Caledonia Community Schools(CCS) announce today that the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) has recognized seven of the eight eligible CCS schools in its district to receive the designation as a Reward School.
Annually MDE ranks schools academically; those that are in the top 5 percent of the state are categorized as “Reward.” Reward schools are determined based on the Top-to-Bottom ranking methodology, which includes data from achievement, improvement, and achievement gaps in standardized scores.
“Caledonia Community Schools is so proud of all our faculty and staff who work so hard to provide excellent learning environments for ALL students,” said Dr. Dedrick Martin, Superintendent of Caledonia Community Schools. “These accomplishments are the result of a focus on instructional quality and the strong partnership CCS has created between our families, students, staff, and community. Our staff works tirelessly to support and prepare ALL students to achieve their best while empowering them with 21st century skills to compete in a global environment.
“CCS is constantly reevaluating to improve district processes. Newly focused team organizational goals enable our building leaders to better support one another and have ongoing critical conversations,” said Dr. Camela Diaz, CCS Director of Secondary Education. “We still have areas to improve on, but our school leadership teams are focused on working with their attendance, behavior, and course proficiency data, to develop plans for growth that effectively close the achievement gap for all students.”
At a time when most schools around the state and the country are reporting a decline in student performance due to disruptions caused by the pandemic, the data in Caledonia tells a different story. Our district has also made it a priority to reinvest in curriculum materials, resources, and supports over the past 5 years and the academic performance proficiency results show we are stronger today than ever before.
As a district, we are pleased with this recognition, but even more excited that our students are growing as learners. We look forward to seeing how much more our students will excel in the coming years as our staff continues to collaborate with one another to Cultivate Agile Learners.
Proposed changes in what your kids learn in their social studies classes are drawing fire from some Kent County parents and teachers, as well as many others around Michigan.
About 80 people turned out at the Kent ISD last week for a hearing hosted by the Michigan Department of Education on proposed changes to the state’s K-12 social studies curriculum standards. They include deleting references to gay rights, climate change, and the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion; decreasing references to organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; and the removal of the word “democratic” from the phrase “democratic core values.”
No one spoke out in favor of the new standards at the hearing, while some claimed the changes are politically motivated. The standards are the state’s expectations for what students are to learn in each grade, though teachers are free to devise their own lesson plans for teaching them.
“To accept the standards as proposed would validate their politicization. You don’t want to go there,” said Jeff Johnston, a Wyoming resident and father of four. “It is a mistake from which we will not easily recover and we cannot afford to make.”
Educators and university experts have been working on the new standards for more than four years. However, some of the changes now under consideration were instituted by a 21-member focus group that included state Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor in next month’s primary election. Colbeck was invited to join the group after submitting 13 pages of suggested changes, though no Democratic legislators were, according to Bridge magazine.
“This whole thing reeks of someone running for governor,” said Caitie Oliver of Lowell, a social worker for Grand Rapids Public Schools. “I don’t appreciate the education of my students and my children being held captive by people who are using it as a political maneuver.”
Jeff Johnston, a Wyoming parent, said adopting the proposed social studies standards would be “a mistake”
Interest Prompts More Hearings
The hearing was held June 28, the day before state officials extended the deadline for receiving public comments on the standards. The deadline was to have been June 30, but has now been extended to Sept. 30, with a projected spring 2019 date for the standards to be presented to the state Board of Education. Interim State Superintendent Sheila Alles said the extension reflects “the great level of interest” in the changes, and that more “listen and learn” hearings will be added to the 11 already conducted.
However, an official with the state superintendent’s office says the end date is not set in stone.
“There is no deadline. We’ll keep going until we get it right,” said Linda Forward, a senior executive policy administrator with the superintendent’s office. She noted that the current standards approved in 2007 went through three rewrites before being presented to the state board, and additional changes were approved by the board itself.
Forward and Jim Cameron, a consultant who helped write the new standards, agreed the proposed removal of the word “democratic” from the oft-repeated phrase “core democratic values” has generated the most common objections at hearings around the state. Forward says the writers were trying to strike a balance between the use of the words “democratic” and “republic.” The proposed standards add the words “a constitutional republic” in several places to describe American democracy.
“We are a democracy, because we make decisions via democratic process,” Forward said. “We are a constitutional republic, because we are a republic and we were designed by a constitution. All three of those words have real meaning, and getting them in the right place with the right meaning is critical in the process.”
Colbeck was quoted by Bridge magazine as saying the phrase “core democratic values (is) not politically neutral. I’m not proposing core republican values, either.”
Deleting History?
Madelyn Cox, who teaches world history and U.S. history at the West Michigan Aviation Academy in Grand Rapids, spoke out against proposed changes to high school standards that would eliminate references to individual minority groups, including people of color and those who are LGBTQ.
