March 2016

ESSENTIAL INSIGHTS AND COMMENTARY FOR SCHOOL SYSTEM LEADERS

Tending Rural
Districts
Six factors contributing
to their surprisingly
productive yields

PLUS
Dealing With Ferguson Unrest, p13
Body Cameras in Schools, p9
Ex-Superintendent on a Board, p10
Open Education Resources, p26
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 March 2016 • NUMBER 3 VOL. 73

16 The Productivity of Rural Schools

B Y M AR G U E R I T E R O Z A
How some remote districts generate higher-than-
expected learning results without proportionately
higher spending.
18 Identifying ‘superstar’ rural systems
20 Doing the most with what they have

22 Academic Challenges in Isolated

Communities
B Y B E T H E N Y G R O S S A N D A S H L E Y J O CH I M
Researchers with the Center on Reinventing Public
Education describe three ways technology is making
a mark on instruction in rural schooling.
24 Chris Hon: Levelling Effect of a 1:1 Initiative

26 Rise of the Open Curriculum

B Y B I L L G RA V E S
Small districts are discovering rich instructional
resources when staff adapt free online lessons as
textbook alternatives.
28 A federal adviser on open education resources
29 Additional resources

30 Won’t You Stay a Little Longer?

BY JOHN D. ULFERTS
The superintendent in rural Shirland, Ill., on the
difficulties of recruiting and retaining teachers.

34 The Demands on the First-Time

Rural Superintendent
B Y CAR I L . W R Y S I N S K I - G U D E N
Case studies of the early-career challenges of four
leaders of remote school districts.
37 The author’s connection to the research

38 Different Worlds: Rural and Urban Poverty

B Y M I CH E L E T. T I N E
A Dartmouth professor shares the empirical
differences and their implications for school
leadership in the two sectors.
 “The question anyone in this position
should ask is, ‘How do you navigate a crisis
that doesn’t play by the rules?’” PAGE 15

FRONTLINE 11 MY VIEW
Cat’s in the Cradle:
4
4 EXECUTIVE PERSPECTIVE
Skepticism Falls to a
6 STARTING POINT My Work-Life Balance Rare Bipartisan Act
The relevancy of rural schools and their BY DENVER J. FOWLER BY DANIEL A. DOMENECH
leaders. How one school administrator acted on The role of AASA, backed importantly by
that out-of-sync feeling and made a major its state associations, in pulling off a long-
6 STATE OF THE SUPERINTENDENCY career change. overdue reauthorization by Congress.
Elapsed Time to First 13 MY VIEW 4
5 SCHOOL SOLUTIONS
Superintendency
AASA measures the months between How We Coped During Ferguson Student Reading Plus
someone’s application and appointment to Unrest … and Shined Parent Engagement
a top job. BY SCOTT D. SPURGEON BY GARY M. ANDERSON
A superintendent’s account of dealing with Superintendents make use of a new
7 BEST OF THE BLOGS program to instill a love of books among
the aftermath of the Michael Brown killing
Five short excerpts from crafty bloggers in that occurred inside his Missouri school students.
the superintendent ranks. district.
4
6 PEOPLE WATCH
8 ETHICAL EDUCATOR Superintendents who are on the rise across
Sampling Vintages
Overseas RESOURCES the country. The Sidelight illuminates a
New Jersey superintendent who manages
How would our four- therapy dogs.
41 BOOK REVIEWS
member panel
kk Mobile Learning: A Handbook for 4
7 PROFILE
address a complaint
Developers, Educators, and Learners
that a teacher chap-
kk Promoting Health and Academic Terry N. Bouck
eroning a school trip
Success: The Whole School, Whole BY PAUL RIEDE
to Europe allowed
Community, Whole Child Approach The leader in Billings, Mont., has bonded
a few students of
legal age to taste the Also, AASA member Nicholas I. Clement the district to its future.
local wine? 8 on writing The Reading Pig

9 LEGAL BRIEF 41 ABSTRACT PLUS

Police Cameras in School: District Support Team
4 READER REPLY
Privacy vs. Necessity A doctoral dissertation on the impact of a
central-office transformation on the lowest-
BY MICHELE V. HANDZEL 4
8 LEADERSHIP LITE
performing schools.
Whether a body-worn camera constitutes
an illegal search depends on where the cation
n-Convo
Tulsa U
police officer is situated within the school
at the time. AASA INSIGHT Y*u T
oob

10 BOARD-SAVVY SUPERINTENDENT 4
3 PRESIDENT’S CORNER
When an Ex-Superintendent Redefining Readiness
Lands on the Board in New Ways
BY MICHAEL T. ADAMSON BY DAVID R. SCHULER
Dealing with the trepidation of discovering AASA’s president is spearheading a
a former district administrator is joining the campaign for better metrics to measure
board of education. students’ fitness for college and career.

2:55
2:22 /
e Nae
hip / Na
Rap - W
School Administrator (ISSN 0036-6439) is a benefit of membership in AASA, The School Superintendents
A Welco
me
48
Association, 1615 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314. Telephone: 703-875-0772. Fax: 703-841-1543. Annual member-
ship dues in the association are $447 (active members), of which $110 covers a subscription to School Admin-
istrator. School Administrator is published monthly except July. Send address changes to AASA, Membership
Division, 1615 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314. Copyright 2016 by AASA. All rights reserved. Printed in USA.

M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 3
R E A D E R R E P LY
Re Rebecca McFall’s My View column,
“The Benefits of Soliciting Our Students’
Feedback” (October 2015):
In my work with Massachusetts
school and district leaders, Rebecca
McFall’s piece will be important when
we discuss the use of student feedback.
Early information about the state’s new
requirement to use student feedback in
the evaluation system was LARGELY MIS-
INTERPRETED as having student input
play a role in the summative phase of
teacher evaluation.
McFall puts student feedback in the
proper place — A SOURCE OF VALUABLE
FORMATIVE INFORMATION for the teacher
to use in developing goals for the year and
adjusting instruction going forward.
MARY STERLING
EDUCATION CONSULTANT,
CONCORD, MASS.
Student Feedback
Rebecca McFall’s column about the
power of using effectively solicited
student feedback to improve teacher
performance, rather than for evaluative
purposes, resonates with an initiative we
introduced at my school in Singapore.
I have been involved with crafting a
survey that appears to align with the
one she describes. This is a project we
have been piloting for over a year now.
The rationale behind the project can be
found at www.academia.edu/10201580/
Improving_Teacher_Effectiveness_
through_Student_Surveys.
RICHARD DAVIES
HEAD OF PERSONAL AND SOCIAL EDUCATION,
UWC SOUTH EAST ASIA,
SINGAPORE
Authentic Leadership
Re “Becoming an Adaptively Authentic
Leader” (October 2015) by Mary B.
Herrmann:
Read expanded
The author’s message rings so true. I
versions of these
will be sharing it with my entire team. No
letters at www.
matter what seat you hold in the school
aasa.org/
system, being able to adapt and remain
SAletters.aspx.
authentic seems to be a balancing act
4 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
for many of the young leaders (and older
ones, like me). Her article states the
importance of both.
LINDA KLOBUCHER
ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF TEACHING AND LEARNING,
BARRINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT 220,
BARRINGTON, ILL.
Transgender Treatment
Do you believe words have power? Do
you believe they should be considered
carefully for their likely impact on the
reader? If so, you should re-read the
column “Transgender and School Risk
Management” (December 2015).
Start with the headline. Are transgen-
der students and staff members a risk to
you? Are they a threat? That is the mes-
sage that could easily be interpreted. The
opening sentence also shows a lack of
consideration on word choice: “Schools
are no longer immune to gender-identity
issues.” Are transgender students a
virus? Is considering ways to support var-
ious gender identities a disease?
While I appreciate the attention paid
to this subject, this language choice is
unacceptable.
PETER OLSON-SKOG
ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT,
ROSEVILLE AREA SCHOOLS,
ROSEVILLE, MINN.
Author’s Reply
I received feedback about my column
“Transgender Students and School
Risk Management” (December 2015).
Some was positive, while other
comments raised concerns about my
choice of words that could have been
(and were) perceived as derogatory
toward transgender students. That was
never my intent.
The School Leaders Risk Management
Association and I do not see transgen-
der students negatively or as a problem
to be fixed or a risk to be managed. The
association’s mission is to help schools
develop the policies to protect all chil-
dren. I regret the choice of words.
WILLIAM J. PERRY
COUNSEL, CLAIMS & CORPORATE SERVICES,
SCHOOL LEADERS RISK MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION,
CHICAGO, ILL.
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Liz Griffin
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EXPAND YOUR WORLD
& YOUR POTENTIAL FOR
LEADERSHIP
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DONNY BYNUM
Superintendent | Dale County Schools, Alabama

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 FrontLine
STARTINGPOINT
STATE OF THE
Rural Relevancy SUPERINTENDENCY
When the magazine staff discussed the articles generated
for this month’s theme issue on leadership in rural America,
we were struck by how so many of the topics applied just as Elapsed Time Between
well to those running larger school districts in metropolitan
areas. Issues such as the leveraging of classroom technology,
Application and Appointment
the return on public investment and the first-year experi-
ences in the superintendency — each of which is addressed Men Women
here along with much more — play equally well across all About a third of sitting
demographic spheres. 3%
6.3% superintendents indicate
This also may be true in the manner school districts it took one to six months
think today about curriculum. Relevant content no longer 8.3% between the time they
is confined to printed textbooks. This is particularly so with
the availability of open curriculum — or what we call “open
10.5% formally began applying for
their first superintendency
educational resources” in the detailed account by veteran 7.4% and their appointment to the
education journalist Bill Graves (page 26). position. About 10 percent
Strong content can originate in any number of places. 8.1% said the process took 1-2
The rise of open resources will enable creative teachers to years.
make an unlimited array of adaptations to their classroom AASA’s mid-decade
instruction. School districts such as the rural Grandview update on the state of the
School District in Washington portrayed in our coverage profession revealed little
will enable their staffs to adapt the curriculum to meet their 29.6% difference between male
and female applicants in the
students’ specific needs and interests. The use of open edu-

33.1%
elapsed time of a search.
cational resources might energize learning communities of
Nearly a third of females
committed teachers and administrators.
in the survey appeared
I’m sure we’ll be revisiting this newly emerging subject to have been recruited as
before long, so I’d welcome hearing from our readers about candidates without actively
their own experiences down the line. seeking the position, while
only about a quarter of the
16.5% males experienced the same
situation. This finding sug-
JAY P. GOLDMAN gests yet another indicator
EDITOR, SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR
that the career path to the
VOICE: 703-875-0745
E-MAIL: JGOLDMAN@AASA.ORG
17.9% superintendency appears to
TWITTER: @JPGOLDMAN
differ by gender.

■■ more than 2 years

32.3% ■■ 1 to 2 years
23.4% ■■ 6 to 12 months
■■ 1 to 6 months
■■ Less than 1 month
■■ Not actively seeking position
EDITORIAL CARTOON © BY AL SENS

SOURCE: “Study of the American Superintendent: 2015 Mid-Decade

Update” published by AASA. Analysis was constructed by Leslie A.
“As a district leader, I’m not afraid of criticism Finnan, Robert S. McCord, Christopher C. Stream, T.C. Mattocks, George
or controversy. However, my wife doesn’t like G. Petersen and Noelle M. Ellerson. Access the report at www.aasa.org.
your choice of colors for the schools.”

6 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
 “Having seen indi- “This younger generation who just started teaching
viduals struggle with this school year laughed with me as I held high my
substance use disor- VHS tape, (the demise of VHS sales) a Walkman
der, the apt phrase disc-player (how the iPod shifted a market), and an
‘there but for the old Blockbuster card …”
grace of God, go I’ comes to mind. … From “Winter Reflections on Time, Technology, Teaching, and Star Trek” by Pamela
Moran (superintendent, Albemarle County, Va.) on her blog A Space for Learning
[S]o many individuals could well be
just one crisis shy of an unhealthy
physical or emotional dependence Read the full postings of “I’ve seen some
these and other members’
that could lead to abuse or addiction.” blogs at www.aasa.​org/ marvelous partnerships
SAblogs.aspx.
From “A Time for Hope” by Mary Delai (superintendent,
Wilmington, Mass.) on her eponymous blog between regular and
special education
“When educators express our concerns, those concerns teachers. I’ve also
are labeled as ‘counter-productive grumbling’ implying, seen some marvelous
or sometimes even directly stating, that if we just tried partnerships and
harder these reforms would be successful.” friendships between
From “It is the Supreme Art of the Teacher” by Todd Gazda (superintendent, Ludlow, Mass.) on his
eponymous blog
regular and special
education students. It’s
“We are unafraid to hold discussions, for example, around race
or sexual orientation believing that a conversation can begin to a beautiful thing.”
From “Happy Anniversary Special Education” by
build understanding, tolerance, and acceptance. Of course, we Dan Curry (superintendent, Calvert County, Md.)
do this work imperfectly and strive to remember and respect on his blog, School Talk

the alternative and contrary point of view.”

From “Confronting Fear in a Season of Hope” by Dan Gutekanst (superintendent, Needham,
Mass.) on his Superintendent’s Blog”

FLASHBACK March 2006

A cover story explored the test of fortitude when superintendents are involved in the
consolidation of school districts … Two superintendents shared separate accounts of
their experiences overseeing two small districts simultaneously. … Paul Tobin of Preston,
Iowa, discussed the political hurdles faced by rural superintendents. … Two letters to
the editor commented favorably on a superintendent’s commentary calling for greater
accountability for parents. … A full-page letter from Eugene White, AASA president-elect,
explained the association’s decision to hold its next national conference in New Orleans
in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. … The President’s Corner column by David Gee
was titled “Where’s the Beef Revisited.” … Advertisers included Jupiter Band Instru-
ments, Studentlunchprogram.com and Coca-Cola. … Profile subject: Ron Blankenship,
Calhoun County, W.Va.

M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 7
FrontLine
ETHIC AL E D U C ATO R

Sampling Vintages Overseas

SCENARIO: A high school teacher serves as a chaperone of a
school-sponsored trip to Europe with a dozen students dur-
ing spring break. During the trip, the educator and several
students who were of legal age consume alcohol in the
country they are visiting, sampling a few varieties of
wine. Students’ parents learn of the consumption fol-
lowing the trip and complain to the high school prin-
cipal, who advises the superintendent of the matter.
How should the administrators handle the complaint?

SHELLEY BERMAN: Wine sampling by potential to place students in harm’s way.

students who meet the visited country’s
legal age may seem innocuous. However,
it is a serious error of judgment on the
teacher’s part. As a chaperone and district
employee, the teacher is responsible for
ensuring students’ safety. The rules that
students and parents agreed to almost
assuredly specified that students not
use alcohol during the trip. Even as a
cultural experience, consumption of wine
violates those rules. In the U.S., attending
an event where alcohol is consumed by
underage youth is illegal and would end a
teacher’s career.
See the panelists’ full analyses of this case
and read the AASA Code of Ethics at www.
aasa.org/SAethics.aspx.
We want students to experience other
countries’ cultures, but we carry our own
cultural guidelines with us, particularly
regarding an activity that would be illegal
or against school rules in the home state.
There may be some mitigating circum-
stances to justify something less than dis-
missal of this teacher. However, the serious-
ness of the incident leaves administrators
with few options.
The act also crossed the acceptable social
boundaries that should be maintained
between educators and students.
The incident held no educational value
for the high school students and was not
relevant to the district-sponsored trip. The
superintendent should instruct the school
administrator to conduct a formal investiga-
tion and report the findings to the human
resources department. The district should
seek to terminate the teacher if the findings
are as reported by the parents.
SARAH MACKENZIE: Perhaps the parents
are complaining about the teacher
partaking along with the students. To me,
this is quite civilized and is far better than
students going off by themselves to drink.
They may well have, but this is the one
story they told to their parents.
At any rate, the superintendent and/or
the principal should talk with the teacher
and notify him or her of the complaints.
But there should be no disciplinary action
for the teacher. The situation highlights,
though, that in the future, the school, in
sponsoring trips like this, must have a policy
about notifications of parents ahead of time
Each month, School Administrator draws on actual circumstances to raise an ethical decision-making dilemma in K-12
education. Our distinguished panelists provide their own resolutions to each dilemma. Do you have a suggestion for a
dilemma to be considered? Send it to: magazine@aasa.org.
regarding such things as the drinking age
and the role of the chaperone in overseeing
students’ free time.
KELLY HENSON: Because it is a school-
sponsored trip, the consumption of
alcohol by both the teacher and the
students must be addressed. It is under-
stood that, in many countries, the consump-
tion of alcohol by students of this age is
perfectly permissible, and certainly in coun-
tries such as France and Italy, the sampling
of wines is a cultural experience. However,
that cannot supersede the fact that the
consumption of alcohol by the teacher and
students is not permissible.
The administration must make it clear
that an educator’s responsibilities do not
end when he or she crosses state lines or
leaves the country with students. Regard-
less of where an educator is with his or her
students, the educator must comply with
applicable policies and laws of the state and
school district.
ILLUSTRATION © BY DAVID CLARK

MARIO VENTURA: The trip to Europe was

a school-sponsored event, which implies
district policy should be followed by the
supervising staff. The chaperone used poor
judgment in sampling wine with students.
The behavior was reckless and had the
The Ethical Educator panel consists of SHELLEY BERMAN, superintendent, Andover, Mass.; KELLY HENSON,
executive director, Georgia Professional Standards Commission; SARAH MACKENZIE, associate professor of
educational leadership, University of Maine at Orono; and MARIO VENTURA, superintendent, Isaac School District,
Phoenix, Ariz., and member of the Model Code of Educator Ethics Task Force. Expanded answers are published in School
Administrator magazine’s online edition.

