RPS RECAP: May 1, 2023 (Pt 1)

Last week, the Board received an update on “Accreditation.” Schools that meet or exceed the state’s standards for quality education, or show significant growth towards that end, are considered “accredited.” 

The Accreditation formula is complex, weighing academic performance (math, english, science) alongside things like student attendance (chronic absenteeism), graduation/drop out rates, and career/college readiness. Per usual, the RPS Academic team gave a “robust” presentation with all the details, so I won’t rehash those here. 

Over the last few years, the State has waived the chronic absenteeism portion of accreditation, acknowledging the impact of covid quarantines and structural barriers to virtual school attendance (access to reliable internet). This year, chronic absenteeism (students who miss 10% or more days of school, around 15 days) is back in play. 

This is an unfortunate new development for a few reason:

  1. Absenteeism will most certainly drag down RPS’ chances at maintaining/growing our number of accredited schools. We - like “a quarter of 85 [Virginia] school divisions surveyed” - have a chronic absenteeism rate over 25%.  As of January, absenteeism was 17% across America, 20% across Virginia, and 25.9% in RPS.

  2. Absenteeism is a very poor reflection of school quality. It - like many metrics the VDOE uses - is more a reflection of poverty, and societal influences outside of schools’ control.

  3. Tethering accreditation to absenteeism will distract from and undermine the incredible gains our teachers, specialists, coaches, and Academic team have made to improve student outcomes. Things like - 93% of students enrolled in our Career and Technical Education (CTE) program receive workplace-ready certifications, our K-2 students literacy growth outpaces the state average and last years pace-of-growth, and many of our secondary schools saw up to double-digit increases in performance - across all schools, all sub-groups, and all grade levels. 

  4. We’re under a 2017 performance improvement plan (MOU, Memorandum of Understanding) that requires all our schools to reach accreditation by 2025, or we risk losing state funding. 

The Board doesn’t engage much with this new development, or express confusion: 
I’m glad absenteeism doesn’t count! It does? But not this year, right? Yes? Hm. 

The alarmist in me worries this is a “sleeping giant” scenario… where they won’t remember any of the information they received tonight by the time final accreditation status is released in September… at which point they’ll panic and make a bunch of rash decisions (a la curriculum and August’s SOL reports). 

Instead, Chairwoman Rizzi admonishes the Academic Team over what she describes as a 2.5-3 year, “knock down, drag out” fight over curriculum alignment. 

“We were told alignment did not matter. That we were not to focus on it, and that it wasn’t a concern.”

She doesn’t know “how much our children had to suffer through that fight” or “how far behind we can say they got just from the resistance to listening” to the teachers and Board members who raised concerns about alignment. [Watch]

If this was bait, the Academic Team didn’t take it. Which was very professional of them, but very unsatisfying for me. I’d never heard about this “fight” - and I was really hoping they’d explain or clarify their alleged “alignment doesn’t matter,” hot-take, position.

Rizzi even included a road map saying If you go back to those meetings, I’m sure you’ll see.. 

Challenge. Accepted.

By now, you and I both know that I’m a School Board nerd. But even I was surprised to find myself rewatching hours worth of academic presentations and Q&A from 2020-present. I spent days matching socks, chasing children, and picking up Target orders while these meetings played in the background at double speed. By Saturday, I was fully wrapped up in the “sunk cost fallacy” - I’ve already put in all this time, what’s a little more? I’m sure the fireworks are just around the corner…

Dear reader, they were not. Instead, this is what I found:

When the Board approved the new K-8 English/Language Arts and Math curricula on June 1, 2020, they were fully briefed on the pros and cons.

I’m going to pause here for a second because this is very important:

This practice is what critics call “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Teachers, guided by implicit biases, underestimate their students’ abilities, and err towards offering easy assignments that do not challenge students, and set them up to enter each subsequent year further and further behind state standards. 

