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A successful model for school improvement
Dr. Judith Lawrence describes the Orange School Districts' successful efforts to implement technology into every aspect of the curriculum. by Melissa Burgos Brown SCR*TEC We take very seriously literature that we see about the central role of staff development [in school-improvement efforts]. We've seen some of the studies which show that, around the country, in places where there may be wonderful technology available, districts ran out of money when it came to staff development. We wanted to make sure that we didn't replicate some of those cases. --Dr. Judith Lawrence |
 r. Judith
Lawrence, Director of Special Programs for the Orange School District in Orange,
New Jersey, has over 20 years of experience in the research and practice of
school-improvement methods using educational technology. She first encountered
educational technology as a doctoral student at the Teachers College at Columbia
University, New York. There were large groups of teachers and administrators
having a tough time working with computers, so she and a fellow student started a
small cottage industry offering workshops to other students out of their dorm
rooms. She found this experience to be one of the most exciting times of her
doctoral work.She was then recruited to lead a state grant program for the Department of Education in New Jersey. It was here that she lead efforts to implement a technique of school improvement that involves teams of cross-role individuals, including everyone from the custodian through the school administrators, parents, students, and teachers. In 1992, she came to work for the Orange School District in New Jersey to work to assist them with their school-improvement efforts and is now Director of Special Programs and is responsible for all district technology efforts. Here she discusses the successful school-improvement methods in place in her district. |
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Let's begin by talking about the structure of your school-improvement
initiative. Professional development is a big part of that. Can you talk about
staff development, the structure of the program in your district, and why it has
been key to the success of educational technology in your
district? We take very seriously literature that we see about the central role of staff development [in school improvement efforts]. We've seen some of the studies which show that, around the country, in places where there may be wonderful technology available, districts ran out of money when it came to staff development. We wanted to make sure that we didn't replicate some of those cases. New Jersey has been involved, for many years now, in some school funding court cases particularly related to the funding that is made available to urban districts. Last year, about this time, the state supreme court ruled that urban districts' funding by the state for education, would be made consistent with the funding that is available for more affluent districts. As a consequence of that, the district [Orange, New Jersey School District] received a windfall of money from the state that needed to be expended within a year's time. So we wanted to really take advantage of that to upgrade the technology that we had available at that time. We also wanted to make sure that the staff development was there and was available. |
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One aspect of your staff development program is the Laptop Program. Can you describe the Laptop Program and how it evolved in your district? What we were able to do is offer an incentive along with a mandate. We worked with our Teachers Association to outline a way that all staff could receive 35 hours of training in basic computer literacy. Along with that training, they would receive the loan of a laptop computer. So it was a way to offer a "carrot" with some obligation on the part of the teachers and administrators. The research on staff development tells us that, it's least effective when it's done at the end of the school day, as well as if you pull teachers and administrators away from their work at hand. If you pull them away from their work, they often come back to a situation where they have more work than when they left. So we tried to build the majority of the staff development around Saturdays and holiday time. What we offered to staff last year was, 35 hours of professional development training in which one day of the training (six to seven hours) would be on-board time. They would get release time and a substitute for one day, but the rest of the training had to be on their own time. They would not be compensated with a stipend during those hours, but they would get the use of this laptop computer once they had completed their training. Staff could sign up for our Saturday Plan, our Holiday Plan (Columbus Day, Teachers' Association days), our Christmas Holiday Plan, and one session that was a combination of after-school time, for those whose other obligations prevented them from attending other sessions. This is more or less the "cafeteria approach." They could choose the time, but everyone would take the 35 hours and this included principals. Last year, we knew we could only offer it to approximately half of our staff. We have about 450 certified staff. We knew that we could only accommodate about half last year. |
