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Q&A with Terry Bergeson: Shepherding Standards in Washington Schools |
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Written On: September/October 2004 |
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Terry Bergeson was elected as Washington’s Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1996, and re-elected in 2000. She is seeking a third term.
A 42-year educator, she previously served as chair of the Washington Commission on Student Learning, president of the Washington Education Association, and as a school administrator, teacher and counselor.
She began her career as a public school teacher and counselor in her home state of Massachusetts. In 1969, she earned a master’s degree in counseling and guidance and moved to Washington state where she became a counselor at Lincoln High School in Tacoma. At Lincoln, she created a successful program for at-risk students.
Bergeson earned her doctorate from the University of Washington and became active in the Washington Education Association and was elected president in 1985. In 1993, she was appointed executive director of the Washington State Commission on Student Learning, developing statewide standards for students, and a series of tests students must pass prior to graduation.
Q: You started as a former classroom teacher. What are the biggest challenges facing teachers today?
A: When I started my career as a junior high teacher, I was handed a textbook and told to “go as far as you can.” There were no learning standards, no school mission, no one holding me accountable for actual learning results with my students. Today, we have common learning goals across the state and we’re holding schools accountable for reaching those goals. Teachers no longer work in isolation; to succeed, they must work as part of a team in their schools. This is a major shift in the way we’ve traditionally taught students, and it’s putting a lot of added pressure on teachers. They’re also dealing with a far more diverse student population. Students in our schools speak more than 180 languages, and the population of students dealing with challenges from poverty to physical disabilities continues to grow. Teachers have to find a way to help each individual student meet our learning goals. It’s a far more challenging job than it used to be, but for all the right reasons — to raise learning expectations and outcomes for all of our kids.
Q: You also served as president of the Washington Education Association (WEA). Do you have ideas on how parents, employers and those elected to office can find ways to meet the needs of teachers in a less confrontational way?
A: The most important thing we can do is to remember who we all are serving — the more than one million students in our public schools — and to make a conscious decision to always put them first. Policy-makers have made important decisions these past few years about increasing student expectations and school accountability. Those same policy-makers have not provided the state resources needed to fully achieve those expectations. That puts enormous pressure on local districts to make up the difference. It creates undue pressure on local levies and becomes a potential source of conflict. All of us who care about the future of our kids need to sit down, determine what we need to do to accomplish our education goals, and tell each other what we’re willing to put on the table and what we’re willing to commit to.
A good example of this kind of partnership exists in the schools currently participating in our school improvement program. My staff works with the entire school team to conduct an audit of the school’s performance and learn where the real improvement needs are. Then we create a “performance agreement” that outlines each team member’s responsibility at the school, district and state level as we work together toward the shared goal of improving the school. Those responsibilities include providing the resources the school needs to meet the goals. We need to use this kind of model statewide, and have some honest conversations about the real needs of our education system and what each of us is willing to do to meet those needs.
Q: What is the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) and why is it so important?
A: When we developed state learning standards back in the 1990s, we also had to develop a way to measure student progress toward meeting those standards. That’s what the Washington Assessment of Student Learning is — a once-a-year check on whether students are learning the skills we expect of them. This is not your typical standardized test. Most questions require students to explain, to persuade, to show how they got their answer. In sum, they’re required to think and apply what they know. The WASL gets a lot of attention because aggregate scores are made public and there’s added accountability riding on the results, but what’s truly important are the skills those scores represent. The WASL is by no means the only, or even the most important, way to measure student achievement. But because the WASL tests are carefully developed to measure learning standards we are asking our kids to reach, the results are an excellent barometer of how students are doing — and how we adults are doing in providing our kids with the help they need to meet those standards.
Q: What was the basis for the 1209 education reforms passed in 1992? Are they working?
A: In the early 1990s, there was a real consensus in this state from educators, parents and business and community leaders that too many students were graduating without the skills they needed to succeed in today’s world. In the past several decades, the kinds of skills workers need have changed dramatically. The vast majority of jobs now require some kind of post-secondary training or education. There’s much more need for workers who have strong math, science, communication and critical thinking skills in our fast-moving, high-tech, global economy. Memorizing facts and formulas isn’t good enough. Students have to be able to apply their learning to real-world situations.
Our new learning standards and accountability system were created with these realities in mind. And 10 years after starting this journey, we’re truly seeing strong results. Washington students, as a group, are now consistently among the top scorers on both the SAT and ACT, the primary pre-college tests in the country. Four times as many advanced placement exams are being taken by Washington students than were taken 10 years ago, and significantly more ethnic minority students are taking these tests. Scores on our statewide assessment, the WASL, have been rising every year in all age groups and ethnic groups. Even more important, I can send you to hundreds of schools in our state that are closing the achievement gap between ethnic and socioeconomic groups. We need to make those gains in every school. Poverty and race are still the greatest predictors of whether a child will do well in school. We should not be able to predict the achievement of children based on the color of their skin or the income of their family. If we want to strengthen our economy and preserve our democracy, we can’t tolerate these inequities in achievement.
Q: Some parents, school administrators and educators are concerned that students won’t be able to obtain their certificate of achievement by passing the Washington Assessment of Student Learning tests in high school. Is that just “opening night jitters” or are there some changes which need to occur?
A: It’s a mixture of both. Parents and educators have a right to be nervous, because the stakes are higher for students. But they also need to know we’ve made the necessary policy decisions to support students in meeting the new graduation requirements. WASL retakes, some kind of alternative assessment, and special options for students enrolled in special education and those struggling to master English will offer important flexibility. I think the biggest challenge we face in these next few years is helping students in middle and high school who have been allowed to move forward in spite of significant problems with their reading, writing and math skills. Getting a 10th-grader who reads at the fourth-grade level to meet her graduation requirements will take far more individualized support than we’re currently providing. I firmly believe that students will rise to the expectations we set for them if we provide them with all the support needed to get there. Money isn’t the answer to everything, but there are some things we need to buy, like good instructional materials, better training for teachers to effectively use those materials and more one-on-one help for struggling students. Teachers must have confidence that if they’re going to jump in and take on this challenge, the rest of us will be there to support them in getting the job done. To me, we really have no option but to keep moving forward. The alternative — continuing to give diplomas to many students who don’t have the skills they need to pursue their dreams — is just not acceptable.
Q: As a supporter of charter schools, why is there so much opposition, particularly from WEA?
A: I think many public school educators are worried that charter schools are the first step toward privatizing public schools and moving to a voucher system. There already are a lot of choices available to students within the Washington public school system. Think of the many alternative schools and magnet schools we have operating in the state. You don’t necessarily need to operate under a separate charter, outside of the management of your local school board, to innovate and create new learning and teaching options for students. However, I know there are many people, including some public school educators, who want the choice of charter schools for very legitimate reasons. Washington voters will get to make the final decision this fall. Whether we decide to move forward with charter schools or not, our public schools need to be more open to innovative approaches that help meet the needs of our diverse learners.
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