Teachers Praise Education Initiative at Cedar Falls School Board Meeting

Three teams of teachers had high praise for an education initiative implemented across the last semester.

The teachers presented their experiences with Professional Learning Communities at Monday's school board meeting.

The Communities are groupings of teachers who share subject matter. The teams are meant to foster collaboration and thus increase student achievement. The teachers at the meeting said they thought the initiative were working.

A group of math teachers presented their experiences working as a Professional Learning Community for geometry. Working together, they use Iowa Core, a statewide set of education standards, to plan curriculum and learning goals.

The program also focuses on increased monitoring of student achievement. On tests, individual questions are tracked, so that instead of just knowing, for example, that 70 percent of students passed a test, educators can see that 100 percent of students answered the first question correctly, but only 50 percent answered the second question correctly. Teachers can use that knowledge to pinpoint concepts they need to reteach.

"I'm a fourth year teacher," high school math teacher Joe Brown said. "This is definitely the first time I've felt as confident of the final I gave."

As a team, the teachers discuss how to address problems, and strive to answer four questions: 1. What do we want students to learn? 2. How will we know students are learning? 3. How will we respond when students do not learn? and 4. How will we respond when they DO learn?

"The best part about this is we can be goal-oriented and have attainable goals we can work toward," high school math teacher Dirk Homewood said.

Not everything with the initiative is rosy.

Homewood's team members said though they appreciate having a dedicated time to meet - the high school began starting an hour late on Tuesdays this year, with that hour devoted to Professional Learning Communities - the program has created a lot of extra work on top of teachers' already busy schedules.

They also said they know they're not getting nearly as much from the gathered data as they could.

"If data is dirt and information is water, we're buried alive and thirsty," the group had written on its Power Point presentation.

"We need to advance in our ability to collect and analyze data more efficiently with technology," high school math teacher Emily Wheeler said.

Homewood agreed.

"How can we take this data and turn it into student achievement?" he asked the board. "There are plenty of school districts we can look at."

Dan Conrad, the district's director of secondary education, said the board would hear another assessment of the Professional Learning Communities program at the end of the school year. In the meantime, some changes are being made in response to the program.

The high school is eliminating pre-algebra and astronomy courses, for example, after determining those courses weren't helping students meet the goals of Iowa Core. In their places will be algebra fundamentals and integrated science.

At the elementary schools, which focused on improvements to math curriculum this year, literacy skill and concepts are the next step.

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The school board on Monday also approved an agreement with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The 42 district employees of that union will get a pay increase that over three years averages 2.73 percent of their current salary and benefits.

Additionally, the board approved plans and set public hearings for renovation projects for Southdale and Elementary Schools. Those renovations will follow in the footsteps of at and junior highs, which were completed just as this school year was starting. The public hearings will be Feb. 13.