Mary Kadera
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Blog
  • How I Voted
  • Contact

Closing or moving schools: the why, when, and how

6/19/2025

 
During my four years on the School Board, the question of closing a school or program has come up three times. A month into my term, the School Board voted to pause the Virtual Learning Program, effectively ending it. In 2023, we considered whether to close Nottingham Elementary as a way to create swing space that would facilitate other, future school renovation and construction projects. This spring, we considered eliminating the Integration Station preschool program for budgetary reasons.

There's nothing I can think of that generates more upset for a school division. If Superintendents and School Boards are going to propose closing a school, it has to be done with an ironclad rationale and with the utmost care.

In Fairfax County in the 1980s, both my elementary and high schools were closed due to declining enrollment while I attended. As a parent and a PTA leader, I participated in deliberations that led to the closure of McKinley, my kids' elementary school. (At the time APS proposed this, it was not guaranteeing that the entire school community would move together to the newly-constructed Cardinal Elementary, which is why it is correctly categorized as a school closing.) During that same process, APS moved two option programs, Escuela Key and Arlington Traditional School. 

So--I have some history with this topic. Because of that, and because of my most recent experience with Integration Station, I have been curious about how APS and other school divisions could improve how we take up this topic and make good decisions. I reached out to staff and families who are part of the Integration Station, Nottingham, and VLP communities to learn about their experiences and hear their ideas for how we could do this better. (Please note: While to my knowledge there are no immediate plans to close or move anyone in Arlington, I do think it would behoove us to develop a policy and related processes that would govern this if it comes up again.) 

I spoke with 13 individuals and here's what I heard:

1. Identify clear goals. What problem(s) are we trying to solve? What initial data suggest that closing or moving this school or program will be a good solution? These goals should not change during the decision making process. The individuals I spoke to felt like the following would be reasonable goals to identify:
  • Budget savings
  • Addressing facility usage and capacity issues
  • Addressing staffing issues (e.g., ensuring there are sufficient qualified staff for a particular program)
  • Insufficient impact/effectiveness (for an option school or specialized program)
  • It is part of a larger strategy (e.g., expansion of an option program, reimagining how we provide services in PreK, etc.).
  • The result of this Step No. 1 should be a clear answer to the question: Why was this particular school or program identified?

2. Involve the right people. Before a closure or move is recommended to the School Board and communicated to the public, there should be serious deliberation among a group that includes:
  • The Superintendent: Given that this is one of the most challenging, and likely upsetting, decisions that a school division can make, folks would like to know that the leader of the division is directly involved and will take ownership of the recommendation.
  • Chief of School Support
  • Facilities: Assistant Superintendent and Director of Facilities and Operations
  • Transportation: Assistant Superintendent and Executive Director
  • Director of Special Education
  • Director of English Learners
  • Executive Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
  • Specific supervisors within the Office of Academics, as necessary and appropriate (i.e., for Integration Station, head of Early Childhood)
  • Director of Budget
  • 1-2 current or immediate past member(s) of the Facilities Advisory Council (FAC)
  • Principal(s) of affected programs/schools
  • School Board liaison.

The individuals I spoke with felt particularly strongly about the need to include the principal(s) as individuals with deep, specific knowledge of their school community and the impacts that would need to be anticipated and planned for. They also strongly recommended incorporating Transportation from the start and consistently including Special Education, English Learning, and DEI so that the needs of specific populations are always factored in.

I shared a worry that involving school principals and/or FAC representatives might risk making something public before a recommendation is fully developed. The individuals I spoke with suggested that this worry implies a lack of trust: “Why would you assume that people can’t exercise professionalism and discretion?” They advised that the greater risk was bringing forward an ill-conceived recommendation because we hadn’t involved the right people from the outset.


3. Utilize a clear decision making framework. This group should employ a checklist of essential questions that need to be answered, including:
  • Is there another way that APS could achieve its goal(s) without closing or moving this school or program? (consideration of alternative scenarios)
  • Is this decision out of sync with other initiatives in APS? (For instance, we are going to close or move an Immersion program site but we are making this decision one year ahead of a comprehensive Immersion visioning process; we identify swing space well before we’re certain we’ll even need it.)
  • What special characteristics of this school community need to be considered and planned for?
  • Will there be disproportionate impact on specific populations? This could include
    • Students and families that have already been affected by a closure, move, or boundary change. One parent noted that it is really important to consider moving preschool and countywide special education programs in this light. Though we tend to think of these particular moves as decisions that are purely capacity-related, they in fact separate children and families from their existing school community. One parent shared that her ninth grade son has already gone through five school moves due to a) changes in location for special education PreK, b) site changes for countywide programs for students with disabilities in grades K-8, as well as c) the discontinuation of the Virtual Learning Program.
    • Economically disadvantaged families. Considerations here might include parents’ ability to reach the new school/program location via public transportation, or the impact of leaving behind established community supports (e.g., a food pantry, afterschool program, volunteer tutoring partnership, etc.).
    • Students and families historically disadvantaged by virtue of their race/ethnicity and/or other identities. Are these populations bearing the brunt of a school closure or move, in this instance as well as over time? Will we be placing students in a new environment where they will have fewer (or no) peers who share their identity(ies)?
    • Students identified for special education services, English learner instruction, and/or advanced academics.
  • What will happen to the staff at this school or program? What clear information can we provide about what will happen and when?  Will the timing of this decision align with the timing for hiring and job placements the following year?
  • How will this closure or move impact enrollment and capacity at other schools?
  • How will this closure or move impact students’ travel to and from school (e.g., length of bus rides, need for additional or altered bus routes, walkability)
  • Will we offer any opportunities for grandfathering particular students or phasing out a school or program over time? Why or why not? If our approach here is inconsistent with what we’ve offered before, do we have clear reasons why we are doing it differently this time?
  • In two or three years’ time, how will we know if we have achieved our goals? What will be the process for evaluating and communicating this?

