welcome to the education committee meeting i would like to thank all of you for attending me and i would like to ask you to join me in the pledge ok well thank you and i really appreciate people turning out tonight on this first day of school we do really jumping into it here dr french so i'm going to turn it over to you to talk about some of the information about our standardized testing and how it is affecting all of us how it's affecting us would be a very long meeting what we're going to do what we're going to go over core standards in two thousand and thirteen and so that was a very tight turnaround from when they're going to begin to fully implement the changes to those assessments and that happened in the spring last spring for our children when they took primarily about having children engaging more problem solving more writing more critical thinking not assessing recall or memorization but really about being able to use information and come up with new ideas and new ways that the really the the changes to the p a core standards is a higher level of thinking and a higher level of thinking demand for our children here we're going to when you look at here reading p s a now became a plain english language arts assessment that combined reading and writing into one exam were in the past have been two separate exams another really important component is that some of the material that was covered in later grades that material and content was pushed down to the lower grades so you are expected to know things that for example you might have had it might have been assessed in the fifth grade is now a cessna third grade  not only did we change the alignment with the core change when things are being assessed at the same time they change the cut scores and cut scores are just a fancy term for saying wh we believe that it van where they should know and be able to do at a certain proficiency level they change that they made it more difficult so for example if you take an exam and just say that you scored one hundred in the past that might have been considered advance and now one hundred is really is considered profession or even basic to change the way that they determine in terms of what you need to know and be able to do for proficiency so the result of this is it significantly change the distribution across the state and this is really important don't have we don't have our finalized data with the so this is just a date and looking at how this impacted across the state and it's important to know that you cannot because the significant changes you cannot compare prior p s a results to these results and there's a slide from p d again just saying this you didn't think i just made this of the other people who are saying this and p d the pennsylvania partner education has also put those out there doing a lot of work around these changes now this doesn't mean that we can't compare how we've done what we have to do is fine figure  out comparing ourselves our performance to like districts or even comparing our distance from the state so we want to know all these changes impacted everyone we should maintain our standing in the distribution we are above the state before we should still be above the state just the numbers and the percentage of proficiency have changed it's also i think it's pretty dramatic we're going to see that erratic changes and was because two things happened at the same time a new more rigorous exam and change in the  and so it's kind of like if you're if you're playing football and you have to get ten yards for first down now you have to get fifteen and before the goal post was this wide you get it through now is this where you have to get through to get points or two things happened at the same time doesn't mean so the same people who are really good at the game are still going to really good at the game the scores are going to be low or it's just going to be it's going to be a different game dr french so just so i'm clear on this when the parents get their child's results on these exams they should not pull out the exam the results from the previous year and say oh my gosh my student did something wrong or the teacher did something wrong everything has changed yes yes everything is changing one of things that we have included some information for parents also in the when we send home the individual individual student reports there will be information about how to interpret the exam as anyone said any reason why they couldn't have perhaps given another name or phased in the increased standards i mean they created this mess it is a little bit of a mess  and i'm not sure what the thinking was it truly is i mean they changed the name for the keystone when you have the eleventh k p s is a huge keystones now very you know very different and one of the things that it also is confusing that the key change before  outcomes yes it would have been nice for that the name changed we don't have any control over that so i think that's another thing we need to point out that this is not a particular problem that for a student in our district or our district this is something that was generated by the state yes ok and listen all this being said that the does this does not mean that we cannot learn something from the data that mornin to get that there's a lot that we can learn from th data just so there's a little lot and i was and i'm certainly not going to go through but the big takeaway here this is for the state level data for the english language arts exam looking at the distribution of proficiency the english language arts exams did not take as significant they were not as impact as a math the mathematics exam but you can still see if you look at their grade only about thirteen percent of the students who took the exams across the stay are scoring in the advanced range and to typically i would you know just and sharper this i want to look at the far right advance what percentage of children scoring advance and then also to try to look and see how many children are  profession or advance and so you can see again there's and we'll get to a slide that shows the difference in the distribution of from the prior years to this year and just to call e heavily impacted very low percentages of students scored in the advance range so to put this in better context it's look at the next sli considerable jobs with the exception of fifth grade we always knew the fifth grade was an outlier it was a little bit more difficult of a task when they did the cross while the actually so that was pretty well aligned to the higher standards already but you  the eighth grade a twenty one percentage point and as a percentage points not percent drop percentage point jobs and if you look at the mathematics it's considerable