That Little District in Warren County

 








Several years ago, my husband and I purchased a large home in Allamuchy Township with the intent of filling it with children. To become foster parents, we attended months of training and what seemed like even more months of intrusive and awkward meetings with DYFS workers. Within a week of completing our training, we were offered the opportunity to foster (and possibly adopt) three siblings. We were thrilled! Within a day of meeting our children, we knew that we never wanted to separate from these beautiful beings.

We registered the children for school with a mixture of concern and trepidation. Our children had many needs. We expected the school system to be resistant. I could not imagine that it would be “fun” to have us as parents. My husband and I have very loud and poignant opinions about all things pertaining to curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Nonetheless, what we found was an overwhelming amount of acceptance and support for our children.

The Allamuchy Township School District exceeded my expectations. In my career, I have worked with over 60% of the schools in New Jersey and countless other districts in the tri-state area. At no point did I plan to be critical or negative toward the district’s educators, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to be. As a parent, I think that we should leave our school system alone, unless an incident occurs where we have no choice but to intervene on behalf of our child. For my biological children, such a time happened only once in their entire public school careers.

Even though I do not believe in interfering, that does not mean that I do not pay very careful attention to what is going on. What we found at Allamuchy Township were over-the-top caring educators. Our oldest adopted child went from being a “C” student from an Abbott district to being an “A” student in Allamuchy. She also went from being partially proficient on the NJASK to close to advanced proficient in just two years. Her success was due in part to her hard work and our emphasis on academic success. But mostly, her success came from the sixth grade English teachers in Allamuchy.

I am not saying that Allamuchy is an educational Shangri-La. The district’s curriculum is weak. It does not capture the Common Core Standards, and the pacing chart is a list of months with no associated content or activities. I am always disappointed in a district’s administration when teachers do not have clearly defined objectives, activities, and resources. That means that the instructors must define instructional activities on their own. In this case, the instructors were brilliant! Our daughter never used to read, and now she reads every chance she gets because the school assigns challenging, engaging literature AND activities so often that reading has become second nature to her.

Her teachers have made a significant impact on who she is and who she will become. My husband and I were inspired by her social studies instructors. We still joke that we want to sit in on their classes. We also believe that she will choose a career in the field of science because of her science instructor. This past summer, during our family reunion, our daughter spent an inordinate amount of time playing in rivers and streams looking for “critters.” When I saw her with those ugly, black, slimy, snail-like animals, all I thought was, “Oh my, our princess is touching dirty animals.” But don’t worry, I never said that. What I said was, “Wow, that is so cool.  What is that?” After I got over my discomfort of her touching and exploring the riverbanks, I realized that she was passionate about any living creature due to her science teacher’s passion for the life and environmental sciences. And for anyone that knows me, knows that I say, “Math is THE most important subject for a young lady. Be a strong mathematician and you can write your ticket to your chosen university;” just know that I am smiling. Allamuchy’s practices (not necessarily their curriculum) are fully aligned with the very rigorous, very challenging Common Core. That is saying a lot!

Our sons too have had exceptional experiences. They are both young children with great needs. Nevertheless, once again, the district exceeded our expectations. Our sons’ teachers text or email us if there is EVER a problem. In my opinion, the major reason why our children went from 0 to 10 in a few short years is due to the instructors’ efforts, intelligence, and hard work.

In terms of teacher effectiveness, Danielson, Marzano, and Stronge would be proud. These instructors created quality lesson plans with far reaching instructional materials despite the absence of clear curricula. They established caring classroom environments and worked with us hand-in-hand to assist our children in reaching their academic potential. And they even displayed progress as measured by test scores, what the Harvard theorists call the “value-added model” of teacher evaluation.

So on the cusp of completing our adoption, we’re on our way to begin a new life with our children. I selected a community with schools that are ranked 10 out of 10. We are looking at blues skies and academic rigor as we go forward. But we will not forget the small district in Warren County that made such a large and significant impact on our children’s future. Thank you, Allamuchy Township School District instructors.

Victoria Pagonis

Founder and President
Standards Solution

To PARCC or not to PARCC

If our students are going to succeed on assessments with content and formats they’ve never seen, on a novel online interface, then we need to assist them by providing strategies and experiences throughout the year that they can apply on testing day. Take for example the English assessments. Students need to know three new and very challenging genres: the Narrative Task, which includes literary and informational text; the Research Simulation Task, which requires students to analyze three pieces of informational text, of which one may be multimedia; and the Literary Analysis Task, which in the past was only taught in high school honors or advanced placement courses.

For the upcoming school year, districts should train all of their instructors on very explicit PARCC concepts and implement targeted PARCC lesson plans. Standards Solution has 20 reading, 20 writing, and 20 reading PARCC lessons plans with unique content for every lesson (540 in all) on every grade level, grades 3-11. During the next school year districts should consider how they can begin integrating the PARCC concepts into existing practice. Two years from now, districts should be integrating PARCC concepts into daily instruction. For students to succeed on PARCC, administrators need to move their entire district to one place. That’s a difficult task without a specific plan in place that uses high quality resources. 

To assure a rigorous and thorough understanding of PARCC, Standards Solution has developed numerous workshops: workshops that introduce the assessments’ major components and specs; workshops that provide an in-depth understanding of the ELA and math assessments (each conducted over a full day); and workshops that hone in on specific elements, such as Creating Quality Literary Analysis Tasks and Preparing Students for PARCC’s End-of-Year Mathematics Tests. But workshops alone cannot fill the bill. We provide assistance in the classroom with demonstration lessons (covering all aspects of the Common Core and PARCC), student product reviews, and targeted in-class support.

When we work with districts we provide them with access to our online software systems. There’s the Improved Instruction System with its 50,000 Common Core items, lesson plans, and workshops, and our Assessment Analyzer which houses our online assessments and our online formative assessments with technology-enhanced items and prescriptive lesson plans. 

But even with all of these resources, a workshop is a “tell me,” a demonstration lesson is a “show me,” and a student product review and in-class support is a “keep coming back until I make these concepts my own.” I think that we are different from other professional development companies. We do not want to work with a district on the same goal for more than three years. We want to assure that the district will be successful in the long term without us. Instead of “lean on my perspective,” we embrace the “teaching a person how to fish” philosophy. 

Victoria Pagonis

Founder and President
Standards Solution