 4. If a recommendation is going to be made to close or move a school or program, develop a comprehensive communications plan in advance. Who needs to be informed? Who needs to be engaged? When and how should we reach out to those groups? This would include families, students, and staff at the school or program in question; staff and students at the school(s) receiving any new students as a result of the change; community organizations partnering with the school or program in question; the County Board; and the general public.

The individuals I spoke with observed that sometimes the very valid reasons for recommending a change get lost in the way it is communicated. They suggest the following improvements in communication and engagement:
  • The initial information to the affected parents, staff, and students should come from a known and trusted source. Most of the individuals I spoke with felt that the news would have been easier to receive if it had come from their school principal, or their principal and someone in central office together. When they don’t have any connection with the person delivering this news, it creates confusion and mistrust.
  • The individuals I spoke to understand that not everyone is a gifted communicator in situations like these (though they may have many other talents!). Consider who beyond the principal is engaging with the affected school communities most directly. Are they the best choice, in terms of their knowledge, listening skills, and empathy? Be intentional about who you choose here.
  • The Superintendent needs to be engaged with the affected school community at the outset, in a meeting and in written communication. They need to know that as the leader of the division, he believes this is the right thing to do. The individuals I spoke to feel like the Superintendent needs to be a solid “yes” in recommending the change. They would like the School Board to function as the respectful skeptic in need of convincing: “OK, make your case.”
  • The affected school community needs time with the School Board, outside of the limited windows provided by Public Comment and Open Office Hours.
  • Don’t assign a brand new School Board member to be the liaison to school that may be subject to a closure or move. 
  • These meetings should be held at the school site, with interpreters available—APS comes to them, rather than asking them to come to us.
  • Don’t change the goals. Every division leader and school board member should be communicating the same goals and rationale.
  • Anticipate questions that are likely to come up and have answers ready. If a question comes up that can’t be answered immediately, share when and how that information will be ready.
  • Show your work. Provide the data and analysis that fueled the recommendation. Be ready to meet with individuals and groups who have questions about the data or alternative interpretations. Currently, it feels like it falls to parents to ask for and analyze supporting data, and only certain school communities are equipped to organize and advocate in this way.
  • Meet in person early on with affected staff members.
  • More meetings and conversations. Fewer exchanges via trading questions and answers in writing via memos and FAQs. When written information is provided, clearly identify the date and source(s) of the information—version control. One parent noted that the boundary adjustments for Elementary School Immersion a few years ago went well because there was direct outreach to every affected family—which admittedly is not always possible, but goes a long way.

If you have experience with this issue and can suggest other thoughtful improvements, I'd love to hear from you. I believe that the School Board does its best work when it listens closely and is open to making positive course corrections based on what it learns. In four years, I have never been disappointed when I've done so.

Choosing to  Abstain

5/23/2025

 
Last week, the School Board meeting included an Information/Action item that recommended a change to the approved school year calendar. I chose to abstain from this vote—something I have not done before as a board member.

Since the meeting, I’ve received questions and comments about my decision to abstain. As an elected official accountable to the community I serve, I believe it’s important to explain any vote I cast--or in this case, my decision not to vote.  (This is why I have maintained a public record of all my votes since taking office, along with my commentary on particularly significant votes, in multiple languages.)
 

As a board member, I have always sought to understand an issue as thoroughly as possible in order to make an informed, responsible decision. This involves asking questions (often I ask a lot of them!); listening carefully to the perspectives of families, staff, and students who will be affected by a vote; studying how other school divisions have handled the same issue; and when necessary and possible, working with my colleagues and APS staff to explore compromises or alternative solutions.

Because of this, I don’t like Information / Action items. Normally, an issue and a related recommendation are presented an Information item and not voted on as an Action item until the subsequent board meeting. This allows board members time to deliberate and it gives the community time to understand what’s being proposed and advocate.

In this case, the School Board learned about the proposed calendar change Tuesday afternoon. It was shared with the community on Wednesday, and the board was to vote on Thursday.

The issue at hand was (is) deeply important to many in our community. It was also divisive: in the space of about 24 hours, the School Board received hundreds of emails. I carve out time to read all incoming emails, but in this case I was not able to because I also have a full-time job.  Additionally, from Thursday morning right up until the time of the meeting, I was receiving new information about the possible consequences of this vote. In the very limited amount of time available, I could not study what other school divisions were doing in response to the same issue, and I could not explore whether there were possible compromises or ways to mitigate the negative impacts of a vote in either direction.

There are completely valid reasons why this was presented as an Information / Action item. It is also true that I was deeply conflicted about the decision (to learn more about that, you can watch the meeting video and listen to my comments beginning at 3:31:20). With the time I’d had to deliberate and the information that was still coming in, I could not cast a responsible, well-informed vote. So my decision was to abstain.

Board members may abstain from a vote for a few different reasons. Abstention is different from recusal: in abstention, the board member participates in the discussion but declines to vote. In recusal, the board member has a conflict of interest and does not participate in the discussion or the vote.

I understand that an elected official’s decision to abstain may be seen as an abdication of decision making responsibility. And I believe that it’s my job to cast votes that are reflective of serious thought, study, and engagement. Last week, those two principles were in conflict.

I’m not a career politician and I don’t have a degree in any related field; I made a judgment call. It’s entirely possible that I should have made a different call, and if you believe I should have done so, I welcome your constructive feedback.

why i support june prakash for school board

4/28/2025

 
Dear friends,

I’ll be voting for June Prakash in the Arlington Democrats’ School Board Endorsement Vote, and I hope you will join me. For information about how to vote in person or online, please see  HERE. Please note that voting concludes on May 10!

​I support June because I believe she will provide the kind of oversight and leadership that we need right now for Arlington Public Schools. When I think about some of the biggest challenges and opportunities facing APS right now, these are top of mind:

Deep Knowledge of, and Experience with, APS Operations. As a board member for the past four years, I’ve seen firsthand the need for APS to strengthen various areas of its operation. And while there has been some good progress, it will require sustained effort.

