RESEARCHER BARI ERLICHSON views New Jersey’s existing school district monitoring system, conducted every seven years, as a broad paint brush: districts either passed or failed.

A new monitoring system, however, promises to give school districts and New Jersey Department of Education officials a holistic view of individual school districts with more detailed information and more flexibility. Enter the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum—QSAC.

Adopted by the Legislature in 2005, QSAC began with a pilot program and is now being implemented in about 25 districts. Over the next three years, it will replace the old process and will provide school districts with a uniform evaluation tool aimed at helping them operate at a higher level of performance.

Key Areas School districts will be evaluated in five categories under QSAC’s District Performance Review:

• Personnel
  
  
• Instruction and programs
  
  
• Operations
  
  
• Fiscal management
  
  
• Governance

The review will occur in three phases: district self evaluations; county superintendent verification of those findings and recommendations; and a final review by the state commissioner of education.

“It eliminates areas that need further attention before they sort of catch fire and burn,” said Erlichson of The Center for Research on Public Education at Montclair State University.

The center has a contract with the state Department of Education to administer QSAC in 15 districts, including three state-operated districts and others under intensive state review. Erlichson serves as project director for the external independent reviews that began in January and are scheduled to be completed in May with a report to the state. About 10 other districts also are undergoing the process, but through self-evaluation versus external team evaluation—using the same criteria.

QSAC is expected to kick into high gear throughout the state this fall. County superintendents and their staffs have been asked by the education department to devise a schedule of districts with the most pressing needs that should go through QSAC during the first year of the three-year roll-out, said Bill King, assistant commissioner of field services for the state Department of Education.

The QSAC process will take a few months. By 2009-2010, every school district should have undergone the process for the first time. Afterward, each will go through the monitoring system every three years.

“It’s more of a collaborative process,” King said. “We as a department are not just coming in on a one-day basis determining the needs of that district—what they’re doing well and what they are not doing so well.

“In some ways it is a perspective. It will tell us where the deficiencies are and what we need to work on with the district and what they need to work on. So, I think it’s a much more positive process than we’ve had in the past. And that’s the whole theme of this administration: Not to be just a compliance agency, but a resource and support function.”

District Ratings QSAC’s performance review process allots points for demonstrating progress or compliance in a variety of indicators that fall under each of the District Performance Review areas. For example, under the personnel category, the state will grade districts on personnel policies, professional development and appropriate certifications and licensing.

• By attaining 80 percent to 100 percent of points in each category, a district would earn the designation “high performing” and would not be subject to state action.
  
  
• Districts that score between 50 percent and 79 percent in any of the categories must submit an improvement plan to the state. They would have two years to increase the ratings to 80 percent.
  
  
• Districts scoring below 50 percent in any of the five District Performance Review areas could face partial or full state intervention.

“It gives you the kind of in-depth and detailed information before problems exist. [QSAC] ought to allow both districts and the state department to target their energies on areas that are not yet problems,” Montclair State’s Erlichson said. “It kind of nips those issues early and provides a great deal of information to the department about what its efforts in the field should be.”

Proactive Approach Knowing that QSAC was coming down the pike, the Hunterdon County School Boards Association selected the new monitoring system as a focus of discussion for its annual leadership breakfast last fall.

“The local board members were quite surprised. They were concerned about where they would get the resources to conduct this District Performance Review, the amount of time it would take to organize all of the documentation that was required, and a bit concerned that it was one more state requirement being imposed on them,’’ said Diane Morris, an NJSBA Field Service Representative, who delivered a QSAC presentation at the session.

Morris, who continues to present QSAC basics to school board members and administrators, recently told the Morris County School Boards Association: “I think we need to be clear—there’s always been a system of monitoring that has come down from the state.”

The big difference, she said, is that QSAC is conducted by a committee comprised of district staff and one or more members of a school board. And while student achievement will drive many of a school board’s decisions, training will be paramount to meeting those standards.

Accountability In the past, some school districts with serious issues in student achievement and personnel also did not have very strong school boards, according to Montclair State’s Erlichson. She said she believes that QSAC shows that school boards are part and parcel of all aspects of district operations, including student achievement.

“As much as we hold superintendents and the business administrators and everybody else accountable for their role and responsibilities, school boards need to be held accountable, too,” Erlichson said.

While much of the QSAC legislation has been covered before in statute and code, Erlichson said the emphasis on governance is in some ways new.
“Right now for the first time school districts and school boards are being asked to show that these are their standard operating procedures. This is the new part—holding school boards accountable for their role and responsibility,” Erlichson said. “At the end of this, districts should have an idea of what they are doing well.”

Assistant Commissioner King said that to reach the goal of improving instruction, more accountability is needed in some places, but that it is not the overriding principle of QSAC.