8 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6

Police Cameras in School: Privacy vs. Necessity
WITH SCHOOLS EVER-ATTENTIVE to
improving safety for students and staff, some
have turned to a police presence inside the
school as a crime deterrence. But are police in
schools overstepping their role and criminal-
izing what is otherwise normal misbehavior
of kids?
Demonstrations of police using excessive
force in the classroom are all over the news.
Failing to obey a police directive can result
in a student getting yanked from her desk
and thrown across the room or an 8-year-old
being handcuffed around his upper arms.
Such actions may lead to requiring police offi-
cers to wear body cameras while assigned to
school buildings.
The idea of camera-wearing police has been
around for decades and for legitimate reasons
— to stem crime, to de-escalate a situation, to
document evidence and to encourage officers
to be more careful in their actions.
Cameras On or Off?
But what about expectations of privacy? Do
body-worn cameras constitute an illegal search
or seizure? That depends on where the officer
is situated within the school when wearing the
camera. If the officer is in a public forum, such
as an office or a hallway in a school, and some-
one does something illegal, there should be no
expectation of privacy because the action is in
plain view and in a public location.
If the police officer is in the classroom or
bathroom or locker room, staff members and
students may have an expectation of privacy
in those locations and protection against an
unreasonable search or seizure. The police
would have to establish a reasonable suspicion
that a prohibited activity occurred before turn-
ing on the body camera in those venues.
Maryland recently passed legislation allow-
ing police officers to wear body cameras during
their regular duties. The local police depart-
ments are part of a pilot program working
with school districts to develop best practices
as to when cameras will be turned on or off.
Videos are subject to the Maryland Public
Information Act and will be released only if
legally required to do so.
The Montgomery County, Md., Police
FrontLine
M I C H E L E V. H A N D Z E L | L E G A L  B R I E F
Department issued a memo to the
157,000-student school district’s employ-
ees outlining the benefits of police wearing
body cameras. It addressed using the video
footage to train officers and improve officer
performance and “increase officer safety.” But
left unclear is whether the video footage is
“Perhaps the better
meant to keep the officer safe or to keep the practice would be
students safe from police action.
Student advocates are concerned body to TRAIN POLICE
cameras are being used to deter police from
using excessive force on students — rais- OFFICERS PROPERLY
ing the question about police officers being
trained properly to interact with students in
before they enter
a school setting. Perhaps the better practice a school building
would be to train police officers properly
before they enter a school building rather rather than after
than after an officer is caught on tape using
excessive force. an officer is caught
Legislated Practices on tape using
Maryland is just one of the states trying to excessive force.”
establish best practices for videotaping police
interaction with students. Education policy-
makers should do more work on this issue
because body-worn camera in the classroom
may be beneficial to students as well as police.
The benefits may outweigh student privacy
issues, with proper legislation.
Legislation or proposed legislation in
most places is silent on when body-worn
cameras should be turned on, and how to
control the dissemination of the video after
it is released. One need only turn to a news
source to see the constant replay of footage
of the young lady pulled from her classroom
desk in Columbia, S.C., by a uniformed officer
to realize nothing protects the identity of the
student or prevents video from being appro-
priated for commercial purposes.
While there may be merits for camera-
wearing officers for ensuring safety in our
schools, public school leaders must be at least MICHELE
as concerned about violations of personal pri- HANDZEL is a
school attorney with
vacy. Body-worn cameras are quickly becoming Capital Region
the new normal practice for police offers. Stay BOCES in Albany,
connected to your state’s professional associa- N.Y. E-mail: michele.
tion for the status of any pending legislation handzel@neric.org
authorizing police officers to wear body cam-
eras in school facilities.
M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 9
FrontLine
B O A R D-S A V V Y S U P E R I N T E N D E N T   | M I C H A E L T. A D A M S O N
When an Ex-Superintendent
Lands on the Board
FORMER TEACHERS AND administrators
who are elected or appointed to school boards,
“Every superintendent especially in the school districts where they once
were employed, fall into one of two categories
realizes a certain as school board members. They are either very
good — or very bad. There really is not a middle
trepidation when ground of performance in my experience.
discovering that When they are very good, you will discover
they draw upon their career experiences to
A FORMER TEACHER complement the board’s collective under-
standing of educational or administrative
OR ADMINISTRATOR issues facing the school district. When they
are really bad, they act as if their board role
has landed a seat on is merely an extension of their teacher or
their school board.” administrative position.
Every superintendent realizes a certain
trepidation when discovering that a former
teacher or administrator has landed a seat on
their school board. But that apprehension is
carried to new heights when the new board
member is a former superintendent. Talk
about bad luck!
Not only is the new board member a fellow
educator, but he or she formerly worked as a
superintendent, and if that person was once
employed in the same district where he or she
now functions as a board member, the circum-
stance goes from bad to worse!
How does the current superintendent begin
working with the superintendent-turned-board
member?
Speculating Motives
MICHAEL That preparation begins long before a new
ADAMSON is board member is seated. Superintendents are
director of board keenly aware of the dynamics surrounding
services with the board elections or appointments. These might
Indiana School
Boards Association include major decisions that divided the com-
in Indianapolis, Ind. munity, personnel appointments or dismiss-
E-mail: madamson@ als, fiscal issues and so on. This awareness is
​isba-ind.org crucial to understanding possible motives that
lead individuals to seek board seats, and it’s
especially true of former superintendents.
Speculating upon what may have motivated
someone to seek a board seat is not responsible
and can be detrimental to building a profes-
sional, long-term relationship. Even if you
think you know, you don’t want to jump to
10 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
conclusions regarding motive. Rather, under-
standing and anticipating possible hot-button
issues will enable the current superintendent
to prepare adequately for the initial orienta-
tion program and subsequently for building an
effective working relationship.
Actually, even though the superintendent-
turned-board member may know your job,
having a person with that experience on the
governing board can work to the benefit of the
savvy superintendent as a built-in advocate,
a person who is in a better position to under-
stand and appreciate the responsibilities of the
school district’s CEO.
Minimally, a former superintendent’s famil-
iarity with the job enables the sitting super-
intendent to anticipate and prepare for those
questions that might be more specific than
those usually asked from other board mem-
bers. Those potential questions should not
necessarily be anticipated as gotcha questions.
They can prove to be excellent opportunities
for building confidence and respect for the
superintendent from board members whose
career experiences are outside of education.
Additionally, having a translator on the
board can prove beneficial for issues where
another experienced interpreter can contribute
to the equilibrium between the superintendent
and those responsible for governance.
Equal Treatment
However, most importantly, the savvy superin-
tendent, while aware of each board member’s
strengths, passions, interests and intentions,
must treat all equally. A former superintendent
is never treated with more deference than
other board members. The former superin-
tendent on the board may rightly deserve
respect for career contributions, but not neces-
sarily above those of other board members.
A former superintendent as a board mem-
ber is no different than any other member,
other than his or her particular skill set. The
roles of the superintendent, individual school
board members and the entire board are dis-
tinct, although they complement each other in
an ideal board/superintendent relationship.
 FrontLine
DENVER J. FOWLER  | M Y V I E W

Cat’s in the Cradle: My Work-Life Balance

AS WE WRAPPED UP the exit inter-
view for my superintendent intern-
ship, the veteran district leader told
me about a recent trip he took with
his son. He choked up as he said that,
despite being the best superintendent
anyone could ask for, he had sacri-
ficed significant time with his family
throughout his career. I got the feel-
ing he was sharing this information
with me for a reason, warning, “Don’t
let it happen to you, too.”
Not knowing how to respond, I
sympathetically said, “Kind of like the
Cat’s in the Cradle song, huh?”
We parted ways and, to my sur-
prise, he not long after accepted the
position of state superintendent.
Perhaps he realized it was too late to
make up all of that lost time with his
a lousy work-life balance. On top of
that, I was no longer exercising regu-
larly and my diet was horrible. Two
things were becoming increasingly
apparent: I was great at my job (I’d
just been nominated for the national
assistant principal of the year award),
and my personal life was suffering. I
started to fear that the ideal school
administrator is someone who is sin-
gle and childless or, worse, someone
who can stomach little quality time
with their family.
We’re Gonna Have a Good
Time Now
After a while, I’d finally had enough.
I decided I was not going to allow
my job to interfere with being a good
husband and father. If I had to cover
the Friday night football game, my
wife and children met me there and
we ate hot dogs and nachos for din-
ner together. I learned to completely
unplug at home by mentally prepar-
ing for my arrival during my drive
home from work by playing music,
rolling down the windows, taking
the scenic route, and even including
some good old prayer. I made time to
work out when my family was asleep
early in the morning or late at night.
I forced myself to eat lunch no matter
how busy I was during the school day.
I learned to say “no” when asked to
serve on committees or volunteer for

AASA Job Bulletin

family, I thought.

Not Today, I Got a Lot to Do

Several years into my first position
as a school administrator, I real-
ized how difficult it is to maintain a
work-life balance as a school leader.
From the inside, the hustle and
bustle and long hours feel normal,
Recruit Top K-12 Leaders
especially because many of your
colleagues are also working 60-80
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that everyone else is doing it make
it OK? Isn’t that in direct contrast
posting and viewing the hottest administrative K-12 jobs.
to what we teach our own children
and students?
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From the outside, it’s easy to see Log on to aasa.org/jobs for details on how
that your schedule is overwhelming. to submit an ad.
My wife used to tell me I needed to
slow down and completely unplug MEMBER AD RATES The AA
when I was home with her and our
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children. After going 300 miles per Time Single job exposure via K12 No. 1 sois the
hour all day long, I found it difficult period posting Job Board Network for adv urce
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I started thinking about that exit 60 days $640 $890
interview from several years before. 90 days $880 $1,130
I was turning into the type of person
the superintendent had warned me
about — a school administrator with

M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 11
 FrontLine
weekend events that interfered with
family time. I learned that the pile
on my desk at the end of each day
would still be there in the morning. I
decided not to check my e-mail after
I left work or on the weekends. I fully
engaged with my wife and children
smithsystem.com/collaborative
12 S C H O O L A D M I N I S1 T R AT O R  
AASA_SMITHSYSTEM_SPT_2015.indd March 2016
when I was at home by leaving my
cell phone in the car when we were
out to eat, attending ballgames or
picking pumpkins.
These changes were hard to
implement at first, but they soon
became routine. Furthermore, they
“I decided not to check my
1/18/16 8:41 AM
earned me respect and admiration
from my colleagues. It wasn’t until
I’d made the change that I realized
how out of sync my work-life balance
really was. We were driving down
the road the other day, singing in the
car, when I looked at my wife and
kids with smiles on their faces and
it occurred to me all that I had been
missing. And that, my friends, that’s
the good stuff.
Personal Care
The other day, I had the opportunity
to share some “words of wisdom”
with 26 pre-service school admin-
istrators who recently completed
e-mail after I left work or on
the weekends. I fully engaged
with my wife and children
when I was at home BY
LEAVING MY CELL PHONE IN
THE CAR when we were out
to eat, attending ballgames
or picking pumpkins.”
the M.Ed./Ed.S. program in educa-
tional leadership at the University
of Mississippi. I shared five items
I believed would help them be
successful leaders, including this:
“While you are out there saving the
world, don’t forget to take care of
yourself … your faith, your family,
your marriage, your health, etc. In
order to be the best you, you need
to take care of these things, and our
schoolchildren need the best you
each and every day.”
DENVER FOWLER is an assistant
professor of educational leadership at the
University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss.
E-mail: djfowler@olemiss.edu. Twitter:
@DenverJFowler
 FrontLine
SCOTT D. SPURGEON  | M Y V I E W

How We Coped During Ferguson Unrest … and Shined

IT WAS THE Saturday in August 2014
before the start of my second year
leading the Riverview Gardens School
District in St. Louis, Mo. We believed
we were on a roll, coming off the first
improvements in our district’s state
report card in more than a decade.
I had been hired to turn around
the 4,900-student urban district in
the northern portion of St. Louis
County, where about 98 percent of
the students are African American.
I experienced a buzz of excitement
among students, staff and commu-
nity over the recent announcement
we had received of a 16.8 percent
increase in our state-issued annual
performance report.
We were proving all students can
learn and felt good about our district
motto: “It’s a great day to be a Ram.”
Late-Night Vigils
At about 12:40 p.m. on Aug. 9, my
iPhone buzzed. It was a text message
from my high school principal who
had received a message from one
of our high school students that an
unarmed 18-year-old named Michael
Brown was shot and killed by a police
officer on Canfield Drive in Ferguson,
which sits within the Riverview Gar-
dens footprint.
The tension between community
and law enforcement was rising
by the minute, and an explosion
seemed imminent. Little did I know
this event would require my full
attention and the district’s resources
for months. Our district, commu-
nity and world would be changed
forever.
What did I do first? Well, let’s just
say there are no training manuals on
how to deal with a crisis of this mag-
nitude. I assembled a team of profes-
sionals who would be able to provide
me with the right updates at the right
time to ensure our students and staff
were as safe as possible.
Our team soon became known
as the “Pajama Patrol” because we
were up until midnight or later every
night for 14 straight days watching

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M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 13
FrontLine
the protest movement and brewing
developments. We were back up at
2:30 a.m. to watch the law enforce-
ment press conferences outlining
the previous night’s events involving
the protesters. We had boots on the
ground each morning by 4 a.m. to
assess the level of threat that might
still exist to make a decision on pos-
sible school closings.
For the first six weeks of the pro-
tests, we had law enforcement and/or
district security staff following buses
in the protest areas during pickups
and drop-offs to ensure safe passage
for students.
Contingency Plans
After the first week, with the volatility
of the protests increasing, I cancelled
classes for two days. During those
leading formative assessment author
Dylan Wiliam
author of best-selling
Embedding Formative Assessment
LSI_PUB_SchAdm_HalfPage_2016Mar.indd 1
14 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
“During those days, we loaded
up our food truck and parked
it outside various schools
in Riverview Gardens at
different times of the day
TO ENSURE STUDENTS AND
FAMILIES HAD ACCESS to
the free breakfast and lunch
the district provides to 100
percent of its students.”
days, we loaded up our food truck and
parked it outside various schools in
Riverview Gardens at different times
LearningSciences.com/books
of the day to ensure students and
families had access to the free break-
fast and lunch the district provides to
100 percent of its students.
We brought our full staff in for
a half-day of training on the signs
of student, staff and family stress.
We disseminated information on
additional resources available in the
community.
Once we pulled our crisis plan
off the shelf, we quickly modified
it. We wanted to ensure our actions
were precise yet fluid enough to react
appropriately to the ever-changing
protest movements, the strategies
used by outside agitators to gain the
upper hand against law enforcement
and the community developments
that would affect our students’ ability
to get to or from school.
AvAilAble now
1.877.411.7114
1/11/16 11:48 AM
 FrontLine

The most complicated piece of
the crisis plan involved the detailed
preparations for deploying our
shelter-in-place plan for students and
staff, if needed. Weeks later, I wrote
to the prosecuting attorney detailing
the most sound decisions for the
safety and well-being of students,
staff and families.
Despite the diversions of staff
time and district resources to deal
with the Ferguson unrest through-

student transportation contingencies
should a grand jury announcement
about the case be made during the
school day.
A Promising Outcome
The question anyone in this position
should ask is, “How do you navi-
gate a crisis that doesn’t play by the
rules?” The answer, simply, is to use
common sense at lightning speed,
communicate with one voice, stay
on message and include the right
professionals on your team, armed
with the right information to make
We Love Letters!
out 2014-15, I could not have been
prouder when I learned last October
that our students’ aggregate per-
formance on state academic meas- School Administrator WELCOMES
ures increased by 33.9 percent. We COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS FROM
ranked as the most improved district READERS about the articles and
in Missouri in 2015 and will be eligi- columns that appear in our pages.
ble this summer for an accreditation Send your letters to: Editor, School
upgrade for the first time in more Administrator, 1615 Duke St.,
than a decade. Alexandria, VA 22314. Or via
e-mail: magazine@aasa.org
SCOTT SPURGEON is superintendent of
the Riverview Gardens School District in
St. Louis, Mo. E-mail: sspurgeon@rgsd.k12.
mo.us. Twitter: @ScottSpurgeon1

! Love-Letters-short.indd 1 1/20/16 10:23 AM

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Edi
sed
evi
ne
W
— R
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student achievement as its primary focus

The comprehensive overview of critical governance

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Board and SuperinTendenT relaTionShipS,