June brings firsthand experience with APS operations, a deep understanding of the complexities involved, and a recognition of the significant impact that operational success or failure can have on APS’s ability to ensure that every student in our community learns, thrives, and excels.
 
These are among the most timely and urgent needs I see in APS today:
  • Finance: How can APS employ sustainable budgeting practices, gauge the impact of its investments, diversify its revenue sources, and ensure that the budget is shared in a transparent and accessible way?
  • Facilities: How can APS ensure that it is spending every capital dollar as wisely as possible so that it can attend to as many facilities as possible that are in need of improvement? Last year’s Facilities Condition Assessment provided an array of data about what needs to be done—now the School Board and APS leadership have to determine how it will get done. How will APS manage its debt service responsibly so that it does not place extra strain on the annual operating budget, as the second largest area of expense? How are facilities decisions informed by enrollment projections, which indicate that we will have a significant number of vacant seats in our elementary schools over the next decade?
  • Staff recruiting and retention: Is APS doing everything it can to attract and keep great staff members, its most valuable asset? APS must recruit and hire in ways that keep it competitive with other local school divisions. Once hired, staff need resources, professional learning, time, and supportive leadership to do their best work. The recent audit of the APS Human Resources department points out many ways that employees’ needs are not being met—including the needs of HR staff themselves. This is a longstanding issue that requires ongoing attention.
  • Operating procedures: How can APS increase its efficiency and ensure that it is handling operational issues in a consistent way? Multiple recent internal audits underscore the need for clear, well-documented standard operating procedures in the areas of finance, human resources, and more. Absent these procedures, there is increased risk for error, needless delays, loss of institutional knowledge, and inconsistent response to staff, family, and student concerns. 

Educator Perspective and Experience. It is not an easy time to be a teacher. Public education is under attack. Policymakers and the general public are asking schools to meet an increasing number of societal needs. Teachers often lack the time to learn about and apply new strategies that will improve teaching and learning. Many teachers cannot afford to live in the communities they serve.

These issues are not unique to APS, but they certainly apply here. On top of those universal needs, I see the following local challenges:
  • Many educators in APS were adversely impacted by the shift in health insurance last year. From my vantage point, this was a significant blow to morale and carried very real consequences for many staff members who had to find new providers or even change or forego medical treatments.
  • Many report difficulty in getting the information and services they need from Human Resources.
  • There has been progress, but still work to do, in order to ensure that staff members have meaningful input into decisions that affect their work and the students they teach.
  • APS should be proud that it is engaging in collective bargaining. It is still early days and there is much to learn and improve as the school division works to bargain in good faith and align that work with other areas of its operation.
​
The School Board makes its best decisions when it is keenly listening to the perspectives and experiences of students, families, community members, and the staff members who are the lifeblood of the system. June has worked in APS as a kindergarten instructional assistant—she has firsthand APS educator experience. During her tenure as president of AEA, she has listened attentively to the needs of staff members in myriad roles and advocated constructively on their behalf with APS leadership. The School Board needs a member who will make decisions that are grounded in the goal of valuing, retaining, and developing a truly excellent staff. June brings that experience and orientation.
 
 
 I have deep respect for the other candidate in this race and I believe she is a tremendous asset to this community. I believe she brings strengths, experience, and perspectives that would also add value to the School Board. I wish a little bit that there were two seats open, because I think these two candidates would complement each other very well.

But when I ask myself, “What do the School Board and APS need most urgently right now?”, in my experience the highest-priority needs are in operational improvements and in the way APS values, supports, and learns from its staff members. I am confident that June Prakash will do great work in these areas, and in others, if elected to the Arlington School Board. I hope you’ll join me in voting for June.

March 2025 budget comments

4/28/2025

 
Last night, the School Board approved its FY26 Proposed Budget, which now goes through a period of public discussion and refinement before the board approves a final budget in May. 

Below, I'm sharing the remarks I made at last night's meeting about our proposed budget and the process we've undertaken to develop it.

Later today, the School Board and the County Board will gather in a joint public work session to share and discuss each organization's FY26 proposed budget; I encourage you to watch via video stream or join us in the County Board Meeting Room at 1 pm.



​I want to thank the Superintendent and members of his leadership team for their partnership and willingness to work together a little differently this year. In particular, I am grateful for the conscientious work of Andy Hawkins, Tameka Lovett-Miller, and John Mayo.

When we began our budget work in July, we knew we would have a considerable gap to cover. In the initial scenarios we looked at, the gap ranged from an estimated 35 million dollars on the low end, if we built in just a step increase for our employees with no cost of living adjustment, to 55 million dollars if we wanted to give a step and a 3% COLA.

We also knew we would not have reserves to plug that gap as we’d done in years past, nor did we want to keep using reserves, which are one-time money, to fund ongoing costs.

Back in the summer, we agreed we wanted to align our financial resources to our strategic plan and data about changing student needs. We wanted to free up resources for priorities and needs that are currently unfunded. We had the goal of ensuring that we can recruit and retain skilled, talented, and effective staff. And we wanted to do all of this in a way that would increase our financial stability and reduce our structural deficit.

These were our goals at the outset, which I hope you saw reflected in the budget direction the School Board approved last October.

In my School Board life, whenever we’re wrestling with a mighty problem, I like to remember that we are not the only school division in the universe. I ask myself, “What have other school divisions done when they faced similar problems?” So my work began with a lot of study of what other divisions have done to close budget gaps and realign resources. This study of other districts factored into our work over the summer, and it also is reflected in the analysis we commissioned from an outside company that has worked with many other school systems on issues just like ours.

Tonight in the budget presentation, you heard about things that are being proposed as potential reductions. What you didn’t hear about are the things that we did NOT include, and that we saw in other school divisions. I think this is useful context for what is being presented, so I want to talk just a bit about things we rejected, for a variety of reasons.

