A+ Colorado's take on APS innovation plans
APS' innovation zone may offer a chance for dramatic change for Aurora's kids--a dramatic change that kids in Aurora desperately need. A+ Colorado is deeply commited to ensuring that students in Aurora have increased access to effective schools, so we took the opportunity to review the innovation plans and write a letter to the APS School Board with our feedback. Below, is our letter. Read the full reviews we sent to the Board here.
Honorable Members of the Board of Education
C/O Tonia Norman, Educational Services Center - 1
15701 E. First Ave. Suite 206
Aurora, CO 80011
March 14, 2016
Dear Aurora Board of Education,
We write you today to once again offer our insight into the innovation plans that are up for your approval at the March 15th board meeting and to convey our concerns regarding the path forward for Aurora Central. Our commitment to effective turnaround strategies invests us in the Aurora Public Schools innovation ACTION Zone. We hope the information contained in this letter, and the analysis of the school plans helps guide your thinking as you determine whether or not to approve these plans. School turnaround is a difficult process and, while there are some promising signs in the plans, there are also serious concerns.
As you may know, we have been closely following the ACTION Zone by attending Zone Design Team meetings, board meetings, and the community meeting where plans were presented to the public. At the last school board meeting we were pleased to hear you echo some of our concerns with the plans including:
The lack of a clearly outlined leadership plan—while the district has included a brief description of the structures of leadership support that will be provided to school leaders, it does not fully describe the key competencies, evaluation process, coaching process, or the school specific job description that school leaders will need to fulfill in order to successfully lead these innovation plans. School leadership is one of the most important parts of school turnaround and to have an ill-defined understanding of turnaround leadership will not support successful implementation of these plans.
Concerns about budgeting—the plans do not make it clear how schools plan to use the resources available to them to hire the new staff or create the new structures laid out in the plans.
Absence of named curricular resources in most plans—the plans point to a need for curricular changes to both increase student achievement and to align more closely with the international leadership theme. With a few exceptions, however, the plans fail to name which curricular resources schools will use to meet these goals.
All three of these concerns remain largely unaddressed. But, upon reading the finalized versions of the plans, we are happy to see that some of our early concerns have been addressed and the scorecards reflect our analysis of the most current plans. While the plans do lack some very important details, we do believe that these plans would benefit students attending Boston, Paris, and Crawford particularly if the district works to support the schools in addressing these challenges.
The crux of our concern regarding Aurora Public Schools’ innovation zone is the plan presented by Aurora Central High School. Central is one of the lowest performing high schools in the state and is entering its fifth year on the accountability clock, as such Central’s plans must be viewed through the lens of school turnaround. School turnaround planning involves more stringent requirements than school innovation planning. In order to transform a school at Central’s level of persistent failure, turnaround planning must reflect a rigorous examination and detailed account of the root causes of failure and research-based methods for transforming the school.
Many factors play into our analysis that Central’s plan falls short of the mark necessary to create dramatic improvements in student achievement.
The plan lacks coherent, research-based structures and strategies for school turnaround.
The focus on moving the school from a traditional comprehensive high school to a “competency-based” based school with an entirely new set of structures and practices will require an enormous level of staff capacity. We know of no similar large low-performing school in the country that has successfully implemented a similar model.
Aurora Public Schools have not identified the school’s turnaround leader—it is best practice to allow a turnaround leader a zero-year to engage in planning and lay the groundwork for implementing school turnaround. At the other three schools in the zone, the current leader will be continuing their innovation work next year. The district is in the process of seeking a new leader for Central who will, theoretically, be tasked with enacting plans they had no hand in creating.
The plan does not cite compelling research to prove that it is possible to turn around such a large, comprehensive high school with the urgency that Aurora Central students deserve.
It is unclear how—in terms of budget, talent, and resources—Central will be able to effectively enact the plans.
Currently, we are not confident that enacting the plan presented by Aurora Central will have a positive impact on student achievement at Aurora Central. Clearly the district needs to act with urgency, but enacting an ineffective plan will not serve students.
We want to leave you with a final question: to what extent will students coming out of the improved feeder schools (Boston, Crawford, and Paris) be served by Central High School? The Central innovation plan is not a roadmap for school turnaround. It lacks detail and postpones much of the decision-making to next year. Rather than pass this plan, you have the opportunity to carve out space for more options for APS students such as making a call for new schools or offering space to high-performing charter networks that have demonstrated effectiveness in communities like Aurora. There are many paths forward for Aurora Central High School that have the capacity to be more impactful that following Central’s current innovation plan. We suggest that the board weigh those options before making a final decision.
Sincerely,
Jesus Salazar, Co-Chair, A+ Colorado
Mary Gittings Cronin, Co-Chair, A+ Colorado
Van Schoales, CEO, A+ Colorado