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M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 15
16 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
 The
Productivity
Rural
of
Schools
S
uperintendent Kevin Newsom in Brack-
ettville, Texas, was faced recently with
replacing a $7 million building in his
school district, which sits two hours west
of San Antonio. Several of his predecessors had
tried to pass bonds to pay for this need but were
unsuccessful, straining community relations in a
town where roughly one-third of the 1,700 resi-
dents live in poverty.
When Newsom had the building re-assessed,
it turned out that a renovation would be better —
and more cost effective.
“For $600,000, we added tiles, remodeled and
gave that building a face lift,” he says. Then, using
modular buildings, the school district spent $1.4
million to put in a 10-classroom facility with com-
puter rooms, a biology lab and space for a nurs-
ing program. The district used a work-around
to spend existing funds for the renovation and
addition.
“We didn’t pressure our taxpayers, and we got
© RUSS WILLMS/ILLUSTRATION SOURCE
done what we wanted for $1.4 million versus $7
million,” Newsom says.
He hopes this will help restore positive com-
munity relations and demonstrate to taxpay-
ers that the 600-student Brackett Independent
School District is fiscally responsible and not
How some remote districts
generated higher-than-expected
learning results without
proportionately higher spending
BY MARGUERITE ROZA
likely to jump to tax levies as a first solution.
School leaders make tradeoffs like this all the
time. But Newsom’s remote rural district is con-
sidered a productivity superstar, one of 30 inter-
viewed by the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown
University to learn what made them so.
Outliers’ Productivity
Rural school systems are often knocked for being
expensive, lacking teacher talent and produc-
ing poor student outcomes. On average, remote
rural districts live up to their reputation of being
expensive and yielding lower student outcomes.
They have the lowest average return on invest-
ment, or ROI, across urban, suburban and town
school districts, meaning that even with their
higher costs, rural student outcomes are lower
M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 17

Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at
Georgetown University, has identified common factors
that explain the productive return on investment in
rural schools.
than the state’s norm adjusted for the mix of stu-
dent needs.
But another part of the story suggests being
rural might actually be an asset.
Some remote rural districts are outliers, beat-
ing the odds by producing higher-than-expected
results without a proportionately higher per-pupil
price tag. They’re outliers because their outcomes
greatly exceed those predicted by their mix of
students and by their available funds when com-
pared with other systems in their state. In fact,
our analysis shows rural districts have the highest
odds of being a productivity outlier — nearly 1 in
5 — compared with other urban, suburban and
town districts.
Our study wanted to find out why these pro-
ductivity superstar rural districts have such good
bang for their buck. (Neither homogeneity, rela-
tive affluence nor size, compared with other rural
remote systems, seemed to play a role.)
Leaders pointed to no single factor or program
to explain their superstar status. But as we talked
with these superintendents some common themes
emerged: The importance of human relationships
(with an emphasis on people over programs),
strong commitment to and accountability for stu-
dents, strategic use of data tied to students and
a clear focus on tradeoffs and what investments
“buy” in terms of outcomes.
While we tried to unearth potential common
denominators that might explain these rural sys-
tems’ assets, we quickly realized that every district
has its own mix of variables that may contribute to
its secret productivity sauce. And not every highly
productive rural system has a tight-knit commu-
nity that wholeheartedly supports its local schools
and agrees in lock-step about how to best serve its
children and respect its taxpayers’ pocketbooks.
Our conversations offer an impressionistic
starting point to better understand rural produc-
tivity. Only future study will help us drill down
further.
Factor 1: The human touch with students,
staff and the community
Strong relationships weren’t a given in these com-
munities. Leaders worked hard to build and sus-

Identifying ‘Superstars’ in Rural Settings

To determine whether school systems
performed better than predicted, we used
the Center for American Progress’s Produc-
tion ROI index. This index predicts the level
of achievement a school district should
have relative to other districts in the state,
accounting for its mix of student needs and
spending level.
The model adjusts for spending level and
the percentage of students who are English
language learners, students who are identi-
fied as needing special education and stu-
dents who qualify for free lunch.
We contacted all 107 outlier districts iden-
tified from the data in 23 states. Thirty dis-
tricts, representing 18 states, responded to
our request for a phone interview. We asked
leaders in those 30 districts why they thought
they received their productivity results.
To be clear, not all 107 districts identified
for their excellent return on investment have
produced student scores in the top tier over-
all for their state. The ranking on CAP’s pro-
ductivity measure compares students’ actual
performance with the district’s predicted
performance relative to peers.
For example, a school district with high
concentrations of poor students or students
with limited English proficiency may have
higher achievement than is the norm for that
mix of students and higher than the norm at
a particular spending level, but have overall
performance that doesn’t reach the highest
level. Only districts where students’ actual
performance surpasses predicted perform-
ance were considered ROI superstars.
While spending varied somewhat across
these districts, on average they spent about
5 percent less than the norm for districts in
their state. But all these outlier rural systems
performed better than predicted by the mix of
students they serve and the funds they have.
The outlier productivity districts we identi-
fied are all categorized by the National Cen-
ter for Education Statistics as “rural remote,”
which means the district is in a “census-
defined rural territory that is more than 25
miles from an urbanized area and is also more
than 10 miles from an urban cluster.” Some of
the districts we talked with are primarily farm-
ing communities. Others center on a main
employer, such as a hospital or small factory.
Still others draw on retirees or tourism.
— MARGUERITE ROZA

18 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
 tain them. The human touch played out in many
ways as these districts sought ways to motivate
and engage each student as an individual. Lead-
ers worked to develop a culture of leaving no one
behind. Several districts mentioned adopting a
mastery model.
“Our motto is ‘small school, big family,’” says
Marlen Cordes, superintendent of Kaleva Nor-
man Dickson Schools in Brethren, Mich., where
some 70 percent of students in the 350-square-
mile district are eligible for free or reduced-price
school meals. “Building relationships, that’s the
best (and most important) thing we do. All our
kids eat breakfast in the classroom every day.
That’s when teachers really get to talk to the kids.
The one thing we have going for us is we know
our kids. For many, school is the best part of
their day. The students work as hard as they can
because they don’t want to let the teachers down.”
Many superintendents grew up in the rural
area where they now work. And some leaders
intentionally sought to hire other natives who
they thought would stay and feel invested. Rural Chris Stevenson, superintendent in Harper, Texas,
superintendents emphasized the importance tries to provide a holiday bonus of up to $1,200 for all
of getting and keeping the right people. And staff to recognize the sacrifices they make during the
they expressed a willingness to let people go if school year.
circumstances warranted (be they budget or
performance related). Many leaders mentioned and elsewhere across the country. Teachers choose
the significance of their teachers’ professional what area they want to grow in, get time during
learning communities around teacher retention contract hours to study best practices in that area
and leadership (giving teachers the latitude and and are rewarded for improving their skills.
resources to do what they feel works best) and “Our staff development has been huge in grow-
student outcomes. ing our teachers,” Alan Allred, superintendent in
The “community” in these remote rural dis- Lincoln County, says. “People are programs. We
tricts isn’t some faceless force. Stakeholders in invest in our people and we retain them.”
these small communities tend to overlap — local
business leaders aren’t some anonymous business Factor 3: Making conscious tradeoffs
community but also local voters and parents — We asked these highly productive school districts
and may be less fragmented than in larger ones. how they could afford what they did without
spending more on average than their peers. Dis-
Factor 2: Sense of flexibility, creativity trict leaders talked about the problem-solving
and self-reliance process and conscious financial tradeoffs they
These school districts’ remoteness seems to foster made — many made specifically to be able to bet-
PHOTO COURTESY OF HARPER INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, HARPER, TEXAS

a sense of self-reliance and resourcefulness. They
seem accustomed to solving their own problems.
The Delhi, N.Y., district stopped paying for its
regional career and technical education program
at BOCES, the Boards of Cooperative Educational
Services, to create its own career technical college
program with a community college across the
street. District leaders say they are saving money
while offering students more course options.
A teacher in Wyoming’s Lincoln County
School District 2 came up with a homegrown,
teacher-led professional development program,
known as Fusion, that’s now used districtwide
ter support teachers and, ultimately, students.
Superintendent Chris Stevenson in Harper,
Texas, gives all staff, from the lunch lady on up,
a holiday bonus of $800 to $1,200 based on the
district budget (some years it’s not possible) and
student performance.
“We wanted an incentive plan that we could
celebrate as a district, and if we aren’t doing well,
then we work on it together,” Stevenson says.
His 600-student district does without a lot of
teacher aides or support staff. And when some-
one leaves or retires, leaders look very closely at
whether or not to re-staff the position.

M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 19
Doing the Most With What They Have
In interviews the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University conducted with leaders of outlier rural districts — those where student outcomes
exceeded predictions — we found each rural district had its own story. What was clear was that every highly productive rural school system has
found its own way to success, rooted in its own unique local context, with its own mix of variables that may contribute to its secret productivity
sauce. Here are excerpts of what we heard from three representative superintendents. — MARGUERITE ROZA
BRET MILES
Superintendent in Holyoke,
Colo., 2009-2015
Located 13 miles from the
Nebraska border in Colorado’s
far northeast corner, Holyoke
is a predominantly agricultural
community with about 600
students in K-12. The community
is home to Seaboard Farms, a
large hog production corporation.
“I grew up in Holyoke and gradu-
ated from the local high school.
… When I came in as superin- Bret Miles
tendent, the school board had
identified two main problems …
ability that comes in a small
low levels of teacher buy-in and
rural district that isn’t under-
declining community support.
stood in the bigger picture of
“Within the district, we built
the accountability movement.
a Standard of Excellence Team
…“With our budget crunch we
comprised of teachers, parents
had to reduce personnel, fortu-
and business leaders to analyze
nately mostly through attrition.
student achievement, set goals
We don’t have teacher aides for
and get community buy-in. … It’s
extra classroom support any-
this kind of genuine account-
more. … Our base salary hadn’t
Factor 4: Respect for costs
Leaders seem to have a general frugality, an
awareness of the price for everything and what
each dollar bought. They appear cautious in ask-
ing their community for money and only ask
when it’s really needed.
Anthony Marinack, superintendent of the
roughly 700-student Tri-County Area School
District in Plainfield, Wis., recognizes the need to
work strategically with the “haves” in a commu-
nity to avoid fundraising burnout (knowing whom
to ask, when to ask and being careful about how
much you’re asking).
“You have to get creative in how you are
going to get funds. You have fund-raised them
(the community) to death. Families can’t afford
it,” Marinack says, noting roughly 60 percent
of his students are eligible for federal free
or reduced-price school meals. “I hit up the
wealthy potato farmers in my area every now
and then to support our great programs. If I
20 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
changed in 10 years. That’s not staff buy-in. With just 50 teach-
good, but it’s our reality. We’ve ers, we can really make sure we
just asked teachers to take on communicate with and hear from
more. But our leadership team everyone.”
is a teacher team. Teachers feel
valued. Some 90 percent of our
teachers say they feel the district PAM KRUSE
Superintendent in Mason,
is moving in the right direction
Texas, 2009-present
and they feel supported. …
On the western side of Hill
“Maintaining that positive cli-
mate is an important part of every Country by the scenic Llano River,
Mason (population 2,200) sits in
decision. We go to the teachers
one of the state’s most rural coun-
to make sure they can get on ties, where farms and ranches
board with every strategy we dominate. About 700 students are
implement. … We’ve changed our enrolled in the district.
curriculum, grading policies and
technology expectations. We’ve “I’ve worked in Mason schools
been recognized for closing our for 28 years. … Our teachers
socio-economic achievement gap. are very involved in individual
Some 44 percent of students are students’ learning so they know
Latino and about a quarter are what each of them needs. And
English language learners, some we’ve really set up our district
50 percent are eligible for free so that no student can just fall
or reduced-price meals. This was through the cracks.
possible only because of the high “On Fridays, we have ‘prime
need sports uniforms, I try to hit up a farmer
who’s had a good year.”
Factor 5: Using data to directly help
students and teachers versus system
management or compliance
Many of the rural superstar superintendents see
every number as a person. They focus on using
data to identify and help struggling students. Dis-
tricts had a clear process for reflecting on what
worked and what didn’t work and making future
budget decisions based on that evidence. They
also used data to drive professional development
and staffing decisions.
About an hour north of Green Bay, all teach-
ers in the Crivitz, Wis., school district attend an
annual summer data retreat to set explicit goals,
timelines and clear methods for checking and
evaluating data throughout the year. The state
evaluation system requires teachers to set goals
for themselves known as SLOs, or student learn-

Pam Kruse
time’ that provides remediation
in each subject for the elemen-
tary grades. … In January, we
give our benchmark for the tests
in the spring. If we see kids who
have trouble, we put them into a
tutorial group. In junior high and
high school, at every level we
have remediation built into the
schedule. …
“We spend at least 90 percent
of our budget on staff. Of the fed-
eral money we receive, approxi-
mately 98 percent of that goes
to salaries. Our philosophy is the
more staff we have, the better off
the kids are. …
“We’re trying to upgrade all
of our facilities, but mostly that’s
an area where we’ve done with-
out because we wanted to focus
on instruction. We have a 1952
school building for preK-8 and a
1976 building for our high school.
… There’s not a lot of money here
and not a lot of ways to make
money here.
“But my teachers go the extra
mile … I have teachers who come
up here at 7 in the morning and
who are here at 6 at night to
tutor the kids. … I’ve had teachers
from other districts say to me that
there’s just no place like Mason
where everyone cares so very
much about the kids. I can’t take
credit for that. That has always
been a part of Mason.”
MARK PLATT
Superintendent in Hart,
Mich., 2013-present
About six miles inland from Lake
Michigan, Hart sits in an agricul-
tural zone with several fruit and
vegetable processing operations.
One of the county’s top employers
is the world’s largest maraschino
cherry producer. Tourists come for
beaches and looming sand dunes.
The district enrolls about 1,300.
Mark Platt
“Before I became super-
intendent, our district had
purposely closed outlying
schools and created a central
campus. … The first thing we did
when I took over … was start
to better manage the things
we had control over. We have
one campus with four buildings,
an early childhood center plus
elementary, middle and high
school. We have one bus run,
with everyone on it from K-12.
We’ve saved a lot of money.
“Those savings let us invest in
a consistent, quality elementary
school literacy program and every
teacher gets trained in it. ... And
we’ve invested heavily in leader-
ship. It’s very important to me that
the principals and I be the edu-
cational leaders. I don’t spend a
ton of time on finances; I have a
finance director. …
“Of course, there’s value in
sending teachers to training,
but the staff members I have
the greatest return on are my
principals. … Because they are
educational leaders, they can
create great PD in their own
building that’s responsive to
their school’s specific needs.
… We’re the only district in our
state where all of our principals
have gone through a 10-month
Leadership Matters specialty
endorsement program. It focuses
on coaching, collaboration,
reflection, courage, intentionality
and technology.
“We don’t have a lot of discre-
tionary money, but when we do
have extra dollars to spend, it’s
almost always on instruction. We
just used general fund dollars for
a one-to-one Chromebook pro-
gram in our secondary school. …
We wanted to give kids greater
access to broader course offer-
ings through the Internet.”

ing outcomes. Crivitz teachers set their SLOs
based on gaps that surfaced during the summer
data retreat and tweak their practice as needed to
meet the goals. Teachers review benchmark tests
during the school year. If gaps surface for certain
students, teachers and administrators together
craft a plan to target them.
“We have 50 teachers, 50 student learn-
ing outcomes that are connected to that data
retreat. Each teacher is attacking the data gaps
in his or her classroom,” says Crivitz superin-
tendent Patrick Mans. The system is “much
more responsive and timely” in using student
data throughout the school year to make
instructional changes.
Factor 6: No magic productivity plan but
food for thought
Our superintendent interviews produced no
magic productivity plan, no “adopt program X
and you’ll get stellar result Y” or “make tradeoff
X and you’ll save Y dollars.” While we need more
research to give deeper insight into what makes
these superstar rural systems tick, even nonrural
leaders may glean something useful from their
rural peers’ advice:
ll Focus on teachers, students and community.
ll Make relationship-building a clear part of dis-
trict leadership strategy.
ll Stay focused on the outcomes the money buys.
Our conversations with rural leaders make
us wonder whether the broad national focus on
“systems” means that many districts (rural and
nonrural) have lost some of the human elements
to schooling that may prove an advantage in any
setting. n
MARGUERITE ROZA is director of the Edunomics Lab
at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. E-mail:
mr1170@georgetown.edu. Twitter: @edunomicslab