We did not increase class sizes, which is admittedly the easiest lever to pull when a school division wants to reduce costs. In our public meetings, we regularly hear from APS educators during public comment who talk about the impact of class size increases on their workload and their ability to know and support each one of their students.

We did not eliminate retiree health benefits as other divisions have done, because we know that these benefits are significant to our retirees, who devoted so many years to our community, and because we know they are an important reason why many educators choose to stay with APS.

We did not outsource and privatize parts of our operation like Extended Day, transportation, or custodial and maintenance services, as is the case in many other school divisions. These employees are members of our APS family and they form valuable relationships with our students, staff, and families that enrich our school communities. Many students begin and end their days with our bus drivers and Extended Day staff, who get to know them and provide positive support.

We did not scale back or eliminate our program for court-involved young people, or our program for older students that enables them to complete credits for a high school diploma while holding down one, and sometimes more than one, job.

We did not close a neighborhood school, which many school divisions have done as enrollment flatlines or decreases and the cost of building upkeep and renovation increases.

These are just a few of the measures that we determined weren’t a good idea for Arlington Public Schools.

There are other ideas we decided have promise, but will require more study and may take more than one year to implement. An example of this is converting more, or all, of our schools to renewable energy sources. At a net zero school like Discovery, this saves hundreds of thousands of dollars in utility costs each year.

I also want to say a few words about our process, which has been different this year in that the School Board and Superintendent are presenting this budget together. This year’s budget in my estimation required a different approach, where the board in its governance role and the Superintendent in his leadership and operational role had the opportunity for extended deliberation, discussion, and reflection.

Now we are bringing you the work we’ve done to date as a result of our deliberation, but our work is not done. The work sessions, hearing, and community engagement over the next several weeks are a crucial part of getting to the best possible result.

If you know anything about me from my time thus far on the board, I hope you know and trust my sincere belief that each of us has unique knowledge and perspective to share, and it’s only when we are genuinely curious and listening to each other that our own understanding and decision making can be enriched. You see things in your classrooms, in your homes and school communities, and in your team’s work here at Syphax, that I can’t see or know nearly as well as you do. When you share those ideas and considerations with me, I make better decisions.

It’s in that spirit of transparency and collaboration that we have posted, along with the proposed budget, a number of other documents that provide a window into our work to date. We’re showing you our work, and asking you to help us elaborate and improve it.

Finally, I want to note that in this particularly difficult budget season, and at a time of economic and job uncertainty for many in our community, we are necessarily having to make decisions that have a very human impact on many people. I want to say to those of you directly impacted by the proposed reductions that I am aware this is difficult and emotional. For me, that’s why it’s even more important that we use the time between now and May to be absolutely sure that we are making the most careful and strategic decisions possible. I thank all of you in advance for the contributions I know you will make.

 

Campaign Update, January 2025

4/28/2025

 
​Dear Friend,

It has been my joy to serve on the school board for the last three years. This is the most purposeful, fulfilling work I have ever had. I have loved meeting new people, learning new things, stretching myself, and feeling like I am contributing to important, positive changes in our schools. 

I genuinely believe I would be happy doing this work forever. I say this despite its demands and challenges, some of which I would never have chosen for myself or made public in the way that happened for me last year. If I didn’t love the work so much, then the toxicity aimed at me, personally, from some of my former colleagues would have driven me out the door already.

It is no secret that I have concerns about the Arlington Dems Caucus process connected to school board elections. I am grateful to the Dems for opening a forum on this topic in 2022 and making some reforms based on what they heard.

Here's some additional feedback on the Caucus: If I have done my research correctly, I would be the first candidate standing for re-election who has a 9 to 5 full time job, the school board job, the extra work of being Chair, and a partner and school-age children at home. That is indeed a lot. Holding the Caucus means that someone like me needs to figure out how to do all that and add several months of extra campaigning in the spring, before the state’s June filing deadline, which would otherwise be when a campaign could launch.

This spring, I will also be leading the school board and the community through some serious and overdue budget work. 

I love a good challenge–and until very recently, I believed I was up for the challenge of campaigning for a second term. But added to all of this, I am now navigating a serious family situation that needs my time and energy for the foreseeable future. I am struggling with it, and I need to acknowledge my limits. I can’t run a campaign and take care of myself and my husband and family in this moment, all at the same time. 

I will repeat–I love this work. I hope that sometime in my life I will have the opportunity to do it again. But in this campaign cycle, I will not be seeking a second term.

In choosing your next school board member, I urge you to prioritize certain habits of mind over specific domain knowledge. APS knowledge can be learned. What can’t be learned, in my experience, are the dispositions of curiosity, humility, open-mindedness, and self-scrutiny. 

My work on the School Board has never been about me, and it has never been about being part of an elite group that believes rigidly and narrowly in its own insular correctness and expertise. My work on the School Board has been about listening to you, learning from you, and exercising my best judgment on your behalf. 

I encourage you to listen closely to discern if candidates hold a genuine belief that good ideas and valuable perspectives can come from all parts of our community, and if their sense of accountability to the community they serve will extend beyond Election Day.  I will be listening closely, too, and I plan to make an endorsement and support the best candidate in any way I can.

Thank you for placing your trust in me and giving me this amazing opportunity to serve. I indeed have been blessed.

Why we need some choir! choir!  Choir!

11/3/2024

 
The idea behind Choir! Choir! Choir! is pretty simple: strangers gather, rehearse for about an hour, and then perform a song together. The brainchild of Daveed Goldman and Nobu Adilman, it started in Toronto in 2011 and then spread around the world.