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Was there a specific method used in selecting staff for that first year? In selecting staff, we tried to incorporate what we've read about capacity building at the school level. It was somewhat arbitrary at the beginning. We started with fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teachers last year. Then, at the high school and middle school level, we chose the English departments, the science departments, the social studies departments, and all of the special education teachers district-wide. This allowed us to begin to build a sense of these grade-group areas or these subject-matter areas coming together around the issues of the applications of technology. This year, we will be offering it to the other half of our staff. We've sort of held our breath, because we weren't sure how staff would react to this. Nothing on that scale had been done before [in our district], certainly nothing that had been mandated. We felt the laptop would be a wonderful incentive, but we still weren't quite sure how staff would react. |
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Did you receive a positive response from staff? Well, we were overwhelmed with applications. Within a few days of the release of the applications to about 225 people, we had over 100 applications for various workshops and they filled up very quickly. The response has been overwhelming! I think it's a combination that's a tribute to our staff and their willingness to get involved in using this teaching tool. I think also, we can take some credit for setting it up in a way that made it attractive to them. The leadership at the Teachers Association and the informal leaders at the building level have done a lot. We laughed because there was one teacher who said "Well they can't make me take this and I'm going to talk to my attorney." We were amused the other day to notice that her application is in. So I think even the "nay sayers" and the cynics have jumped on board. One important thing to think about is that, as an urban district, the popular press would have us believe that we're not a place that can have successes like this or that we're not a place where people, whether it's students, parents, or teachers, have access to state-of-the-art tools. The fact that we are disproving that sort of bias is exciting for our staff. |
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"In our experience with moving from this lab experience in the elementary schools
with the Josten's Learning System, we are still battling the notion that certain
people are "computer teachers." We want to get to the point where every teacher
is a computer teacher, because every teacher uses computers in some way, as a
tool for their teaching." |
Your district also uses Josten's Integrated Learning System, can you describe that system? In 1992, when I came to the district, we had labs in each of the elementary schools that were running, exclusively, the Josten's Integrated Learning System. It was used, almost exclusively, for Title I students who were pulled out of their regular classrooms. The system was used to try to remediate their deficiencies in reading, language arts, and math. We find it to be a really good piece of the overall curriculum in that the student is able to be diagnosed online and placed in a learning level that is consistent with his or her needs. It includes a management system that keeps track of the student's progress. There's opportunity for parents to get feedback, and the students get feedback and rewards for completing certain lessons. Jostens offers a training program for teachers that teaches them how to maneuver within that system. So we had a small group of teachers who were familiar with Jostens and how to utilize that system, but what we found was that, teachers could know a lot about Josten's and know little about the capabilities of technology in general. They were sort of seeing the computer as a Josten's machine. What we're trying to do with the laptops and the labs now, is to see that Jostens is viewed as a piece of that pie, but there are many other things that we can do with technology. We run the Microsoft Office professional packages on all of our desktops and the laptops. We really encourage utilization of the word processing and Excel. Our students and our teachers are very much involved in using Power Point now. We have students making presentations at the Board of Education meetings using Power Point. Kids really like it and do a wonderful job with Power Point. |
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Did you encounter any barriers when moving to an expanded software system? In our experience with moving from this lab experience in the elementary schools with the Josten's Learning System, we are still battling the notion that certain people are "computer teachers." We want to get to the point where every teacher is a computer teacher, because every teacher uses computers in some way, as a tool for their teaching. We do, however, have individuals at all of our schools called "Technology Team Leaders," but they're regular classroom teachers who we give a stipend to, to take some overall responsibility for being a liaison between the central office and the in-level user. They help us articulate what's happening with technology in the district to the people in their building. They bring us problems and issues. They also help us keep track of needs for assistance or for repairs. So, they are like peer leaders when it comes to technology, but we don't want to let anybody off the hook. We think that once we start designating someone as the "computer teacher" that sets up a system that allows some folks to sit back and let somebody else take care of it. |