Penelope Lattimer, an assistant commissioner in the state education department who oversees district and school improvement, likened QSAC to an opportunity for school officials to conduct an honest assessment of their district.

“Look at accountability from a standpoint of confessional conversation with yourself, ‘Well, how well am I doing?’ That’s the theme that we’re hoping for as people go through this,” she said.

N.J. Ahead of the Pack An associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Rowan University, Virginia “Gini” Doolittle, characterized school districts’ ability to meet QSAC as “absolutely feasible.”

Doolittle plans to write a handbook to help districts adhere to guidelines and develop action plans that are consistent with QSAC and with the existing review process for schools deemed in need of improvement under federal law.

Ideally, QSAC is expected to be a collaborative approach by getting the right people to talk to the right people—or at least, it has that potential, Doolittle said. And, leadership is crucial.

“You need school board policies that are going to support the teaching and learning and professional development process; budget processes that support instruction. You need everything in schools from safety to health issues,” she added.

As a researcher, Doolittle has found that, more than anything else, what happens in the classroom affects student achievement. In terms of monitoring, it appears that the Garden State is ahead of the pack.

“In a lot of ways New Jersey is moving to the fore nationally in my perspective.”

District Friendlier NJSBA successfully advocated school board-friendly changes in the original 2005 QSAC law. These amendments provided for the following: state payment for at least half the cost of “highly skilled professionals” (state-appointed consultants assigned to oversee improvement efforts in districts under full or partial takeover); the piloting of the program in selected school districts; inclusion of the state Board of Education in developing code to implement the system; and due process for school districts targeted for intervention.

“It’s an opportunity for a district to take a look at itself, see all the good things that it does and see those areas where the district can operate in a better fashion,” said Michael F. Kaelber, senior counsel for NJSBA, who is providing QSAC training to Association staff and will be conducting seminars for board members, along with NJSBA’s Morris and its policy manager, Steve McGettigan.

“It’s an inclusive process that involves the board, the administration, and teaching staff members.”

On Jan. 25, Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed into law new legislation further amending QSAC. The bill contained NJSBA-sought changes, including one that eliminated provisions that would have given the highly skilled professionals sole authority to hire and fire employees.

Inclusive Process It will be tough for any one in education to argue against the basic premise of QSAC, Kaelber said.

Boards get to approve their school districts’ self evaluation, and county education officials will review it. The boards then are given a score. Depending on where they fall on a list, they could be labeled high performing or in need of assistance.

“The process has a greater level of flexibility to it, so you’ll get in and out of it depending on how well you perform and how well you improve. And for the heightened areas of partial and full state intervention, there are full hearings in the state office of administrative law that give boards due process protection, which is something we like,” Kaelber said. “The state is not just going to come in unless it can prove its case in a full hearing.”

For local school boards, a critical part of the process will be record-keeping.

On this point, NJSBA’s Morris offered parting words of advice for school officials: “Every district out there needs to get an NJQSAC stamp and start stamping documents that in some way are related to district performance review and begin keeping a file, a folder, a binder; it’s a requirement of the monitoring process.”

Rosa Cirianni is a writer for the New Jersey School Boards Association. She can be reached at rcirianni@njsba.org.

By Suzanne Bond

ARE YOU AWARE OF SCHOOL BOARDS whose members don’t get along? Have you ever heard of a board member who got elected just to get rid of certain administrators? Have you known board members with particular agendas they want to promote, to the exclusion of other issues?

You’ve probably encountered these types of morale-draining situations. It’s good practice to establish a set of guidelines for how you and your fellow board members will treat one another and operate as a board. Effective school boards offer districts vision, structure, accountability, and advocacy—attributes that promote continuous improvement of school systems and increased student achievement. To provide all these things, however, your board must work as a team.

A first step is establishing a code of conduct and operational guidelines, sometimes called operating principles.

This foundation piece is a cornerstone for building a positive climate and a healthy learning community for everyone in the district. Once the school board develops its principles, it’s easier to encourage the involvement of everyone in the district to develop districtwide principles.

In both business and educational settings, the key to success involves “the identification, promotion, and protection of core values,” write Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker in Professional Learning Communities at Work: Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement.

Getting started There are five steps you must take to implement operating principles as a school board:

1. If available, examine the operating principles that have governed board operations to date.
   
   
2. Have each board member complete a survey about how you actually work together and treat one another. Discuss the results.
   
   
3. Review copies of the operating principles of other boards and discuss which pieces you feel are important to be included in yours.
   