My sister introduced me to Choir! Choir! Choir! in 2020. A group had gathered in New York City two years before to perform David Bowie's "Heroes" with special guest singer David Byrne. When my sister sent me the link, we were in the early months of the pandemic and no choirs could assemble anywhere. 
Picture
Being part of a choir is beautifully human. It says something about our need for connection and the amazing things humans  create together. We can all name people with extraordinary voices--soloists whose talents we could never hope to match--but singing in a choir is different. 40 or 70 or 400 ordinary voices join together and make something none of them could do alone. The sum is truly greater than all its parts.

I
 feel that way about our country, too, even though our bonds seem increasingly fragile. It's evident that no matter who wins the election, we'll be sorely tested in the days and weeks ahead. "Heroes", especially when sung by a group of everyday, un-heroic strangers joined by shared affection and purpose, seems like a good song for these times.

If you're not a Bowie/Byrne fan, maybe the song below will be more your style. (And if you want something that's more purely fun, you might like the Choir! Choir! Choir! performances with Rick Astley or Colin Hay--the latter I think is remarkably good!) 

​
This one is "We Belong," written by Lowen & Navarro but made famous by Pat Benatar. It also makes me think of this moment in America: "Whatever we deny or embrace / For worse or for better / We belong, we belong together." ​
Picture

Get the lead out

10/20/2024

 
Imagine you live in a small, fictional country. Your government cares about health and the environment, and it's recently issued new regulations about lead contamination. 

Lead, as you likely know, can cause all kinds of human health problems--from headaches to high blood pressure, memory problems, and miscarriage. In young children, lead poisoning causes developmental delays, learning difficulties, seizure, and more.

So, your government is going to require every neighborhood and community to reduce the level of lead in the water, in the soil, in buildings and in the air. Lead levels will be measured through a variety of tests, starting this year, and in 12 months each neighborhood and community will be publicly rated on how much lead is present. Communities will the highest lead levels will have to enter into a special agreement with the government and cede local control of environmental services, waste management, water treatment, and parks.

What kind of tests will the government use? Well, they haven't developed all of them yet. But by this time next year, they'll be in force and your rating will be published. 

What kinds of funding or assistance will the government provide to help communities reduce lead pollution? Well, they haven't worked that part out yet.

If your community loses some of its local control, what exactly will that mean and how long will it last? Well, the special agreements haven't been drafted yet.

But you'd better get started with that clean up, because it's going into effect one year from now.

Maybe you live in a wealthy neighborhood. Individually and collectively, you can pay for companies to come in and work on the problem. You don't want your neighborhood to earn a failing grade, right? What would that do to home values?

But maybe you live in a neighborhood that's less well-to-do. The houses are older and smaller, and many likely still contain lead-based paint. You live closer to the municipal waste incinerator, which for many years contaminated the soil, air, and water nearby.  You're going to start with more lead pollution, and your neighborhood has less money to fund its own clean up effort.



​Of course you don't live in a small, fictional country, and nobody is testing your yard or your blood for lead levels. But something very similar is happening in the state of Virginia to our public schools.

Recently, the Virginia Board of Education approved a new School Performance and Support Framework to evaluate how well schools are meeting academic expectations. The new Framework replaces the current accreditation system, which critics have charged is not rigorous or transparent enough.  The Framework will  rate each school as Distinguished, On Track, Off Track, or Needs Intensive Support. The Department of Education will publish these ratings next fall. School divisions with a certain percentage of schools rated "Needs Intensive Support" will be required to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the state. 

Whether or not you believe we need a more rigorous accountability system, you've got to admit (I hope) that we need one that's fully built. 

What assessments will the state use to gauge academic performance? Well, some of them exist today but some of them haven't been created yet. Even the most familiar, the Standards of Learning, will be changing this year as new standards for Math and English Language Arts have rolled out. (It's worth noting that Virginia is introducing the new math standards and the new math SOL test in the same school year; normally, teachers get a year to familiarize themselves with the new standards and the related test rolls in the following year.) 

What funding and resources will the state be providing to schools that are rated Off Track or Needs Improvement? We don't know yet.

What will the Department of Education put in the MOU it will require for the lowest performing schools and districts? No one has seen it yet. 

It's a little like not knowing if you're actually going to earn your college degree because the university hasn't figured out its degree requirements--even though you're starting your senior year and you have less than 12 months before you're supposed to graduate. 

Or like the lead testing in my imaginary country. Similar to the less affluent neighborhoods in my example, there are schools and school divisions in the Commonwealth that will be disproportionately affected by the new academic accountability system. 

Under the new system, students who are English Learners will "count" towards a school's overall accountability rating after just three semesters. Federal law requires that school divisions test all EL students after three semesters, but until now in Virginia we've used those tests to check for growth of content knowledge, not mastery of the content. After just three semesters, an EL student's science SOL score may say more about the student's understanding of English than their understanding of the science content being assessed. For this reason, many states that count EL scores after three semesters will test students in their native language; Virginia does not allow this.*

In APS, 27% of our students are English Learners. The state average is 9%. In several of our schools, EL students comprise 50% or more of the student body (Carlin Springs and Randolph are highest at 75% and 59% respectively). What will those schools' ratings look like when compared to schools like Jamestown (2% EL) or Discovery (4% EL)?  EL students and families are also often economically disadvantaged. The extra support that more affluent families tap into, like private tutoring, disability screening, occupational and speech therapies, and more, are beyond the reach of many immigrant families, which exacerbates the gaps across and within school communities.

In Arlington, most of our school funding is locally generated, with the state kicking in just 14% of the school division's revenue. In other, less affluent counties in the Commonwealth, the state contributes two-thirds or more of the school division's operating funds. 

I imagine that if the state does not appropriate additional, dedicated funds to support schools labelled Off Track or Needs Intensive Support, school divisions like Arlington will figure out another way to finance the extra staff and resources we'd need for these schools. But what if you are Lee County in Southwest Virginia, and 70% of your education funding comes from the state? Or the City of Petersburg, which is 63% funded by the state? (It's worth noting that Petersburg schools have been operating under an MOU with the Virginia Department of Education since 2004. The state's involvement for 20 years has not yielded significant improvement.) 

