Jared Polis Foundation Education Report: People

In June, the Colorado Department of Education welcomed Dwight Jones as the new Commissioner of Education. Jones was chosen unanimously by the Colorado State Board of Education to replace William Maloney, who had served as the Commissioner since 1997 and had announced his plans to retire in June of 2007. He previously served as superintendent for the Fountain-Fort Carson school district for four years and also served on many committees and boards, including the Closing the Achievement Gap Commission. Prior to moving to Colorado, Jones was an educator in Kansas where he rose through the ranks of the Wichita school district and eventually became superintendent, and was also an operational vice president of Edison Schools, Inc.

This summer, we had a chance to ask him about a number of critical issues and challenges facing Colorado’s education system during a very interesting interview, which follows.

Almost two months have passed since the Colorado State Board of Education unanimously appointed you as Colorado Commissioner of Education. What are your first impressions of the job and what are your top priorities for your first year at the Colorado Department of Education?

My first impressions would probably be that the job is huge. As I have been meeting with legislators, State Board of Education members, educators, community members, I mean the amount of folks that have actually come in and had a dialogue has just been intense. What I am seeing is that there are so many issues, and the issues we have been discussing are big. It isn’t something that you can just say, ‘Well I will just do that and then I will fix that and just do this and that will fix that,’ I mean a lot of them are policy issues, some are philosophical issues, some of the issues have to do with how we feel about certain populations of kids. That has been probably the hardest part, even though the learning curve has been kind of steep that has been the biggest “ah-ha” in coming into this position. Just the complexity and the enormity of the educational issues that face this state, and so that has been the biggest piece.

The second part of that was, “What’s the plan for the first year?” I have been dealing with my staff saying that we have to do everything at once, because I am one of those kind of firm believers that, though there are those big issues that we’ve got to address, there are youngsters that are currently in the system and are transitioning through the system that need us to deal with those kinds of issues. So, we’re trying to put together a strategic plan here at the department to prioritize. If we have a list of 20 things, then we know we can’t do all 20 things at once. Let’s try and prioritize which of those things we think have the most urgency. And then how do we go about supporting either districts or schools, or helping to set policy across the street [the capital] around things that are the most urgent. Even though we are starting to get some thoughts and ideas, I am not in a position right now to share that plan. We have a retreat coming up with the State Board of Education and I hope to have a draft of some of our thoughts and priorities that we’ve got to try to get our arms around yesterday rather than even tomorrow. So that is kind of how we are trying to go about getting that put together.

Now, in my first Chiefline [commissioner newsletter to districts and schools] I listed what I consider some of my non-negotiables. We have to do something with the achievement gap, and it has to be more than just talking about it. This state has been talking about it for a long time and there has not been a lot of action. We are getting ready to release another round of CSAP scores and there certainly has not been much result. There was still a double-digit gap. And when I am talking about double-digits I am not talking about it being in the teens, I am talking more about it being a 20-30% point gap. So you can see that that’s going to be a piece that we’ve got to quit talking about and put resources behind it if that is what it takes. Get focused around it and start holding ourselves accountable to saying that those results have got to change. [I] talked a little bit about early childhood education, as not a non-negotiable, but maybe one that makes the list of things we really have to focus on. I think the Governor has made that a priority and fought pretty hard to try to get some additional funding to support either some additional pre-school slots or some kindergarten slots. I’m very supportive of that. I don’t think, I know early childhood education makes a difference. And finally, graduation rates. The state has to identify how we are going to interpret graduation rates. I think we have to get our arms around where we’re not being very successful graduating. And even graduating kids at the level that it has a rigor where we don’t have to do so quite much remediation at the next level, or that kids are college ready. I am not saying every kid is going to go to college, or has to go to college. I am saying, as a state, and ourselves as a department, we ought to help support every kid at least be college ready or that they or their families can make a choice so that we don’t make that choice for them based on the fact that they don’t have the necessary skills. So that’s a long answer to your first question.

During your four-year tenure as the superintendent of schools for the Fountain-Fort Carson School District you successfully narrowed the achievement gap and you also served on the Closing the Achievement Gap Commission. What “lessons learned” from your experience can inform efforts to close the achievement gap statewide?