considerable jobs on average thirty five percentage point drop nine percentage point drop without a french you can see in the language arts you stay within the same core tile in the sixty percent range whereas you have a drastic decrease from third grade eighth grade in language arts so to me that says there's a problem with the test and the testing when you can keep the same core tile from third grade eight grade roughly percentage wise whereas it's a complete it's a drop in sequence from grade to grade that says something about the test not the taker well one of the i saw a lot of this what we really have this is a baseline year that's what's really important it does not mean we cannot assess something from this data the data that we get back will show about what would particular content we might not have done as well as and others and so that we'll be able to use a day to figure out what do we need to do better my early without having a lot of access to the data my early hypothesis is that the earlier grades in mathematics were not as impact as much because when we did the transition to changing mathematics a lot of districts change mathematics before they move to changing with the english language arts and moving into the but we will take this time to look in go through to figure out how can we use as data figure out how to get better wall so see you know i'll be very interested to look at like districts with that date has not been really just our lake district doing we do know how th is doing and will bring back we talk about our our own data we'll do an analysis looking at how far we are away from the state average how far we were last year way from the state i was how far we are way now because hope is that we stay at least same or that we are actually gaining ground on the states dr french can you just give us a quick update on when we get when will parents expect to get the data for their own kid and when will we as a district know what information we have about us and also about our similar districts we always compare ourselves to september ni we'll get that file that's not public release the public the parents will be getting we'll get the data files on the you know the individual reports on the fourteenth we will destroy them out the parents will make sure that includes that route that i report interpretation guide case scenario i can't imagine him being released any any time sooner than that but we're working on the corrections right now we do not have any other indication that it won't be at that time just in the past and it well if that task tast something that is very valuable then you would want to teach to the task so what kind of information do you get do you actually get to r task questions because maybe it was a bad question or you think that kids could have been you know it was ambiguous or something like that so how much information do you get so that you can ensure that what you know the changes that we have to make to try and perform better on the task are actually better for our kids and getting them career and college ready we don't get the questions  you have to have a lot of background knowledge a lot of across a lot of content you can't it's not facts anymore so that teaching to the test is gone really you teach teaching critical thinking is about giving a lot of teaching across content allowing children to make connections between music class and math class and it's going to be this i think is a really positive thing you can use not going to you're going to be opening up a you know the getting ready for the p s a is in ten days kind of this is really about being thoughtful about teaching children how to use information not just recall that's one really good thing about this transit the information that will get back will get anything more specific but it's if you look on our on the walls in the boardroom you know that's a lot of the internet where the standard gives the like umbrella of what is what kind of content is covered and then the anchors dro look at is it a curriculum issue we'll be able to it will i won't answer anything for us it will ask it will help guide us to what questions we need to be asked so mr fisher saying that an anchor is really sort of  synonym for a skill it does it i would say specifically skill but it does draw down to so for example i may say number sense and fractions and then as an anchor in third grade they may have to put fractions to the nearest quarter of the nearest eighth in the simplest form so it gives it gives a specific skill yeah i guess you could say skills that follow underneath that standard ok thanks any other board questions on this i think we're moving on i have one question you mentioned corrections are those adjustments for the fact that we know some of the questions were correct on the tast or are the correct input corrections for our under now so for the corrections window on the school performance profile they have corrections when a for just general facts like for example on the corrections i had to make as they said that we had ten schools so i had to write back and go through a procedure and provide evidence that we do not in fact have ten have the wrong number of takers a week from the college board they're supposed to directly pull it we know that we got a different number than they did then we started a disagreement does not get to the level of that we any validity of reliability of the test doesn't give you much confidence and i wonder how those other five schools that i might want to get your next i can get to thank you all right just to give an update so last year we identified in august a group of parents who wanted to serve on the literacy committee and as we as we began our transition with d biggest to me you know working into the central office and as we knew about the information with the change in assessments we wanted to just take an opportunity postpone to really get some information about how we were going to score on our current on our current look at the p a core standards and then identified areas that we wanted to offer additional professional development to two teachers we want to really focus on letters which are it's a modules that are really aligned around the basic building blocks of reading so whether it be fun a logical werent which is really understanding how letters make words and sounds and all the way up to fluency comprehension and then our different grade bands we wanted to get a dig a little deeper and in grades three through five we took a look at informational narrative writing and we did the same thing as well and grade six to eight i missed i think dr murphy so mr fisher before us section about the grade level training for the teachers i mean it makes perfect sense to me that it different