M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 21
 Academic Challenges in
Isolated
Communıties
Three ways that technology is making a mark on rural schooling’s
most pressing needs of curricular and instructional quality
BY BETHENY GROSS AND ASHLEY JOCHIM
S
uperintendent Matt Grose, a
math major during his under-
graduate days, has an especially
personal view of the differ-
ence technology has made in his
900-student rural district in northern
Minnesota.
Grose’s teenage son wanted to
take pre-calculus but there were too
few students to justify a dedicated
course. Fortunately, the Deer River
Independent School District is part
of a thriving regional effort to ensure
rural students have access to a rich set
of course offerings to meet their aca-
demic needs and interests.
Grose’s son got to take that pre-
calculus class with just over a dozen
students dispersed across a handful
of farflung school systems through
“telepresence” classes taught by a
remote teacher using immersive video
technology.
Consisting of eight rural school
districts that together enroll some
7,000 students across 3,500 square
miles, the Itasca Area Schools Col-
laborative in north-central Minnesota
today offers 25 telepresence courses in
subjects such as business, physics and
Spanish. The newly added content
became so popular that participat-
22 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R    M a r c h 2 0 1 6
ing school systems had to align bells
and bus schedules to accommodate
student demand. The telepresence
courses help fill the gaps in hard-to-
staff subjects or courses that may not
generate a critical mass of students at
a single school site.
Rural districts such as Deer River
often struggle to deliver the same
educational experiences provided
by their larger suburban and urban
peers. They face a double-whammy of
higher per-pupil costs and stretched
budgets. Technology’s ability to bridge
long distance, boost administrative
efficiency and personalize experi-
ences at relatively low cost holds great
promise for rural communities work-
ing to improve student outcomes and
best manage existing resources.
At the Center for Reinventing
Public Education, we recently brought
together a national consensus panel
to evaluate technology’s role in rural
education and identify opportunities
for states to support rural technology
use. The panel’s mix of rural educa-
tion and technology experts, technical
assistance providers and researchers
discussed how technology can support
rural school systems’ work and boost
productivity through such means as
virtual learning, blended learning and
virtual professional networks.
Virtual Learning
Owing to the limited size of their
teaching forces, Deer River and other
small, rural systems are challenged
to offer specialized content. Virtual
learning programs are filling that gap
as they become more sophisticated.
Many today are interactive, incorpo-
rate video and other media, promote
collaborative and shared workspaces
and can be accessed on smartphones
and other devices.
Although it’s unlikely that a K-12
system will ever shift to a fully virtual
environment, rural areas can use
virtual learning to complement tradi-
tional classrooms or fill holes in their
curricular offerings, particularly in
hard-to-fill roles, such as STEM sub-
jects, world languages and Advanced
Placement courses. Many rural school
systems are already leveraging virtual
learning for credit recovery.
Launched through a grant from
the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
Rural Utility Service program, Min-
nesota’s Itasca collaborative also offers
an extremely local telepresence course
option: the Native American language
 Ojibwe. It’s taught by one of the dwin-
dling fluent speakers, who lives some
20 miles from Deer River. It’s a fitting
option because roughly 45 percent of
Deer River students are Native Ameri-
can, primarily Ojibwe. In addition, the
district offers drum and dance circles
and incorporates Ojibwe culture and
history in the curriculum.
“The language is very important to
my community,” Grose says, crediting
the Ojibwe offering with helping bet-
ter engage students. “And I love that
we’re teaching one of the oldest lan-
guages on the continent using 21st-
century technology.”
Grose, who has been the superin-
tendent for 10 years, notes the district
uses the telepresence technology
not just for students, but for teacher
training and administrative meetings.
It sharply reduces travel costs.
Virtual content also can con-
nect rural students with institutions
beyond the K-12 classroom walls,
such as museums, universities and
other cultural and scientific resources.
Aspirnaut, founded in 2006 by two
Vanderbilt faculty members (one of
PHOTO BY LYNN EVANS
whom grew up in rural south-central
Arkansas), lets students become
rural scientists engaging in hands-
on, inquiry-based STEM labs led by
university faculty, postdoctoral fel-
lows and graduate and undergraduate
students. Weekly labs are streamed or
video-conferenced to rural schools in
10 districts in Arkansas, Maine and
Tennessee. Onsite at the rural school,
a teacher or aide, sometimes with
assistance from former Aspirnaut
school interns, helps students with
troubleshooting and ensures student
safety with the lab.
Blended Learning
Rural school systems also could use
blended learning to improve instruc-
tion and rethink the school schedule
and classroom structure, possibly
saving money. According to the Chris-
tensen Institute, blended learning
is “a formal education program in
which a student learns at least in part
through online learning, with some
element of control over time, place,
path and/or pace.”
Technology opens the door for stu-
dents to do more meaningful at-home
work independent of a teacher’s phys-
ical presence. Some online setups let
teachers closely monitor and respond
to student progress whether students
are working at school or at home.
M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R
Superintendent Matt Grose (right) checks
the status of a 9th-grade social studies
project in Deer River, Minn., where
students are researching ways their rural
school district could be improved.
For students with no Internet
access at home, there now are readily
available, high-quality, stand-alone
apps and content, such as Native
Numbers and Dwelp, that can be used
off-line on mobile devices. Some rural
school systems, such as Vail, Ariz.,
covering 425 square miles southeast
of Tucson, even have tried to make
long bus rides more productive. They
have equipped school buses with wire-
less Internet access, creating a mobile
study hall of sorts.
Blended learning eventually may
enable districts to reduce the num-
ber of days students are on campus,
potentially lowering transportation
costs (which can be two to three times
that of urban districts) and freeing
up independent or collaborative work
time for teachers and students.
The 550-student Waco Community
School District in Wayland, Iowa, has
run an extended Monday-Thursday
school week since 2013. But the dras-
tic scheduling move wasn’t budget
23
 motivated. (In fact, district officials
say it may wind up costing more,
owing to the expanded enrichment
and professional development offer-
ings for students and teachers.) The
goal of the new schedule is to boost
both teacher and student learning
and, in part, better prepare teachers
to use technology as a teaching tool.
The district adopted a one-to-one
Chromebook program at the same
time it moved to the four-day week.
On designated Fridays (14 during
2015-16), the vast majority of Waco
students still hop aboard the school
bus to participate in optional teacher-
led enrichment activities, take college-
credit classes or get small-group or
individual help. The other Fridays
are dedicated to teacher professional
development around technology and
other needs.
Under the new arrangement, Waco
students receive more instructional
time (240 minutes a week versus 215
minutes a week) and longer class
periods than they did in the standard
five-day week, according to the dis-
trict’s technology coordinator, Andrea
McBeth, who is also a veteran teacher.
McBeth sees more teachers tak-
ing advantage of the time to integrate
technology in their classroom and
use it to personalize instruction. Dis-
trict test scores are up in many areas,
though she hastens to say technology
may not be the reason why. McBeth’s
own 9th-grade algebra students go
online to graph problems or watch

The Levelling Effect of Our 1:1 Initiative

BY CHRIS HON

Five years ago, a glimpse into any given classroom within the
Poplar Bluff R-I School District in southeast Missouri would look
much like this with respect to technology:
A Smart Board, maybe a couple of desktop
computers and a whole lot of paper and
pencils. In some ways, I envied school
districts with one-to-one initiatives, knowing
that in our rural part of the state, providing
personal devices to our students was a pie
in the sky idea.
That all changed after I heard a presenta-
tion by Mark Edwards, superintendent of
North Carolina’s Mooresville Graded School
District. He and I met in March 2012 during
the annual Missouri Association of School
Chris Hon Administrators conference. As he talked
about the demographic makeup of his dis-
trict — the population, the free and reduced lunch rate, etc. — the
wheels started to turn. Maybe going one-to-one wasn’t a pipe
dream after all. I left the conference with a renewed energy to
introduce the concept to our school board.
Partnering Needs
Living in rural Missouri presented several challenges. Our tech-
nology gap is the consequence of the disparity among our
students: the haves vs. the have-nots.
Twenty-first century learning wasn’t happening in and out-
side of our classrooms. Students need differentiated instruction
so they can develop communication skills and learn to work
together as a team on projects. We started with a one-year pilot
in fall 2012 at our junior high, which houses 800 7th and 8th
graders. Each pod received a cart of MacBook Airs.
After figuring out some WiFi issues, the trial run went excep-
tionally well, and the teachers were in large part on board.
The following year, we purchased 800 Macs and by 2014, we
deployed 1,500 laptops to students in grades 9-12.
There are several key points in leading a successful digital
transformation in a smaller community. Students need access to
rich content, so we chose to partner with Discovery Education for
its curriculum materials. Our students use the science and history
techbooks in class and can access a vast array of educational
video clips, articles and imagery.
The Discovery team recognizes that WiFi access can be an
issue in small, remote districts, so all content is made available
for downloading during school hours so students without Inter-
net at home are not hampered in their learning.
The second key factor was choosing a versatile learning
management system. I saw the need for a unified platform for
teachers to be able to organize their content, interact with stu-
dents and, most importantly for us, to communicate directly with
parents. In our area, we have a largely blue-collar workforce, and
many of our parents do not have the opportunity to speak with
teachers or know what is going on in the classroom with their
child’s learning progress. We adopted Schoology to address
these needs because it allows parents to follow exactly what
their child is studying and to communicate digitally with teachers
on a convenient timetable.
Prepared Instructors
Lastly, we invested in professional development and spent a
lot of time on the front end, preparing our teachers before the
one-to-one digital transformation occurred through networking
with other districts. I wanted to ensure teachers knew the device
was just a tool to aid in their instruction, not a replacement.
The initiative would have been a flop if we simply substituted a
device for textbooks.
While running schools in a rural community definitely presents
its own set of problems, I believe we have really been able to
address the major challenges, leading the region in one-to-one ini-
tiatives. Each student receives a device and accesses the assigned
content to experience a world beyond the four classroom walls.
When I walk down the halls and look into the classrooms today, I
see students creating projects, solving real-world problems, being
innovative and preparing for a realistic future. They should be able
to compete on the same playing field as anyone else.
CHRIS HON is superintendent of the Poplar Bluff School District in
Poplar Bluff, Mo. E-mail: chrishon@pb.k12.mo.us. Twitter: @pbsupt

24 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R    M a r c h 2 0 1 6
videos of different concepts. She
guides each student to the materials
they need on a given day.
“The technology helps me hit all
the kids’ different levels,” she says.
“And the technology has definitely
helped us better engage kids.”
Unfortunately, not much research
exists on the overall effectiveness of
a four-day school week. In general, it
seems to have a neutral effect on stu-
dent achievement. Some fiscal analy-
sis shows transportation costs could
be reduced by up to 20 percent, but
overall cost savings are relatively low.
One estimate caps savings at 5.43 per-
cent of a school district’s total budget.
Blended learning can help rural
teachers do better what good teachers
do already: differentiate instruction
and provide students deep learning
experiences. Technology enables a dif-
ferent classroom structure, where stu-
dents use mobile devices in a one-to-
one setup or in small groups, freeing
the teacher to individualize student
learning and take it deeper with more
nuanced craftwork, problem solving
and troubleshooting.
Further, software can adapt to stu-
dent performance and provide a cus-
tomized learning path. Rural commu-
nities boasting deep school-to-home
connections and relatively small class
sizes seem particularly well-positioned
to keep technology-based instruction
from becoming impersonal.
Virtual Networks
Rural districts also are using technol-
ogy to help break teachers’ profes-
sional isolation and deliver quality
professional development. Rural
teachers sometimes lack subject or
grade-level peers in their community,
making online professional learn-
ing communities, online training
or online resource banks that allow
teachers to share and review instruc-
tional materials particularly helpful.
The Wabash Valley Education
Center in West Lafayette, Ind., helps
communities of schools learn from
each other, enabling a rural algebra
teacher to connect not just with other
algebra teachers, but other rural
Bethany Gross
algebra teachers. About once a week,
the center facilitates a virtual teacher
meeting using Elluminate (virtual
conferencing software).
Online professional development
can give rural educators access to
timely learning experiences while
lowering travel and facility costs.
Arkansas created a state-funded por-
tal in 2006 that provides thousands
of free online professional develop-
ment courses. Teachers earn 19 hours
on average. The Teach LivE program,
developed at the University of Cen-
tral Florida and now used at 42 sites
nationwide, populates virtual class-
rooms with student “avatars” to help
teachers learn new skills and hone
their instructional practice.
Also, the University of North Caro-
lina’s LEARN NC charges nominal
fees for online workshops and helps
rural schools deliver state-mandated
training if they lack capacity them-
selves. Nearly 70 percent of the state’s
rural schools access www.learnnc.org.
Research suggests quality online
professional development is a viable
option. A rigorous 2013 study by
Barry Fishman, a professor of learn-
ing technologies at the University
of Michigan, and colleagues found
online professional development has
the same effect on student learning
and teacher behavior as more tradi-
tional in-person models.
Technology also can help rural
school systems hold teachers more
accountable for what they actually
M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R
Ashley Jochim
learn in professional development.
Often, accountability in face-to-face
workshops is no more than simply
signing an attendance sheet. Technol-
ogy can measure changes in teacher
knowledge (like a simple pre/post
training survey), changes in teacher
practice (sample lesson plans, digi-
tal recording of a live lesson) and
changes in student performance (digi-
tal portfolios, online assessments) that
are embedded within or linked back
to online professional development
opportunities.
Policy Support
Technology offers considerable
promise to rural districts working
to improve instruction with limited
resources. To take advantage of these
opportunities, policymakers must sup-
port improvement in rural America’s
technology infrastructure. More than
70 percent of the 26 million people
without high-speed Internet access
live in rural areas. And fewer than 50
percent of educators nationwide have
an Internet connection that meets
their teaching needs.
Addressing the existing gaps in
access will ensure every rural student
and educator can leverage technology
to improve teaching and learning. n
BETHENY GROSS is senior research
analyst and research director at the Center
on Reinventing Public Education in Seattle,
Wash. E-mail: betheny@u.washington.edu.
Twitter: @bethenygross. ASHLEY JOCHIM
is a research analyst at the center.
25
 Small districts discover rich instructional resources when
teachers adapt free online lessons as textbook alternatives
B Y B I L L G R AV E S
L
eaders of Grandview School District in rural
central Washington concluded four years
ago that their textbooks would not prepare
their students, a third of whom have limited
English skills, for the new Common Core State
Standards.
In fact, the district’s middle schoolers were per-
forming among the bottom 5 percent in the state.
So Grandview educators took the unusual step of
tossing their textbooks and turning instead to free,
openly licensed educational resources online to
build a curriculum better suited for their students.
“We wanted to use high-yield teaching strate-
gies that were not always reflected in the basal
textbooks,” said Superintendent Kevin Chase.
Today, the district teaches math and language
arts in preschool through grade 10 from lessons
that staff members created out of materials har-
vested online. It soon will do the same in grades
11 and 12.
Teachers and students are benefitting from the
conversion, Chase said, adding, “I honestly think
the teachers realize they are teaching kids at a
much higher level than they were.”
An Enormous Leap
Few school districts have made this enormous
leap so fully into the world of what is being called
26 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
open educational resources, or OER. But a grow-
ing number are gearing up to do so:
ll Eleven states have formed a K-12 OER Col-
laborative to create high-quality educational
resources for math and language arts aligned to
state standards.
ll The U.S. Department of Education in October
launched its #GoOpen campaign, encouraging
school districts to use openly licensed educational
materials, and 10 districts pledged to replace at
least one textbook with open materials within the
next year.
ll The federal education department in October
appointed Andrew Marcinek, a school technology
expert, to become its first-ever open education
adviser.
ll Eighty-three percent of district technology lead-
ers predicted the majority of their districts’ educa-
tional content will be digital within the next three
years, according to a 2015 national survey by the
Consortium for School Networking.
ll Twenty states were planning initiatives relating
to open resources, according to a 2014 Council of
Chief State School Officers survey.
 Abundant and Free
More education leaders are concluding that the
growing abundance of high-quality open educa-
tional resources can better personalize education,
prepare students for higher learning standards
and fit schools’ increasing use of technology.
Online materials also are more flexible, easier to
keep current — and free. They can range from
podcasts to digital libraries to educational games.
When school districts invest in traditional text-
books, Marcinek says, they “might be locked into
six or seven years” of lessons in subjects such as
history and science that quickly become outdated.
They can instead invest that money in laptops
and tablets that students can use to access more
current digital information, he says.
The increasing interest in technology and open
educational resources is part of a larger trend
to individualize education and content in an era
when teachers want “to mix and match things,”
says Keith Krueger, chief executive officer for the
Consortium for School Networking. “You can go
deeper where you want. Not every (student) has
to do exactly the same thing.”
Educators have access to an exploding collec-
tion of open resources, from clip art and the free
video lectures developed by the Khan Academy
to lesson plans on Shakespeare and EngageNY
instructional materials developed by the New
York State Education Department. Two organiza-
tions, Curriki and OER Commons, provide online
repositories of open resources. What’s more,
Creative Commons, a nonprofit that promotes
open licensing, will lead workshops on OER for
schools across the country. Amazon, Microsoft
and Edmodo, a network for teacher and student
collaboration, have teamed up with the U.S.
Department of Education to provide an infra-
structure that will help people find education
materials and data in the department’s Learning
Registry and elsewhere.
Whether or not they are ready to plunge into
open materials, school district leaders should be
educating their teachers about what is available
and how to gauge its quality, says Reg Leichty,
founding partner of Foresight Law + Policy in
Washington, D.C., and counsel to the Consortium
for School Networking.
“Educators are going to be out in the world
looking for resources to help them do their job,”
he says, “so they should be educated about how to
make the most of it.”
PHOTO BY GEORGE GRAF
Elementary school pupils in Grandview, Wash., work
on math problems using free instructional materials
harvested online by their teacher.
The Staff’s Challenge
Educating teachers became a bigger part of the
Grandview district’s shift to open resources than
anyone had expected. The district, which is situ-
ated 45 minutes south of Yakima in farm country
that has drawn a large Latino population, enrolls
about 3,600 students, 550 of them migrants and
92 percent Latino.
After experimenting with open resources for
a couple of years under the guidance of Wilma
Kozai, assistant superintendent of teaching and
learning, the district embarked four years ago on
a rare quest to design its own math and language
arts units for all grades with the use of various
online resources such as EngageNY. District
leaders wanted to make instruction more rigor-
ous and standards-based, Kozai explains. They
wanted students to learn concepts, to gain a grasp
of the underlying principles of math and reading,
before they learned procedures, Kozai says.
“Teaching procedurally did not work for more
than half of our kids,” she says. “We believe you
have to struggle to learn. If you are not struggling,
you are not learning.”
Grandview’s staff struggled, too, not only to
build its curriculum but also to use it. Norma
Morales, an instructional coach for elementary
grades, helped write the elementary language arts
learning units. “I was writing at night and coaching
during the day,” she says. “It has been a long road.”
The school district saved $130,000 by not buy-
ing textbooks, but it then invested much of that
into preparing teachers how to use its homegrown
lessons, Chase says. As consultants and instruc-
tional coaches developed learning units, each
typically for five to 15 days, teachers were trained
how to use the lessons — and to master them. If
M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 27
 their lesson included fraction problems, they were
expected to work the problems.
“We have professional development every
single day in our district,” Kozai says.