6th District Rep, Felicia Cosby (who won her seat in 2016 against incumbent, Dr. Harris-Muhammed, 67% to 31%) was especially moved by this point. Just ahead of the final vote, she shared this reflection on her own teaching career, and the varying expectations educators have for their students: 

“My expectation was that students could perform and perform at a high level. And others felt that - maybe because of where the students came from, and some of their deficits - that they wouldn’t be able to perform as high. And therefore, the material that was taught [was watered down]... I do believe having curricula that is district-wide, and curricula that is rigorous - will get rid of some of the implicit biases that sometimes we may find in our classrooms.” [Watch]

The “cons” were varied, ranging from eye-roll-inducing suggestions of cronyism, to more practical concerns:

  • Now is not the time. We were just weeks into a global pandemic, and - at 9PM on June 1, 2020 - literally as the Board took this curriculum vote, the streets of Richmond were full of tear gas and racial/social justice protesters. Learning a new curriculum takes time and mental energy that a lot of people just did not think they could muster at this time. (Experts call this an “adversity quotient” - an individual’s ability to learn and grow amidst stressful conditions.)

  • This is unchartered territory. RPS would be the first district in Virginia to essentially “beta test” the Virginia-aligned version of the math curricula. There will almost certainly need to be adjustments to its alignment and recommended pacing calendar.

  • There’s a chance we use this wrong. This curriculum is not scripted. It’s a playbook. And if teachers read the playbook to the class instead of letting their students run the routes, everyone will suffer from “really unfortunate instruction.” 

  • This will require an overhaul of the school division’s pervasive, toxic, “teach with fidelity” / “teach to the test” mindset. Staff need to embrace a new learning model of “trust and release.” Teachers need to let students engage with the material themselves, and principals need to learn, support, and enforce this new “student-led” model of “academic discourse.”

The Academic Team promised to hold monthly “pulse check” meetings with teachers, coaches and specialists. This is especially important to then-CAO Dr. Epp, who repeatedly says that she wants to hear teacher feedback and wants to know when Principals are crippling the curriculum’s implementation by requiring staff to “stick to the script!” 

“This is the worst thing we can do with a quality curricula,” Dr. Epp warns. “Using this curricula in a scripted way is as bad as not using a curricula at all.”

Rizzi’s criticism - that the Academic team was “resistant to listening” to teachers - is not supported by the record. Neither is her claim that the Board was told “not to focus” on alignment concerns. 

Instead, they were told 2 things.

  1. The goal of instruction is student mastery of skills, not just remembering facts long enough to take a test [Watch]

  2. “Curriculum is an evolution” -  any curriculum the district adopts (or builds themselves) will have to be adapted and continuously improved-upon with teacher feedback, over time. 

Needless to say, the 2.5-3 years the division has had with this curriculum has been chaotic at best. 

On June 1, 2020, nobody knew our schools would be closed for the entirety of the 2020-21 school year.
Nobody knew how much Covid would exacerbate student achievement gaps.
Nobody knew the extent to which extended social isolation would devastate student mental health and stability.
And, nobody could have known the scale of the teacher retention crisis or that it would leave RPS to implement a new curriculum with a largely-inadequately trained, uncertified, and/or inexperienced teacher workforce.

This rollout has been anything but smooth. Everything Epp warned might happen, happened. Principals, especially, appear to have fallen into old “teach to the test/ the curriculum is your script“ habits. (Or perhaps they were never on board with “teach and release” in the first place.) 

By the Spring of 2022, teachers were reporting overly-strict curriculum enforcement and undue principal retaliation when teachers did not comply. 

In her last School Board meeting appearance, Epp said she was working with teachers directly to identify the communication breakdown, bypassing her own staff and school principals to meet directly with teachers and identify: “Where are there alignment issues”, vs “Where is the implementation being undermined by school administrators”?

Obligatory “Not All Principals” Disclaimer: I do not know that principals are being fairly characterized in teacher testimony. Retaliation is a serious charge - as is the suggestion that principals are poorly implementing or intentionally undermining the curriculum transition. The least bias account on record comes from the VDOE Academic Review, which finds teachers, school administrators, and division administrations all responsible for weak academic instruction. Specifically, that a lack of role clarity among coaches, specialists, and administrators may be confusing the curriculum roll-out in some schools. (We discuss this report in more detail, below.)

This struggle did not go unnoticed. Plenty of teachers wrote in to try and explain this phenomenon to the Board.

“Ultimately the curricula we use is not the main problem with teacher retention or student achievement. Teachers are leaving because they feel over-controlled, under-supported, and left out of critical decisions. "Scripted" curriculum is just one of dozens of ways these issues manifest.” Teacher, RTC (August, 2022)

The Board, of course, added to the mayhem. 

