Recommendations
After a careful study of all the data, visitations to schools and interviews with a variety of individuals, the site visit team makes the following recommendations:
A. Leadership Area
- The School Board should adopt new policies and revise some as stated in the report on page five (see also Appendix F). This should be accomplished no later than September 1, 1997.
- Management personnel should be the catalysts in forming
community groups committed to working with the state
legislative delegation in revising the Florida School
Finance Program to incorporate the items stated in
this report.
- The Superintendent and the administrative team, through
recommendations to the School Board, should set
the direction for the school district. The community
at large should support that direction while at the
same time holding both the administration and Board
accountable for the results.
If the results are not obtained over a period of time
specified by the School Board and administration,
then the community at large has every right to demand
change. However, the community must guard against pressure
groups unnecessarily trying to obtain results by altering
the directions of the Board and the timetables.
- Because individual schools have the responsibility of
improving student achievement, the culture of the
central office needs to be redefined in order to
assure that student achievement is maximized. Any
reorganization should highlight such central office
support by paying careful attention to the articulation
of districtwide improvement plans with those existing at
individual school buildings to assure continuity and
appropriate use of scarce resources.
B. Instructional Effectiveness
- The data clearly indicate a need to improve reading
instruction at early grades and both reading and mathematics
instruction at middle school grades. Sufficient funds should
be utilized to train teachers in early grades to teach
reading using a variety of methods - from phonics to
experientially-based tactile strategies.
- Instruction in the middle schools should be made more rigorous, with stronger requirements for higher quality work, particularly in reading and mathematics.
- Promotion retention practices from 7th to 8th grade
and especially from 8th to 9th grade have been
tightened over the last few years, causing more
retentions. Those students being retained are
over-aged for middle school, and if and when they are
promoted to the high school they are over-aged when
entering the 9th grade. The over-aged status at the
middle school level and the resulting pressures on
the high school are instructional and behavioral
management problems for the district.
Early identification of at-risk students should take
place at the elementary level and programs should be
designed specifically for the at-risk retention
population. Additional academic success-based programs at
the middle school level need to be developed to get the
over-aged students back-on-track.
At least two promising programs were observed by the
site visit team: The Graduation Enhancement Program
observed at the Andrew Jackson High School and the
Modified Calendar Program at Mandarin Middle School
which allows for on-going remediation throughout the
academic year.
- The Advanced Placement program must become more effective,
resulting in more scores of 3, 4 or 5 on the AP exams.
This requires teacher training, adherence to the Advanced
Placement curriculum, reduction of grade inflation
and establishing districtwide rubrics to guide grading
practices.
- A school unit accountability program should be established
and incorporated into the personnel evaluation program.
Specific objectives should be reached over a two to three
year period. A sample school-unit accountability report form
is found as Appendix E.
C. Governance and Organization
- School-based management has been established in the school district and should be continued. A School Board policy should be adopted to support its implementation.
- The Duval County Public School District should establish a long-range program to provide adequate schools and sufficient space for instructional purposes. In doing so, consideration should be given to the following features:
- Establishing school sizes that conform to the following guidelines:
- Elementary schools ... 400- 500 students
- Middle schools ... 600- 800 students
- High schools ... 1200-1500 students
- Implementing extensive community and parent involvement to support effective instruction, particularly at the early grades. The literature clearly indicates that the strongest variable for students to remain in school and to graduate is the success level that they attain in early grades, particularly in the area of reading.
- Providing adequate space in schools for experientially-based instruction, technology-based support systems and spaces for the instruction of special needs children. Modern schools need additional spaces other than classrooms.
The district already has models that illustrate the
positive effects of these features. For example, an
emerging model of parent involvement can be observed
at the Ramona Elementary School.
- The district should establish a position for an
assistant superintendent for instructional
accountability (chief information officer), with authority
to collect and analyze data, establish standards, validate
results and carry out the responsibilities indicated in
Appendix G. This individual should be independent of
curriculum development and instructional improvement and
should will report directly to the Superintendent.
- The efforts to improve instruction and to select appropriate
curricula should be separated from the accountability
function. These instructional improvement services should be
provided by team instructional leaders organized into six
learning communities -- a geographic cluster of schools, K-12.
Similar organizational patterns have been successfully
implemented in the Philadelphia, PA, and Fort Worth, TX,
school systems. All instructional personnel would be
school-based and appointed for a three-year period to improve
any area of instruction indicated by the databases.
- The school district should examine the possibility of
organizing into smaller, semi-autonomous learning
communities. The organizational structure to support
this concept is found in Appendix H. It is also
discussed in the book, Effective Learning Communities
by Nolan Estes.
- Some of the data obtained from interviews indicate to the site team that utilizing services provided by the city government may not be the most effective way of establishing accountability in the use of educational resources. Therefore, the site team recommends that an outside group review whether or not a change in the charter is warranted.
D. Public Perception
- An analysis of the parent perception data indicates a
need to improve the public image of the Duval County
Public School District. The district should initiate
and implement a program of public information aimed at
establishing a more accurate perception of the district's
performance. This can be done by having and
disseminating reliable data to both the employees of the
district and to the general public. When employees of
the district perceive the organization more positively,
that perception is generally carried out to the
community. In addition, positive public perception is
established when the public believes that schools have good
discipline, rigorous programs of instruction, extensive
involvement by the community in school affairs, and have
sufficient information related to school effectiveness.
- The data indicate that parents and teachers do not perceive
leadership to be strong at the central administrative level.
It appears that training programs in force can produce high
quality school leadership. The district should develop a
program to make the leadership training more visible and to
provide greater recognition and rewards for principals who
complete such training programs. The public information
program recommended in D-1 will also improve the parents' and
teachers' perception of principals.
- Public perception of the school district can be enhanced
when there is a high level of cooperation between union
leaders and management personnel. The site team believes
potential exists for such collaboration to be established
between the Duval Teachers United, other union groups and
the administration of the Duval County Public School
District. Possible areas of collaboration are legislative
matters, personnel evaluation, student discipline policies
and instructional improvement efforts. Particularly
effective in enhancing the public perception of a school
district is the collaborative development of a peer staff
evaluation system, reduction in grade inflation, and
establishing more rigorous instruction throughout the system.