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Copyright © 2007
SAU #70
45 Lyme Road
Hanover, NH 03755
603-643-6050
sau70@valley.net

May 10, 2007 - Unapproved Minutes

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QEd Qualitative Sub Committee    DRAFT: UNAPPROVED VERSION

Thursday, May 10, 2007
Richmond Middle School: Room 602
3:30-5:15 pm

Present: Mully Blight, Jan Assmus,  Marjorie Rose,  Paul Tierney,  Ann Waterfall, and Linda Addante

Absent: Mary Sachsse, Rob Edson, Sarah Curtis

Guests: Susan Finer and Bob Bruce (QEd members who are not members of the Qualitative Sub Committee)

HANDOUTS:

  • Next Steps: Interim Report Draft -email version sent 5.07.07 by Jan Assmus
  • Next Steps Interim Report Draft -email version sent 5.10.07 by Jan Assmus
  • Quality of Education Committee Goals

DOCUMENTS SHARED AT THE MEETING:

  • Survey of College Admissions Officers, Final Report, December 1999
  • School Report Cards-Sample pages & materials from various Vermont Reports, Vermont School Boards Association
  • Hanover High School PROFILE, 2002
  • Report Format suggested by Wayne (green sheet)-distributed at QEd meeting 5.3.07

TO DO LIST:

  • HHS PROFILE: 2007 copy for each sub-committee member-Linda
  • Investigate School Report Cards-contact VT. School Boards Association-Linda
  • Work on draft for Interim Report: Jan and Mully
  • Send new draft to sub-committee members: Jan
  • Posting on District Web Page of previous surveys done: Marjorie
  • Collect listing of previous surveys done at High School and send to Marjorie: Linda
  • All sub-committee members will continue to work in their area of focus
  • Contact all committee members to be sure their area of focus is included in the interim report along with any additional supporting information they want to include in the appendix of the report-Linda

MEETING NOTES

I.   Agenda Review-no additions

II. Time Line: Discussion to establish timeline for working on Interim Draft

  • SAU meeting June 6, 2007 Quality of Education Interim Report will be discussed
  • Consensus that SAU Board would most likely want Interim Report one week before: May 30
  • If Board needs report by May 30 then sub-committees should have their drafts into the SAU office no later than May 23
  • Next QEd meeting schedule for May 16th
  • Consensus to continue working on draft via email. Jan will take input from the meeting today and apply that to the May 10 th draft. Jan will email draft 4 of the Interim Report to all committee members for review and feedback on May 14th.

III.  Discussion about sub-committee draft-process and content of the draft. The following points were made by those present:

  • Report that is submitted has to be representative of all members-it has to come from the group-everyone has to have seen it and given consensual approval
  • Sub-committee members will continue to work on next steps and continue to gather data-but this data will not be added to the Interim Report unless it can be discussed and incorporated as a product of the sub-committee’s work together.
  • Identified need to include Adina’s report on the Qualitative Assessment done at the Richmond Middle School.
  • The list of recommendations needs to be prioritized-specifying what the sub-committee members feel should be done soon and what is more of a long term target
  • Report should include additional next steps, recommendations, time frame and resource list needs
  • The term “Quality” needs to be defined. Discussion opened: Should the Qualitative Sub-Committee submit as one of its recommendations that the term Quality of Education be defined. A consensus was reached that the Qualitative Sub-Committee will recommend to the QEd and the SAU board that the term Quality of Education be defined. The following points were made in the discussion:
    • The definition should include many parts-for example quantitative measures, qualitative measures, other
    • Problems arise when one of the points defining “quality” are seen as more important than others-we have to come together-agree on a broad set of assessments/factors that constitute this districts definition of Quality of Education
    • It needs to be a working definition-a product of this districts vision of what constitutes quality
    • It has to have components that are hard data, at a national level, that allow for comparisons.
    • We need to identify national recognized standards of quality and use them
    • Using SAT I and SAT II scores to find top performing schools and once identified mine them for qualitative assessments/data to use as yardstick for qualitative measurement in our district
    • QEd needs to have a working definition of quality of education that district constituency agree on
    • Our sub-committee process would be better informed if we have a definition of “quality” of education
    • Quality is a function of the individual district-it flows from the mission statement
    • The mission statement of the system should be revised to explicitly recognize the obligation to every student. This should be added to the district’s current mission.
    • We need a way to access whether the schools are doing their job as far as performance
    • Funding from taxpayers will not continue without evidence that the school is providing quality education to match the cost.
    • We need a way to demonstrate that the dollars are buying a quality education
    • The School Report Card is Vermont School Board’s Association example of a way to identify quality of education data/information points that can be reported out to communities.
    • The NEASC report represents measures of quality of education
    • It is too difficult to compare districts-too many variables to be able to make a real comparison
    • Statisticians do have ways to nullify the variables so that a comparison of the data from different districts is possible
  • Discussed how surveys done in past should be included in the report. Discussion yielded the following recommendation:
    • Use a broad bush on these surveys. List area of survey and a few examples
    • Acknowledge that when a survey is done it is important to note who created the survey and for what reason. For example the school board versus the individual school conducting a survey
    • In opening statement note that the Sub-Committee feels that surveys are useful part of assessment cycleàgive only a few examples like student surveys, parent surveys-complete listing of surveys does not need to be in body of the report-can be in appendix
    • Acknowledge that some of these surveys are already part of a regular annual cycle and some are not. Those not done routinely may be ones that the sub-committee recommends be repeated and be done as part of a qualitative data collection cycle.

IV. The Interim Report: The sub-committee reviewed the draft submitted by Jan on May 10 th. Jan recorded comments and will incorporate the suggestions made. The next draft will be sent to all sub-committee members. It was noted at the last QEd meeting of May 3rd that Wayne proposed that the report format include:

    • What information/data has been gathered to date
    • Additional data to be gathered
    • Recommendations from the sub-committee 
    • Resources needed

Respectfully submitted by Linda Addante, May 14, 2007 at 1:20 am