grades you're sort of looking at different things in reading can you talk a little bit about the differences in those different levels to why we're doing different things to those teachers when the more elementary grade levels you're learning to read and then as you transition to the higher grade levels you're reading for actual attacks really aren't for the content and so in those basic area levels we used letters models which really teaches those foundations as building blocks of you know word recognition and transitioning into reading or or reading fluency and comprehension and then as we look at the three to five in the six day band we want to apply those skills did a bit develop comprehension and tax base analysis which is really looking you it was part of that the new course as presented either in seventh and eighth grade where what what was that call are you going to talk about that or is that it was that part of this idea about last allegheny we started to learn how to quantifying qualify text making sure that they're not just in a grade level because teachers love teaching that book in third grade but is it an appropriate text for third graders to read at this point because of  regular rigorous demands that are required with students being able to truly understand texts and answer questions bigger than remember the questions we looked at in the fall or in the winter of last year where you could there be a question that you wouldn't even have to read the one of the things also important to note with the teacher support is we were able to find this training in support for teachers all through our governor's excellence grants that is funded through october of this year so that's something really important to note that we felt it was really important to invest in the teachers and really train them around best practices in teaching literacy as well as just basic pedagogy pedal logical understanding as well this is the umbrella of the and you'll see where it's kind of foundational skills which goes with what mr fisher was talking about as well that's the basic building blocks of understanding reading as he said shifting from learning how to read in reading to learn that's the big difference that is important to truly note that things change in a child when they shift from learning how to understand how to read reading comprehension as they start to get up toward the middle school age where they have to be able to start to understand the much more complex texts nonfiction reading being able to understand technical reading and the first slide was actually a clip from a c t that talked about kids that can understand those more complex tax are the students that are more successful in college and paying very close attention to how our children are progressing with learning to read in a for us as we forget how complex and difficult it is to learn to read it's good for us to go back and try to understand hieroglyphics the symbols are associated with sounds which one blended together create certain meaning that's a very complex we forget it and probably for really good is probably really traumatic but what we have we have really good in a way where people already have the skill sets and they're leading a lot of professional development and mr fisher is keeping track of where we are with our letters training and i believe we will write letters letters mother ok there's on were letters three with our cater to teachers so there are there are a lot of models but though as pam mentioned to me the foundations are the one through three modules and that's what we're through for the beginning of this year and we want to continue to build with our k to to teach k to one teacher's and k to two teachers but also find ways to phase in our three through six teachers as well so we really try to target our reading support teachers are learning support teachers to get those trainings along with arcane one and now and while our teachers are two through five teachers are working or two through a teachers are working with i f l on the more complex actual critical identification i don't know if you have anything you want to add that was another again really good higher with these reading specialist and really again reading is the key to success if we want our s a t s scores to get better it starts in kindergarten  one of the reasons we wanted to bring this back to the table is because it was tabled this time last year but it's time to reconvene our committee mr fisher and i will bring the whole group back together this is beltre will be sending one of our belcher blasts with the information for the first meeting on thursday september twenty fourth here in this room at three forty five and we want to go over with the committee the work we've done to date have the teachers talk about the training receive look at some of the units the teachers have learned to implement and to learn how to change potentially moving books around creating new units just having very in depth conversations around what they've done after the first meeting we realize it's important to shift the committee into two different venues k five will start to look at what programs potentially we need to choose around teaching children learn to read to learn to read do we continue with the baby is a program which i don't know if you want to add anything around the k five well i mean currently the way our l a is set up is we have two programs k one has a program harcourt two through five has their teacher six has a program reading street scott foresman and i think one of the things that we discovered at our at our l a for a committee meeting last year were having two different programs create some gaps and so that was that was evident our teachers are really working hard to fill those gaps to help blend those two grade levels from first to second grade when they change programs so when we do look at programs you know there are there are some of our publishers out there that we're working on getting samples from but we want to pick a a a program that's going to be consistent k through five so that will be that will be some of our work looking looking at that and also looking at how it it works with some of the novels that are already taught the grade levels in the six twelve committee will continue the work we've already been training the mcmurry sixth grade teachers with the seventh and at the middle school and nine to twelve trainings they've been working predominantly with our names a grant but then will be pulling with them in october to start to look at are the novels in the correct place do are we teaching the novels that kids need to be reading some contemporary literature sticking to the classics and having really good conversations around are they