Study Guide

It is important to prevent bullying, harassment, and intimidation in my district because of the effects of these problems on school culture and student learning. Students who do not feel safe in school are likely to be less motivated to attend school and are unlikely to be able to focus fully on their learning when in school. As superintendent, I am responsible for ensuring all students' safety in school and for promoting school cultures and behaviors that reflect democratic values of good citizenship and respect for diversity. By working to prevent the targeted problems, I would help ensure all students' safety and thereby help maximize student learning and academic performance.

One of my first tasks as the new superintendent would be to review student behavior guidelines and procedures currently in place and discuss my questions and concerns with my staff and the school board. I would then create a group that includes stakeholders with varied experiences and expertise (e.g., teachers, school counselors, parents, students, law enforcement personnel, community mental health professionals) to begin reviewing relevant information and developing a plan that effectively addresses the targeted problems. Bringing such stakeholders into the process of developing the plan would be helpful for gaining diverse perspectives on the issue, accessing many kinds of relevant expertise and resources, and helping ensure that the district's responses are effective and appropriate in the local context. Including others in the process as described would also likely facilitate broad buy-in and involvement in implementing the final plan, as well as increasing the district's access to resources necessary for its successful implementation.

Before developing a plan, I would gather various types of data and other information. For example, I would survey students and parents to identify their specific concerns and perceptions around the targeted issues. This would be helpful because we could look at actual documented incidents to see how they align with concerns and perceptions. Through surveys, we could determine whether there are related issues needing to be addressed that do not show up in school statistics. We may also find that we need to reconsider how we communicate with students and parents about school behavior issues so they have a clear understanding of expectations for student behavior and how we deal with the behavior issues of concern.

Another type of information that would be important to review involves procedures currently used in each school to document and report on incidents related to the issues in question. This information would be helpful for ensuring that schools across the district are using a consistent and accurate method of collecting and analyzing data so that we can make informed decisions when developing a plan to address the issues. It would also help ensure that we can accurately identify specific areas of need, populations affected, and factors that may be contributing to higher levels or lower levels of occurrence.

Bullying, harassment, and intimidation can affect everyone including those who are bullied, those who bully, and those that witness bullying. These are aggressive behaviors—words, actions, or social exclusions that intentionally hurt or harm another person. Bullying is linked to many negative outcomes for students including academic, physical, social, and emotional problems. The severity and duration of the abuse impacts student safety and learning.

I would reach out to relevant stakeholders, such as parents/guardians, students, teachers, counselors, coaches, law enforcement, community and religious leaders, school board members, district lawyers, outreach organizations, and social services and form an Anti-Bullying League. A community liaison will be consulted about the various cultures and languages spoken in the area and best practices for reaching out to them.

The whole community plays an essential role in providing high-quality education for its students. Each stakeholder brings a different perspective, background, and point-of-view and their input would be valued and respected. Board members often are sensitive to particular community groups whose needs may or may not have been met. District staff have the daily contact with students. Meeting with parents could provide opportunities to express the needs of their children. When schools, parents, families, and communities work together to address problems, students feel more encouraged and supported.

One type of data that should be collected and analyzed prior to developing a plan is the School Discipline Report, which is school-specific data on the number and types of incidents that resulted in out-of-school suspension or expulsion of students. The data are reported by school year. Another type of information that is important to gather is: What resources are available to our schools to help us in our efforts to prevent bullying, intimidation, and harassment?

An indicator of schools' efforts to recognize and curb disruptive behavior in schools is found in the School Discipline Report. Offenses associated with bullying, intimidation and harassment are weapons violations, fighting, threats, intimidation, or harassment of others. This information will help to examine the size and scope of the problem. It will be useful to compare data after interventions are in place to ascertain their effectiveness in reducing aggressive behaviors.

