Candidate for GISD Board

A candidate for the GISD Board has emerged that appears to want to take on the "real" issues facing the students in Georgetown.

Francis Jackson has filed as a candidate for Place 4 on the GISD Board of Trustees.

In an interview with the Wilcosun on February 26, 2020, he articulated his concerns and approaches to change the Board and administration focus.

He is running on a platform of “well-thought-out change.” “Georgetown is in trouble,” he said, citing the district’s multi-year decline in the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) program.

Mr. Jackson is outspoken about Superintendent Fred Brent’s salary — $319,534 in 2018-19. He said it’s too high for a district of 12,000 students. “He’s the 24th highest-paid superintendent in Texas,” Mr. Jackson noted, citing data from the Texas Education Agency.

He also believes that the superintendent and senior administrator's pay should depend on meeting or surpassing state averages on STAR scores. This is a transparent way to hold them accountable.

For those citizens in the GISD, this candidate provides an opportunity to vote for a person with a focus on accountability, both for student achievement and financially.

Incentive Pay for GISD Teachers?

Is it time for GISD to implement an incentive pay system to reward the most effective teachers who raise the skills of their students? Overall, merit pay is a win for students and those who teach them.

Frisco’s move to teacher merit pay means a strong district will get even stronger.The Dallas Morning News

Frisco ISD, a high-performing school district, is moving toward an incentive pay system to reward its best teachers based on student performance, classroom observation and the qualifications of teachers. Districts everywhere need to take this approach.

Excuses for Poor GISD Performance

The GISD superintendent has publicly admitted that GISD students "have not been performing". What is going on here? Is this blame shifting? Is it not the superintendent, staff and teachers who are responsible for student performance? Don't blame the students!

Then the superintendent tries to blame the "State of Texas" on shifting performance targets.

It makes no difference what the "targets" are if the students are fundamentally being taught reading, writing, history and arithmetic!

The superintendent has admitted he and GISD staff and teachers have not been focused on the subjects that would ensure good state test results. They were focused on more qualitative aspects of instructions instead of quantitative measures of learning such as test scores.

The Georgetown ISD superintendent is paid almost $350,000 per year. Are the children and community receiving value equal or greater than that pay? That is a relevant question that needs to be asked and answered.

The superintendent's 2018/19 contract can be found on the GISD website. Looking at the compensation part of the contract the following pay and benefits are identified.

This salary is more that twice that of the Texas Governor according to the 2018 Book of the States. ($153,750)

Recall that GISD recently received a grade of "B" from the Texas Education Agency. Three of GISD schools were rated F and three were rated D.

 Why are there are no incentives provided in the superintendent's contract to improve those grades? Should there be?

Get involved with your school system, including the school board if you want to see improvements. Hold them accountable!

Georgetown Schools Performance Report

Get involved, find out how your Georgetown schools are performing! Attend the public meeting and hear what the administration has to say.

The 2017-18 Georgetown ISD Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR) annual presentation will be held on Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:00 p.m. at the Hammerlun Center for Leadership and Learning, Building 2, room 711.

  

The GISD community is invited to attend.  Information provided for the meeting can be found on our website:  http://www.georgetownisd.org/assessment.

Ask why there are 3 schools in the District that the Texas Education Agency identifies as "Needs Improvement"?

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Go here to view the Campus Improvement Plans. Ask why only one of the schools, Mitchell, has specific objectives to improve STAAR reading and math scores? The other two schools do not have quantifiable metrics to measure improvement.

Isn't it time to put quantifiable metrics in the Superintendents and Principals contracts tied to their pay? If the schools do not show  improvements in the STAAR scores, then they would suffer a pay impact. This is how merit pay and incentives work!

Status of Education in GISD

School district administration personnel across the state are criticizing the Texas STAAR tests. Here are some facts about the tests.

Texas STARR Tests

1. The tests were developed with and by Texas teachers. The test questions have been reviewed and approved by Texas teachers.

2. The tests are administered once per year in compliance with Federal law.

3. The test questions and answers are available on the TEA website for review.

4. Everyone can check school report cards at Txschools.gov

5. Critics of STAAR seems to want no test that measures student achievement on which to hold teachers, administrators and school boards accountable!

Critics seem to be unhappy when children score below acceptable levels or below levels the critics believe children are actually achieving. The scores on the National test, NAEP, are consistently below the STAAR scores. These scores reinforce the fact that Texas children are performing below their capability.

National tests are developed without significant Texas input and are largely based on Common Core. This means national tests are not particularly useful for Texas since Common Core was rejected. The reading and math questions from Common Core would likely be foreign or confusing to Texas students and would partially explain why the national scores are lower than STAAR.