positioned in the right place  so dr murphy just to reiterate you or maybe shelley belcher will be sending out an e mail blast inviting parents who are interested in participating on this committee and does that mean you'll also have some teachers who have volunteered to be on the committee as well absolutely yes there were sixteen original parents that were here this time last year we will definitely be sending it to them to ensure that we are continuing with this work and then anyone else that would be interested it was a very packed room there were forty plus community members board members teachers and parents in this room this time last year so the more the merrier  ok also becomes around and then having and then eventually it sounds like you're going to bring it into so that you have the lower grade levels in the upper grade right because that just the kids have different intentions these committees should really have different intentions  let necessarily pick a program per say for grade six to twelve it's looking at are the novels in the appropriate the sixth seventh the k to sixty excuse me the k to eight teachers have already started to look at potentially new novels to pilot this year nine through twelve they won't start that work until october so we might not be at a point where we're necessarily piloting anything at the high school we'll see what happens on october sixteenth and i'll be able to tell you more ok i know ok the eight for sure they definitely have some books that are pulling books out putting books in and thinking through not just contemporary but are they at the ripe and one last question on this i know historically it seems that we were more focused on having students read novels and sort of fiction as opposed to nonfiction technical is there a movement to shift well some of the units do have  nonfiction articles being able to understand and read at a deeper level and they're also aligned to history they're aligned to science some of the elementary levels units one was about the rainfall so it's not just the p a core standards as well not just having one book and being able to understand it but potentially themes across more than one text and that goes all the way down to the younger students and a lot of the work that are you know lake committee members did with i have felt was to not only pick a novel but it to pick a novel that really supplement some of the concepts that they may teach in science or in social studies that are more thematic so they can you know really learn maybe the the the content and in the science subject or in a social studies subject but also see how it is in a literary piece or another nonfiction piece or to compare those texts in their skills great thanks any other questions from the boys i do have a question is are going to be some time that we can get a briefing on what is being sent home as far as the parents involvement in this process i see a lot of teachers learning to do that but the importance of the parent being supportive of helping their students read at these younger ages is so important and are they going to have something that's you know she just did to them that they in fact get involved in not just let their child sit out there and try to read just by themselves we have on our title one sites for both make merry and pleasant valley and there's access for that power here as well mrs will make williams many years ago made videos around teaching kids sounds teaching kids how to learn to read and that that's available now on our website schools also sent home packets about what children should be working on the books they could be reading and will be more i guess is more scripted when we know that there's a need and then there's the just general this is really great to do between third and fourth in the mathematics we're doing a lot of work on videos we are again we when we buy curriculum now there's a lot of really cool online tools we need to get parents of digging into those using those for the foreign language sex going in looking at those books looking  f the studies that i've seen and used in duquesne and everything else demonstrate that the a successful student who can pick out and sight words and everything else one of the very young becomes a more successful person as they grow and develop and that's i don't think the that many parents know that that there's a direct correlation between those they can read an early age and understand and how successful that brings them through their later life and that's a that's i think this as just as important as having our teachers learn which is great but if our parents don't support that you know that's going to be an issue and peter sonship has never had parents nonsupport but it does her early age sometimes the parents don't know what to do so that's i would really appreciate students who had the high of like high need and we brought them in and actually last year in october before i transitioned we actually brought parents in and sat with their child with them and actually modeled for them the basic building blocks how do you teach  so we really tried to extend through those title one meetings in those reading support meetings with the parents you know as we've discussed here many times we look at on earth and we look at a p and we look at children who have needs special needs i'm interested in the eighty five percent that are sitting in the middle and how do those people get their support and you know that's the group you know i love these folks i love these folks i like these guys too and i just want to make sure that they get the support they need and what our focus in ensuring that all children are benchmark by the third grade is along those lines that when you could have been advanced on the p s it's a third grade reading but still not been benchmark on your devils because the p s a is really assess reading for saving us or reading tests it's more about content knowledge and what not and not about the particular skill of reading in them are heavy heavy confident level to make you have for you to be able to take advantage of the new content that you're going to be learning in grades three four five and six and one of the ways to look at this you know when you struggle through reading a v c r manual  t i think and this is it's really me go to look for the most technical thing all of your brain power is really china what are these words are not familiar and you don't really get the gist of it and when children who don't know how to blend in don't know that the manual different i'll tell you because as a quickly a couple things first of all what happens when reading doesn't become important a more is what ikea does with instructions now which is leaves all the words out so i don't necessarily