PROGRESS AND PROCESS EVALUATION

PROGRESS MONITORING AND PROGRAM and PROCESS EVALUATION

AT

VERGENNES UNION HIGH SCHOOL

(Prepared by: Ed Webbley, Peter Reynolds, Tom O’Brien, and Carol Spencer)

Meetings, Discussions and Studies about further participation in NEASC

Mr. Webbley brought the question of how to best organize all of the work ahead of the VUHS staff to the faculty in January, 2008. He weighed the pros and cons of organizing into NEASC based committees in order to meet deadlines for the outside evaluation, against change and improvement efforts that would allow work in curriculum, assessment, professional development, technology integration, education support services to continue. The notes from the faculty meeting are just below in item # 2.

2. Faculty Meeting Discussion, January, 2008

Comments from VUMS/HS Faculty about NEASC Participation

Positive Impacts About the Process – Staff Who Were Involved in 2000-2002

Forces introspection and dialogue on curriculum, community, facilities and students

Provided released time for the process

Reviewers had expertise in the areas they evaluated

Working together

Negative Impacts About the Process – Staff Who Were Involved in 2000-2002

Levels of involvement of all faculty – motivation

Communication between visiting chair and the school

Focus in committee meeting tended to be negative (witch hunt)

Cost a lot

Instructional Assistants not officially included

Gather evidence from ALL factors at VUHS

A lot of work with little results back to us

Have community members and students be a part of the process

From faculty who ‘have not been involved’ because they have been hired since the last NEASC process in 2000-2002:

NEASC accreditation seems like a lot of money and work for little benefit for students
High Schools on the Move seems more student-focused
Habits of mind seem very good to have
Something that goes beyond data collection
Focuses on student overall improvement not just academic improvement?
HSOM – continued work toward self governing model.
Too narrow to focus on meeting the standards; base it on what students are doing after they graduate.
Finish enhancing/adding to the graduation requirements/standards. Do our students meet these? Assess this.
Do we want outside assessment? What are the consequences of not having someone from the outside assess us? Couldn’t we hire experts in specific areas (e.g. library services or math) to come in as needed, instead of NEASC, which is very general? Some of the people who came weren’t very knowledgeable.
What have we done with data collected from previous assessments? What we collect isn’t as important as what we do with what we collect.

General Faculty Discussion :

Positive NEASC Impacts

Forced us to look at entire school with input from students, parents, community members and faculty
More in depth look at curriculum
Forced communication across disciplines and within disciplines
Objective third party
Accreditation could be important to some colleges/community members
VUHS staff member being part of visiting team for another school was informational; process can be helpful in development of group understanding
Responsible for renovation at VUHS
Student and community involvement was a positive attribute.
Brought community in – NEASC brought us the new building – community responsive $12 million
PE gained facilities; AG lost facilities
Curriculum/Assessment/Block Scheduling
Format provides management module – structure
This needs to continue – working towards improving students’ learning

Negative Impacts

Curriculum was recreated; waste of time; everything else had to stop
NEASC – cumbersome process – way too much time
Expensive for the very general results we got
Sometimes feels like a “big brother” concept
Big list of problems; no help with solutions
Report was not complete; nor was it entirely accurate
Lacks context for the creation of positive interactions between educators; we worked separately as committees; the process doesn’t unify the staff
Instead of NEASC to Monitor progress, we should create a process specific to our school
NEASC is not beneficial to us (middle school); continue w/E.L. implementation review
Run as a graduate course – LSB credit – if you want us to do it again
Measure ourselves – progress reports – more useful

In the future what process should we use to measure our building, programs, and student work?

High Schools on the Move process adapted to our needs.

Not NEASC – too expensive and not where we are headed

Keep movement to authentic assessment.

Involve community, students, parents, faculty