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Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization

Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization Program Transcript

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-In this program, Mr. Craig Kupferberg, principal of Findlay High School, explains the impact of community demographics on student equity. He describes his vision for social change and discusses the leadership team's goal to eliminate the general tracking system. Mr. Kupferberg also discusses the challenges the team encountered and how the findings of their action research study are guiding future plans.

The program concludes with his reflections and recommendations to other school leaders who are in the midst of change.

CRAIG KUPFERBERG: Findlay is a, really, a wonderful place to raise a family. Findlay just recently was awarded one of the 100 best communities in the United States of America for youth. Because of the opportunities we have here for youth.

Some of the culture with Findlay is probably most famous for Marathon Oil Company. It was founded here by the Donnell family whose name is still very prevalent here in Findlay. Matter of fact, one of our middle schools and our football stadium is named after the Donnell family. And the original Donnell homes are still a centerpiece of the community.

The south end of town, as you go down South Main Street, is some very large, beautiful restored Victorian homes. As you move out to the east part of town, you'll find some very beautiful, large modern homes that are still being developed out on the east side.

And then more in the central and northern part of Findlay is the part of the community where it's more blue-collar worker in a lower socioeconomic families would be living.

To get a better understanding of our student population, go back to the description of the homes in the older restored Victorian homes and the newer homes out east. Those students come from a rather high socioeconomic family with tremendous support for education. These parents are involved.

We have a lot of booster organizations. We have the traditional athletic and music boosters. We also have academic boosters that just do a tremendous amount of legwork and other type of workforce around the building. We have a parent advisory counsels. We just have a lot of ways for parents to get involved.

At the other end of the scale, with more blue-collar jobs coming into the community. We're finding more, or a higher percentage of our students, coming

Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization

from a lower socioeconomic type of family. And the support that we receive from these families sometimes aren't like the higher socioeconomic. It's hard to get these families into the school to even conference with us about their students, let alone get them to volunteer on booster organizations and get involved in the school.

As I walk into Findlay High School today compared to when I arrived to Findlay High School back in 1989, one of the differences that I see in the student population is a bigger disparity in the student body itself. In that, when I arrived in 1989, the vast majority of the student population came from homes that were extremely supportive of education. The students were very much involved. And they still are very much involved.

One of things I feel very strongly about and believe in public education is that it is for everyone. It's for every child. And one of things that I've observed and experienced throughout my professional career is people tend to categorize and try to label people differently. And I think it starts very young.

In the elementary schools, you'll see students pairing off, even in elementary schools. I think we continue that throughout our adult life, as well. In that, we for some reason see a need, even in a community like Findlay, that's very homogeneous. To categorize and separate people into different classes or groups one way or another.

And one of the things that I noticed coming back to Findlay High School. One of the things that I wanted to challenge is that we had high expectations for all of our students. The Ohio Graduation Test that has been implemented in Ohio, even before Nickleby came about, really raised the bar for our student expectations.

And I was concerned, as the principal of Findlay High School, that our general classes and our general curriculum expectations for those students were not high enough to allow our general students to succeed.

Some of the things we did to come about and try to win some of the staff member and community members over is. I really went about it backwards to begin with. Because I really just made the decision unilaterally, on my own. After reading the research and my core beliefs, that the general track wasn't being successful. Looking at the data here, and the number of failures that we were having in general classes. And I just unilaterally said we're going to change.

Then I started to hear the complaints. And I started to realize no matter what the research says, and no matter what we do. If we don't go about this change appropriately and get people on board, no matter how good the idea is and how good the change is, it's going to fail.

Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization

So I started talking with different people. Matter of fact, one of the people I called first was the principal who was in this building prior to me, Doctor Kathleen Crates. She also, well she continues to work in the school district. So she was very easy to get a hold of. She's been very supportive of me all along.

To get a little bit of history of how this has gone in the past. If this is something that she's tried. And what I learned from talking to her is that this has been talked about in the past. But there has been a huge amount of dissension on the staff. That they were talking about eliminating the general track at one time, and she put a stop to it, because of it.