think i'm half joking but i'm half serious because in all due respect i would like to see the studies that show that reading proficiency translates into success later in life i'll tell you why because if you look at the biggest deficiencies post high school in college it's not reading it's writing teach freshman class sometimes a college and you will see exactly what i'm talking about it's not reading deficiency it's writing deficiency so i have a little bit of i said here i've heard it referenced more than one time that you know reading proficiency co equals success i know you can mark that at college because of other means but i really have a hard time accepting that it automatically translates into better success in life and first of all i don't know how you measure that number one but number two show me somebody who can read very well that can't write very well and i'll tell you somebody who's not going to make it very far in life to the translation of being able to read is to be able to communicate either speaking or writing and if you ask the high school and i hope you do and laurie should with automaticity be able to say that their focus is on writing across content that was one of our areas that stage in speaking so but i agree with you that that start with reading right and the ability to understand you said it best i think communicate that's the key communication so i would like to go back to what mr miller brought up originally about the at least what i thought you were asking is resources for the parents of the vast majority in the middle not the kids who are gifted the kids who are having some learning support but the vast majority in the middle if you've got a kid in first or second grade who is going through this process and they're not really terribly struggling in they're not at the top of the class what kind of resources the district have to help parents who want to sit with their kid and do some extra work at home i think the most important resource that we provide parents is multiple bits of information about how their a lot more online for parents can do it independent are resources books and online materials and making sure the parents know about them how their child is doing and then knowing what's available the two biggest pieces we also have a wonderful new relationship with the public library and i would like to see us do some things like ask the public library to start a junior scrabble club another scrabble club at the middle school or maybe it's mcmurray elementary is a big hit so maybe if we asked the public library to have a junior scrabble club for the country for whatever some some tools like that we have this relationship now nothing against the previous administration of the library but we now have a special know this is this is so this is so cool chart with the presentation but it kind of showcases in captures the call to be clean program at the middle school as a visual aid for our students especially for the new seventh grade students who are just entering our building and kind of catching them up to speed on what the program is an easy way to communicate that so that the call to be clean program is a program that is currently at the middle school last year last summer actually was one of the first initiatives that took part in and in joining this district is beginning with a couple of adults sitting in a room at the police station myself in chief officer de stanton in a business owner and we're talking about how  looking at some pieces of data on the use of drug and alcohol within our community and thinking at a middle school level how critically important it is to catch to catch kids early and to educate kids early and to empower kids early and so we talked about having the dare program at the elementary level in the sad program at the high school and at the middle school there really seemed to be kind of like a gap and you think about middle school is really the time where peer pressure really sets in kids can really be influenced in either a positive way or negative way and we really want to focus on that positive influence for students so we you know really thought about you know how how does a group of adults convince kids that you shouldn't use drugs and alcohol and you know we came up with with a catchy slogan that we think is a little catchy cool to be clean and you see on the board up there it's c two b care about their their safety and their health but the component that makes this program different is that it awesome once you care about yourself it's your duty an obligation to really encourage others to make those positive choices and decisions and so if you've if you've worked with middle school students or you have middle school students or had middle aged school students you know that a bunch of adults just telling you not to do things isn't the best way to to resonate with with with with that population so we really wanted to empower kids and we talked about bringing our student coun who are our student leader years into a think tank with us and so we actually brought our are student council members our core group of student council members over to the to the chamber of commerce office and and i mean have the council chamber i say the right yeah the p t council and really wanted to empower the kids to let them know that this is a really important topic we put them in the council chairs you know was anybody there by the  way ok i couldn't remember if there was anybody there but we had so we had representatives from the community there and the kids sat in the in the big powerful seats in chairs and and really talked about what does into drug and alcohol  mean to you and how how does it resonate with you individually or as a team of students and what can we do to really drive this notion home with our entire student population and so the student council you know started talking about i think people need to hear the facts i think our student body needs to hear the facts i think our student body needs to hear from somebody who may have suffered from drug and alcohol abuse of that we can see what the what what the long term effects and consequences can and will be i think we need to talk to those in the field i think we need to talk to pharmacists i think we need to talk to doctors and so on and then and they came up with some really really great ideas so now it became a student movement and which we shifted that focus from adults to the students are the ones that are carrying this movement and so one of the ways that we really wanted to bring the that we wanted the program to come alive is they said ok we really want to introduce a clue call to be clean program to our student body but we want to do it in an assembly style and so the student council