A lesson that was a frustrating lesson was that there were a lot of really good people with very good ideas that were discussed and ultimately became part of the plan of the Achievement Gap Commission. And nothing happened with that. So, I guess one of my lessons was actually a lesson in frustration because there was a lot of time and a lot of effort. And as a superintendent, any time I am spending away from teachers and kids I think makes a difference. I am not trying to cry over spilled milk. I am just saying that there were some pretty good recommendations that came out there that didn’t seem… I know that funding is tight, but you typically find money for the things that are really important to you. We still find money for roads, and that’s important and we should find money for roads. We still find money for other things. I think if the achievement gap was really important to us we’d probably find a way to find some resources to help support that. I heard ‘well, some of the recommendations cost money, we don’t have any money,’ therefore nothing happens. So, that was a little frustrating, even though I understand how it works. I certainly did not go back and pout. I just said that’s how it works, I am just disappointed. In school district 8 I always tell folks that there is no magical pill. If there was a magical pill everyone would take it, and we’d be done with it. It doesn’t matter what it would cost we could find the money and everyone could just take the pill. We could just eliminate and that’s what works.

Now the practices that we focused on in school district 8 are practices that everybody can do, and a lot of folks are doing: student engagement; making sure that kids are engaged in class; making sure that teachers are well trained; trying to hire the best and the brightest; looking at direct instruction; doing spot observations and giving teachers immediate feedback on the practice. None of those things are rocket science and there are a lot of districts across the state that are doing those kinds of things. And those things certainly matter. Aligning your curriculum, you know those pieces.

I always say there are four things. One of them is it is tremendous work, it is hard work, and I am not sure everybody is willing to do the work that it takes to actually narrow or eliminate that achievement gap because it’s hard work. The teachers and administrators in district 8 worked very, very hard. And I want to give them that recognition for their hard work. Number two, you have got to get pretty focused about the things that make a difference. You can’t be all things and do all things. So we like to say that there are some leverage points that make a difference like: aligning the curriculum, direct instruction, spot observations. Getting pretty focused around what really makes a difference because I think some folks spray too much, and they’re doing this, and there doing this and this program looks good. There is no substitute for just good teaching. We didn’t think that some program was going to fix the gap. We thought that if we made sure all teachers were well trained and then giving them the best tools and practices to use would make a difference. And I think that has made a difference. Then there has to be a sense of urgency. I mean the gap will exist as it does right now in this state year after year after year unless someone gets a sense of urgency around, we’ve got to do something about it and we’ve got to do it yesterday. So let’s go. Its hard work, its being pretty focused, very focused, and it is a sense of urgency.

And then the last thing for me is you really have to expect that all kids can learn. And that seems like common sense everyone expects that all kids can learn; but that is not the case. You have to have high expectations and those have to be modeled. So let me give you an example. If you have high expectations for kids, you have to believe that all kids can do high level work. And when they do less than that, it’s got to be a do-over. And sometimes parents don’t like do-overs and kids don’t like do-overs but if you are going to hold folks to a standard, now that doesn’t mean you don’t have to help someone do it over, you have to support them and stay after them, and that’s why I say its hard work. But we can’t have this expectation for African American males sending in a project at the high school, that it can be a different level than the white kids. Sometimes you know you will face some teachers that say ‘Oh, I am just so glad they turned something in’. That can’t be the expectation that we have. That we’re just glad you turned something in. The expectation has to be that, I am glad you turned it in too, but you can do better work. And so I am going to give it back to you and you’re going to turn it in again. I had some teachers and professors during my university work that did that to me. ‘Dwight you are capable of doing better work, good effort, go back and do it again.’ And I even had a professor one time tear a paper that was a C, I only needed a C to graduate. And he said, ‘you can take this C, but I am not even going to allow you to take this C; I am going to rip it up and I am going to have you start completely over because you can do better.’ And so I do think it is that expectation, and what I have found is kids will meet you there. Kids usually meet you at about what ever you expect. So, we don’t expect much, what do you think we get? Not much. If we expect a lot more, what I have found more so than not is that you get a lot more. So it is really kind of those four things, which everyone can do, I just think a lot of us just don’t, and that’s the difference.

Teacher quality is a critical factor for educational achievement. How can we improve teacher preparation, increase teacher pay and reward performance to attract and retain a new generation of effective teachers for all schools?