Positive Outcomes
Many teachers initially resisted the switch from
textbooks to open resources, but most say they
would not now want to go back. “The majority of
our teachers are loving it,” says Stephanie Stanton,
an elementary math coach.
Chase, who has been Grandview’s superin-
tendent for 11 years, says the personal construc-
tion of new instructional tools has made teach-
ers perform “better and better. … Their content
knowledge has grown exponentially because of
the work they have done around learning these
units of study.” Kevin Chase is superintendent in Grandview, Wash.,
The learning units are closely connected to a school district leading the way in its use of open
Common Core standards and produce consistent educational resources available to staff on the Internet.
instruction, Chase says, noting visiting educators
often comment on the coherence they see across math standards climbed over four years from 35
the grades. Math lessons, for instance, focus first percent to 59 percent in 3rd grade and from 24
on underlying concepts. The language arts lessons percent to 51 percent in 4th grade.
all reflect the district’s philosophy of balancing “We are definitely on the right track,” says
whole-class instruction with shared and guided Morales, who coaches elementary teachers on the
reading in groups and independent reading. new methods.
Student performance has climbed district- Other districts in Washington, such as the
wide, especially in math. Students in 3rd and Bethel system south of Seattle and Spokane
4th grades, who’ve been exposed to the new cur- Public Schools, are making major commitments
riculum for most of their schooling, are achiev- to open resources and getting some guidance
ing close to the state average, far higher than in from Barbara Soots, a program manager for the
the past. The portion of students meeting state state education department focusing on the use

Federal Adviser on Open Education Aims at Classrooms

Andrew Marcinek says he is focusing on the
front lines in his new role as the U.S. Depart-
ment of Education’s first open education
adviser.
“I put on my teacher lens and try to see
it from the teacher’s point of view,” says the
former English teacher who served previ-
hoping teachers will have more flexibility and
the ability to really get recognition for being
the content specialists that they are.”
If he were back in the classroom, Mar-
cinek says, he would work with his English
department as a team to seek open teach-
ing resources that could replace textbooks
cational Technology last September, says he
also will help superintendents see the pos-
sibilities of open educational resources for
their districts. Ten districts already have com-
mitted to replace at least one textbook with
open materials by fall.
“I think everyone is feeling comfortable PHOTO COURTESTY OF GRANDVIEW SCHOOL DISTRICT, GRANDVIEW, WASH.

ously as director of technology in two Mas-
sachusetts school districts, “and how the
teacher is going to bring more open educa-
tional resources into his or her classroom.”
Free, openly licensed resources are teach-
ing, learning and research materials in the
public domain, freely available over the web.
They range from podcasts to digital libraries
to textbooks and games.
Marcinek says these resources open
doors for teachers who “feel limited by text-
books and what they can teach. … We’re
and enrich instruction. As school districts
move deeper into using online resources, he
expects they will use a mix of digital lessons
with commercial instructional materials.
“We are not trying to take a textbook away
from (teachers) and say, ‘You have to create
a textbook on your own,’” he says. “We want
to give them access to high-quality resources
that you can change and adapt. … You have
more creative control over the educational
resources.”
Marcinek, who joined the Office of Edu-
that this is not going away and that we are
supporting this,” he says. “In a few years, our
hope is we have a critical mass, a community
of educators, a shared culture of learning,
sharing resources across state lines.”
Marcinek can be reached in the U.S.
Department of Education’s Office of Edu-
cational Technology at 202-453-5710 or
570-259-1114. His e-mail address is andrew.
marcinek@ed.gov, and his Twitter handle is
@andycinek.
— BILL GRAVES

28 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
of open educational resources. The state created
Soots’ position, the first in the country, in 2012,
and she has already been talking with Marcinek,
her federal counterpart. Soots’ office identifies
open resources aligned with the Common Core
standards and shows school systems how to do
the same.
“We are hitting a critical mass,” Soots says.
“There are a lot more folks who are aware of it
and interested in it.”
Texts to Technology
Despite its heavy use of online resources, Grand-
view does not rely heavily on tablets or other
computer technology, Chase says. Students read
print versions of books and write and work math
problems on paper. But another small rural dis-
trict in central Illinois turned to open resources
and used its savings to build its technological
infrastructure. Three years ago, the 300-student
Williamsfield Community School District, located
30 miles northwest of Peoria, combined $8,000
it had budgeted for a math textbook series with
its federal funding to buy a fiber optic network
and tablets for every classroom from preschool
through grade 12 in its single school building. It
has continued the same strategy for the last two
years and now checks out a tablet to every child
in 5th through 12th grades.
The district used a free, open math scope and
sequence developed by the Charles A. Dana Cen-
ter at the University of Texas as a framework to
build lessons with other open resources such as
EngageNY and the Illinois Shared Learning Envi-
ronment. As in Grandview, teachers put in two
years of demanding work curating materials for
their lessons. They now are finding the technol-
ogy makes it far easier for students to follow inde-
pendent, personal paths to proficiency, according
to Tim Farquer, the superintendent.
“We can do a much better job of tapping into
what kids are passionate about,” he says. “You let
the student drive the learning.”
Farquer believes “the level of student engage-
ment is visibly higher.”
Williamsfield is one of six school districts
designated by the U.S. Department of Education
as ambassadors to help other districts use open
educational materials. So is the Upper Perkiomen
School District with 3,200 students in Pennsburg,
Pa. The 2,400-student Mountain Empire Unified
School District, which sprawls over 660 square
miles east of San Diego, is among 10 districts that
have accepted the federal education department’s
challenge to replace at least one textbook with
open resources within the next year.
Additional Resources
Readers can find more about the use of open educational resources from these
sources.
FEDERAL:
kkU.S. Department of Education’s #GoOpen campaign encourages school dis-
tricts to use open educational resources: http://tech.ed.gov/open-education/go-
open-districts
kkU.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology includes links
to its Learning Registry and other resources: http://tech.ed.gov/open-education/
STATE-LEVEL:
kkCalifornia Learning Resources Network’s free digital high school textbooks:
www.clrn.org/home
kkCK-12 Foundation in California’s online textbooks and other educational materi-
als: www.ck12.org
kkEngageNY instructional materials: www.engageny.org
kkIllinois Open Educational Resources: https://ioer.ilsharedlearning.org
kkWashington State’s reviewed OER library in the state education agency’s digital
learning department: https://digitallearning.k12.wa.us/oer/library
MISCELLANEOUS:
kkComplete sample unit from Grandview, Wash., school district: http://gsd200.
org/cms/lib8/WA01918991/Centricity/Domain/39/LIT-05-U3-Narrative_Study_of_
Historical_Fiction.pdf
kkConsortium for School Networking: www.cosn.org
kkCreative Commons, global leader in open licensing: https://creativecommons.org
kkCurriki, a repository of open resources: www.curriki.org
kkIllustrative Mathematics’ resources for curriculum and assessment staff:
www.illustrativemathematics.org
kkThe K-12 OER Collaborative: http://k12oercollaborative.org
kkOER Commons, a repository of open materials: www.oercommons.org
kkOpen Professionals Education Network’s guidelines on searching for OER:
https://open4us.org/find-oer
A Resource Pool
Grandview is putting all the lessons it has devel-
oped online for others to use for free. Williams-
field plans to do the same. Those lessons will be
part of a growing library of open materials being
developed by schools, districts and state education
departments across the country.
“I see the pool of resources getting richer and
richer,” says Farquer.
So does Marcinek, the recently appointed
federal official overseeing the spread of open
resources in schools. He sees the movement con-
tributing to educational equity.
“Hopefully,” he adds, “this will close the digi-
tal divide so all kids have access to high-quality
resources.” n
BILL GRAVES is an education freelance writer in
Beaverton, Ore. E-mail: billgraves1@frontier.com.
M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 29
 Won’t You
Stay a Little
Longer? The challenge in rural America of
teacher recruitment and retention
BY JOHN D. ULFERTS
R
ural administrators expect to wear a lot of
hats. Most of us have shoveled our share of
snow, served cafeteria food, swept floors,
substitute taught and bandaged the elbows
and knees of a small army of children. But when
our only kindergarten teacher stood before me
just days before the school year began in rural
Shirland, Ill., on the border with Wisconsin, and
regretfully explained why she had to resign, I seri-
ously wondered if I’d be starting the year off in
her role.
Having begun my career as a high school
teacher, I found the prospect of standing in front
of a room of 18 kindergarteners terrifying. How
could Mrs. Harris (a pseudonym) do this to me?
Even worse, the kindergarten open house was just
hours away. How would I tell the parents, who
were understandably anxious about sending their
babies off to school, that we just lost our only kin-
dergarten teacher?
“Mrs. Harris,” I pleaded, barely able to contain
my rising anxiety, “isn’t there something I can do
to make you reconsider? I have no idea where I’ll
find another kindergarten teacher on such short
notice. Why do you want to teach in Rockford
anyhow?” With nearly 30,000 students, Rockford
30 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
Public Schools is the state’s third-largest district.
And while it’s only 18 miles away, it is about as
different as can be from rural Shirland’s 120
students.
“I hate to leave,” she said consolingly, “but
how can I turn down an $18,000 raise and full
health insurance for my family? And I’ll never
have to worry again about the district closing its
doors because of (state-imposed) consolidation or
declining enrollment.”
And so I watched helplessly as yet another
promising young teacher walked out the school-
house door, lured like so many before her to a
larger, nearby school district offering higher pay
and better benefits.
Shortages and Turnover
School districts nationwide are grappling with
a teacher shortage caused, in part, by a sharp
decline in enrollment in teacher preparation pro-
grams from 2010 to 2014, as reported by the U.S.
Department of Education, and by an improved
economy offering better paying jobs to college
graduates. California, which licenses an average
of 15,000 teachers annually, was short 21,500
teachers at the start of the 2014-15 school year.
©MARK SHAVER/ILLUSTRATION SOURCE

M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 31
 One month from the start of this school year, the
Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., district still had
200 teacher openings.
In rural districts, the teacher shortage has
intensified the longstanding challenges of teacher
recruitment and retention. Now more than ever,
rural administrators find themselves pleading
with their teachers, as Jackson Browne crooned
on the final track of his album “Running on
Empty,” “Oh, won’t you stay/just a little bit lon-
ger?/Please, please, please/say you will.”
Teacher turnover is a problem nationwide, but
it impacts rural school districts, responsible for
educating 20 percent of the nation’s youth, the
hardest. Rural schools regularly report teacher
turnover rates of 30-50 percent, with the high-
est teacher turnover found in rural schools with
fewer than 300 students. Faced with a shortage of
teachers, rural districts often have to consolidate
classes, cancel course offerings, assign classes to
unqualified teachers or rely on uninspiring online
computer courses.
When rural teachers resign, there is little their
principals can do except watch as another teacher
packs his or her bags for a better-paying posi- John Ulferts, superintendent in Shirland, Ill.,
tion. Few rural districts have penalty clauses for encourages teacher Sarah Maxey to sign a contract
teachers to prevent them from breaking contracts with the district. His doctoral dissertation examined the
because collective bargaining associations oppose challenge of teacher recruitment in rural communities.
them, teacher recruits are discouraged by them
and rural districts can ill afford the legal cost of remain teaching in rural schools. Rural teach-
enforcement. ers stayed because of their “relationships with
students,” “safe environment,” “small class size”
Influencing Factors and “support from administrator, parents and
If rural administrators want to persuade their community.”
teachers to stay a little bit longer, they need a bet- Since rural school districts cannot compete
ter understanding of the recruitment and reten- with the better pay and benefits offered by sub-
tion factors that influence teachers to accept and urban and urban districts, the rural community
remain in positions in rural districts. itself must understand it plays a key role in
In fall 2014, 54 percent of teachers employed determining whether a teacher remains. Rural
in the 24 smallest Illinois school districts par- communities need to make every effort to include
ticipated in a survey to measure the influence their teachers in the social fabric of the commu-
of teacher recruitment and retention factors on nity, thereby lessening the social and geographic
overall job satisfaction. The survey was based on isolation they experience. This can be challenging
Australian educator Colin Boylan’s model of four because the study indicates 83 percent of rural
domains for teacher recruitment and retention: teachers do not live in the communities where
classroom factors, schoolwide factors, community they teach.
factors and family/personal factors. Rural communities can build connections with
their teachers by inviting them to social func-
ll Teachers are most likely to accept rural assign- tions and getting to know them as both friends
ments for family or personal reasons but remain and neighbors. Rural communities are often busy
PHOTO COURTESY OF AMBER EMERSON

because of community factors. places with community potlucks, book clubs,

Study participants reported that the most influ-
ential recruitment factors were “best or only job
offer,” “enjoy the rural lifestyle,” “family and or
home close by” and “small class size.” But these
factors were not what influenced teachers to
softball games, dances and card nights. It takes
courage for a young rural teacher, new to a com-
munity, to attend these social events for the first
time. Whether the teacher ever attends another
event is largely determined by how they are