I'm all for accountability (just like I'm all for lead-free neighborhoods). There are parts of the new school accountability framework that I believe could be beneficial. And in our country, state, and community, we do need to act with greater urgency to close chronic opportunity and achievement gaps that can have lifelong consequences for English Learners, students with disabilities, and our Black and Brown students. 

But "getting the lead out", if the solution is not crafted with care, is in a best-case scenario blundering and ineffective. In the worst case, it will do real damage to those we had ultimately set out to serve.



*The issue of when and how to test English Learners on subject area content knowledge is complex, and (at least in my study of it) does not lend itself to blanket guidelines that dictate how "all" EL students should be assessed. Variables include the language in which instruction was delivered; whether a student is fully literate in their native language, which is not the case for many students whose formal education was limited or interrupted before coming to the US; a student's English language proficiency (e.g., are they at WIDA Level 1 or WIDA Level 3?); and more. It's also not clear to me that a blanket "number of semesters" rule makes sense. Three semesters may well be too soon for some EL students' scores to "count" as a measure of how well a school is equipping students with content knowledge. Eleven semesters (or five and a half years) feels to me like it would be too long in many cases.

I note in WestEd's 2019 independent evaluation of APS's English Learner program that a large percentage (44%) of middle school English Learners had been classified as English Learners for five or more years, and a large percentage (40%) had been English Learners since Kindergarten. Since that time, of course, APS has made significant changes and investments in English Learner instruction as part of its 2019 settlement agreement with the Department of Justice. 
​

A reformer and his recruits

9/8/2024

 

I’d been a high school teacher for four years when I determined it was time to earn my masters degree. I was deciding between UVA and NYU in the spring of 1996 when I answered a long-distance phone call (remember those??) from a professor named Alan Howard. “I’m calling to recruit you,” he told me.

Two years earlier, Alan had started a masters program in American Studies within the UVA English Department. The program required one intensive year and aimed to equip graduates with marketable skills as much as intellectual ballast. It also emphasized production of information and resources for public good: rather than writing theses that might be read by half a dozen people and then archived in the university library, we would be learning how to build websites to publish our work and we’d serve as interns with local museums, historical societies, and arts organizations. Alan’s motto was “We DO American Studies.”

I was flattered to be recruited and I accepted his invitation, joining four other grad students for what would be quite literally a life-changing experience.

Our summer reading list included George Landow’s Hypertext, which explored how the internet—and more specifically, clickable hypertext links—would change the way humans construct and consume information. Four decades later, it’s almost impossible for us to remember a time when we couldn’t follow links, but at the time it felt (and was) groundbreaking. In Alan’s American Studies program, I hand-coded websites instead of turning in papers for my courses. This included the courses Alan himself designed and taught, which explored the American West, Washington, DC, and the 1930s.

My year in the American Studies program taught me new ways to think, new ways to understand America and its place in the world, and new ways to produce and share information and ideas. When I returned to high school teaching, it changed the way I taught and how I thought about assessment. Later, it enabled me to land a job at PBS in its fledgling Interactive Learning division, where we used the internet for then-revolutionary purposes like virtual interactive field trips, online professional learning, and on-demand video streaming.

I kept in touch with Alan after I left UVA. He helped me teach HTML to my ninth graders so that they could publish an online magazine of their writing. He followed my work at PBS with great interest and shared his own work, which after retirement from UVA included establishing a scholarship for nurse practitioners in southwest Virginia and using technology to connect and support nurses in Appalachia.

He came to my wedding and I went to his retirement celebration. When I was considering moving to Arlington, he put me in touch with his son, whose children attended Arlington Public Schools. He talked with my husband, who at the time worked in real estate and construction, about housing developments that were springing up around his beautiful cattle farm just outside Charlottesville.

Two weeks ago I learned from his daughter-in-law that Alan had passed away. He died at home on his farm, and he was 85 years old.


I’ve been blessed in my life to have had some really wonderful teachers, and Alan was one of the best.

He understood that there are all kinds of things humans can know, and only a fraction of them are things that we value in our schools. Several times during that year, Alan invited me and my classmates to visit his farm, where I got the sense that his accomplishments as a farmer meant just as much, if not more, to him than his degrees from Princeton and Stanford. In his obituary, his family wrote: “He felt equally at home with William Faulkner and John Deere.”

He understood that there are all kinds of ways for humans to demonstrate and share what they know, way beyond the papers and standardized tests that we prize in education. Alan explained to my classmates and me that the UVA English Department had examined whether high scores on the Verbal section of the GRE predicted the long-term academic and professional success of its graduate program alumni: according to Alan, they discovered that the only thing correlated with high GRE scores was a greater likelihood of mental breakdown. (This led us, over the course of the year, to warn each other that we were having a “High Verbal” kind of day.)

He demanded a lot from himself as a teacher and believed that we should demand more of our systems of education. After single-handedly launching and running the American Studies program for five years, he asked the English Department to evaluate it and make recommendations for its improvement. He contributed a Self Study Narrative to that evaluation, in which he wrote:

I came to believe in 1994 that the English Department had reached a critical juncture in its graduate program: it had passed from an institution unwittingly accumulating the world's largest stock of unemployed Ph.D.s and ABDs and had become a knowing producer of unemployable graduate students in English. Unable to accept what one of my colleagues termed the "recreational Ph.D.," I determined to create a terminal M.A. in English that would re-tool bright and capable students for productive work outside the academy.

​…[the] Humanities had—by their resistance to public accountability and their inability to articulate the social value of their enterprise, by their inability to imagine the undergraduate and graduate curricula as anything more than the means to produce even more unemployable academics, and by their inability to engage in meaningful examination and reform of their own institutions, programs and curricula—essentially defaulted on its traditional obligations and filed for bankruptcy.