   
4. Draft the document and revisit it several times to edit and finalize.
   
   
5. Using input from everyone in the organization, encourage the development of districtwide operating principles.

As you move through these steps, you will begin to define the content of your operating principles. In my experience, the following topics should be addressed in any operating principles document:

Board etiquette and procedures Your statements might include: “We treat one another with mutual respect, caring, and dignity; we allow one another the freedom to make mistakes; and we support one another by interacting honestly and compassionately, and by creating a safe environment where people trust one another, can take risks, and ask for help.

“We also support our district’s vision, mission, and goals; keep abreast of current educational issues; and hold ourselves accountable for our actions.”

This section will also include procedures for board meeting and related business. Some examples:

• The public has input during the public comment section of the regular board meetings.
  
  
• Board members and staff do not debate or argue with the public during board meetings.
  
  
• Board members with agenda items contact the board president and superintendent one week prior to the meeting.
  
  
• The board will conduct a yearly self-evaluation and will promptly address any areas needing improvement.

Decision-making This outlines how the board makes decisions that foster a healthy and professional learning community. Examples include: “We make decisions using a clearly defined decision-making model; we consider research, best practices, and constituent input in our decision-making process; we follow up and evaluate the effectiveness of our decisions; and we abide by all final decisions.”

Effective communication Examples include: “We check the facts and go to the source for information and concerns; we maintain confidentiality; we focus on discussions of issues, not personalities; we encourage constructive disagreement; and we practice no surprises.”

Developing operating principles This is a process that takes time and patience. It requires full involvement and open dialogue. I suggest the following meetings be held to develop your principles:

• First Meeting—clarify and assess Explain thoroughly what operating principles are, and why they are important. As a board, talk about what kinds of situations might occur and how they might be addressed by operating principles. Capture everyone’s thoughts on paper. Have each board member complete an assessment. This will give them a chance to think about how they currently operate together and treat one another.
  
  
• Second Meeting—determine the content At this meeting, review the essential components that should be in all operating principles. Study some examples of operating principles documents. Discuss what you like and don’t like about what you see in those documents and review the assessment results from the last meeting. Next, discuss what you think should be included in a first draft of your board principles.
  
  
• Third Meeting—review the draft Review the first draft of the principles. At this point, also discuss format and style. Formatting suggestions can really add to the impact of the principles. Be sure to put your district logo on the document and include pictures or graphics where appropriate.
  
  
• Fourth Meeting—finalize the document You may need one last meeting with your group to get any last-minute and/or final changes that may be needed. Let participants know that your intention is to include the minor changes as you complete the document, and that you will then send it out electronically.

You will be amazed at how often you use operating principles in your work with all constituents. These principles lead to a high level of functioning (taking the high road, especially when times are tough), positive and supportive relationships, and a healthy and professional learning community.

Opening the World of Science

By Jeffrey Osowski 

THIS SUMMER, LIBERTY SCIENCE Center will reopen its doors after a 22-month, $109 million expansion and renewal project.  Once again, it will provide hands-on science exploration to school groups in ways they’ve never experienced before.

As the pre-eminent science field trip location in the region, Liberty Science Center takes its commitment to improving science literacy seriously. Not only have the exhibitions been expanded and transformed, but school leaders, teachers and students will also discover Liberty Science Center’s valuable educational programs.

Educators can choose from literally hundreds of new and established programs designed to enhance their pedagogical skills and excite their students.  They can build an ongoing relationship with Science Center staff members, whom they can turn to for information throughout their careers.

Liberty Science Center’s programs and exhibitions are fully aligned with New Jersey’s Core Curriculum Content Standards and designed to enhance achievement in science through onsite, offsite and online educational experiences. Programs and exhibitions can be custom fit to the needs of students and educators.

Center for Science Learning and Teaching  Designed with educators in Mind, the 20,000-square-foot Jennifer A. Chalsty Center for Science Learning and Teaching is one of the nation’s largest, best-equipped science education centers. Here, students and teachers will become immersed in the sciences, gaining insight into cutting-edge science information, theories, and research.

Educators and students will work directly with scientists conducting real research in plasma physics, bio-medicine, ocean science and more.

They will have access to six flexible-use science labs, variously equipped with hoods, water, natural gas, oversized plasma screens, videoconferencing equipment, scientists-in-residence and even banks of computers showing real-time data.  Data will stream in from submersible robotic devices, plasma chambers and other places where science breakthroughs are taking place.  It can be used in lessons that allow students to experience first hand the excitement of science discovery. One lab is designed to help young children develop their natural desire to explore and discover, with appropriately sized furnishings and equipment.

Another valuable Chalsty Center resource is the Gateway for Science Educators, an “alternate route” program that allows new science teachers to gain teaching certification while earning a stipend. Through this intensive four-week summer program, participants prepare for their new careers by observing and practicing teaching.

