Orange schools closing in on prize
When Miami-Dade schools won the nation’s top prize for urban school districts this past fall, Orange County’s school district wasn’t even a contender. But Orange is headed in the right direction and could be a national leader and Broad Prize winner in a few years, accordingtotheresults of an intensive site visit.
The assessment offers a rare outside measurement of the inner workings of the nation’s 10th-largest school system. According to the report, Orange needs to evaluate programs to see which work best, make key decisions at the district level and ensure technology is distributed more equally among schools.
Teachers, especially in the upper grades, need to move beyond a lecture style and offer different assignments to struggling and accelerated students, it said.
“You’reontherise, butnotthere yet,” said Shelley Billig, who led the site-visit team.
The district is doing a number of things well, including intervening when students struggle and increasing Advanced Placement participation and performance. Orange also has an excellent strategic plan to guide its operations, good fiscal controls and hiring policies, and an effective board and superintendent, the report stated.
“I welcome this feedback,” Superintendent Barbara Jenkins said. “It confirms the strength of our efforts. She said improvements to professional development for teachers are on the way. The district already has begun to makechangesinmanyoftheother weak areas.
The Broad Prize is awarded an-
nually to one urban school district that demonstrates the best overall performance and improvements in student achievement, as well as a reduced achievement gap between low-income and minority students and other student groups. It comes with $1 million in college scholarships.
Jenkins, who has trained as a Broad Fellow, and School BoardChairmanBillSublette have made winning the prize an explicit goal.
“Becoming a Broad finalist or winner is a gold standard,” Sublette said. “We’ve set this out as a high bar we aspire to.”
Theprize’ssponsor, theEli and Edythe Broad Foundation, sent a five-person team to evaluate the district for three days in January. Orange schools were one of two districts chosen in 2012 for such an analysis, which was paid for with a $35,000 grant.
The Orange evaluation included visiting six schools — two low-performing, two average and two high-performing — at a variety of grade levels in different parts of the county. The team also interviewednearly400people, including randomly chosen staffers, as well as parents, principals, teachers, students, community members, union leaders, administrators and School Board members.