None of this let students off the hook, however: he expected us to own our own learning. Early in the program, I met with him in his office and he asked me what I thought I wanted to study. I had no clue, and I blathered extemporaneously about a dozen or so topics that seemed like they could be fun to investigate. He gave me what can only be described as a world-class side eye, took a long drag on his cigarette, blew smoke in the direction of the window, and said drily, “Then I can’t help you.” The meeting was over.

We need more Alan Howards in education: people with high expectations of themselves and their students, who reject complacency and catalyze change. He wrote, “Like a shark, the Program must keep moving just to stay alive. Course content can, to some degree, be rolled forward; but in very fundamental ways, it has to be new and different each year. Both the students' work and my own is in plain sight. Neither of us can simply repeat what someone else did last year because it’s already been done! And this takes a good deal of energy on everyone's part.”

Alan’s sense of responsibility to his students—his conviction that he needed to push himself, to get it right for us—is accountability in its finest form. It’s not at all the same thing as the accountability peddled by many policy makers and measured in things like Virginia’s new school accountability standards—more about that in my next post.

I’m sure that after nearly four decades as a professor, Alan’s legacy includes a stack of scholarly books and articles. I don’t know much about that, because I never read them and he never talked about them. I think he believed his students were his real legacy: “As I explain to them, they are their own best work, and they are uniquely qualified to tell you whether or not it proved a job worth doing.”


Away for the day

7/3/2024

 
In the spring of 2007, while I was counting down the weeks until the birth of my oldest child, millions of other people were counting down the weeks until they could get their hands on this new thing called an iPhone.

I’d had a Blackberry when I was employed full-time, but when I left that job, had a baby, and switched to freelance work, I wasn’t convinced the juice was worth the financial squeeze. My flip phone and I stayed together for seven more years.

But in 2014 I relented, and right away, I was hooked. Check my email from anywhere? Text with babysitters twice as fast? Take pictures, edit them, and post on social media? What took me so long?

Still, I was acutely conscious of my device habits: I was pretty careful about my kids’ screen time and I wanted to be sure I was modeling moderation. I remember keeping my phone out of reach during certain periods of the day, and intentionally stating why I was using my phone if I had to interrupt my time with them: “I need to look up directions to the restaurant where we’re meeting Grandma and Grandpa,” or “I need to check for one email about a work deadline.”

Ten years on in 2024, things are different. When my kids stagger out of their rooms in the morning, I’m likely to be on my phone trying to finish the NYT Spelling Bee game or reading the news on the NPR app. When I cook I’m listening to Apple Music and following a recipe on my phone. Family conversations and outings are punctuated by pulling out phones to fact-check each other, pull up trivia, or sink periodically into our own texts, games, videos, and other diversions. It’s not uncommon for all four of us to be in a room together, each on their own device, in companionable silence.

I find this unsettling. Is it different from when I grew up and we’d all be at home, but each doing our own thing? When I’m on my phone, do I seem less accessible to other people than if I were reading a magazine or writing in a notebook or watching TV on a TV set?

Research conducted last year suggests that on average, American adults spend four and a half hours each day on their phones, up from three hours just a year before. We check our phones an average of 144 times each day, and 75% of us check our phones within five minutes of receiving a notification. A third of all US adults report that they go online “almost constantly,” up 10% from 2015.

This is the context for “Away for the Day” phone policies that school districts are implementing. APS will introduce an “Away for the Day” policy for students in all of its schools starting in August.  (Previously, some administrators and staff members had established an “Away for the Day” rule in certain schools and classrooms, but it was not standard practice.)

Teachers are tired of competing with phones for their students’ attention: Mitchell Rutherford, a veteran Arizona science teacher, recently made headlines when he left the profession, citing frustration with smartphones in school. He said, “It’s kind of like the frog in the boiling water. I guess it’s always been increasing as an issue. And then finally, I was like: Oh, we’re boiling now.” During the last school board meeting here in Arlington, one teacher gave public comment that phones have become “a black hole for brain power in every classroom.”

It's hard to argue with the idea that phones can be a seductive distraction: after all, haven’t they seduced most of us at this point?

In an ideal world, we’d teach students how to exercise good judgment about when and why they’re on their phones. We’d acknowledge that digital platforms can provide important information and social support for individuals who may be marginalized in their physical communities. An outright ban in schools wouldn’t be the answer: rather, we’d help students self-regulate and reflect on their relationship with digital devices and content.

The arguments against this approach include the “David and Goliath” concern that immensely powerful companies have created platforms and algorithms that are purposely addictive and undermine our volition. It’s also been noted that the executive functioning skills necessary for effective self-regulation aren’t fully developed in the adolescent brain.

I have a third concern: Who is going to teach and model this sound judgment and self-regulation? What will we do about the cognitive dissonance that comes up when young people hear us talk about their phone dependency while remaining oblivious to our own?

This is a school problem and a social problem. (If you agree that our relationships with our phones are becoming problematic, which I think is a fair assessment.) I’m intrigued by communities that are taking a holistic view of the issue and designing comprehensive solutions. In New York City, for example, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene considers unregulated social media to be a “digital toxin” and states: “We take a classic public health approach that emphasizes regulations to minimize the production of the toxin, guidance to the public to reduce exposure, and support to individuals to build skills that buffer the toxin’s effects.”  
 
The City’s public health response to social media (which is a piece of, but not equivalent to, problematic phone use) includes encouraging families to delay the initiation of smartphone use until children are at least 14 years old and set shared norms of reducing screen time, especially near bedtime; establishing tech-free zones in schools and other community facilities; and creating community programs that avoid smartphone use during certain times or in certain places to promote social connection.
 
I’m interested in this example and curious how other communities are promoting  wellbeing, which surely must include encouraging healthy media and technology habits for people of all ages.
 