“A lot of these groups are already marginalized in textbooks,” Cox said, noting that she often has to do her own research to address the lack of information in textbooks on these groups. “I think if we continue to write these groups out of our textbooks and our standards, we’re going to write them out of history. I don’t think we can let that happen.”
The new standards also added in language, backed by Sen. Colbeck, on “how the expansion of rights for some groups can be viewed as an infringement of rights and freedoms of others.”
Cameron, the MDOE consultant and a former social studies teacher in Saline, issued a word of caution about the proposed standards, saying just because something is not included does not mean an individual teacher cannot teach the subject matter.
“How you teach, what you teach is a classroom decision, an instructional decision,” Cameron said. “Those are left up to local schools, local districts to decide which examples to include or not to include.”
“We will see new opportunities for Tech Center students to earn college credit in welding technologies before finishing high school” – Tech Center Principal John Kraus (Photo courtesy School News Network)
The Michigan Department of Education announced that Kent ISD and 13 other ISDs and school districts across the state were awarded Career and Technical Education (CTE) Innovation and Equipment Grants.
The grants are intended to expand programs and purchase equipment in manufacturing-related areas. Kent ISD’s award of $300,000 will be used to purchase welding equipment including high-tech virtual reality training systems, expand current welding units in several Kent Career Tech Center programs, and provide welding training for adults, middle schoolers and in summer camps.
Campus Principal John Kraus said “coupled with robotics, welding technology is present in nearly every manufacturing environment. In addition to the virtual welders, we hope to acquire a high-tech robotic welder that will prepare students for a vast number of unfilled jobs right here in West Michigan.
“And through our established partnership with GRCC,” Kraus added, “we will see new opportunities for Tech Center students to earn college credit in welding technologies before finishing high school.”
Check out School News Network for more stories about students, schools, and faculty in West Michigan.
Letter by letter, fourth-grader David Espinoza read through the alphabet on flash cards. English-learner teacher Nicole Adams timed him with a stopwatch at 40 seconds. Unsatisfied, David wanted to try again.
“Last week you were only able to do it in one minute. Now 40 seconds seems slow,” Adams said.
David, a recent immigrant from Cuba who started at Gladiola Elementary School in September, tried again, hesitating at just one letter. His time: 34 seconds — a personal record. “Wow! Wow!” Adams exclaimed to a gleeful David, who wrote the time down on his data sheet.
First-grader Gustavo Aburto Ambriz shows his story to EL teacher Nicole Adams.
David is learning English letters, sounds and reading. By the end of the school year, he will be much more proficient. Adams spends time with him conversing in Spanish and English, in ways that capture his attention. David knows a lot about dinosaurs and, in Spanish, talked excitedly about a brachiosaurus. In English, he practiced words like “mouth” and “neck” while describing the prehistoric beast.
“He’s really eager to learn and not afraid to practice,” Adams said. “He will be much more fluent by the end of the year.” He has strong Spanish speaking, reading and academic skills, she said, so he’s on the right track.
Gladiola is one of only 35 schools recognized by the Michigan Department of Education for academic efforts for English learners over the past two years, and is eligible to be named a 2016 Title 1 Distinguished School in the category of Serving Special Populations (English learners). Also in the running are West Godwin Elementary in Godwin Heights Public Schools, Explorer Elementary in Kentwood Public Schools, Sibley Elementary in Grand Rapids Public Schools, and Appleview Elementary in Sparta Area Schools.
The top two schools will be announced in late November and recognized at the 2017 National Title 1 Conference in Long Beach, California.
The schools have shown growth in proficiency levels with their EL population.
David Lyon, who was hired as principal last year, credits a strong culture of shared leadership in the building and strong EL instruction including a full-time EL teacher, formerly Laura VanderWerf and now Adams.
Fourth-grader David Espinoza, who is from Cuba, uses beads that correspond to questions to grow his vocabulary.
He said EL students are held to high expectations, and not not limited because of low proficiency in English, Lyon said.
“Sometimes the perception in your struggle with English is your struggle with ability. This really proves you’re a very capable student in spite of your struggles with the language,” he said.
In-depth language instruction challenges EL students in Adams’ class to really think about words. They hold colorful beads resembling a caterpillar. Each bead corresponds with different questions on the classroom wall. When David thinks about a dinosaur, for example, he goes through each bead. What does it do? What does it look like? What is it made of? What are its parts? Where does it live? And what else?
At Godwin Heights, Director of Instruction Michelle Krynicki said staff works hard to build relationships and collaborate. Oftentimes, instruction can be tweaked in classrooms to benefit all students.
“The celebration for us at West Godwin is embracing the idea that all of these learners are our responsibility,” she said.