And at that point, it became very clear to me that we had to slow down the change process a little bit. And really just started to think about how can we move forward without creating such a controversy over this. That it couldn't succeed. And talked with some of the teachers here that were involved in the decision. And also talked with some parents, kind of, on my own, informally, about some things. And came up with the idea of the experimental and control group.

I sat down with my administrative staff and brought to them the idea of the experimental and control group and started bouncing ideas off of them. Where we, as a group, really came up with the structure and idea of how we were going to work this experiment.

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VICKI BRUNN: I've been concerned, for the last several years, even when I was a teacher in the classroom, about our general track here at the high school. It's not a track where we have traditionally done a lot of intervention trying to move these students up to college prep.

It became almost a holding area for kids who were not motivated enough to want to do school. But just to try to help them get through, especially with the OGT, or the Ohio Graduation Test coming on. I was very concerned about these kids being successful and being able to get a diploma. Because I don't feel that the general track was preparing them to pass the Ohio Graduation Test.

The discipline problems in the general classes are. It's probably 75% of our discipline issues that we have here at the high school, if not higher. Because when you put a group of students together who are all unmotivated, they really don't want to be here. They tend to feed off of each other. And it creates issues where there wouldn't be issues, if those students were with students who were motivated.

So there are several things that we were looking at. And as a freshman principal, on the front lines, as far as the discipline. I had teachers coming to me almost

Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization

daily saying, it's impossible for me to teach this class. I'm dealing with discipline the whole period. I don't have a chance to teach them anything.

And so that was a large concern of mine, also. So we began to look at ways to, without watering down the curriculum, bringing these kids into a college prep atmosphere. Keeping the bar high and motivate them to get through the material. I've never been a proponent of tracking any more than absolutely necessary. And so I want to do interventions with the students who are not getting the work done and get them to a point where they're capable of doing the work that they need to do to graduate.

We just called it a pilot program to do away with a general track. Because we still have tracking at the high school. We have the honors AP track for advanced placement students. So if they were getting Cs or lower at middle school, they would probably think of putting them in a general track.

I then took that list of students who had signed up for the general track and began phone calls. I would call the parents. And we randomly went with every fourth student so that we could have a random sample. And I would call. Ask the parent and ask the student if they would be willing to be part of this pilot project.

But we were concerned about the general track preparing them for the Ohio Graduation Test. So we wanted to form a class this year. Putting some of our general students in with our college prep students and see if they were successful. See if we could help them reach that bar that they would need to, in order to pass that test.

If the parent declined. And I did have two parents that said they would rather not because their student was struggling so much at the middle school level. They were concerned about them being successful. And so at that point, I would go on to the next student in the list and ask the same questions of that family. Until we got.

We wanted to have six students in that class. The purpose of that was because we looked at the ratio of our general students to our college preparation students. And we wanted to maintain that same ratio in this pilot program. So out of 30 kids, we would generally have six that were general students and then the 24 that were college prep students.

We met with the staff, and we told them that we wanted to do this pilot project. Gave them the reasons why. We did not tell them who the teachers were going to be that would receive these general kids into their college prep classes. But they all were aware that we were doing the project.

At that point, we had to spend time looking at these students and how they were progressing. And making sure that none of them were struggling and falling through the cracks. And then as the year progressed, we looked at several

Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization

things. We looked at the academics of these students. We looked at the academics of the college prep students that were in the same pilot group.

BILL BARBAREE: We had general level students in our college prep level courses. We did not know which students were brought in from the general level in our courses, there. And they were using data. As far as our test results and our test scores that we were given throughout the year, as a means to measure whether or not those general students were able to stay up with the standards of a college prep level course. That's the measurement that they were primarily using.

MANDI CROFT: They looked at mid-term grades. They looked at the exam grades and compared them to a general level class with all general kids and a college prep level class with all, what we would call college prep students. And they looked at the numbers to see what the percentages were and where people fell with certain grade levels and great ranges. And with that, they saw that the general kids who were in the CP class were doing a little bit better than the kids who were just in the general classes.