Well that is a really difficult question. That has been kind of the elephant in the room. What I mean by that is, kids learn different, I don’t know if they learn different, we just have better research and data about how kids actually learn, you know now kids have a more technical world and its more self-gratifying and immediate and all those things. So certainly I think kids come to us a little different than they did when I was a kid. Kids now can manipulate electronics like it’s the back of their mind. I mean, my four-year-old figures out my cell phone and can do stuff on it that I can’t do, I mean he’s not read the manual, has had no training. I almost give it to my four-year-old and say, can you set-up my voicemail? I don’t know how to get to that. But at the university level, and I am not just trying to call out universities; but our teacher ed programs have not changed. Folks are still being trained the same way based on a model that I am not even sure even exists. So I don’t think that’s very fair to teachers.

For example, in our school district, even though teachers get training on early childhood, on how to teach reading, we have found that the majority of teachers that are fresh out of college have no idea, they might know how to do a reading group or set up, but if a kid is a struggling reader they have no clue about what you do about it. So we do reading training for all teachers regardless because we know they all need it, and so we do that at the district level. I know that the colleges have complained a little about remediation, about having high school kids going into college. But I have said that turn-around is fair-play because I have to do a lot of remediation of the teachers that are coming out of your system, so I guess we are both suffering. We both have something to fix. So you know, teacher quality, in fairness to teachers, what I like is a lot of the young people who are going into education are quite bright, quite capable.

I think if we re-adjusted what we expected and how we trained them, we would know some things. We’ve learned a lot about how kids read and if a kid can’t read, what has to be done. If we can transcend that to say that has to be part of the program, I think that would really make a difference. Or the fact that elementary teachers have to be expected to be able to teach math. If you will go into a lot of schools today, most, especially early elementary teachers will say ‘you know I have got to teach reading and writing, I really don’t have to teach math.’ We have found that kids need to learn those math concepts at an early age, and as that starts to spiral and as they move through the system, if they don’t have that strong foundation, of certain math skills then we know they become struggling math students. So, is it important for kindergarten and first-grade teachers to be able to teach math and teach it well and teach it at a high level? Absolutely it is. I just think there are some things we know, I am just not sure we have made the adjustments.

In relationship to teacher pay - it is huge, it is key. I think you have to pay a competitive wage. We expect a lot out of our teachers. In our school district we tried to make sure we were one, two or three in the region. And there [are] about 14 school districts in the Pikes Peak region. And our board, what’s nice about it is I didn’t have to convince our board. They recognized and understood it, and held me accountable. Sometimes, if there were things that I wanted to do, they looked at compensation for teachers first. And they said ‘whether you can do those things will be determined by what percentage we have got to increase our teacher pay.’ That’s always first, so when we would do our budget meetings, if it looked like we had to give a 5% increase, and we knew the resources were tight, we would always start the budget meetings by saying ‘ok 5% goes to teachers, now let’s see what we have left, and that’s how we can decide what else to do.’ And that is how we started the meeting.

Every district again has that opportunity, and it is kind of where our priorities are. If we are going to expect a lot out of our teachers, and ultimately kids are only going to improve based on the teachers in the classroom. There are no tricks, no gimmicks for a teacher in front of 24 or 25 kids, and them getting really good instruction, and it doesn’t matter where you are if you are a high level student or a low level student, we expect our teachers to meet all of their needs. Think about how difficult that is. I am a teacher lover. Our teachers have such huge responsibility. We have to find resources to keep them at a competitive salary.

Colorado has long been in the forefront of the school choice movement. We were among the first states that passed legislation enabling the creation of charter schools, intra- and inter-district public school choice is offered statewide, and online education is growing rapidly. But at the same time, many parents are unaware of available choices or do not have adequate information on how to navigate the choice process. How can we improve the quality of information and enable parents to access available options? In addition, there are concerns about the effectiveness of existing accountability systems. What is needed to ensure that all schools are held accountable for their performance?