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What about "Teachers on Special Assignment" in your district? About a year ago, I placed one of the most outstanding of the teachers who had been involved in the Josten's system, in the central office to be what we call a Teacher on Special Assignment. She went around to the different schools and assisted them with the implementation of Josten's. Since she had a lot of experience with it and she had the credibility to work with individual teachers, it made it ideal. She was not supervising as such, but she was a teacher, like them, who could assist them and assist with a lot of the training. Last January, she accepted our new position as Supervisor of Information Technology. I then brought in another individual, who likewise had been a Technology Team Leader, as a Teacher on Special Assignment. We found that using teachers in this way is very helpful, because they are not far removed from having been in the classroom. In many cases they have just been out of the classroom one or two years. They really have a lot more credibility and a lot more understanding of the issues facing the classroom teacher. They also work with our Technology Team Leaders. Our Technology Team Leaders run the gamut from a fourth grade teacher up to someone who has some major responsibilities at the high school for teaching classes in programming and computer literacy. There's a wide gamut, they don't all come from highly technical computer-based experiences. |
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I've also heard about a partnership with Seton
Hall University for computer literacy training. Do they train your Technology
Team Leaders? Yes, our partnership with Seton Hall has been critical to the success that we've had so far. Three years ago, we received the Goals 2000 grant. We had built into that grant that we wanted to have CyberCamps in the summers. When we wrote the grant, we did not have Internet access, but we knew that we were moving in that direction. So we planned for the following summer, to bring in students from grades four through 12 for some experiences in curriculum applications of the Internet. None of us at the district level had any experience in that, but Goals 2000 required that we have a partnership with a university. Because Seton Hall was in a neighboring town, we were able to locate a professor there, Dr. Rosemary Skeele, who has a background in education and had gotten involved in educational technology at Seton Hall. She and some other adjunct professors, have been central to us being able to provide the laptop training, as well as training for the Technology Team Leaders and all aspects of our Technology Plan. |
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"We found that using teachers in this way is very helpful, because they are not
far removed from having been in the classroom. In many cases they have just been
out of the classroom one or two years. They really have a lot more credibility
and a lot more understanding of the issues facing the classroom
teacher." |
Seton Hall has been active in various activities in your district, can you
talk about some of those? The first thing that Rosemary did with us was help us to develop an acceptable user policy. We are very proud of that policy. Actually, Rosemary referred us to a Web site written by someone who had developed an acceptable use policy and made it available to others for a very nominal fee, something like $50. We fashioned it into our own and received board approval on it about a year ago. That's been really important, because it laid down a set of expectations for everybody who is involved in using our technology. Secondly, Rosemary, along with us, designed the 35-hour laptop training course. She and some of the professors that she has worked with have been the main delivery system for the 35-hour laptop training. Thirdly, Seton Hall has also assisted us in developing a 12-hour training for parents. And finally, last summer was our first summer with CyberCamp. Last summer we served about 750 students in two weeks. We offered various themes. The teachers wrote lessons around themes like castles or animals or baseball and they incorporated as much curriculum as they could. Teachers did a lot of searching and found appropriate Web sites and then supervised kids doing some searching on their own. For example, the baseball CyberCamp theme incorporated math, history, and writing, along with all of the fun things kids enjoy about baseball. Kids in the district were able to choose the theme and the school that they would go to for CyberCamp. This summer we repeated CyberCamp but we've changed it a little bit. We've made it a three-week session running from 9 to one. Last year it was a two-week session that ran from 9 to 12 and we offered it to another group of students from one to four. So this summer we're serving somewhat fewer students with a little more intense experience. The feedback from the teachers and the kids last year was that they needed longer than three hours together and longer than two weeks. We're very pleased with Cybercamp and it's been part of our Goals 2000. So we've used a lot of different funding sources to pull this together. |
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You also have a district Web site.