BILL BARBAREE: Besides the academic part of it, they also looked at behavioral issues. And they were tracking the number of detentions or behavioral problems from an all general class compared to a mixed college prep and general class to see if the social dynamics. If that helped out with the decrease of behavioral problems that we experience in the classroom.

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CRAIG KUPFERBERG: I really expected the firestorm to come from my general students' parents. That we were putting them in a place that they couldn't succeed. And we were setting them up for failure. I really didn't hear from that segment of our community.

The segment of our community I heard from were the parents at the college prep level. They were concerned that these students would be coming into the class and pulling the expectations down and disrupting the classroom environment. I was also surprised to hear from some of my staff members. Both staff members that deal with the more challenging students as well as staff members that deal with some of our very bright students.

SUSAN DAVIDSON: Tom does very well in school. He's a bright young man. And he, at the time, knew for certain that he was going to take honors level math, which would be algebra two and science. And we were considering whether or not he should do the honors route, honors track, for the English, which is honors English, and AP American history.

He's a very self motivated young man. Very focused. He's also a perfectionist. So I guess at that point, my husband and I had concerns that would it be too much if

Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization

he would take all honors classes. We believe, of course, academics is very important. As a teacher here, that's, of course, a main concern for my own children and my students.

And so I went to our principal, Craig Kupferberg, having these concerns about combining college prep and general students in the same class. I see them as being two diverse groups. These students have different abilities, interests, needs. Perhaps, we could say goals in life. Different levels of motivation. And so I was concerned. Because I thought if Tom went that route instead of the honors AP classes, would he be challenged enough.

In the end, through conversing with different teachers here. Thinking about it. Looking at the pros and cons of each. Our son went the route of the honors AP classes. So he had all four honors AP classes last year.

As a parent, I would hope that if a school is considering doing this, combining the general and college prep classes, I believe it's very important to get different perspectives. From the teachers in the school, from parents of the children at the school, in the community, from students.

Because, I suppose you could say, that research could back up any point of view you have. Whether you believe the tracking isn't good, you can find research to back that up. On the other hand, if you believe that tracking is good, you could also find research to back that up.

So I believe it's important to listen to both sides, before a decision is made. And once that decision is made, whether you agree with it or not, to follow up. Which they will be doing here at Findlay High School with finding out if it really is working, of course, which would take time to determine if this new program is working. But I think it's important to listen to all viewpoints in order to make a decision.

BARBARA BORMUTH: This is my 32nd year of teaching. I began my career at a small county school in Vanlue, Ohio. And then I transferred here. And I have been a teacher here since 1978. Here we had four tracks. Honors, college prep, general, basic. I have taught all the levels except honors. I've taught sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

The philosophy of tracking is the idea that you put students who are of a similar level into a classroom. So the teacher may be able to work one-on-one more often with them. Be able to address their needs. Because most of them will have the same needs.

By eliminating the tracking, we lose that perspective. When we put general students in with college prep students, we are creating a situation where you have a wider spectrum of student levels to work with.

Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization

Another concern that I have is the possibility of watering down the curriculum to meet the needs of these students. I know that we had to change the types of novels that we taught. We now are going to have students who are very academically oriented and those who are not.

The driving force behind this change was the Ohio Graduation Test. The administration was very concerned, as all of us were, about whether or not our students would be able to pass the parts of that test without having exposure to college prep material.

The bottom line is we did well. English did very, very well. I believe, 90-some percent of our students passed the reading. In the upper 80%, passed the writing. And that was without the changes.

CRAIG KUPFERBERG: One of the things I feel very strongly about in handling dissentions, is that you really need to make the person understand that you are listening. That you are trying to hear their side of the issue, as well. And one very good way is by asking questions of the person. Because then not only are you hearing, but you're trying to seek input from the person, as well.