That’s a big question, your killing me. This is tougher than the interview with the State Board of Education. I don’t know what data you have gathered, but I think you make a couple of assumptions, and those assumptions may be true, I am just saying I don’t have the data to support it; and that is that parents are not aware of some of the choice options and don’t know how to navigate that system. That may be true, but I think, and a lot of parents I have talked to, they understand that choice is out there. I think that some of them purposely make a choice to stay in their current public school, even if their public school may not be doing very well because here is a concept that I think a lot of parents embrace. There will be a high percentage of parents that may not think that maybe some schools are doing very well, but it’s not their school.

Let me use the example of some very under performing schools that a board might try to close and when does a boardroom get packed. It gets packed by those neighborhood parents that say ‘don’t close my school’, and that school may be underperforming like you would not believe. I have lived that case in point when I worked as a vice president with Edison Schools. In Baltimore Maryland, the state took over three schools that were underperforming, they reconstituted them. One of them was Montebello elementary school. 100% black, 100% free and reduced; kids [with] single digits on their state assessments, which was the MSPAP (Maryland School Performance Assessment Program) at the time. When we went in as Edison schools to do something different and offer something different and give the guarantee that if we are not better you can fire us and kick us out of town. The auditorium was packed with angry parents about, ‘what are you doing?’ and ‘we love our school’. I just went, ‘Are you kidding me! No one can read, or write or do math, but you love your school?’ I said, ‘Now, obviously some of the folks in your system have done a good job of saying that reading and writing don’t matter. As long as kids can come to school and have lunch and recess and all those things, That’s unbelievable.’ The only time I was finally able to turn that crowd is, I put my own children in an Edison school in Wichita, Kansas, and I said, ‘I would not sell you anything that I would not put my own child into. I am going to take care of my kid,’ I am going to tell you that. I told the audience that. And [I am] going to make sure my kids can read and write and do math and are able to compete. And I said ‘ Don’t you want me to make the same guarantee to your kids, and shouldn’t I equally say that is what should happen?’ and the crowd finally started to turn. When I actually put some data up on the board, I am not sure some of the parents had ever seen the data. I said look at the school, which was predominantly…white. I said, “Look at that achievement compared to your kids,” And when they leave this school and [are] out in the real world, there is no separation like that. They have to compete for the same job.

How do we brake this cycle that we have in our inner-city? I think we have to break it through education. But I don’t know that parents…don’t know about choice. I still think there is a sense of loyalty and almost obligation to the system. We don’t change the system, it’s a system we came through. So I don’t know if it is because of lack of information, or just that folks have…become accustomed to, this is a system that we are in, and it was good enough for me, its good enough for my kids. I am not sure that matches the changing world. So that would be my impression there.

The accountability measures are how we help parents. [That is] what I have found in our district, and we put a lot of information on our website. Parents shop their [district] website. And I believe they looked at the accountability measures and did some school comparison because I had some parents come in and say ‘I picked your district because I looked at the district I live in, and your middle school is different than that middle school, so we are driving everyday to come to this [school].’ So I do think parents are becoming better educated. And it isn’t just about test data, it’s about safety; it’s about the attendance; it’s about the teachers that you have; it’s about the principal and how engaging they are. It’s about all of those things. So I think that parents are starting to shop that. That is why I agree that we are trying to see if there is a way for us to get a fairly comprehensive and consistent accountability measure that parents can count on.

Right now in my district for AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) you had to make as a district 122 categories. We made 121 out of 122, so we were a failing district. Now how are you a failing district? You make 121 out of 122 of the benchmarks. So, we would have to send parents a letter saying that we were a failing district, then they would hear from the state ‘ the schools are high or excellent rated, so which is it? Are you failing, or are you good? How do I know?’ I said we have got to [remedy] some of that confusion. And I don’t think that it is intended, I think it is unintended. So if we can get an accountability system aligned, that we can agree to that includes more than just test data. That includes pieces that parents would like to look at as they start to evaluate, whether it is a public school or a charter school, because we have some charter schools that don’t perform very well either. Parents need to have accurate information. Some of the charter schools have great marketing, but you have got to get passed the marketing and the glossy brochure to say what really is happening, and probably the same thing happens in some of our public school. Some of them are pretty good at the verbiage and the marketing and what goes out. But if you are not willing to dig underneath to make a determination than I think sometimes we just accept what we see or read.

So you think all schools should be held accountable within the public school system regardless of online, charter?