organized an assembly where you know we had some guest speakers and notably  individual who who unfortunately was addicted to drugs and alcohol and shared a pretty touching and moving story of how that impacted his life and our students left that assembly all of our students in the school attended that assembly and a lot of students were really kind of touched by that and we had a lot of momentum of you know we don't want this to happen to us and it was really palpable and we had a lot of energy and motivation going into it so the the call to be clean board student board came up with a plan of how do we get other people to be part of this because there's so much momentum right now i think we can really catch kids and hook kids right now so they came up with an idea of for this to be a national club or program and that you would be nominated into this court to be clean because if you are nominated and you accept that nomination and you know in the pamphlet it talks about you know what the pledge is to live a drug free life to be a leader and positive role model to be kind and respectful to help family and friends be drug free and learn the facts about drugs and how they really hurt people work with law enforcement officials educators and community leaders to help create a drug free peters township so you're being nominated you're accepting this responsibility and that and empowers you and so this kids came up with instead of adults saying eugen to be part of this program the students are nominating one another so we said to the board they were the first members to nominate students to be part of their program as well and so they had unlimited access actually at the beginning i think they had ten nominations that they could nominate ten other individuals and not stressing that it's not a popularity contest it's when you're noticing people do making really great decisions in school when you notice people who are helping others who are more than more  likely to make positive choices as they move forward in the middle school and so we set a target you know if we can hook twenty percent of our student population by the by the end of the school year you know we'd be really really impressed with that especially how long it took to get this program off the ground while at the end of the year we ended up having over three hundred fifty students pledge to be part of this program and the honestly it probably would have been the whole school if had we had more time which is what's exciting this year is that you know we have an entire four year to do this so the nomination this is a student gives out a nomination for a pass a student gives a nomination form to another student again it's all student related and student directed and says i nominate the student to be a member of c two b c because they have to rationalize why they think this person should be part of this program so it's not just a haphazard like jan i think she should be part of the program and then and then from there that student who is nominated has to get an adult signature and it could be any teacher in the school building but somebody some adult influence that would say yes you know i support this nomination and it's that's really just to get the staff engaged and involved in the process as well nobody nobody would  nobody had been turned down and then again there's the pledge this is my pledge to and there the pledge of actions positive actions of the students can take and then their membership signature and then once you're part of the club as an incentive for students because again it's middle school and you have to incentivize students they get a response that i'm wearing right now it says quote to be clean honest who represents and shows that they're that they're proud but that it shows their support and then from if you have a bracelet how we can really rap in the community and how the chamber has gotten involved is that we want to spread this district error township wide so local businesses and organizations are really backing and supporting this to say if you have a quota be clean clean bracelet you may be incentivized by you know local industries and businesses you may get a ten percent discount at miller's ace hardware for your lock that you're going to buy for your locker or you know you'll get a free sunday at the mcdonald's or just a few examples so it goes from you know personal incentive such as that tangible incentive stop to now we have business leaders and community leaders saying we're going to offer free job shadowing so if you're a member of quote to be clean we want to get you into our businesses we want to get you into our practices and will offer free jobs shadowing experiences for your student your group of students or individual students so that the point of this is to make a better peters township yes we want to make a better middle school but eventually use middle school kids are going to go to high school and graduate hopefully give back to our community so we want this to be a full peters township community based effort to keep kids off of drugs and alcohol especially at this age words it's critically critically important and  y through with the chamber there have been the chamber chase the five k run walk they were very gracious to say that a portion of the proceeds are going to go to benefit quote to be clean and so you know we really want to be we want our students out in the community are you know we are going to have a belief that the community day we're going to have representation at the chamber chase we are looking for two other opportunities for volunteer work and activities here in peter's township because it's not we don't want we really want to stress that it's not just about making a pledge and saying that you're going to do good things it's actually by showing it you know this is the step to get to get us in the door with students but we want to give back to the community and we want to foster relationships within  you know it would be nice if an adult knew about  but i think you're right on the night is another circumstance that we're trying to tackle and i do think that that is very typical of middle school students and that was a conversation that was probably multiple day conversation by the  members of what is what happens in that scenario and they say too they said back to us what happens in that scenario mister good what you know what happens and my first notion is always to throw it back on the students and so you know we said well what what what happens you tell us what do you think should happen and in and by no means do i think that we are in in a place where we know exactly what's going to happen because i don't think we necessarily are there but what was decided was that we would go back to