Putting Accreditation to Work
An Interview with Dr. Phil Price, Superintendent, Mayfield City School District,
Ohio
Following is an interview with Dr. Phil Price, Superintendent of Mayfield City School District, located in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. The district serves 4,258 students, the majority of whom are white and from middle class backgrounds. The high school has been accredited by NCA CASI since 1928, the middle and elementary schools since 2000. The district is pursuing the Transitions designation and the new District Accreditation framework.
Q: With the requirements of NCLB and heightened demands facing districts, why have you chosen to go above and beyond with NCA CASI accreditation?
A: This is not about compliance. This is not about meeting certain goals for NCA or NCLB. It's about the kids. If we are going to do better with them, we need a long-term planning model. NCA gives us that model. NCA is all about the academic environment and academic attainments of the students to help them get better and better. The whole reason we are involved with NCA is not about getting a certificate, it's about how to make the district stronger.
Q: How have you addressed concerns about duplication of effort?
A: As we embarked on Transitions and District Accreditation, we made a commitment that we were not going to replicate effort. It's all the same work. District Accreditation folds into Transitions which folds into NCLB, and you can use the same data to apply for the state's quality award or the Baldrige award.
To ensure that we do not duplicate effort, we have retained a retired administrator who has a solid background in NCA who helps us align our goals, interventions, and assessments. She has put a lot of work into aligning our assessments so that we are measuring what the state is asking us to measure and seeing the desired results.
We also have someone who helps us with our data. I highly recommend this for all districts. It usually is a university person who has the expertise to manipulate the data and work with it. This individual helps answer the questions everyone wants to know.
We secured grant money for the consultants to assist us with alignment and data analysis, so we have not incurred any additional costs. They work a few days of the year and are integrated into our team. Their impact is tremendous, as we use the same information to meet all our accountability requirements.
Q: You mentioned that you use NCA as your long-term planning tool? Why NCA? Why not one of the several improvement models that are on the market?
A: I wanted a long-term planning model that could be used in the district that would be comfortable for teachers. NCA was a natural fit because our teachers, particularly at the high school level, have a long-standing relationship with NCA.
Q: Why did you decide to pursue Transitions, NCA's exemplary school improvement model, and then District Accreditation? Some might ask, why did you choose to do even more work?
A: Our initial thrust was to use NCA as a planning tool. From very beginning, we were looking at where NCLB was going and what the expectations were going to be. Transitions, with its focus on individual students, its benchmarks, and its credentialing, seemed to be a really good fit.
As District Accreditation came along, we picked that up because it was so aligned with what we were trying to accomplish. It was a tool to help us build capacity at the district level to support schools in their efforts to meet the needs of every student.
Q: How are you implementing Transitions and District Accreditation?
A: We have an internal team of NCA facilitators comprised of several district facilitators, two facilitators from each elementary school, and three from the middle and high school. The team is responsible for driving the Transitions and District Accreditation work. The team meets on a regular basis to ensure articulation of our efforts up, down, and across the district.
We have completed the data gathering part of our improvement process, identified goals, and have our preliminary district-wide plan ready for review. We will be hosting our visiting team this fall. We are bringing in people who will be looking at the Transitions piece and the District Accreditation piece. We placed a good deal of importance on bringing together a strong team with members willing to make a five-year commitment to our district. Our intent is to have at least a core team of three people visit every year to ensure we are on track and to assist us with any areas needing extra attention.
With Transitions, we are just beginning the credentialing of students at certain grade levels. We worked to match the credentialing requirements so they make sense for NCA, NCLB, and the state. This will help us ensure that no child is left behind.
Q: Tell me more about your internal team of facilitators and how you are providing them with the training and resources they need to be successful.
A: We send five people a year from our NCA facilitator team to become certified as Ambassadors. Right now we have approximately 15 certified Ambassadors in our district. What we found is that you don't know how much you don't know about NCA until you become an Ambassador. It has really made sense to send people to the training. They have depth of knowledge related to NCA and quality school improvement.
In addition, another critical thing for us has been taking a team to Chicago for the Annual Meeting every year. We have found that you do not get the full value of NCA by just bringing your team to Chicago the year before you have a visitation. We have at least a core team of 5-7 that go every year. One year we took 12. This allows everyone to remain current with the latest information on school improvement and provides an opportunity to interface with other schools that are pursuing Transitions and now District Accreditation.
Q: What have been the results of your efforts to date?
A: We have not been in implementation long enough to discuss student performance results, although I believe we will see strong gains there. We have seen the intangibles start to come together with the implementation of District Accreditation. The framework calls for involving the entire district community - bus drivers, education aides, kitchen staff, parents, etc. The organizational climate has really improved as a result of this involvement. In addition, there is a growing understanding among the faculty across all of the schools about what our goals are and what we are doing to raise student performance.
Q: Some might claim that you can do what you're doing because you have a relatively homogenous population who come from families with stable incomes. What about districts where this is not the case?
A: What all of us need, regardless of student diversity and no matter how much you receive per pupil, is an aligned effort - everyone going in the same direction. We do not need random acts of improvement. NCA's District Accreditation and Transitions will help you align your efforts for the benefit of students. NCA does not cost a lot of money, and you can utilize the expertise of the state office and Tempe to reach the goals you want to reach. And, you really need to be doing this anyway for NCLB. The advantage NCA has is that it is a known quantity. If you talk to teachers K-12 about NCA, they don't blink. They are comfortable with it
Q: What advice would you give to districts about NCA?
A: I can't stress enough that this is not about compliance. The reason we are involved in NCA is because of kids and about getting better as a district. The higher the frequency of association with NCA, the better the results. This is not about how little we can do. The more you do, the more the return is going to be.