Some legitimately didn’t understand. Enough teachers said “this curriculum is scripted!” so loud and so often, that some Board members believed it must be so. This was true of the “admin-endorsed retaliation against teachers” narrative, too, despite each of these Board members having seen (with their own eyes!) Dr Epp speak out against this behavior over and over, since March of 2020.

Other Board members (like the only one to vote against the 2020-curriculum-adoption) seized an opportunity to relitigate the past. They poured gasoline on the curricular fire, spreading misinformation about how expensive this curriculum was, capitalizing on teacher resentment, and their Board colleagues’ inherent distrust of the administration. To paraphrase the various insinuations we heard last Fall:

Some CEO is getting rich with our public tax dollars! I can’t even tell you how rich, because the superintendent has buried the truth in the budget - probably trying to avoid accountability again. (Reminder: the curriculum is free. We pay for “consumables” - and the budgetary impact was very much made public.)

The Board even took ideas like Epp’s monthly “pulse check” meetings and teacher surveys, rebranded them as a “curriculum taskforce,” and then pretended that they had to force the idea onto an unwilling administration.

 “​​Mrs. Burke stated that she would like to see the number of teachers who had participated in professional development per school.  She also desired to know if a survey had been, or would be, used to determine how teachers were embracing the new curriculum.  Dr. Epp responded affirmatively that there had been a survey and there would be check-ins throughout the school year.  She noted that feedback she had received thus far had been very positive.“
Approved Meeting Minutes (July 20, 2020)

In any case, the curriculum’s alignment and implementation problems appear to have outlasted Epps’ “adversity quotient.” She resigned just ahead of the August uproar. Several key members of her staff left shortly afterwards, believing they’d lost the faith of the Board, their colleagues, their principals, and/or teachers. (They had.)

They were tired. They were burnt out. They were thoroughly disrespected. But they were not necessarily wrong. 

The remaining Academic Team picked up the baton and ran with it. In October 2022, they called in the VDOE to sit in classrooms all across the district and provide an Academic Review for each school with “Level Two academic achievement indicators.”

In many RPS classrooms, they found evidence of all the things Epp had feared:

  • Instead of rigorous lessons, the VDOE found that “students are engaged in low-level activities” and RPS needs to enforce “higher expectations for teaching and learning…”

  • Instead of “student-led academic discourse,” the VDOE found that “strategies/activities are teacher-centered and students are not provided the opportunity to grapple with content or engage in productive struggles.” 

  • Instead of a K-2 workforce fully trained in the Science of Reading and “teach and release,” the VDOE found that RPS staff need “professional development… on how to utilize the curriculum framework…” and how to lead “student-centered instructional practices.”

  • They endorse the division’s ongoing use of “pulse check”/“curriculum taskforce” meetings to “monitor and provide feedback to teachers to ensure alignment…” 

But that’s not the whole story. Epp’s Big Gamble is paying off at…

  • Overby-Shepphard, where “Student engagement is high, and activities strategies/activities are aligned to the content…” and “a focus on the Virginia Standards of Learning Curriculum Framework…. was evident.

  • Bellevue, where “Instruction is student centered with several opportunities for students to make decisions regarding the content independently;”

  • Ginter Park, where the VDOE notes a “team effort” between administrators and educators to provide “ongoing, timely, and specific feedback on lesson plans” before they’re taught, in order to increase both grade-appropriate (rigorous) and SOL-aligned instruction; and,

  • Swansboro, where “there is evidence of walkthrough observations and [administrator] feedback to teachers that contain learning target “look-fors.”

Each of these schools received special shout outs on Monday night for “showing amazing gains,” “exceeding math goals,” and “performing really well in ELA.” The data shows “strong evidence” that they will meet or maintain their accreditation status.

“Through our visits, and looking at our data, we see the hard work translating to [student] outcomes.” [Watch]

So, while Rizzi asks: how much did our students suffer academically these last 2 years because the admin was resistant to staff feedback?…

I wonder much the opposite.

  • How would our students suffered academically if we’d kept our (teacher-despised) 17-year old curriculum? How would our middle school teachers have managed virtual instruction and their students Covid Recovery without any formal curricula at all?

  • How much did the Board’s campaign of misinformation, constant bullying, and ever-present threat of throwing out the curricula distract the Academic Team’s work to continually align and implement it?

  • How much will our student’s academics suffer if the Board - ignorant by choice - decides to hit the curriculum “reset” button now?