32 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
received by community members. If teachers are
made to feel as if they are living in a fishbowl,
their every move analyzed, they will likely never
return. It is essential for rural communities to
recognize teachers are people, too, and refrain
from talking to them only about school.
ll Rural teachers value flexible schedules.
In addition to competitive salaries and insurance
packages, survey participants indicated “more
flexibility with scheduling including flexible per-
sonal days” as an effective strategy for increasing
rural teacher recruitment and retention. Rural
administrators with tight budgets may want to
emphasize flexibility as a teacher recruitment and
retention strategy. With 83 percent of rural teach-
ers commuting to the communities that employ
them, a later start time in inclement weather or
an early dismissal to attend a medical appoint-
ment may entice some rural teachers to stay a
little bit longer.
ll Homegrown recruitment initiatives don’t work.
Because homegrown teachers already live in and
know the rural communities where they teach,
they are thought to bring staying power to their
teaching assignments. However, researchers sug-
gest homegrown teachers can negatively affect a
school’s culture because other teachers may per-
ceive homegrown staff as receiving preferential
treatment. If the homegrown teacher is unsuc-
cessful, the school district’s relations with the
community can sour. While hiring homegrown
teachers is a gamble for rural administrators, it
pays big when the homegrown teacher is success-
ful. The connection is already there with the com-
munity, and the homegrown teacher is more likely
to remain in the rural district as a result.
Additionally, the study’s findings suggest it
is more important for teacher recruits to have
a rural background than to be homegrown.
Rural administrators should be sure to include
interview questions about the backgrounds of
teacher candidates because those with a rural
background are more likely to remain teaching in
rural schools.
ll Marketing efforts need improvement.
District marketing efforts were seen by study par-
ticipants as largely ineffective, in that they were
nonexistent or in need of improvement. Rural
school districts should strategically focus their
recruitment marketing on hard-to-fill roles, such as
special education, math, science and reading spe-
cialists. Launching a district website might be the
first step because half the rural school districts in
the Illinois study did not have their own websites.
Because study results indicated rural Illinois
teachers were satisfied with the profession at or
above the national average, rural administrators
should conduct exit interviews whenever possible
to identify the factors leading to teacher turnover.
Ties That Bind
When teachers exit as hastily as our kindergarten
teacher did, it’s helpful for rural administrators to
be able to call upon one of their retired teachers,
who often act like guardian angels over the rural
schools they once served. As superintendent-
principal of a district with 120 students in kinder-
garten through 8th grade, I let out a sigh of relief
knowing I had averted certain disaster when Mrs.
Pankratz, one of our retired teachers, agreed to
accept the long-term kindergarten assignment.
Nervous parents were now reassured about send-
ing their young children to school for the first
time, especially as I wasn’t going to be their kin-
dergarten teacher!
I had dodged a bullet. Maybe, just maybe, I’d
start the new school year fully staffed. I could
remain just the superintendent-principal (as well
as the nurse, food service worker and part-time
custodian). I was still in a celebratory mood when
the special education teacher came into my office
and shut the door. The much larger, wealthier
high school district nearby had offered her a
teaching positon.
Thankfully, she declined. It was too close to the
start of the school year for her students. Besides,
she felt a connection with our staff and our com-
munity and didn’t want to leave us hanging. But
she did want me to know that the high school had
told her they’d call again in the spring and, when
they did, she intended to accept the special educa-
tion assignment.
Knowing how hard it is to find a good spe-
cial education teacher, this rural administrator
had better start looking for another teacher. At
least my special education teacher was giving
me enough time that I might be able to find a
replacement before needing to fall back on my
own special education teaching license.
Rural school districts should not have revolv-
ing doors. Rural teachers may indeed stay a
little bit longer if rural administrators can bet-
ter understand the factors that influence rural
teacher recruitment and retention. n
JOHN ULFERTS is superintendent-principal of Shirland
Community Consolidated School District 134 in Shirland,
Ill. E-mail: julferts@shirland134.org. Twitter: @JohnUlferts.
His article is based on his doctoral dissertation at Western
Illinois University.
M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 33
 The Demands on the
First-Time
Rural
Superintendent
Case studies of four leaders of remote districts
on their early-career challenges
BY CARI L. WRYSINSKI-GUDEN
M
y work as superintendent leading the
600-student school district in the village
of Edgar in central Wisconsin doesn’t
differ much from many other small, rural
districts. I came to that conclusion after complet-
ing a doctoral dissertation about a year ago that
studied the roles and challenges faced by first-
year superintendents in rural communities.
My research focused on administrative
demands, curricular development and instruc-
tional leadership and yielded evidence of specific
leadership actions taken by superintendents dur-
ing their entry periods in small, rural school dis-
tricts. The four districts ranged in size from 420
to 600 students, and all are located in Wisconsin.
Given the lack of literature relevant to first-
time rural superintendents, my study might serve
as a bridge between the little research that does
exist and the practitioner’s hands-on professional
training needs. In addition, my study gave the
participants an opportunity for their voices to be
34 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
heard by those in the field of educational admin-
istration when much more attention is directed
toward larger school districts.
The new, rural superintendents identified five
important tasks that they performed in their first
years. As their top priority, they pointed to this:
“consult with, model and actively coach other pro-
fessional staff in the district.”
In the four short narratives that follow, the
participants individually relate some of their chal-
lenges as early-career superintendents in small,
rural school communities. Because the subjects
were granted anonymity, the superintendents have
been given pseudonyms, but all other details about
them and their scenarios are factually accurate.
©KIM LAFAVE/ILLUSTRATION SOURCE
Superintendent Pentermann
Wayne Pentermann was shocked by how much
he did not know about the job when he started as
superintendent of a rural district in west-central
Wisconsin that drew 600 students from four vil-
lages and the surrounding area. board minutes and just trying to absorb sort of a
“Based on the experiences I had at the prin- knowledge base of what that organization looks
cipalship, I thought I had a broad range of skills like and what are their challenges. … So it wasn’t
and understanding of the system, but I think that what I expected. It was a little lonelier in that ini-
the delegation of time to yourself and where you tial entry period,” Pentermann said.
put things really sort of stresses a person out,” He considered the transition plans significant
Pentermann said. documents, so he asked the board of education
The complexities of the organization fell to to use them as part of his evaluation. He had
the superintendent to figure out. Without clear hoped these would give the board members,
direction from the school board upon his hiring, some of whom were new, a clearer picture of his
he created his own transition plans, one for the day-to-day responsibilities as a rural superin-
first 45 days, the other for 90 days. The first plan tendent, forestalling any
called for him to meet a wide array of constitu- misconceptions.
ents to understand the school system. But starting
work in July hampered that good intention.
“You want to meet with your principals
and all of a sudden, you find out that
they’re not year-round employees
and they’re off on vacations and
what-not, so you’re kind of there
trying to absorb written mate-
rial … going over policies
and looking at past

M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 35
 Pentermann found it
necessary to differentiate his
management system from
that of his predecessor when
dealing with staff members.
This included spelling out
early on how he wanted
problems to be handled.
“You deal with your own
problems. I’m not here to
take on your problems,” he
said he told them. “I’m happy
to solve them, but you prob-
ably won’t like the way that
I solve them, so it’s better off
that you do.”
When Pentermann found
his organizational skills put
to the test in his first year,
he was assigned a mentor, a
nearby superintendent, by the Cari Wrysinski-Guden
region’s educational service
agency. The two initially met once a month and
spoke occasionally by phone.
When he thinks back about addressing chal-
lenges as a new rural superintendent, he consid-
ers personal integrity the most influential factor.
“You have to kind of maintain your integrity when high school, so they’re an expert,” Jerson said.
even people within the organization do things
that are against your own belief system and you
have to deal with that, especially when they’re
your boss, in some cases,” Pentermann said. “I
think trying to maintain a personal sense of integ- for 20 years. How can an outsider to our district
rity — trying to keep your energy up, especially
now in the climate that we’re in.”
Superintendent Jerson
Soon after Justin Jerson was promoted from the
high school principalship to the superintendency
of a 420-student district in southeastern Wiscon-
sin, he recognized the need to establish a close
relationship with his board of education to under-
stand their expectations.
Early on, he approached the board about his
authority to replace an ineffective building prin-
cipal at year’s end. The members granted that
latitude. Jerson met with the principal to discuss
the nonrenewal of his contract and the posting of
the position. A week later, the board had changed
its mind, met with the principal and issued a new
two-year contact.
“I felt stabbed in the back,” Jerson said. “They
made me look like a fool.”
In his capacity as the instructional leader,
Jerson was determined to introduce the use of
technology into classrooms — an area in which
36 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
many school staff lacked
experience and were resis-
tant to change. “The build-
ing principals have no idea
how a computer works, so
they can’t talk … about what
teachers should be doing in
the classroom because they
don’t know,” he said.
When Jerson met with
teachers, he was disap-
pointed about how little
they knew of technology
integration. Recognizing
the school district needed
to stay competitive with
neighboring districts, he
took a top-down approach
where staff members were
not given a choice to imple-
ment technology. He imple-
mented a “Bring Your Own
Device” initiative in grades 6-12, stating, “This is
the way it’s going to be.”
Educating his rural board members had to be
part of this process. “Many times [school board
members] went to school and graduated from
“I’ve tried, over the years, to inform them, but
they’ve lived in the rural town for 60 years and
they’ve been involved with the schools since age 5,
as a student or a parent or now a board member
tell me differently?”
Superintendent Bishopson
The one thing that surprised Charles Bishopson
the most during his first months as superin-
tendent of a 600-student district in southwestern
Wisconsin was the challenge of maintaining a
calm environment. He described the staff as “very
scared, nervous and unsure of their future.”
It wasn’t their unfamiliarity with Bishopson
that spurred the fearful climate. He had been the
elementary school principal for 4½ years before
he was promoted to superintendent.
What had so dramatically altered the work
climate was the state government’s strong arm in
radically changing the rules of collective bargaining
in public schools in short order. This completely
transformed the role of management in employee
relations in his first year, and Bishopson was left to
grasp all of the legal and regulatory changes and to
develop a new employee handbook.
“It’s so ridiculously complicated right now, and
I think that was kind of born out of the speed
with which the change took place,” Bishopson
said. He felt that the rapid overhaul caused a
great deal of confusion and angst among teachers.
A significant benefit toward his understanding
and handling of administrative demands dur-
ing this early chapter of his superintendency was
his involvement in state and local professional
associations. Yet as a small rural district superin-
tendent, Bishopson sometimes felt his voice was
not heard at meetings with colleagues.
“I can try to get my voice out there full well
knowing that the rural school people probably
need to get together and bring their issues up
as a small group or as a group of small schools
because it’s really not a small group, it’s a very
large group if you bring them in — there’s
strength in numbers.”
Subsequently, Bishopson joined a startup
group, the Wisconsin Rural School Alliance, to
raise the visibility of superintendents’ concerns
over rural school issues. He considered this an
important means for highlighting the differences
between a rural school education and an urban
school education.
Superintendent Houston
Richard Houston said he experienced a smooth
transition into the superintendency of a 530-stu-
dent district in central Wisconsin. He had been
able to work closely with the superintendent in
his previous district, also small and rural, where
he was the high school principal. “I kind of knew
what to expect,” he said.
Many of the job’s responsibilities were new,
so Houston said he needed to “learn by doing”
during his first year. One immediate challenge
involved preparing for the district’s annual bud-
get hearing and annual board meeting, both in
August, just a month after his start.
He found it helpful to rely on routines to deal
with the many managerial tasks that begged for
his time. This became especially so at the end of
his second year when he cut $800,000 from the
operating budget, requiring him to assume a dual
role as superintendent and high school principal.
This change in duties sharply increased the num-
ber of staff evaluations the superintendent had to
complete, among other school-based duties.
“I’ve had to streamline things and make sure
that I rely on a calendar and the things that we’ve
done in the past,” Houston said.
He said it was strategically advantageous
to share instructional leadership responsibili-
ties with all staff members, using a professional
learning community model. By giving teachers
a voice, Houston explained, they feel more con-
My Connection to This Study
When I reflect back on my first year as superintendent in Edgar, Wis.,
I can relate to the findings collected in my doctoral study about the
leadership actions of newcomers in small, rural school communities.
My own early experiences, overseeing a 600-student, K-12 system,
most closely correlate with the challenges of the job described by
superintendents Bishopson and Houston in my research.
I completed the study, which was titled “How New Rural Superin-
tendents Address Administrative Demands, Curricular Development
and Instructional Leadership: Facing Challenges and Improving Learn-
ing in Their First Year,” for my Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison during my second year in the superintendency. I previously
spent eight years as a high school principal in a school district more
than twice the size.
Interestingly, one responsibility facing new, rural superintendents
that surprisingly was not raised by the participants in my research
is the substantial time and energy a superintendent must spend on
promoting the school district. I realized early on the significance that
student enrollment has in regards to leading a district effectively. In
today’s education domain, student enrollment is no longer a constant.
Owing to legislative actions at the state level enabling open enroll-
ment, student enrollment in school districts has changed dramatically
in Wisconsin.
During my first year as superintendent, I was part of several projects
intended to promote our district among families outside the commu-
nity. Marketing schools is just the beginning of what I believe will be
the new norm for school districts, especially in rural and smaller school
districts, all of whom are battling financial crises.
I believe my study provides support and valuable information that
can be used by other new superintendents who are appointed to lead
rural school systems. It can be accessed at https://search.library.wisc.
edu/catalog/9910212828702121.
CARI WRYSINSKI-GUDEN
nected and willing to make changes. He con-
ceded the idea of letting go of key decision mak-
ing was difficult for him.
Through the PLC model, Houston had to find
ways to communicate his message of excellence,
while giving staff members the autonomy to lead
the change process. He discovered it was impor-
tant to develop a strong knowledge base about
implementing PLCs and how they worked before
asking the school board for approval.
Houston adjusted the school calendar to give
staff members time to meet twice a month in their
professional learning communities. “They under-
stand the expectation of excellence and what we
want to do here, and they go and look at how we
can accomplish that. So I think PLCs have caused
me to back away from having to do that.” n
CARI WRYSINSKI-GUDEN is the superintendent of the
Edgar School District in Edgar, Wis. E-mail: cguden@gapps.
edgar.k12.wi.us
M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 37
 Different Worlds:
Rural
Urban and
Poverty
The author shares the empirical
differences and their implications for
school leadership in the two sectors
B Y M I C H E L E T. T I N E
I
notice patterns. As a researcher,
it is what I am trained to do. So
when I began collecting data
in low-income urban and rural
schools, it was not surprising that I
noticed differences between the two
types of schools.
In impoverished urban schools, I
often passed some form of security
at the entrance — a buzzer, a secu-
rity guard, a metal detector. I saw
long halls, high ceilings and small
classrooms with young teachers. In
impoverished rural schools, the build-
ings were smaller, the ceilings lower,
the class sizes tinier and the teachers
older. These were all differences I
expected. I did not, however, expect
38 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R    M a r c h 2 0 1 6
to notice some less-visible differences,
such as the ways low-income urban
and rural families become involved in
their children’s education.
To help me better understand the
less-visible differences, I did what
researchers do — I dove into the
extant research.
I quickly learned little quantitative
educational research has been pub-
lished about rural poverty and almost
none directly compares and contrasts
rural poverty with urban poverty. It
is as if the students living in rural
poverty live too far away for their
voices to be heard. Consequently, the
research driving school reform often
draws exclusively from urban popula-
tions. This means that school admin-
istrators in impoverished rural areas
must attempt to tailor urban-based
interventions and programming to fit
their schools.
A few of the less-visible differences
between rural and urban poverty can
be identified from the empirical stud-
ies. How should school administrators
interpret the findings when thinking
about optimally tailoring interven-
© STEPHANIE CARTER/ILLUSTRATION SOURCE
tions and programming for their
schools?
Parental Involvement
Across grade levels, low-income rural
families are less involved in their
children’s education than low-income
urban families. However, it isn’t that
low-income rural parents don’t want
to be involved in their children’s edu-
cation, but instead they don’t know
how to be involved.
One study found more than half of
rural parents report being unsatisfied
with the way that school staff commu-
nicates with them. Meanwhile, urban
parents are more likely to report
being satisfied with school communi-
cation, even when the levels of com-
munication are low.
Considering this, low-income
rural school administrators may want
to think about novel ways to invite
parents to become involved in their
child’s education, as such efforts may
be more successful than they might be
in a low-income urban setting. Nota-
bly, the U.S. Department of Educa-
tion offers online resources for family
involvement techniques, with specific
recommendations for rural schools.
One success story comes from
Hueco Elementary School, located on
the rural outskirts of El Paso, Texas.
The school, which enrolls about 500
students, 97 percent of them Latino,
formed a program to help rural par-
ents support their children’s learning
at home. In order to accommodate
families’ lack of transportation, meet-
ings were held at students’ homes.
Furthermore, the school boosted par-
ents’ comfort with math and technol-
M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R
ogy by offering a family math program
and by lending laptops to families.
Hueco’s principal reported the
number of parents involved in at least
one school-related activity increased
from 30 percent to 80 percent as a
result of these efforts.
Teacher Characteristics
What low-income rural schools
may lack in parental involvement,
they often make up for in increased
teacher support. In general, rural
teachers are more aware of individual
student progress than urban teach-
ers, allowing them to better predict
students’ educational problems and
intervene.
39
 Rural teachers also report being
emotionally closer to their students,
are more likely to run into their stu-
dents outside of school and play a
greater role in their life than urban
teachers, who describe having greater
anonymity in their schools. This ano-
nymity leads low-income urban teach-
ers to report poorer staff relationships
and administrative support than rural
teachers. Low-income urban teachers
also exhibit higher levels of stress and
burnout, perhaps explaining the find-
ing that low-income urban districts
have lower retention than low-income
rural districts.
Despite these seeming advantages
for low-income rural teachers, they
still face obstacles not faced in urban
contexts, particularly related to sci-
ence education. Rural teachers, in
general, have fewer science materials
and fewer community role models
in science fields than their urban
counterparts. Additionally, many
rural schools rely on only one science
teacher per school, limiting the time
available to oversee hands-on and
experiential lab work, which has been
shown to be a particularly effective
pedagogical approach for science. As
a result, low-income rural students
score lower on measures of science
achievement and motivation and per-
ceive science as less relevant to their
lives than low-income urban students.
Some low-income rural adminis-
trators have sought to address these
obstacles by partnering with local
businesses, which may offer resources
that poor rural schools lack. Tennes-
see’s Rural Communities STEM Ini-
tiative has excelled at this, partnering
nine rural school districts with local
companies so that students can apply
what they learn in class in a real-
world context.
Admittedly, some rural districts
may be too isolated to find appropri-
ate business partners. Administra-
tors in such locations may find it
cost-effective to implement mobile
laboratories that students from dif-
ferent schools can share and use
40 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R    M a r c h 2 0 1 6
Michele Tine
at different times. In rural parts of
Texas, students have begun bringing
their science projects into the STEAM
Express, a mobile science lab that is
shared across multiple grade levels
and schools.
Cognitive Differences
Low-income rural students trail
behind in science, but fare similarly to
their low-income urban counterparts
in math and reading achievement.
My own work suggests, however, that
even when the academic performance
of students living in rural and urban
poverty is similar, their underlying
cognitive profiles are different.
Students growing up in rural pov-
erty seem to especially struggle with
tasks related to visual processing.
Their visuospatial working memory
and inhibition are both less developed
than those of children living in urban
poverty. However, students grow-
ing up in rural poverty have stronger
verbal processing abilities than those
growing up in urban poverty. Because
of these cognitive differences, low-
income rural and urban students
actually approach certain academic
tasks in different ways.
As a result, it is important for
school leaders to note these cognitive
differences between children in rural
and urban poverty, especially when
considering the myriad interventions
being created and marketed that
aim to improve cognitive abilities.
Many of these interventions have
no empirical support. But for those
that do, schools serving impover-
ished rural communities may benefit
the most from those that focus on
improving visual processing.
Alternatively, schools serving chil-
dren in rural poverty should consider
how to capitalize on students’ verbal
processing strengths. For instance,
math and science typically require a
high visual cognitive load. It might be
particularly beneficial to offer addi-
tional verbal support to students in
low-income rural contexts.
Unique Needs
Many more differences exist between
schools serving low-income rural
and urban students, but few others
have been formally researched and
documented. Fortunately, low-income
rural districts are finally starting to
receive attention from policymakers.
The Rural and Low Income School
Program, run by the U.S. Depart-
ment of Education, now provides
rural schools with flexibility to allo-
cate funds in a most fitting way for
their unique local needs. Allocating
funds appropriately in rural schools
is especially critical because Title 1
distributions are not equitable, and
low-income rural schools are at a dis-
advantage. As a result, school admin-
istrators in low-income rural districts
have a particularly challenging job.
They must decide if and how pro-
grams can be catered to be efficacious
for their student population, and they
have less money to do it with. n
MICHELE TINE is an assistant professor of
education and director of the Poverty and
Learning Lab at Dartmouth College in Hanover,
N.H. E-mail: michele.t.tine@­dartmouth.
edu. Twitter: @ProfessorTine. MYLES
MCMURCHY, a senior at Dartmouth and a
research assistant in the Poverty and Learning
Lab, contributed to this article.
 Reading&Resources
BOOK REVIEWS Promoting Health and Academic
MORE BOOK REVIEWS
Success: The Whole School, Whole
Community, Whole Child Approach www.aasa.org/SAreviews.aspx
Mobile Learning: A
Handbook for Developers, edited by David Birch and Donna Videto, Human Kinetics, Building a Community of
Educators, and Learners Champaign, Ill., 2015, 248 pp., $49 softcover Self-Motivated Learners:
Strategies to Help Students
by Scott McQuiggan, Jamie McQuiggan, Jennifer Sabourin As educators, we Thrive in School and Beyond
and Lucy Kosturko, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, Calif., 2015, know that to truly by Larry Ferlazzo
400 pp. with index, $45 hardcover impact a child, we REVIEWED BY DONNA S. MCCAW
The term “21st-century must focus on the
learning” applies to whole child. David Retaining New Teachers:
How Do I Support and
many innovations Birch and Donna Develop Novice Teachers?
and changes to the Videto take this by Bryan Harris
delivery of learning. knowledge to the next REVIEWED BY WILLIAM J. LEARY
One of the most level by compiling
dynamic is the devel- writings by others that emphasize that Teaching ELLs to Read: Strategies
opment of mobile everyone in the field of education, not just to Meet the Common Core, K-5
learning, for which classroom teachers, must pay close atten- by Paul Boyd-Batstone
REVIEWED BY EDYTHE B. AUSTERMUHL
four authors from tion to the link between child, school and
SAS Curriculum Pathways have written this community. Whole School Projects:
comprehensive guide to the educational Promoting Health and Academic Success Engaging Imaginations Through
promise of mobile technology. demonstrates through the whole school/ Interdisciplinary Inquiry
Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Devel- whole community/whole child approach, or by Kieran Egan
opers, Educators, and Learners provides WSCC, what collaboration between educa- REVIEWED BY BOB SCHULTZ