We have some of the more traditional methods for teachers to voice their dissension or bring ideas to the table. In the faculty advisory council. Through the union. We have a faculty president that meets with the administration on a weekly basis. So they have these different ways to communicate and bring ideas to the table. But I wanted to expand on that.

One of the things that we've started here, since I've been here, is collaborative teams. Every Thursday morning, we delay school 15 minutes. We were able to work that out so that our academic classes are all the same length.

We have a homeroom period that's 15 minutes in length. So all we really did was eliminate that. So we give that time to the teachers, as well as an additional half hour that they had anyway, to meet in collaborative groups that they determine. And different things that we're experimenting with. What we called an input board.

And there's four quadrants. There's one for issues. There's one for questions. There's one for concerns. And there's one for high-fives. And they can anonymously just put a note up on the input board. And I check it on a daily basis, if not two or three times a day.

And if I find a new response or a new question on the input board, I'll take it. I'll research it. Find the answer, if I need to. The issue on why fix something that isn't broken. I'd like to go back one more year.

The first year that we gave the Ohio Graduation Test in reading and in mathematics, our scores were not very good. As matter of fact, we were placed

Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization

on school improvement. This last year, we had a dramatic improvement. We're now classified as an excellent, which is the top rating that you can receive from the state of Ohio.

I contribute a lot of different factors to that. The first time we took the test it didn't count for our students, as far as whether they graduated from high school or not. They were still on the old Ohio proficiency test. They needed to pass that. That was part of it. Because the sophomore group last year needed to pass the test, in order to be able to graduate from high school.

So it was a high stakes test for this last year. But also, a lot what contributed to that, were the changes that we did make through the collaborative teams and the common assessments. And some other improvements that we have put in the building. And the direction that the building was going, with raising expectations. And I think that this fits in right along with that area.

And when we looked at the very first test, where we didn't do very well. The students that were not passing that test were the students, predominately, that were in our general track. So whether it was because they weren't motivated to take the test or it was because curriculum wasn't lined up. You can argue a lot of different factors. What matters to me is what our expectations are for the students. And I think eliminating the general track fits right in with that expectation.

So if the data shows that we need to eliminate the general track as we move along that curriculum, we'll change. It will not be watered down because we're moving the general students in, but it will change. It would also change if we kept the general track. We're constantly looking at what our literature is going to be. And constantly making those changes.

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One of the things, when I come into our English classes and observe what's going on. I see students that are actively participating. You can't tell which students are college prep students, which students are general students.

As a matter of fact, when we did our experiments. And one of the teachers accidentally found out that she was involved in an experiment. She tried to determine which were college prep and which were general students. And every time she thought someone was a general student, she wasn't even correct.

And as I sit around the class and watch our students become actively involved. Because that is one of the expectations I set for our teachers. Is that I want to see students actively involved in the lessons. I see them all being actively involved. And I can't tell which students would have been general students and which ones would have been college prep. They come together as a class.

Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization

VICKI BRUNN: One of the effects that this pilot project has had, which we really weren't concerned about at the beginning. But it's been a real positive experience for students socioeconomically, also and socially. We tend to have social tracking here, even though that's not the intent.

And what we found is the students who are in our general track tend to be lower socioeconomic students. And what this has done is it's intermixed those kids in with the college prep kids, who tend to be from a higher socioeconomic classes. And it gives them a chance to be together and make friends with each other. And I think that's beneficial, also.

Which it also leads to self esteem, as far as not feeling like you can't do it. Because you're in the general track. And you're in the dumb classes. And students know that that's where they are. And then that one of the reasons that they tend to just give up. And they're not motivated.

It may not even be that they are thinking about, I don't want to be here. I don't want an education. But I'm in this class because I'm stupid. And I can't do this. And so that has taken that barrier away for the students, also.

It's also impacted the social climate with our staff here at the high school. I think it's helped us to work together more closely, as a group. We've all always been a close-knit group, here in the freshman wing. Because we're a building within a building. And we have approximately 20 to 25 staff members. And then me, as the principal in the freshman wing.