You bet, as a matter of fact if it looks like money starts trickling to even private, private ought to have the same accountability measures as well. We ought to determine what those accountability measures are and then we aught to hold all of ourselves accountable, even if you are online.

In April, Governor Bill Ritter created the P-20 Coordinating Council to align the state’s educational system from pre-school through grade 20. How do you envision working with the higher education, early childhood and business communities to move toward an educational pipeline that prepares students to succeed in college and successfully meet the needs of employers in a global knowledge-based economy?

I think that P-20 council is an excellent start. We have got to start looking at it as an educational system that is interconnected and non-isolated. But I am not sure Pre-K is early enough. I usually say birth-20, or B-20, because what we have found is that those first formative years are vital. We know that in a wealthy household versus a non-wealthy household, the amount of literature that kids are exposed to [is larger]; and that maybe as simple as whether or not your parents read to you, or even whether or not your parents talk to you. And we know that some parents that are working two or three jobs trying to make a living, and doing all those things that [don’t allow them] to talk to their kids. Sometimes they reach their kids coming and going. And I work a lot myself, and there were some times when my wife would say ‘you haven’t seen the kids,’ Because I would leave before they would get up and I’d get home after they have gone to bed. And you know we’ve always been what I would say is a middle-class home; but that even exists in middle-class because even making it in middle-class has become more and more difficult. So I had a wife that was kind of filling in for me; but every now-and-then she would say ‘listen you cannot leave so early, I don’t care if you want to go to the Y and workout before work,’ Or ‘ you cant get home so late because the kids haven’t even seen you,’ I think that is part of what exists, so I really applaud the governor for trying to take, and I say ‘trying to’ because there are some paradigms that have got to be broken down, to say ‘is that an interconnected system that flows all the way through college?’ And if it is, how do we go about doing that? So I am afraid I don’t have the answers for you, but I am glad there is going to be conversations and some recommendations come out, that I think is going to really help us to do that, because part of it is there are some sacred cows. And those sacred cows exist at all levels. I am an old farmer, so I use cows as an example. Elementary schools have their sacred cows that they hang onto, and every elementary school ought to do this. And this is elementary, middle, high school and certainly college. And at some point we have got to be saying, for the sake of the kids that we are trying to serve we have got to all be willing to give up some of those sacred cows, some of those things that we just want to hold onto, that’s ours, and it doesn’t belong anywhere else.

And then hopefully we have got to also look to see if there are adequate resources. I am not saying there’s not, but what I am saying is that we ought to have that conversation. Are there adequate resources to do the kinds of things that we have got to do to support all kids, because we know that certain kids and certain schools need different kinds of resources and if you look at how we actually fund our per-pupil allocation for our public schools, or even how we fund higher education, both of those are at the low-end of the spectrum of other states rather than even in the middle or at the upper-end. You can’t just expect more, more and more and think that the current system can just support that and house that. At some point we have got to say, how do we support that and some of that support comes through resources.

Lowering high school dropout rates and improving college access and success are critical challenges facing Colorado. Dual enrollment programs, also known as early college programs, that allow high school students to take college courses and earn both a high school diploma and a college degree simultaneously have proven effective in both reducing high school dropout rates and expanding postsecondary opportunities, and are being implemented in several states. Do you think Colorado should encourage the development of such programs in our high schools, and if so, how can the state assist such efforts?

Well, I think not only should we, I think we better. I am a huge supporter of that concept; I think it’s got to happen. If we are even going to get to the 20th Century, I am not even talking about the 21st Century, even to the 20th Century we have got to put those pieces in place. Our kids are way ahead of us, their already starting, that’s what online has offered some of them. They’re already taking college level classes sometimes even when their school doesn’t allow it, they will go somewhere else, or they will be taking them online in a different situation.

Our kids are quite capable; I think the senior year has been a wasted year. It could be a lot more, but ask the kids whether or not, most of them work hard so that they can get all of their work done and just lay back, chill, relax that senior year. Some of them don’t take math that senior year. We know when you go into college, sure you’re going to get remediated in math because you haven’t had any math for a year. You have got to stay up and consistent. Some of us, I always was a pretty good math student; but, I couldn’t go back and do that math right now because I don’t do it everyday. You have got to stay with it. That’s a progression, how we try and support that. The answer is absolutely yes, we have got to do it. And some districts are doing it. I am happy to say in our district kids could take college level classes that we brought on to the campus and get full college credit their junior and senior year, and we even had some very bright freshman and sophomores that were slipping into some of those classes, and the district paid for it. We used our allocations so that kids could take it and didn’t have to pay. We have kids graduate with 18-24 hours of college credit, some of them skip their freshman year of college. Right while they were in high school, and it was funded by us.