analysis of the aspects of mobile technology
that attract learners and shows how effec-
tive education apps are developed. It also
shows the instructional changes that are
associated with this innovation and provides
examples of classroom use and integration
into curriculum. The authors even provide a
comprehensive listing of apps that apply to
the discussion in each chapter, along with
suggestions for best use in education.
Mobile learning technology is an integral
part of our society and is now a force in
education. As such, this book is helpful to
those leading school systems.
Reviewed by Frank Kelly, executive director, Council of Ontario
Directors of Education, Oakville, Ontario
tional entities can mean for improving our
children’s education and health outcomes.
The reader is taken through a timeline
of school health models beginning with the
Comprehensive School Heath program in
1980, moving to ASCD’s Whole Child Initia-
tive in 2007, then finally to the creation of
WSCC in 2013. The book paints a picture
of how we got to where we are today and
where we need to be in the future to ensure
the wellness of all children.
The book’s repetitiveness can be seen
as a means to stress the significance of the
topic, reminding us to focus on not only
the child but the school and community as
well. Promoting Health and Academic Suc-
cess reinforces that it takes collaboration
between the school, community and family
to nurture the whole child.
Reviewed by Priscilla A. Boerger, department chair,
department of education, Regis College, Weston, Mass.
ABSTRACT
District Support Team
A recent dissertation by Danielle Pfei-
ffer at Seton Hall University studied the
effect of a central-office transformation on

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK …

“The day after I retired from the superintendency, I sat up in bed and
felt paralyzed. I knew I needed to answer the question, what am I
going to do in my next phase of my life to pay back my profession?
Writing this book helped me move on by paying it forward. All net
royalties are donated to a foundation providing mini-grants for
school leaders to pursue professional development opportunities.”
Nicholas I. Clement, the Ernest McFarland Citizen’s Chair in Education, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Ariz., and AASA member since
1998, on writing The Reading Pig (Teachers Change Brains Media, 2015)

M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 41
 Reading&Resources

improvements at a school district’s lowest-
performing schools.
The study examined the experiences of
staff at the school and district levels in the
Puget Sound School District in Washington,
which was in its third year of using a dif-
ferentiated support service model at the
central level.
The major themes to emerge were
these: (1) the ambiguity of the purpose,
process and participants’ roles; (2) the role
and impact of power and trust in the col-
laborative process; (3) the use of tools and
resources as means to facilitate discussions
and decisions; and (4) the process as the
impetus for growing and building instruc-
tional capacity of all participants.
Legislative
Conference
AASA’s annual legislative advocacy
confer­ence will be held July 12-14 in
Washington, D.C. More information will
be available soon at www.aasa.org.
Conference Recap
Wondering what you missed at AASA’s
national conference in Phoenix? Want
to share information with your board
This study found an imbalance of power
and trust delayed collaboration but also
found the service model built the instruc-
tional and leadership capacity of all partici-
pants.
Copies of “District Support Team Model
as a Manifestation of Central Office Trans-
formation: Experiences from Central Office
and School Based Staff” are available from
ProQuest at 800-521-0600 or disspub@
proquest.com.
BITS & PIECES
Violence Prevention
The Early Intervention Foundation has
released two reports examining the effec-
tiveness of interventions to prevent gang
and youth violence.
Researchers found that the signals of risk
for gang involvement and youth violence
can begin to be identified at age seven.
Download the reports at http://bit.ly/­
prevention-youth-violence.
Curriculum Reform
A report by the Center for American Prog-
ress titled “The Hidden Value of Curriculum
Reform” looks at how states and districts
select curricula and the associated costs.
One key finding is that more rigorous ele-
mentary school math curricula can deliver
a higher return on investment than other
reforms.
Find the full report at http://bit.ly/­
curriculum-reform.
Disabilities Website
PowerUp What Works, an online resource
for those who work with students with
disabilities, has launched an improved
website.
The new site offers clear and easy access
to curated resources, tools, strategies and
guidelines for teachers, professional devel-
opment facilitators and school leaders.
Find the new site at www.­powerup​
­whatworks.org.
Fellowship Program
RAND has released a preliminary report
on the effects of the Leading Educators
Fellowship program, which aims to improve
schools by developing leadership skills in
midcareer teachers.
The study found evidence of an impact
on student achievement among mentee
teachers in math and social studies.
Find the report at http://bit.ly/leading-­
educators-fellowship.

and staff? You can access a compre-
hensive recap of keynote speakers’
remarks, award announcements and
much more through AASA’s Confer-
ence Daily Online.
The multimedia coverage is pro-
vided through words, photos, tweets,
blog postings, a Facebook page, video
clips and audio clips. Visit www.aasa.
org.
SchoolAdministrator | A P R I L
SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING. Articles
address the teaching of “success skills,” social
and emotional learning at the secondary
school level (by the author of Belonging and
Becoming); the use of better intelligence
measures in K-12 schooling; and implementing
a character education program across a district.

PLUS
kkCommentary: Why are we using a supervision model
from the 1860s?
kkBoard-Savvy Superintendent: The board member confidante to the teachers’ union
kkReviews of Dumb Ideas Won’t Create Smart Kids; What Schools Don’t Teach; and
School Shooters
kkSidelight of a Tennessee superintendent who skydives for a hobby

42 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
 AASAInsight
P R E S I D E N T’S C O R N E R | D AV I D R . S C H U L E R

EXECUTIVE 
COMMITTEE
2015-16
Redefining Readiness in New Ways
(terms expire June 30
of the year indicated) WHAT AN AWESOME Our students learn in a variety of ways.
National Conference on Edu- They should be able to demonstrate readiness
PRESIDENT
cation we had last month in in a variety of ways. We must look beyond a
David R. Schuler
Superintendent Phoenix. From incredible key- standardized test score and use multiple meas-
Township High School note speakers to outstanding ures to assess and demonstrate that students
District 214 breakout sessions to time to are ready for life beyond high school. That
Arlington Heights, Ill. network and collaborate with is what the new, research-based Redefining
peers and corporate partners Ready! initiative is all about.
IMMEDIATE PAST from across the country, this year’s national You can check out the metrics by visiting
PRESIDENT conference was clearly a smashing success. www.redefiningready.org. On the website,
David K. Pennington
Superintendent
I am already looking forward to next year’s you will be able to click on any metric, and it
Ponca City Public Schools conference, which will be held March 2-4 in will show you the supporting research from
Ponca City, Okla. New Orleans. respected organizations and institutions
As I mentioned during my remarks in regarding that metric’s link to college and/
PRESIDENT-ELECT Phoenix, with the passage of the Every Student or career readiness. If you know of additional
Alton L. Frailey Succeeds Act, it is time for education leaders research supporting the Redefining Ready!
Superintendent and our professional associations across this metrics, please e-mail RedefiningReady@
Katy Independent
School District
great land to stand up and champion public d214.org.
Katy, Texas education. It is my hope you will join AASA It is imperative this initiative authentically
and many of our partner organizations in sup- and appropriately defines college and career
MEMBERS porting our new, research-based Redefining readiness, and having research studies from
Lyle C. Ailshie (2017) Ready! initiative. highly respected organizations and institutions
Deborah S. Akers (2017) You and I know students are more than just is critical to doing just that.
Richard A. Carranza (2016) a number or a score they earn on a standard- Consider endorsing and championing our
S. Dallas Dance (2017) ized test. Our nation’s public schools strive Redefining Ready! initiative in your district
Charles S. Dedrick (2016) to provide students with rigorous academic and across your state. Together, let us support
Joseph V. Erardi Jr. (2018) programs, personalized and career-specific our high school graduates’ ability to demon-
Eric C. Eshbach (2018) learning experiences, along with social and strate readiness to colleges, employers, their
Christopher O. Gaines (2017) emotional skills that prepare our young people family, themselves and the world in which
Gary L. Kelly (2018) to be global citizens in an ever-changing world. we all live. Let’s end this “one score fits all”
Timothy M. Mitchell (2016)
We are educating a generation of innova- approach that has proven stifling and unfair.
tors — students who are driven by ideas and A world we cannot yet imagine lies before
Gail K. Pletnick (2016)
inspired by innovations. Students leave our us, and I am confident AASA and its mem-
Michelle R. Price (2018)
schoolhouse doors with the academic skills bers will provide the innovative leadership
Theron J. Schutte (2018)
that make them college and career ready but necessary to prepare our nation’s students to
Valeria S. Silva (2018)
also with grit, perseverance and resiliency be incredibly successful in our ever-changing
Tom J. Turrell (2017)
to tackle and achieve their goals. They have global economy. Please consider supporting
Jule J. Walker (2017)
the growth mindset that empowers them to this new, research-based Redefining Ready!
M. Brock Womble (2016)
approach their future with confidence, to initiative by expressing your support via the
Daniel A. Domenech dream big and make those dreams a reality. dedicated e-mail address.
AASA Executive Director The scores of standardized tests are one of I hope you continue this conversation on
(Ex Officio) many potential indicators that demonstrate Twitter using #leadexcellence and that you
readiness for life beyond high school. However, will share this article with your community.
Steven P. Crawford (2016)
Association of State allowing a child, a teacher or a school to be Together, we can Redefine Ready!
Executives Liaison reduced to one test score diminishes the worth
(Ex Officio) and value of an individual and the totality of DAVID SCHULER is AASA president for 2015-16.
the school experience. E-mail: david.schuler@d214.org. Twitter: @DSchuler1970

M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 43
AASA Insight
E X E C U T I V E P E R S P E C T I V E   |   DANIEL
Skepticism Falls to a Rare Bipartisan Act
I ADMIT THAT
throughout the re-
authorization process
for the Elementary
and Secondary Edu-
cation Act, I was a
skeptic. I even bet
my good friend and
NSBA’s executive director, Thomas
Gentzel, a steak dinner that ESEA
would not be reauthorized. I lost the
bet, happily.
Truth be told, it was a win-win for
us. The AASA advocacy team, headed
by Noelle Ellerson, did an outstand-
ing job helping to shepherd the bill
through both houses of Congress.
A year ago last spring, an unprec-
edented event occurred. Nine national
education associations in the Wash-
ington, D.C., area convened at the
National Press Club to urge Congress
to do the right thing for children
by reauthorizing ESEA. The group
included the two teacher unions, the
school boards association, the chief
state school officers and AASA. The
fact that labor and management
jointly urged the passage of a new law
was not lost on members of Congress.
In the Senate, Lamar Alexander,
R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash.,
took up the challenge of forging a
bipartisan bill. In the House, the pros-
pect of a bipartisan bill was an impos-
sibility, but Rep. John Kline, chair of
the House Education and Workforce
Committee, wanted to pass the same
bill approved in the House with a
Republican vote the previous year.
Unfortunately, this time he faced stiff
opposition from right-wing conserva-
tives and the Freedom Caucus, which
was convinced the bill they previously
approved now was too liberal.
Progress Yet Doubts
With the help of our state associa-
tion executives and members, AASA
campaigned to reach those conser-
44 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
A. DOMENECH
vative House members to persuade
them we were joined in our dislike
of No Child Left Behind and that
crafting a new bill was the way to go.
To our great delight, last July, during
our Legislative Advocacy Conference,
the House indeed passed its version
of a reauthorized ESEA. Shortly
thereafter the Senate passed its ver-
sion, and now what had seemed a
legislative impossibility had taken a
huge step forward.
“A year ago last spring, an
UNPRECEDENTED EVENT
OCCURRED. Nine national
education associations in
the Washington, D.C., area
convened at the National
Press Club to urge Congress
TO DO THE RIGHT THING for
children by reauthorizing ESEA.”
Mind you, though, I remained
skeptical even though my friend Tom
already was making dinner reserva-
tions at Morton’s. The bill’s different
versions would have to be resolved by
a congressional conference committee
with a new version approved by both
chambers.
Moving the bill too far to the right
to appease the House would force a
presidential veto. Moving it too far
left would prove disastrous in the
House. It was not until fall that the
conference committee finally came
together to create the one version. It
was then that House Speaker John
Boehner, R-Ohio, announced his
resignation, raising the prospect the
conference bill never might get to the
House floor for a vote. I cautioned
my friend Tom not to eat his steak
before it was cooked.
The speaker issue was resolved
with the election of Rep. Paul Ryan,
R-Wis., to the post, but House pas-
sage of the bill was confounded again
by the “Hastert rule,” which prohibits
the House speaker from bringing a
bill for a vote to the floor before it
has the support of the majority of the
party in control, the Republicans in
this case. Consequently, even with
enough Democrats and Republicans
voting to pass the bill, it would not be
brought to a vote without a majority
of GOP members supporting it.
Again, AASA’s advocacy team went
into high gear, reaching out to our
state executives and our member-
ship to urge members of Congress
to support reauthorization. The bill
passed the House with only a handful
of Republicans opposing it. Shortly
thereafter, the Senate also passed the
bill. A few days later, I had the plea-
sure of being in the White House to
watch President Obama sign the bill
into law.
A Settled Bet
We should all be proud of the work
the AASA advocacy team and our
members did to not just urge passage
but to help craft the new law’s provi-
sions. The onerous mandates of No
Child Left Behind have been elimi-
nated while positive facets, notably
the disaggregation of data to monitor
performance of student subgroups,
remain. The ever-growing federal
intrusion into the classroom has been
stopped, and the prerogative to make
those decisions given back to states
and localities. We look forward to the
implementation of the Every Student
Succeeds Act, and yes, Tom and I
recently had dinner at Morton’s.
DANIEL DOMENECH is AASA executive
director. E-mail: ddomenech@aasa.org.
Twitter: @AASADan
 AASA Insight
GARY M. ANDERSON    | SCHOOLSOLUTIONS