In 2007, Steve Jobs said of the iPhone, “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” Putting it Away for the Day feels to me like a necessary though vexingly limited response to a phenomenon that is profoundly altering how we think, behave, and build community.
 ​

We are all investors

5/10/2024

 
It was time for a new elementary math curriculum in Traverse City, Michigan, and the school district decided to take a pretty unconventional approach to making its selection.

This is no small matter, as purchasing curricula (including print or digital textbooks, workbooks, and other components) can cost millions of dollars, and districts typically only make this investment every five to ten years.

In Traverse City, the curriculum adoption committee had narrowed it down to three new curricula, each of which was backed by research. But here’s where things get interesting: the district then decided to run a year-long pilot study of all three curricula and include a control group of students who would continue to use the existing materials.  Principals, teachers, and district leaders ran the pilot together.

At the end of the year, they found that only two of the curricula produced statistically significant improvements. They could then compare the financial costs of the two products, and they had practical wisdom from teachers who had implemented each product in the classroom to inform the decision about which product to select, what components to purchase, and how to roll it out to the rest of the district.

The associate superintendent overseeing math instruction called it “the best experience of my career.” One school board member shared, “For the first time in my board tenure, I feel that decisions have been rooted in objective information.”

This is one example of Academic Return On Investment (A-ROI), a collection of practices that many school districts are adopting to make more strategic decisions about how to invest their funds and how to evaluate the impact of their programs.

The ABCs of A-ROI

I’ve been learning about A-ROI from sources including the Government Finance Officers Association, the District Management Group, and Education Resource Strategies.

The question at the heart of A-ROI is: What does the most good, for whom, and at what cost?

Districts are using A-ROI to adopt new programs and initiatives, like in the math curriculum example shared above. Often, they run limited pilots before they scale implementation across a whole district.

Districts also use A-ROI to evaluate the return on investments they’ve already made, ensuring that existing initiatives are worth the time, money, and effort being expended.

Because staffing comprises the largest part of any school district’s budget, it’s important to capture the amount of staff time a particular program or initiative requires, as part of its overall cost; this is challenging, but not impossible, to do. There are formulas, tools, and templates available from districts that have already begun this journey.

That said, because A-ROI is intense, districts can’t analyze everything. Often, they choose to focus on the programs that consume the most resources, or where they’ve identified that a number of programs overlap and there might be redundancy.

The “Ugly Christmas Tree” in Boulder Valley, Colorado

A few years ago, Boulder Valley School District  was struggling with the same problem that a lot of school districts face: in a well-intentioned effort to support as many students as possible, it had layered one initiative on top of another, creating what  one former district leader calls “the ugly Christmas tree” effect: “too many decorations that, while individually well-intended, don’t work well together and weigh down the very thing they were intended to support.”

An initiative inventory confirmed some suspicions: school staff were trying to implement 251 initiatives from 28 teams across nine departments in the central office. Over the next six months, the district worked to glean as much information as it could about
  • the students served by each program
  • its known outcomes
  • its fully loaded costs, including allocation of staff time
  • and its connection to other efforts.
In parallel, through a survey of school principals district leaders gauged their perceived value of each program, and for which students. They also asked principals about the implementation status of each program, and whether additional support was needed to implement it effectively.

This didn’t instantly fix the problem—but it gave Boulder Valley a good place to start. The district is using this inventory to create a roadmap for when and how it will conduct more thorough analyses of specific initiatives as a regular part of its ongoing operation.

Five Tips I’ve Learned From Districts Who’ve Done It

1. Be clear at the outset about what “success” looks like. When a new initiative is proposed, specify the outcomes that will be measured, by whom, and when. Make sure everyone knows what data would be considered proof of success later on.

2. Combine evidence-based decision making with cost-benefit analysis. Evidence-based decision making says “Wow! This program delivers great results!” Cost-benefit analysis says, “Yeah, but it costs sixty gazillion dollars per student. What if we could get 70% of that same benefit with a program that costs a little less, and allows us to work on this other instructional need, too?”

3. Don’t be afraid of pilot tests. I’ve said in a school board meeting, “We can’t run pilot tests” and here is where I eat my words. We can and probably should. It’s the best way to reduce the risk of a district spending too much of its money and students’  and teachers’ time on an intervention that doesn’t work.

4. Beware the sunk cost fallacy. Only the likely future benefits and costs of a program—not the sunk costs—should be considered when making a decision on whether to invest in a program going forward. I think of this as the “bad boyfriend” cognitive bias. Yeah, you’ve been with him for four years. You’ve invested a lot of effort. But girl, it’s still time to go.

5. Don’t make it just about cutting costs. A-ROI might yield budget savings, but it’s ultimately about making the best instructional decisions for the district’s students. As such, it’s a process a district should run completely separately from its budget development cycle. Some districts also adopt formal policies stating that no employee will lose their job as a result of the findings of an A-ROI analysis. That analysis can lead to any one of the following results:
  • Wow. Great value. Let’s expand this program.
  • Delivering really well for some student populations: let’s use it in more targeted ways.
  • Results aren’t clear: let’s continue to monitor for X period of time.
  • We’ve uncovered this flaw: let’s fix that flaw and reevaluate in X period of time.
  • Let’s abandon this program.
 
In my work as a school board member, I can appreciate how intensive A-ROI would be to implement. But I am triply certain that A-ROI or a discipline very much like it is absolutely essential. We have to exercise this discipline if we are to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, if we want to avoid overburdening educators with low- or no-value initiatives, and—most important—if we are really committed to providing the best education to our communities’ youngest citizens.
<<Previous

    Author

    Mary Kadera is a school board member in Arlington, VA. Opinions expressed here are entirely her own and do not represent the position of any other individual or organization.

    Categories

    All
    Achievement
    Assessment
    Budget
    Communication
    Community
    Elections
    Facilities
    Family Engagement
    Future Of Education
    Governance
    Mental Health
    Relationships
    Safety
    Summer Learning
    Teachers
    Technology

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Blog
  • How I Voted
  • Contact