Georgetown’s Forbes middle school was rated "Improvement Required" by the State of Texas based primarily on STAAR scores. These are excerpts from their campus improvement plan.

Goal 1: Student - Centered: Develop a future-ready learning experience that reflects student voice, choice, and ownership.

Goal 2: Communication: Engage the community to become champions and advocate for student success and the future of the district.

Goal 3: Leadership: Cultivate an adaptive system of empowered leadership where collaboration and problem-solving are our natural behaviors.

Goal 4: Establish an innovative culture that encourages risk-taking, diverse thinking and meaningful exploration.

Problem Statements Identifying Student Academic Achievement Needs  

Problem Statement 1: 67% of students did not "meet" grade level in math. Root Cause: As a campus, we put greater emphasis on autonomy rather than making instructional decisions based on the needs of individual growth of students.

Problem Statement 2: 60% of students did not "meet" grade level in reading. Root Cause: As a campus, we put greater emphasis on autonomy rather than making instructional decisions based on the needs of individual growth of students.

School Processes & Programs Summary

Forbes Middle School is a Capturing Kids Hearts and Natural Lifesmanship trained campus. This means that our teachers have been trained to understand how strong, appropriate, caring relationships and an acknowledgment of various traumas can affect the learner. Forbes also trains its teachers in the Schletchy Center method of design. Design is focused lesson creation with the learner in mind and is a process that pin points hard to teach and hard to learn concepts.

Does autonomy mean they are left alone to learn on their own at their own pace??

There is apparently no goal to improve test scores!

Georgetown Should Be Ashamed of It's Schools

Here are the test results for Georgetown ISD students:

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What abysmal results for a reasonably well off and educated town. Yet, look at the money being spent to achieve these results.

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The district is spending $18,861 per student, which is far above the state average of $12,787 per student. For this we are getting 55% of students reading below grade level and 64% doing math below grade level.

When you drill down to the school level, the lagging achievement is readily observable. Here is Frost Elementary School:

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If you want to look at results for other schools in the district, look here.

Its time to elect school board members who focus on student outcomes and will hold the school superintendent accountable for improving student test scores. Insert a financial incentive into the Superintendent's contract to improve student scores every year.

Watchdogs Assumptions Proven Wrong

In a blog post last Friday, Watchdog said: If one examined all the schools in GISD it is likely one would see similar results.

Everyone should know it is very dangerous to make broad generalizations based on a small sample size, Watchdog included.

Here is the relevant chart for GISD 3rd graders reading and performing math at or above grade level.

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Looking at the District column, it is observed that only 37% of 3rd graders in 2018 are reading at or above grade level!

Only 40% of 3rd graders are performing math at or above grade level.

Thus the assumption that the scores at Ford elementary represent the District as a whole is flawed!

District wide 37% meet or exceed grade level in reading and 40% meet or exceed grade level in math. That means 63% and 60% respectively are failing or below grade level in reading and math.

Yet the Texas Education Agency gives Georgetown ISD an overall grade of "B". It seems like a very generous grade given the 3rd grade reading and math scores.

It is clearly time to incentivize the superintendent to improve those scores!

GISD Has Room to Improve Student Outcomes

A concerned citizen has looked at the test scores for the Round Rock ISD and found the following:

STAAR testing results have become particularly enlightening now that the archaic “Met Standard” vs. “Improvement Required” system has been replaced by the A-F accountability ratings, and domain calculations rely on weighted levels of performance. I was particularly horrified to learn from Round Rock ISD’s 2017/2018 Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR) that passing the STAAR exam does not mean our students are performing on grade level, but rather that they are merely “approaching” grade level. For example: reading and mathematics are tested annually from grades 3 – 8. Although only 15% of students in Round Rock ISD failed the reading portion of the STAAR test at all grade levels, a full 35% of our students are reading below grade level, and will need targeted instruction in order to catch up during the following school year. Likewise, although only 11% of students in Round Rock ISD failed the math portion of the STAAR test at all grade levels, a full 33% of our students were performing below grade level. It is thanks to the STAAR test, and the TEA’s new accountability rating system that our district can finally begin addressing these academic challenges so that all of our students have a shot at developing into the best versions of themselves.

Looking at just the results for the Ford elementary school in Georgetown, the results look very similar. Here is the relevant data for 2018:

There is much analysis to be performed using this and other school data, but, just look at reading and Math that meets or exceeds grade level for 2018; 68% meet or exceed grade level in reading and 67% meet or exceed grade level in math. That means 32% and 33% respectively are failing or below grade level in reading and math.

It looks that there are tremendous opportunities to improve math and reading ability in Ford elementary.

If one examined all the schools in GISD it is likely one would see similar results.

Its time to hold the superintendent accountable for improving the outcomes in GISD. How about writing incentives into his contract to improve test scores?