We have tried to say let’s put together a model that [helps] parents…encourage their kids to say, ‘that senior year we better do it, because that even helps me.’ What we have found in that process was some kids that didn’t think they were capable of going to college they would take these college level classes and all of a sudden they would say, ‘I can do that work,’ No one in their family had ever gone to college, so they don’t know how that works. I think it even broke down some of the cycles of generations of kids that hadn’t even seen college as an option. We have to do it at the state level. You know the State Board has passed that fifth year [rule], and how that is all going to be funded I am not sure… [not] all those questions have been answered. But that fifth year potentially could give some schools some options, but I am saying those options already exist, it’s how you want to spend your resources. But it is probably going to take more resources, but I think schools have got to get in that business. I think that is going to be one of the choice options that parents will start looking at the high school level. ‘Do you offer this? What’s the option for my kids?’ You know ‘what’s the connection, can they work on dual credit can they get a dual degree?’ You know those kinds of things; I think that’s going to become just what parents expect.

Many school districts have significant unmet capital construction and repair needs and are struggling to address serious health and safety problems in their classrooms and buildings. In your view, what is the role of modern, safe and technologically equipped school facilities in helping our kids learn and succeed?

I do think this state has some obligation. We know that there are different resources based on economic ability of districts. Castle Rock [has] growth, wealth, business and infrastructure coming in. Certainly, they can either raise bonds or just through that growth alone are able to create enough resources to build state-of-the art buildings. You can go out to some of the farming communities, especially this year, they have been struck by drought. For them to raise the same kind of resources, first of all, they don’t have the same level of businesses and corporat[ions] to be able to raise that. It’s all on the back of farmers. And second, when farmers don’t have a crop they don’t have any money. And so I just think that there is that inequity, not really intended, just almost by design based on where you live. And what we have said is we shouldn’t dictate facilities, quality of education, all of those things, based on where you live. In this state we want every kid to have access to the very best that we can offer. And in order to do that, I do think its going probably take some support at the state level, but you know it is still local control. And so it isn’t that I think that the state should just take on that obligation. There’s going to have to be some middle ground, and some middle-ground based on need. Everybody doesn’t need the same thing.

An assessment of need?

I think there has got to be some assessment of needs, and ability. Because some communities are quite capable, the tax payers may not approve it, but they have the mill level authority and mill level ability to do it. I am not sure the state should just do that, I think that the local community has to make that commitment, and they maybe sending a message to their school saying they expect something better, its got to get stronger. So I don’t think you just carte-blanch just say that’s what we do, but I think there has to be some kind of [action] based on need and ability, because I do think there are some communities [where it] matters if their parents would all pass the mill levy, or what ever that increase might be. There is not much capability to even raise many resources. So… I don’t know, I just think that that probably needs to happen. It’s a difficult question and people feel different about it. You sometimes can’t say you want local control on this, but you want, at some point we have got to say, what’s a middle-ground on how we are going to make sure that all kids have access to the best education, best facilities, best technology, all of those things that are important for kids to be competitive, not just in their state, and not just in the United States; but, in the world. That’s what are kids are faced with… I never had to think about competing against folks from other countries. And not even that much, competing [with] folks outside of the state, it was kind of an in state world that no longer exists. Our young people have quite a different world, quite different challenges.

Anything you would like to add? Anything I did not cover?

The only thing that I would add is that I have been quite impressed with the State Board of Education, and their commitment to wanting to assure that all kids get a good education. There is quite a differencing of opinion, but what isn’t different is that commitment to children. And I can tell you as an outsider coming in, maybe I didn’t always hear that, but I have gotten to see that first hand. Now I am trying to keep us all kind of agreeing on how we are going to go about doing, but what I don’t have to do is convince any of them that we need to do it. And that has been really nice. So slip that in, my bosses are tough but they are doing alright.

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