Arizona’s public schools chief said he plans to push five new initiatives in his plan to improve K-12 education in the state. He also said the Department of Education is using “a full-court press” to make sure all students pass the AIMS test.

“Our job is to be sure that everything possible is being done to ensure that the students are taught what is needed for them to become proficient in reading, writing and mathematics,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said. “We are doing this in a number of different ways — it is a full-court press.”

In his State of Education 2005 speech delivered Jan. 5 at Taylor Junior High School in Mesa, Mr. Horne laid out his plan for Arizona students and teachers. Key elements to improving education, he said, are intervening in failing schools, increasing adult volunteers in the schools, incorporating technology to assist teachers, focusing on math improvement and expanding career and technical education programs.

“One way or another,” he said, “we will push relentlessly, both in support and intervention, to ensure that never again in Arizona will a student attend a school where he does not learn and become proficient.”

Of the 81 schools last year in their second year of being labeled under performing, only 11 were unable to escape being labeled failing by not raising student test scores. By law, the state must intervene in failing schools to increase performance. Mr. Horne said the department will be focusing on the state intervention of those 11 schools as pilot projects, in hopes of developing successful models for turning around schools that cannot sufficiently raise their test scores in the future.

Volunteers

Mr. Horne said the Education Department has begun the “Emeritus Program” to promote a massive increase in the number of adults — especially highly accomplished retirees — who volunteer to help students in a one-on-one setting.

“We will recruit adult volunteers statewide and partner with school districts to provide them with training and the opportunity to help students increase their academic achievement,” he said.

Technology

The third major initiative for 2005 will be the use of technology to enhance data-driven instruction, Mr. Horne said, in order to provide professional development to all Arizona teachers through streaming video and Internet-based methods for communicating, displaying and sharing one’s work. He called it “a major leap forward for teachers in individualizing instruction” that all teachers will have access to data needed to make more informed instructional decisions.

“For years, teachers have been individualizing instruction for students,” Mr. Horne said. “However, they have lacked the tools and access to data. Our planned state support for technology and data-driven instruction will…provide the basic data analysis tools to schools, teachers and to students.”

As an example, Mr. Horne said this spring’s AIMS scores — for the first time ever — will be reported as to whether those students fell far below, approached, met or exceeded standards for each concept measured in the test, rather that a simple pass/fail in the three core areas of reading, writing and math.

“Schools can no longer be data-rich and information poor,” he said. “We can take a lesson from business and gather all the data in one place, tie it together, and then mine for valuable information and relationships between those elements that would otherwise remain hidden under mountains of bedrock.”

Math Initiative

The same people who have successfully operated Reading First, a program that provides targeted funds to increase reading ability in 72 high-needs schools, will lead the math initiative, Mr. Horne said. It will be a two-pronged approach to improving math scores, by providing effective strategies to address students who have fallen far behind and increasing the effectiveness of classroom instructing to prevent students from falling behind.

Arizona has attracted national attention, Mr. Horne said, because of the success of its career and technical education students. As a result of the education such programs provide, students in these programs have passed the AIMS test at a higher rate than other students.

“While students are learning about specific occupations, they are focusing on the reading, writing and mathematics standards that relate both to the occupational skills and to the Arizona academic standards,” he said. “By working in the private sector, they learn that skills such as algebra, geometry, reading difficult material and writing clearly are relevant to their futures. This is an important motivational factor.”

Technical Education

Mr. Horne said the state will increase the number of students enrolled in three “exceptionally successful” career and technical education programs: automotive technologies programs, health care programs and drafting and design technology programs.

The “full-court press” to help students pass AIMS is already underway, Mr. Horne said. The state has $10 million available for tutoring and has presented conferences on the best practices for teaching math, he said. Also, for the first time this spring, teachers, instead of an out-of-state testing company, will have written all of the AIMS test questions.

“The result is that the test questions will be a better match to the standards that the teachers are teaching in the classroom,” he said, something he expects will increase the number of passing students.

In addition, the teachers that wrote the test questions were also hired to write practice questions to test the same concepts. The practice questions are posted on the Department of Education Web site at www.ade.az.gov.

Mr. Horne said he does not expect the transformation of Arizona’s school system to be an easy one — other states have gone through the same process, and he said the department is prepared for controversy and law suits. However, he said no amount of legal action or controversy will change the department’s vision.

“Beginning in 2006, for the first time in many years, the public will be assured that a high school diploma in Arizona means something,” he said. “Whatever is worthwhile requires passing through hardships.” —