equivalency diploma. The West Linn-Wilsonville School District, with almost 8,000 students, has sufficient numbers of students who meet these criteria. The planning, design, implementation, monitoring, and ultimate success of OCCS will result from a collaborative effort of students, parents, community members, local business leaders, teachers, and administrators from the district.

The OCCS design team will use the planning year to continue to identify instructional and program approaches that will be most effective with alternative students. The design team expects that the program will evolve over the next year, as well during the implementation years, but as of this time they are proposing a charter school that will provide students with a blend of strong academic, citizenship, and career competencies necessary for post-secondary education or employment. OCCS will emphasize project-based learning infused with high academic expectations that have real-world applications and are based on student interest.

As the enrollment of the district has grown significantly over the past decade, so has the number of students who feel disconnected or alienated from the two comprehensive high schools. Each year students drop out, shift to a community college environment with a low high school completion rate, or enter the work force. During the 2002 – 03 school year, the Board and district administration commissioned a year-long study of high school graduation requirements. The study group of students, parents, teachers, and administrators unanimously agreed that an alternative secondary school was the greatest educational need in the district. That decision provided additional support to the alternative school study group which led to this charter school proposal.

The OCCS design team believes that the students who choose to leave the district early would reconnect with learning in an environment intentionally designed to meet their needs. Staff across both high schools, interested community members, and students have provided input to this proposal and are committed to the creation of a successful alternative charter school with student outcomes that will parallel the results of the two district high schools. The OCCS will welcome students from the entire district by creating an alternative learning environment for students who are:

• capable but disconnected from the traditional, comprehensive high school setting;
• in need of an alternative learning environment;
• working hours which make it difficult to attend regular high school;
• considered “at risk” of leaving school due to erratic attendance;
• dropouts or ‘early leavers’ who have exited before graduation;
• interested in and would benefit from a more personalized educational program;
• teen parents;
• ELL students; and
• more likely to succeed in a smaller learning community.

The planning committee has and will continue to require student input in the planning, implementation, and continued implementation phases of this proposed charter school. Students in the West Linn High School credit recovery class, for example, suggested the name of the school. Mrs. Teresa O’Brien developed the first middle level alternative program and she successfully connected with alternative students at the middle school until her career ended after a two-year battle with cancer. Her legacy of reaching out to students outside the academic mainstream will live on in the O’Brien Center Charter School.

O’Brien Center Charter School vision statement:

The O’Brien Center Charter school will be an inviting, high-energy, flexible, learning environment focused on the educational needs of students who struggle in the traditional comprehensive high school. The OCCS will support and ensure the academic success of these students through project-based learning, instructional technology, small learning groups, continuous input from enrolled students, and a community-based mentoring program.

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V. Gresham Barlow School District Community High School Education Symposium

Introduction
Gresham-Barlow School District is dynamically moving forward into the 21st Century its mission to assure a high quality education for each high school student of the community. Sustaining an effective education system for high school youth is a complex task requiring a focused and ongoing effort with an unwavering commitment to each student’s success.

This “Call to Action” for Leading High School Education in the 21st Century will actively engage the broader community in increasing the quality of student learning and achievement for each student in the Gresham-Barlow School District high schools.

Purpose
The purpose of this symposium is to foster greater understanding of high school education on the part of the community which includes educators, community members, business members and others in thinking about and developing new understandings on how to :

• Ignite system-wide change that assures each student’s success.
• Create conditions that need to be in place for each student to be successful.
• Build new roles and responsibilities in supporting each student’s success as high school education moves forward in the 21st Century.

VI. High School Credit Offered Based on Proficiency

Introduction
In January of 2003 the State Board of Education adopted an administrative rule that states that “Districts may award credit based on proficiency.” The purpose of this rule is to:

• Offer flexibility to districts and schools as they meet the diverse needs and interests and different level and rate of learning of each student.
• Create additional options for students while maintaining a strong accountability system and high standards as the underpinning.
• Empower local decision making and creativity.

As a result of this rule districts and schools need guidelines in how to implement such a policy and dialog regarding how to reach the intended goals and avoid the unintended consequences.

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