It's still under construction but there are some interesting projects currently
under way including a plan to soon feature your technology
plan. Yes, our Web site has been under construction for about six months now and as we've had a chance to check out Route 66 and see what a lot of different school districts are doing, we're making some changes to that. We expect that August 24, we will have our site pretty much the way we want it and we will make our Technology Plan available on the site. The New Jersey State Department of Education has encouraged all districts to make these plans available. We turned ours in sometime in January and we've already made some changes so it's very much a work in progress. What do you use as a model for evaluation activities? We've really found the Star Report, that was published by the CEO Forum, very helpful in helping us taking a look at where we were with respect to the rest of the country. We want to be in the top 5 percent of the nation, because we want our students to be able to step out of the Orange School District and compete with kids from anywhere. So, we really looked at the hardware and the software and the connectivity and that's where we found evidence that we'd better focus on the staff development. This year we will, as I said, focus on the other half of our staff, and begin to offer follow-up staff development for the folks who completed the first phase of their training last year. We expect to have some subject area meetings for teachers to come together and share ideas. Our Teachers Association publishes a newsletter monthly and they include projects, urls, and methods that they are finding successful. We are finding that groups of teachers who took the training early on are coming together in their buildings and sharing ideas at staff meetings. What we are looking for is technology to be the tool for dialogue about improving instruction. We think the heart of the matter in moving this process from point A to point B is determining whether the teacher in the classroom is successfully interacting with students and teaching them the skills they need to learn, using technology as just one aspect of that process. |
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"The ability to take the laptops home allows our parents and our teachers to
practice their technology skills out of the scrutiny of a workshop or leader, or
from their peers who might know more. It gives them the leisure time to practice
and to make those mistakes that we've all made, in the quiet solitude of their
living room or den. The portability of the program allows them to explore on
their own." |
Let's talk a little bit about future plans and school level projects. There are two frontiers that I see this year. One is that we want to move even more intensively into working with parents. We have found our parents to be very responsive to having technology training available to them. I think right now we have about 85 families that have loaner laptop computers. We said, "If you will come for 12 hours of training, we will make this laptop available to you" and we've had a lot of response. Again, we made sure that we offered the training at a variety of times. Next year, we would really like to continue working with families on how they can use this tool in their home as a way to increase the skill of everybody in the family. Did you encounter any resistance from the district when proposing to extend the Laptop Program to families? When we first talked about making laptops available to a combination of parents and staff there were many people that expressed concern that the laptops would be lost or stolen or damaged. We have had exactly two losses. One laptop was stolen from our administrative building by an outside person from a desk where it was sitting unsupervised for a moment. It was early on in the laptop distribution process so it was probably kind of propitious that it happened, because it was a wake-up call. The other was lost when one teacher had one stolen from her apartment, so that was a very small percentage and a clear sign that our staff and parents take the program very seriously. They consider it a highly prized item that's on loan to them. We are happy to destroy the stereotypes and the bias that might suggest that because we are an urban area, we're going to have a great deal of loss. |
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The ability to take the laptops home allows our parents and our teachers to
practice their technology skills out of the scrutiny of a workshop or leader, or
from their peers who might know more. It gives them the leisure time to practice
and to make those mistakes that we've all made, in the quiet solitude of their
living room or den. The portability of the program allows them to explore on
their own.
The second area that we want to address this year, is the development of portfolios for students. We want to get our students using the Internet to get engaged with students from other parts of the state, the region, the country, and the world. We also want to get involved with digital photography, an area that students do not have much access to. We're also revamping our whole vocational program at the high school. We're in some discussions right now with Cisco Systems to start a Cisco Academy here where our students would complete a two year program and become certified Cisco engineers. We are also building in a school-to-work component. I know that there has been some debate over traditional shop programs being scrapped for technology programs, but there is not a big need out there for folks who can make napkin holders. We think that making way for technology labs is a good direction, because we want our students to have the skills that they need to operate in the next millennium. |
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Is there any advice you'd like to give to school districts developing a model
for technology integration? The thing that I would really emphasize for districts getting involved in this is that, you've got to build the capacity at the building level. It's important to be able to build in the incentives for the training and the partnerships. We've had a lot of partnerships that have been helpful. For instance, we have a Technology Literacy Challenge Grant and we're working with the police department, the YWCA, and the library. The local HeadStart has sent about 30 people to our training. So wherever we have openings in our trainings we bring in other community members. We've cast a very wide net with that and it has really enriched the school district enormously, to have all of these partners. Computers and technology has just been the hors d'oeuvre at the cocktail party, but it has brought us together. All kinds of other partnerships have ensued from that, because we got to know each other and saw what we had to offer. |
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