Highlights of the Jennifer Chalsty Center include two cutting-edge microscopes. The Global Microscope is a pedestal-mounted, five-foot diameter sphere on which real-time or recorded digital media is shown. It presents easy-to-grasp images of vast amounts of data, such as multiple global warming indicators, complex atmospheric movements, and tsunami propagation. It can even show near real-time satellite images of science in action, such as erupting volcanoes.

The Anatomical Microscope is a wall-mounted plasma screen showing detailed, life-sized, vivid, three dimensional images of the human body. Guests can choose to examine a variety of internal systems and organs to get an unparalleled new perspective on their own bodies.

Also included in the Jennifer Chalsty Center will be a 150-seat interactive theater where teachers and students can participate in the award winning “Live From…” surgery programs, interacting in real time with surgeons as they perform open heart, brain, kidney transplant and robotic surgery.

The Jennifer Chalsty Center will be a professional home for science educators. A teaching-learning lab will provide a study and seminar room for educators, granting access to extensive print, media, software and online resources for study and collaboration.

Reinvented Liberty Science Center Guests will enter the Science Center through a spacious, new lobby with a gathering area dedicated for school groups, speeding entry to programs and exhibitions. A sense of energy and movement emanates from the Spatial Portrait, an interactive light installation, while the iconic Hoberman Sphere, a favorite from the original building, welcomes visitors back to Liberty Science Center.

The expanded Skylines Café will have a designated school group lunch area and a redesigned gift shop.

Guests can start their tour at the signature exhibition, Skyscraper! Achievement and Impact. Entering the 11,000-square-foot exhibition, guests explore an amazing cityscape of large-scale models amid sections and cut-away views of tall building interiors. They can  learn about the design, planning, operation, ecology and impact of modern skyscrapers. The exhibition offers hundreds of exciting learning challenges including walking along an “elevated” I-beam and conducting wind tunnel tests on a building of one’s own design.

Second Floor One level up from the main floor is the Piazza, a large, open, flexible area that can be used for presentations, demonstrations and performances. A kinetic art piece, Times Square of Science and Technology (T²ST), overhangs the floor from a 60-foot-high atrium, with colorful screens and news crawls highlighting the latest findings in science and technology.

Also on this level, young children and their adult caregivers can visit the 4,000-square-foot “I explore” gallery, designed to encourage exploration by children from two to six years old. “I explore” is next to the existing 279-seat Joseph D. Williams Science Theater where guests can enjoy 3-D video presentations. Just a short stroll down the Piazza is the 400-seat IMAX^® Dome Theater. Opening films include Hurricane on the Bayou, Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs and Roving Mars, with stunning real images from the Red Planet.

Third and Fourth Floors  To reach the two upper floors and all other exhibition areas, guests ascend an elegant new staircase in the Science Center’s signature all glass, pyramid-topped tower, or they can take one of two new 30-person elevators. The third and fourth floors offer nearly 48,000 square feet of exhibits.

On the third floor, guests can explore the dynamic and changing nature of Communication, then visit Eat and Be Eaten, which offers a collection of live animals and illustrates aspects of predator-prey relationships.

Through Infection Connection, guests learn that we share the world with microbes and that, every day, individuals and society make decisions that contribute to the rise and fall of diseases. Visitors will explore interactions between microbes and humans, learn about emerging diseases, and see how science develops tools and technologies to fight infectious diseases. They can even conduct microbiology and epidemiology experiments in a laboratory environment.

Overlooking the Hudson River from the fourth floor, Our Hudson Home explores the often complex interrelationships between nature and humanity along the watercourse. Special attention is given to wetlands’ roles in flood control and as nurseries for aquatic species. Three oversized tanks allow guests to peek into different riverine environments.

Breakthroughs, a rapidly changing exhibition area, offers an innovative approach to science center exhibitions. Its content and activities change rapidly depending on local, national or international events in science.

The dynamic exhibition, Energy Quest, allows guests to explore scores of hands-on exhibits and come to a deeper understanding of the energy sources available to us, from gas and oil exploration to nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal and ocean wave power options. Also found on this floor is the Traveling Exhibition Gallery, where new science learning experiences from around the globe await guests on every visit. The selection for July to December, 2007 is One Thousand Years of Islamic Science Rediscovered, with plenty of hands-on learning experiences.

Finally, guests will be delighted to find 24 of their favorite exhibitions from the Science Center’s earlier days in the Wonder Why gallery opposite Energy Quest. In three topic areas, Observe, Imagine and Create, visitors can try out the Resonance Tube, create oversized soap bubbles, scale the fossil-studded Rock Climbing Wall, explore their pulse, reaction time and endurance, and challenge their powers of deduction at the Brain Teasers stations.