Resources for schools would be useful in developing a plan. Our district needs assistance with policy development and selecting a prevention/intervention program that includes staff training to identify and properly respond to bullying. State and federal programs are in existence, such as the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program, and we need to determine if there are programs that we want our school district to participate in to curb the incidents of bullying, harassment, and intimidation. We need a clearly worded, board-adopted district policy. Adopting and enforcing district policy, training staff, and having school climates in which the norm does not tolerate bullying-related behaviors will create a safe environment where teaching and learning are clearly seen as the focus of the schools.

One important issue related to student achievement and/or teacher effectiveness suggested by this data is the consistently lower scores in sixth-grade English and math compared with other grade levels in the district. Although scores on state tests across the district have been below state averages, other grade levels are showing better gains in English and math than sixth grade and are thus doing more to close the gap with the state. The sixth-grade issue is important because if students are not mastering skills in core content areas as they transition from elementary to middle school, they may experience difficulties across the curriculum as they progress to the upper grades. This may be particularly true in math, where skills learned in earlier grades are essential for mastering skills and concepts in higher grades. Besides the difficulty sixth graders may have in content-area learning later in middle school and in high school, this lack of skill development can contribute to student frustration and behavior issues and may ultimately even impact students' choices and potential for success in higher education and careers.

One approach I would use to learn more about the nature and/or causes of low scores in sixth grade would be to hold meetings with elementary and middle school principals to discuss how we prepare students for the increased rigor and expectations they encounter as they transition from elementary to middle school. Included in these discussions would be an evaluation of how we prepare our teachers to provide curriculum and instruction that meets students' academic needs as well as their developmental needs (e.g., in relation to personal responsibility, organizational skills) as they transition from upper elementary to middle school. By discussing how we transition students, we could develop a strategy for supporting teachers as they work with students to promote skills needed for greater success in sixth grade and beyond.

One strategy I would include in a plan to address this issue is to involve relevant staff (e.g., sixth-grade teachers, middle school principals, relevant upper elementary staff) in taking a closer look at the test performance of sixth graders to identify areas of particular weakness for all sixth graders, for sixth graders who attended particular elementary feeder schools or who are attending particular middle schools, and/or for particular subgroups of sixth graders. This strategy would help us ensure that we target our interventions exactly where the greatest needs are.

Another strategy would be to study and evaluate specific factors, such as attendance, that may be negatively affecting sixth-grade test performance. The goal would be to determine whether there is a correlation between student attendance (or other similar factors) and test scores and whether there is a pattern of low attendance, for example, for specific student groups, specific classes, etc. This would help us identify possible causes of the observed problems in achievement and determine whether we need to revisit related policies and procedures.

One important issue suggested by the data is an achievement gap among the Free/Reduced Price Lunch student group. The State Test Results data reflect an overall increase in scores in English Language Arts (ELA), mathematics, and science in the district and the Standardized Testing and Reporting Results by Student Group table also shows an increase in ELA and math scores for all grade levels. The Free/Reduced Price Lunch student group, which is 63% of the district population, made minimal gains over three years for ELA and math compared to the overall district performance.

This is important because this student group is the majority of our district's population and we need to ensure equity for all of students to succeed. We need to explore why there is a disparity between this student group and the rest of the district.

As a new superintendent, it can be very intimidating for classroom teachers to have their initial meeting with the superintendent focus on lagging scores. Therefore, my approach would be to meet with the principals to learn more about the cause of this achievement gap. What barriers are preventing this student group from achieving higher test scores? We need fact-finding and data gathering to answer this question. District policies must be carefully studied in order to document the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of various policies in closing the poverty achievement gap.

This approach would be useful because we need to identify the barriers that these students have and find ways to address the barriers. Is it lack of resources? Does this student group need intervention strategies? How can we offer more support services to this group? From this fact-finding and data collection, we can pinpoint areas of need and then create a plan which may include professional development, coaching, shared planning time, after-school tutoring, and other similar interventions.

One strategy to include in a plan is an internal review at each school site of curriculum alignment, professional development needs, resources, formative assessments, and periodic benchmark indicators of progress. Another strategy is Professional Development (PD) specifically addressing how children living in low-income homes affects student achievement.