And so I like to think that we have a pretty good relationship. But this has even made it better. We've discussed issues like the discipline issues that are coming out of our general classes and not coming out of this pilot class. And we've also discussed how it's important not to lower expectations. And it's been a positive thing.

We've also discussed what's going to happen if this doesn't work. Because this is still in the trial stages. We're still in our first year as a pilot, with the entire freshman wing. And so just meeting together and talking about that has created a collaborative feeling between the staff members and myself.

BILL BARBAREE: I was glad to be part of the pilot. To be honest, I was skeptical at the beginning. Because going through public education myself, I was in many classes that were what we would call general classes. Well, non-tracking. And it seemed like I didn't get as much out of those classes as I thought I could. Because the course was watered down or geared towards the middle of the class, instead of being more challenging.

And then as I took AP courses, and I was more challenged. And was able to further my education that away. So that was a fear that I had, just from my own

Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization

experience. I didn't want that to happen here at Findlay. I didn't want the college prep child to be slighted, either. And having the course be lowered.

But I think, as educators, as long as we maintain our expectations and keep our requirements higher and our expectations higher, at the course. That I believe the students will have an opportunity and will rise up to that level of challenge and expectation.

MANDI CROFT: I've seen an impact on the social climate. Just because the kids that were in the general program and always traveling with those same general kids. If it was a group that was getting in trouble, that's what they heard about. That's what they knew about. So now they're also hearing the positive things and seeing the kids who are involved in sports and other activities.

We do have a negative result of having our classes mixed. And the honors program and the basic program still being in tact, the way that they were. Because we had parents who were fearful of a joint class. In our honors classes skyrocketed. We've got kids who probably should be in our general CP class, which is run as a CP class, instead of the honors program. And there needs to be some guidelines set, as far as how they get into the honors program.

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CRAIG KUPFERBERG: As I look at the social climate around the building this year, one of things that we really stress with our freshman. As matter of fact, we bring our freshman in to meet with myself and the freshman principal about a week into the building.

One of things I really hit on is that they've come from different schools. And they had rivalries in those old schools. But now they're Findlay High School Trojans. They're on the same team. And I even use the example of the movie, The. Miracle And how they brought all these hockey players from all of these different colleges together. And they had to learn to play as team, before that they could win. And how important it is for the students to do that, not only to be successful as a class but to be successful individually, as well.

And I walk into our English classes, and I see our students. And they're doing that. They're working together. They work in groups. They volunteer answers. They support one another. They debate issues that they don't agree on. But they come together. And they're working together extremely well.

From here, we're really still experimenting and taking a look at the data. Where we are going to go from here is. We're going to continue taking a look at the data and see if it supports expanding this program. Last year we took a look at a very small group. It was one classroom in English and one classroom in social studies. And we looked to see how successful they are.

Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization

This year we're going to take a look at the entire freshman class. And see how successful it is compared to our previous freshman class and their success, as far as their grades, their discipline, their attendance. And if we see and if the data points out what I think it will. That this class is being more successful than the previous classes, when it comes to those three areas. Then we're going to expand this program to the sophomores next year.

We'll continue to look at the data. If it continues to support it, we'll continue moving it forward. Probably the best piece of advice I could give anybody came from a secretary that I met when I first came to Findlay. They were taking me around the building and introducing me to everybody. And I got back to the guidance office, and they introduced to the guidance secretary. And she looked at me. And she just shook her head, and she says I hope you have a good sense of humor.

And that is so important in the job that we do. We can't take what people say personally. We've got a keep our sense of humor. We've got to make sure we're enjoying our job and the people around us are enjoying our job.

We're working with the most valuable resource, that not only our country have, but these parents are giving us. They don't hold the best students back. They are sending us their children. And it's the most important, most precious resource that these parents can have. And they come to us angry. And they come to us frustrated, sometimes. But it's an emotional situation. We're talking about their kids. And we need to understand that. That they get angry with the situation. It's not with us. And we need to work through that and keep our sense of humor. And love what we're doing.

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