The Chairwoman and I do agree on one thing though:

“I feel like we’re on more solid ground, but it took a long time to get here, and I don’t think a lot of what we’ve been through to get here was necessary.” [watch]

If the Academic Team’s delivering win-after-win-after-win for the school district isn’t enough to win the approval of our School Board, maybe a State mandate will:

The very curricula that Dr. Harris-Muhammed calls “invalid, misaligned, evidence-less” - just became a Virginia Literacy Act finalist. Soon, school districts all across the state will have to adopt it, or something similarly rigorous.

Edit to add: If you’re a former or current member of the academic team, I want you to know that I saw this and thought of you. Thank you for your service to the children of Richmond. Their academic growth is your success, too, and our elected leaders ought to be the ones saying so, rather than receiving your work with suspicion and hostility or crediting others for your efforts.

I’m going to close out part one of this recap here. I’ll be back later this week with updates on the following (very important!) developments:

RPS Budget
School Climate & Safety
Legal Updates
The English Learner Experience
(Pt 2 now available here)

I can’t link directly to meeting minutes, so I’m including a sort of “appendix” of memorable quotes I found during my research. There are opposing views, too, but I don’t have those represented here because they mostly opposed curriculum adoption in the hope that curriculum funds would be reallocated to other priorities (like a 3% teacher raise, covid gear, etc.) None of those things are relevant to a conversation about whether or not the curriculum itself actually works.

2022 Public Comment Re: Curriculum

“To change curriculum without adequate time for teachers to internalize or create alternatives does not support strong academic outcomes. While RPS did not show the academic results we strive for, they were predictable and followed similar trends from around the state given the reality of the pandemic across the last three years and that teachers were learning new curriculum in RPS. It is crucial to evaluate the resources you provide to teachers for effectiveness, however making rash decisions and providing resources without training does not set teachers up to deliver strong teaching that produces the results our students deserve.”

“All summer, I have deepened my understanding of the curriculum we use while researching additional ways to meet my students where they are. If the School Board makes rash adjustments to the RPS Cabinet or to curriculum, the impact and burden will be on students and their teachers as they work to provide consistent, loving, and rigorous classroom environments through the changes.”

“There is a learning curve in using the curriculum but since I am at Franklin, I was on 4 x 4 and used the whole curriculum twice in one year. In my 8 years of teaching I had never experienced my students understanding the concepts and using the vocabulary like last year.” 

2020 Public Comment Re: Curriculum

“Our current reading curriculum is my least favorite in 20 plus years of teaching for RPS.”

“We are in desperate need for a new ELA curriculum as Benchmark Literacy is outdated and often misaligned to the VA Standards of Learning.”

“There are teachers who are doing their best to support cross curricular efforts but find it very hard to do so as itinerants who share schools and have students on many different levels, using many different resources and platforms.”

“Teaching with novels, not test-oriented snippets, awakens a joy for reading through an affinity for characters that keeps students engaged in learning and eager to develop and express their own ideas.”

“I was honored to serve on the district's Literacy Plan Committee. I saw firsthand the efforts that went toward reviewing different curriculum options. I also see every day what a strong curriculum can do for teaching and learning in my building.” Boushall Librarian

“Our current curriculum, Benchmark Literacy, is not meeting [student] needs. The majority of RPS teachers have been dissatisfied with this curriculum for several years and many have been resistant to use it in the past and spend many hours searching for outside resources to use. We need a new curriculum to help our students succeed and to provide our teachers with the resources they desperately need to teach our students.” RPS Reading Coach

“Their curriculum and teaching strategies provide the high quality framework for learning and instruction that all of our students and teachers deserve.”

“By adopting these curricula, RPS will finally be providing rigorous instruction to ALL of our students by holding them to high standards and closing the opportunity gap by engaging EL students in years worth of rigorous learning- leading to a lifetime of success. And there is no better time to adopt than now!” AP, Wythe

“I am writing to share my full support of the curriculum adoption for Richmond Public Schools because it is much needed. RPS students deserve a curriculum that has been vetted by the instructional industry, and the curriculum proposed is just that. For too long, our schools have been without a strong, universal language arts and math curriculum, especially on the middle school level. My hope is that the School Board will adopt the new curriculum to support the needs of our schools, staff, and students.” Principal, Richmond Virtual Academy 

Becca DuVal