Student Reading Plus Parent Engagement

IN AN AGE of testing
mandates, superin-
tendents wrestle with
how to boost reading
skills while also instill-
ing a love of reading in
students. At the same
time, there’s a constant
struggle to engage parents, especially
those who don’t normally get involved.
A growing number of school dis-
tricts have begun using the One Dis-
trict, One Book program to address
these challenges. Beginning last fall,
the leaders of three districts became
first-time users: Brad Reed of Unified
School District 428 in Great Bend,
Kan.; Steve Anderson of Lake Ham-
ilton School District in Pearcy, Ark.;
and George Steinhoff of Penn-Delco
School District in Aston, Pa.
Districts work closely with Read
to Them, a nonprofit family literacy
organization, to plan and publicize
the ODOB program, which can rally a
community around reading by having
all of the district’s elementary stu-
dents read the same book at the same
time at home with their parents.
Keys to Success
The three superintendents who are
new program participants had their
districts read The World According to
Humphrey. Their recent experiences
contribute to these tips for running a
successful ODOB program
ll Start planning early. All three dis-
tricts began planning months in
advance of the launch of the simulta-
neous reading program.
ll Build enthusiasm among principals
and teachers. Bring all educators in
the district into the loop early to help
generate excitement.
ll Identify funding sources. These can
include Title I money, other district
funds, and/or support from local
businesses.
ll Take a leadership role. All three
superintendents read the book’s first
chapter aloud via videocast to kick off
the program.
ll Organize a fun launch event. School-
wide assemblies with videos and
stuffed Humphrey dolls sparked stu-
dent interest.
ll Engage the community. Restaurants,
stores and libraries often partner with
ODOB programs, building commu-
nity awareness.
ll Keep communication flowing to par-
ents and teachers. This helps main-
tain high levels of enthusiasm.
A Great Investment
The simultaneous book reading pro-
gram exceeded the superintendents’
expectations, and all three plan to
repeat it. They cited these benefits:
ll Increased student interest in reading.
Many students wanted to read other
books in the Humphrey series.
ll Links with other curriculum subjects.
AASA School Solutions Center
These firms make up the AASA School Solutions Center. NJPA is the premier member.
NATIONAL JOINT POWERS ALLIANCE, national contract
purchasing solution, www.njpacoop.org
CHROMAGEN, new lens technology for students with
reading problems, www.IReadBetterNow.com and
www.HelpStudentsRead.com
ECRA GROUP, research, analytics and accountability
solutions, www.ecragroup.com
EDBACKER, crowd fundraising for education, www.
edbacker.com
HMS EMPLOYER SOLUTIONS, dependent healthcare
eligibility audits, www.employeraudits.com
INFINITY SYSTEMS, helping school districts measure
alignment, www.isimetrics.com
JASON LEARNING, STEM education through exploration,
www.jason.org
K12 INSIGHT, develop strategic communication
initiatives to engage and collaborate with stakeholders,
www.k12insight.com
School districts should do their own due diligence before signing contracts with companies that belong to the AASA
School Solutions Center. More on the School Solutions Center can be found at www.aasa.org.
“The book extended itself into many
other classroom activities,” Steinhoff
said.
ll Enhanced parent engagement. “It
brought in parents who normally
don’t participate,” said Anderson.
ll Improved community involvement.
Humphrey was literally “the talk of the
town” and drew positive media coverage
in each of the participating districts.
The superintendents see ODOB
as a key component of their overall
literacy program with Reed saying
it “presents a perfect opportunity to
re-establish parent/child connections
over reading.” One District, One Book
(readtothem.org) is a “value-added
proposition that added real meat” to
the overall literacy curriculum, Stein-
hoff said. “It’s hopefully the start of a
new tradition.”
GARY ANDERSON is the founder of Read
to Them, based in Richmond, Va. E-mail:
gary.anderson@readtothem.org. Twitter:
@1school1book
ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH, organizational audits of
human capital, www.organizationalhealth.com
PENN MID-CAREER DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN EDUCATIONAL
LEADERSHIP, national, executive, cross-sector, innova-
tive, cohort-based, www.gse.upenn.edu/midcareer
PRECIOUSTATUS, parent-teacher engagement and
community/school branding, www.precioustatus.com
QUANTUM LEARNING, transformative schoolwide
professional development, www.QuantumLearning.com
READ TO THEM, creating communities of readers. www.
readtothem.org
SCHOOL LEADERS RISK MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION,
focus on federal legislation and litigation,
www.slrma.org
UPS, shipping, freight, logistics, supplies for schools,
www.ups.com
VARSITY SPIRIT, elevating the student experience,
www.varsity.com

M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 45
AASA Insight
PEOPLEWATC H
Brenda B.
Blackburn
Berkeley County School
District in Moncks
Corner, S.C., has
welcomed Brenda Black-
burn as superintendent.
Prior, Blackburn was
superintendent of Montgomery County
Public Schools in Christiansburg, Va., for
five years. She also was associate super-
intendent for curriculum and instruction in
Brevard County, Fla., where she served as
area superintendent and a high school prin-
cipal. She began her career as a teacher in
Virginia and has been an AASA member
since 2004.
Desmond K.
Blackburn
The 73,000-student
Brevard Public Schools in
Viera, Fla., has selected
Desmond Blackburn as
its new superintendent.
Since 2003, Blackburn
has served Broward County Public Schools
in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as director of school
improvement, area superintendent, chief
school performance and accountability
officer and middle school principal. He
began his career as a math teacher and
athletic coach. An AASA member since
2015, Blackburn holds a Ph.D. in educational
leadership from Florida Atlantic University.
SIDELIGHT
When a toddler was separated from her
mother at the annual Halloween parade in
the South Bound Brook, N.J., school district,
it wasn’t a staff member who found her. It
was Ruger, a 2-year-old Labrador-Pitbull mix
and certified therapy dog handled by super-
intendent Lorise Goeke. She has managed
dozens of rescue dogs since helping her
father do the same as a young girl, but she
has trained only a special few to accompany
her to work in the 450-student, preK-8 district
each day. Ruger’s busy schedule includes
working with a special-needs 5th grader
through sign language commands, calming
students in emotional turmoil and participating in the Reading to Dogs program to
help struggling readers. Goeke says Ruger helps her, too. “His agility training gets me
outside in the fresh air for exercise and activity,” she says. “It’s a real stress reliever.”
46 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
Susan
Rieke-Smith
After serving as acting
superintendent in
Springfield, Ore., Susan
Rieke-Smith has been
named the district’s
superintendent. She
spent the previous 15 years in Salem-Keizer
Public Schools in Salem, Ore., where she
rose through the ranks to become a middle
school principal and then director of instruc-
tional services for four years before moving
to Springfield. Rieke-Smith holds an Ed.D. in
educational leadership from the University
of Oregon and became an AASA member
in 2015.
Robert A.
Tremblay
After 17 years in Milford,
Mass., including eight as
superintendent, Robert
Tremblay has assumed
the superintendency in
Weston, Mass. In Milford,
he also served as an elementary school
principal and assistant principal for over
a decade. A longtime Bay State educator,
Tremblay began his career as a music
teacher in three Massachusetts school
districts. An AASA member since 2008,
Tremblay earned an Ed.D. in educational
leadership from Northeastern University in
Boston, Mass.
APPOINTMENTS
Jon Abrams, from superintendent, Lincoln County
School District 2, Afton, Wyo., to superintendent,
Laramie County School District 2, Pine Bluffs, Wyo.
Kathleen Bannon, from associate superintendent to
superintendent, Copiague, N.Y.
David Baugh, from acting superintendent,
Neshaminy School District, Langhorne, Pa.,
to superintendent, Centennial School District,
Warminster, Pa.
Sean Bruno, from principal, Fred W. Hill School,
Brockport, N.Y., to superintendent, Mexico, N.Y.
Greg Florio, from superintendent, Cheshire, Conn.,
to executive director, Capitol Region Education
Council, Hartford, Conn.
Charles R. Ford Jr., from superintendent,
Monmouth Regional High School, Tinton Falls, N.J.,
to superintendent, Deptford, N.J.
Kyle Kallhoff, from superintendent, Chickasaw,
Ala., to superintendent, Demopolis, Ala.
Steven Kellner, from director of professional
learning and instructional technology, Township
High School District 214, Arlington Heights, Ill., to
superintendent, West Sonoma County Union High
School District, Sebastopol, Calif.
Robert Mitchell, from assistant superintendent to
superintendent, Cumberland, R.I.
Paul K. Smith, from superintendent, Griswold,
Conn., to superintendent, East Hampton, Conn.
Michael C. Tempesta, from superintendent, Saugus,
Mass., to executive director, Central Massachusetts
Special Education Collaborative, Worcester, Mass.
Philip Thornton, from superintendent, Cumberland,
R.I., to superintendent, Warwick, R.I.
Eddie Tyler, from superintendent, Eufaula, Ala., to
superintendent, Baldwin County Public Schools,
Bay Minette, Ala.
Terry Weeks, from interim superintendent to
superintendent, Coffee County, Ala.
Mitchell Wood, from superintendent, Oran, Mo., to
superintendent, Dexter, Mo.
HONORS
Deena Paramo, superintendent, Matanuska-Susitna
Borough School District, Palmer, Alaska, selected
to University of Alaska Board of Regents
DEATHS
J. Michael Janelli, 66, retired superintendent,
Wrentham, Mass., Nov. 11
Michael S. Pavlovich Sr., 74, retired superintendent,
Vestal, N.Y., Oct. 6
Stanley Rakowsky, 67, superintendent,
Shenandoah, Pa., Nov. 6
News about AASA members’ promotions,
retirements, honors and deaths should be
addressed to: Editor, School Administrator,
1615 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314. Fax:
703-841-1543. E-mail: magazine@aasa.org

Bonding Billings Into the Future
B Y PA U L R I E D E
WHEN TERRY BOUCK took over
the leadership of Montana’s Billings
School District in 2012, he faced a
squabbling board of education, class-
rooms bursting at the seams and a
town that hadn’t passed a construc-
tion bond issue in 30 years.
In short order, Bouck has shrunk
class sizes and now is leading a mas-
sive facility renovation project across
the district, funded by the biggest
bond issue passed by voters in Mon-
tana history. The nine-member school
board, meanwhile, won 2014 state-
wide School Board of the Year honors.
How has he done it? Lew Ander-
son, the district’s bond project man-
ager, has one answer: indefatigability.
“This guy works seven days a week.
He never quits,” Anderson says. ”I’m
constantly getting e-mails on Satur-
days and Sundays. I’m like, ‘Terry, it’s
the weekend, relax.’”
Anderson, 62, says he was plan-
ning to retire two years ago, but stuck
around because the dynamism Bouck
brought made the job fun again. “As
long as he’s here, I’m staying,” he says.
Bouck, who turns 66 in mid-
March, came to the 16,300-student
district, the state’s largest, after work-
ing as superintendent of the Peninsula
School District in Gig Harbor, Wash.,
for six years, and as assistant super-
intendent, principal and teacher in
nearby Tacoma before that.
He spent two three-year stints at
the American International School in
Lagos, Nigeria, with which Tacoma
had a school-to-school relationship.
But it wasn’t in Nigeria — where the
school’s families were comparatively
well-off — where he learned about
poverty. He did that while growing up
outside of Seattle.
Bouck’s father died when he was
2, and his mother was disabled with
a seizure disorder. She remarried, but
her husband — Bouck’s stepfather —
died when Bouck was in high school.
The family survived with help from
AASA Insight
P R O F I L E   |  T E R R Y N . B O U C K
BIO STATS: TERRY BOUCK
CURRENTLY: superintendent, Billings, Mont.
PREVIOUSLY: superintendent, Peninsula School
District, Gig Harbor, Wash.
AGE: 66
GREATEST INFLUENCE ON CAREER: My
grandmother instilled in me the idea that the
one thing nobody can take away from you is an
education, and that has driven me every day.
BEST PROFESSIONAL DAY: Passage of a $122 million bond initiative in fall 2013
to build new middle schools, improve elementary schools and reduce class size.
BOOKS AT BEDSIDE: Tears in the Darkness by Michael Norman and Elizabeth
Norman; and The Thursday Speeches by Peter G. Tormey
BIGGEST BLOOPER: In my first year as superintendent, I closed school on the
day before Winter Break because of a storm with high winds. I wanted to get some
work done in the office, where we set up generators to run the computers. While
there, a tree blew down in the parking lot, blocking my exit. When it was time to go,
I did the only reasonable thing — I walked gingerly across a large bridge, which was
iced over, in the roaring wind. It was not my most logical moment!
WHY I’M AN AASA MEMBER: I value the eclectic nature of the magazine. Practi-
tioners and experts offer a range of articles, data and current trends. The magazine
invites reflection, innovation and collective impact among educational leaders.
Bouck’s grandparents and the federal trict and attended more than 70 com-
Aid to Dependent Children program. munity meetings over a five-month
Bouck was sought after as a pole- period to generate voter support.
vaulter, attending the local commu- Parent Heidi Duncan, who co-
nity college and then the University of chaired a “Yes for Kids” committee to
Central Washington on athletic schol- help pass two mill levies and the bond
arships and financial aid. issue, says Bouck’s “open, transparent
After putting in a full career in and genuine” style won the day.
Washington and with their five chil- Voters first passed the levies, each
dren grown, Bouck and his wife, more than $1 million, 10 months into
Kristy, looked for a new adventure. Bouck’s tenure — one to reduce over-
They found it in Billings. crowding and another to fund technol-
“When I interviewed for the job, ogy. When the community saw judi-
they said, ‘What are you going to do cious spending plans, support mounted
with a dysfunctional board?’“ he says. for the bond issue, Duncan says.
“I said communications, respect and The result of that hard work and
working in concert.” transparency is a school community
Bouck’s biggest achievement so far that has pulled itself back together.
is passing the $122 million bond issue “We’re not just running around
in fall 2013. The money is building putting out fires,” Anderson says.
two new middle schools and renovat- “We’re looking to the future.”
ing most of the 22 elementary schools.
Before those spending commitments PAUL RIEDE is a journalism instructor at
were made, Anderson says he and Cazenovia College in Cazenovia, N.Y. E-mail:
Bouck visited every school in the dis- psriede@cazenovia.edu. Twitter: @PaulRiede
M a r c h 2 0 1 6   S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R 47
 Y*u Toob
Tulsa Un-Convo
LEADERSHIPLITE cation

A Welcome Rap
When she assumed the superintend-
ency in Tulsa, Okla., last summer,
Deborah Gist made a big change in
the back-to-school program for the
school district’s staff. She launched
what she labelled an “un-convocation” 2:22 / 2:55

to replace the annual all-staff meet- A Welcome Rap

- Whip / Nae Na
e
ing that typically lasted for hours.
For her alternative program, Gist shared a five-minute
YouTube video she produced to celebrate the school year’s impending start. The last minute of
the video consisted of a group dance inside her office, involving the superintendent and 16 office col-
leagues, to Silento’s “Watch Me,” which also is known as the “Whip/Nae Nae” song.
You can find the video at https://youtu.be/t7ckaKhMfZE.

The Snowed-Out Surprise A Gluttony for Service

When the weather forecast showed snow for Valentine’s
Day in Arlington, Va., Olivia, a 7th grader at Kenmore
Middle School, wrote to Patrick Murphy, the district’s
superintendent, to NOT call off school that day. Here’s
what she lobbed at the schools chief:
“I have a huge surprise for my parents on Valentine’s
Day involving Edible Arrangements, nice boots, slippers,
cards, flowers and chocolates; it’s a lot, I know. But to
continue with a plan that my grandparents are in on, they
will drop off all of that stuff to me before I get home, I
need there to be school on Friday or maybe a two hour
delay. This year is special and I need to make it that way
to continue with my plan. If there is a lot of snow on Fri-
day, I understand, but if you can I would love for there to
be school, (I’m sure this email is a first).”
“When it became clear the weather would force schools
to be closed the next day, Murphy wrote Olivia a personal
response, saying in part: “I hope that by announcing our
decision earlier than we normally do, it gave you enough
time to talk with your grandparents and come up with an
alternative plan while still keeping your gift a surprise.”
He concluded with this post script: “You are right — you
are the first student to request that I not close school,
which makes you doubly special!”
SOURCE: Linda Erdos, Arlington Public Schools
SHORT, HUMOROUS anecdotes, quips, quotations
Public school leaders in Kentucky just can’t get their fill of public
service. Many are fond of running for seats on boards of education.
Several were on the November 2014 election ballot.
Sam Dick, who was superintendent in Caverna for nine years,
wanted to use his retirement to land a board seat, as his daughter still
attended high school there. (He wasn’t successful at the polls.) Bill
Morgan, a former superintendent in Bath County, ran successfully for
the school board in neighboring Montgomery County. In Henderson
County, Sally Sugg, a former associate commissioner with the Kentucky
Department of Education, also was a successful candidate.
SOURCE: Kentucky School Advocate
Role Appreciation
As job swaps go, Harlingen, Texas, hosted a distinc-
tive one. Superintendent Art Cavazos became the
city’s police chief for a half-day, while Jeff Adickes
spent supervisory time visiting classrooms at an
elementary school and a high school. He read “There
Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Frog” to newly
promoted 1st graders.
The two public officials met up later in the day at
a Rotary Club meeting, where Cavazos wore a police
uniform. The superintendent said he learned quite a
lot about command and control, use of crime evidence
ILLUSTRATION © BY TIM HAGGERTY

and malapropisms for this column relating to school

district administration should be addressed to: Editor,
School Administrator, 1615 Duke St., Alexandria, VA
22314. Fax: 703-841-1543. E-mail: magazine@aasa.org.
Upon request, names may be withheld in print.
and “how to decide between firearms and Tasers.”
Adickes, though, missed out on the toughest part
of being a superintendent — co-existing with school
board members.

48 S C H O O L A D M I N I S T R AT O R   M a r c h 2 0 1 6
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