the member who nominated that student and the member who would not who nominated that student would have an obligation and responsibility to go back and talk to that student and that person who nominated that individual would have an obligation to tell an adult and that's what the kids came up with so we're hopeful that you know it's going to be notifying the right people the student and an adult who can who can help in that  failed to mention this and i don't know how because i'm really proud of this but as the call to be clean program was going on we started to receive contact from from parents and two in particular  stand out to me is you know a parent called and called me and called my office and said what's a school to be clean what is the school to be clean program i thought all know she's going to this is you know she's going to complain about the glue and it was very very much the opposite because she was she stated you know my daughter came home and told me about the school to be clean program and she told me that she had been drinking on the weekends and that she wanted to come clean in the adult the parent you know was extremely you know she pretty emotional about it but she said that this is had such an impact on my daughter's life and vice versa the same thing happened with another student who had been smoking and the parents contacted me to let me know about that and on social media brought some some social media comments you know these are middle school social media and i try to stay away from whatever they're saying on social media but there's there are so many instances where parents have e mailed me screenshots of what they've seen on call to be clean and  if i could i'd like to read a couple of them for you this is a student i think it's a i think it's a great program the speaker that came into this is after the assembly speaker i came in today truly made me cry knowing all that can happen by making bad decisions making one bad decision can lead to so many more kids ruining their education opportunities in life is it really worth it not making a bad decision making bad decisions can affect your whole life c to b c will help kids make the right decision us think it's very important and hope it spreads through the state don't ruin amazing opportunities life brings you it's called to be clean another one i'm really excited to be part of the such an amazing program i think it will go far i think it'll really help kids think about their future before making a bad decision and hopefully impact a lot people are just read one more for sake of tom and these are all from parents screen shotting these and sending him to me i don't stage any students to read promise you i think it's a really awesome and smart program the speaker really moved me and showed me how how drugs can affect your life how drugs room great opportunities in life that you may have worked for years for and when taking drugs you you're basically flushing those opportunities down the toilet is it worth it is taking drugs worth ruining great opportunities or memories the memory of graduating college with your peers may not exist i feel the students nominated were excellent choices and hopefully other districts will start using c to b c and influence the students there to make good decisions as it has influenced me lastly hopefully one day many students in many districts and possibly states will know that it's cool to be clean so i think we've definitely you know struck a chord with students by no means do i think that this is a one size fits all program that's going to catching catch every student but i think that it is a  program that really is making an impact and having an impact on on our student population thank you so much it sounds like it's a fabulous program and i'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out so mesmerized i was mesmerized by him he was he was quite something that he really was and what i did like if i remember the student leaders got up to speak and they were talking about holding each other accountable and i noticed the kids some of the kids i know that are a little shy are in the audience and i was watching them and i think that we all know that whenever kids get into drugs or alcohol or whatever they're they're kind of lonely and to hold each other accountable like that those kids i noticed were really listening intently and so i i think it's going to be great yeah appreciate it i do too i think the whole concept of having the kids holding each other accountable because we all know the parents can talk till they're blue in the face and the kids will tune them out but when the other kids are holding them accountable that's when it changes them thank you so much for this initiative yes i do think this basis or a few months from dollhouse some of the kids involved actually come on to a board meeting oh my goodness i would love it they would absolutely love it and you all are invited i can even send updates out of  when our board meets because it's really great to even you know we invite community members that we've worked with and partner with to even just come to the board meetings that are held at the school just to see the student leadership in action is  there's no doubt that you'll be you'll walk away really impressed and i know that they'd that our students would love to come speak at the board is there anything this board can do to support that program i think the number one thing is to support the kids and i think you know if if the kids i'll tell you i've never i've never i don't know if i can use the word never but it's definitely definitely very much up there if not the most proud of everybody kids when i saw them  out at the council and sitting in those chairs and really feeling like they're making a difference so i think the best thing that we can do is you know if i could invite you to attend a board meeting or if i can invite you to events that we do if they see that our community believes in them and that you know they have an army of support behind them i think that only you know strengthen their opinions on being cool that it's cool to be clean that would be great invite us to all of the board members are available during the school day by the number of the members are if you invite us i'm sure people will come we would love to i mean great thanks any policy makers should know about the new p s a going back to the original topic and then on the table over there there should be several sections starting with five key points parents should know about the new p a lot of documentation just reiterating what was discussed here tonight so that people in the audience should take a copy of that and anybody who's watching on t v could get a copy here at the district offices later i