REHOBOTH BEACH—For years, Delawareans believed the “lie” that their schools were the best in the country, says state Education Secretary Lillian Lowery. But according to newer, more accurate measures of rating and comparing schools nationwide and globally, Delaware's education system gets a "D," she said.
“We’ve gotta stop lying to people,” Dr. Lowery told an audience in Rehoboth Beach on Thursday. “In Delaware we had children shooting at an 8-foot-high basket, and they were proficient at that, but children in other countries were shooting at a 10-foot-basket. As children entered the global economy, they started behind.”
But with the aid of $119 million in federal Race to the Top money, Lowery expects Delaware’s schools to raise their grade to an “A” by 2014.
The education secretary spoke at the fifth annual Association of American University Women (AAUW) Community Forum at Rehoboth's Epworth United Methodist Church. She answered questions from local community members about Race to the Top and other education initiatives. As she has done at venues throughout the state, Lowery outlined her vision for reinventing Delaware’s ailing education system.
The goal of the state Department of Education (DOE) is for “our children to graduate from high school with choices”—to enter the workplace, military service, or college, Lowery said. “We want to know that they have the skills to do that.”
She stressed that “this is not just another ‘reform’ in education” but rather a new model for assessing and encouraging students that is based on four key principles:
• effective teachers and leaders • rigorous standards, curriculum, and assessments • sophisticated data systems and practices • deep support for the lowest-achieving schools
“Our new standards reflect how prepared our students really are,” she noted. “Half of our student population”—that is, more than 60,000 students—“will likely not meet the new standards.”
Last year Delaware adopted the national Common Core State Standards for curriculum. The state DOE also put in place new interim standards that emphasize greater mastery of core subjects.
Lowery admits that a daunting number of students are in failing and low-achieving schools. More than 40,000 students attend schools that have made no measureable progress in the last five years. Of those students, 26,000 have had no improvement in standardized test scores in five years. And of those students, 11,000 attend the state's lowest-performing schools.
“That is not acceptable,” Lowery said. But she believes Delaware has the tools and resources it needs to turn its schools around.
“We probably have the most sophisticated data system in the states,” she noted. The system allows DOE, administrators, and classroom teachers to build reports and generate data to compare individual students, grades, and districts. The database also gives administrators insights into teachers’ teaching strengths and weaknesses and how they affect student performance.
The data collection enables administrators to take quicker corrective measures for students and teachers who are struggling, because assessments are done three times a year, rather than just once at the end of the school year under the now-defunct Delaware State Testing Program.
As part of the Race to the Top program, low-performing schools are trying innovative measures to improve their students’ achievement. But Lowery said there has been a “huge push-back” regarding some of reforms the state is proposing. Teachers and administrators at failing schools fought the state’s demand that they re-interview for their jobs, but the union eventually conceded. Teachers and administrators at schools throughout the state have resisted using student performance as a measure of teachers’ and leaders’ effectiveness.
Lowery says the benchmark is essential. If a teacher cannot show student growth in two out of three years, the teacher cannot be rated as effective, she said. “We’ve got to make sure [students] are growing,” she said.
Reforming the teacher accountability system was “huge,” she said. “We knocked down the status quo.”
The reform efforts have implications for Sussex County, which is home to the two most impoverished school districts in the state, Seaford and Woodbridge. Both of these districts have received Race to the Top funds.
She also notes that because of Race to the Top, districts throughout Sussex County are starting to share more information and resources countywide instead of operating in isolation. The contest has forced “a collaboration that we’ve never had before,” Lowery said. “Districts plan together and share best practices.”