can't believe you came here on your birthday comment i'm kathleen show the re do i need to state my address three o seven fox one dr nisha i have four kids and i was here in march talking about them if you remember me i have fifth grader mcmurry a ninth grader the high school and two beautiful girls who just started the university of pittsburgh today and thanks to their hard work and all of our teachers they entered pit with twenty seven credits so it's exciting  my passion this year is tracking common core and understanding common core curriculum so i don't know from space can i ask a few questions or do i just as a strictly for comment i don't know what to do i'm going to throw it out there you guys can decide ok i looked i did look at this ahead of time transition timeline for ph core standards this piece of paper was over there and on the very top it says july two thousand and ten the state board of education adopts com standards our pennsylvania state board of education adopted them and i was kind of surprised to see it here because every time i ask if peters is a common core district in pennsylvania as a common core state i hear no i directly asked a building principal my daughter's a pennsylvania is a common core state he said no and i take that one yes there's national common core but each state is free to establish ten percent pardon me their only lodges change the standards by ten percent but they're allowed to establish more strict standards hires pennsylvania has chosen to establish higher standards just as they really ought to call the p something different i say i think they should call that something other than ph core standards but that is a higher standard we did not adopt the national common core we adopted it says state board of education adopts current common core state standards of pennsylvania common core standards but they're only allowed to change a standard by ten percent we can be all right well but that i'm glad i'm just saying that it's frustrating i think parents are very confused because the principal says in a math meeting we are not common core and they look at the stock they look at the textbooks and it says common core and parents actually want sure i'm so glad i'm glad we're not common core like we all are you know there's that ten percent leeway so i totally understand that but i think it's confusing we're hearing different things from different places things that i can help you with because if you read further and it looks like the transition in two thousand and thirteen the peak or standard that's when all the changes started to happen and the th ings that are negatively associated with the common core are the tax it is expensive and it did not adopt and a lot of those other requires the data requirements are not and so one of the things that i always ask parents to do is please grab a standard let's go back to the text grab a grab for standard that you do not want your child to learn and that's when we have to start having the discussions so when there's confusion you go back to the things themselves not the rumors around them not the other things that  things we have to go that's the only text that we have and you go there and that's what we have to again start the discussion the actual standards themselves and then we can talk about how we implement them in the school text what materials we use because although there's standards schools can use any text any programs they want to reach those standards so i think parents are confused are they really have to do is again what do they disagree with in the standard and are they disagreeing with how we instruct it what materials you might be using then those are real conversations i think are grounded that we can so i think when they get the test scores they're really going to have a lot of questions about what the heck we're doing here well these are going to have questions about what they'll be able to situate with what's happening in the state  and parents and thank you all for coming in because you'll be ambassadors to help people understand the test changed to new test scores change impacted the entire state and so when we bring our forward our data will want to look at  how well do we fare compared to the state like districts i think i'm going to just comment and then not ask questions because i feel like i don't want to be here home on a clock i feel bad i do have eight more years in the district and my daughter would it would break her heart if i homeschool but i did consider doing it so i'm not here to get anybody mad at me and i just kind of want to work together for the next eight years but i i have i probably look at twenty different articles weekly about the common core state standards so i do do a lot of research on my own and so a lot of my friends look to me for guidance i also noticed on this timeline it said there was field testing for the questions for p s a maybe i missed it but there was no field testing for the actual standards so from what i've read and learned there just has not been field testing for the actual standards they have not been proven to work and yet we're changing everything that we do including testing and telling kids that instead of ten yards if you go fifteen yards i kept thinking that poor football player this poor kids hearing that information that they work so hard last year especially with that math curriculum and they didn't do well and then the teachers too so i guess i'm just just telling you what i'm thinking now the state of new york has a year and a half ahead of us and there are so many kids who opted out of the spring and i did decide to opt out my my two kids and i just have a feeling as i mean a lot more people who are disgruntled with the testing in the state in new york there are five hundred early childhood experts that said that the standards are not age appropriate especially their critical thinking like if you think about teaching a kindergartner how to think critically her second grader and i i was there anybody else here the thinks it's crazy that that's what i feel like mrs smith said there's nothing we can do about it you do understand seriously that this is a makes the decisions and we have to implement them the best way we can but i not i'm really seriously not trying to throw this off and say you know nothing we can do about it but seriously the things we can do about it are preparing the students preparing the teachers but we can't change the rules if you want to change the rules write to your legislators yeah that was one of my points to that everybody who doesn't agree as a board member you're to carry so much weight to write to your doctor if you go back and study the history of testing it was not schools who said around this room or in the school