Roseville High Schools Raise Their Sights

By Deb Kollars, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

May 28–The public high schools serving Roseville have much to commend them: Strong course offerings. Healthy test scores. Well-equipped campuses where sports, music, theater and debate teams thrive.

Yet, in an effort both humble and far-reaching, the Roseville Joint Union High School District has decided a solid reputation is not enough.

Drawing from schools as far away as Fairfax County, Va., Roseville educators are on a mission to make their high schools not just good, but excellent.

“We’re looking at what great schools and successful schools are doing and bringing it back,” said Tony Monetti, superintendent of the growing suburban system, which serves 9,000 students in grades nine through 12.

Among the efforts:

–Bringing International Baccalaureate programs to Oakmont and Granite Bay high schools this fall. It will mark the first time the prestigious global learning program is offered in Placer County.

–Creating a new collection of “common assessments” in key subjects. The goal is to go beyond the state’s standards tests and make sure all students receive the same high-level academic content regardless of the school or teacher.

–Addressing head-on something many schools avoid mentioning in public: High numbers of freshmen earning D’s and F’s.

–Adding new Internet-based technologies often found on college campuses. District leaders hope to capitalize on teenagers’ comfort with technology and expand their learning opportunities beyond the standard six- or seven-hour school day.

“24-7 learners” is the new catchphrase.

Existing budgets paying bill

In the world of public education, it is not unusual to find a district trying to improve. Often, such initiatives are driven by a blue-ribbon commission. Or a multimillion-dollar grant. Or a partnership with the private sector bearing a lofty name.

What sets the picture apart in Roseville is the absence of big names, big checks, or big-ticket agendas.

“It’s not a packaged initiative,” said Ron Severson, Roseville Joint Union’s executive director of curriculum and instruction. He noted all enhancements are being made within existing budgets. “It’s just a bunch of us working together. Principals. Teachers. Administrators. We’re in our infancy with all this stuff.”

The effort is already touching students.

Last Wednesday, for example, Jessica Rutledge, a sophomore at Oakmont High, experienced something she never had before: her English teacher instructing her personally in her home.

No, Daniel Flinn wasn’t there in her dining room. He had used a new online program called “Blackboard” to record an electronic audio file for Rutledge. It contained his comments on a writing assignment she had turned in two days before.

Sitting at her laptop, Rutledge followed an electronic version of her paper as she listened to her teacher’s husky voice. He complimented her writing triumphs, pointed out problems with capitalization, and told her that with revisions, she could bring her paper up to at least a B.

“Kinda cool,” she said when the audio comments concluded.

“Who was that?” her brother asked from the living room.

“Mr. Flinn, my teacher.”

Virginia district is model

The push toward greater excellence was born four years ago of a single goal, Severson said.

At the time, Severson was principal at Granite Bay High and researching how to start International Baccalaureate classes. The IB program puts students through college-level coursework under strict standards, and requires several years of planning and training to start.

Severson and other educators traveled to other schools that had both an IB program and a block schedule like that used in Roseville Joint Union. Under Roseville’s “four-by-four” schedule, the day has four periods rather than the standard six. The periods run longer and enable kids to complete courses in just a semester. It means they can take eight courses in a year instead of six.

Among the schools the Roseville educators visited were three in Fairfax County, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C.

They came away with far more than IB intelligence.

Fairfax public schools have a national reputation for excellence.

“Fairfax is at the top of the heap,” said Daniel Duke, a professor of educational leadership at the University of Virginia who wrote “Education Empire,” a book about Fairfax’s successes. “It really is the model for future districts.”

Innovations taking hold

The Roseville educators were impressed by several strategies aimed at enhancing student learning, from teaching approaches to technology. They soon found themselves on a deeper journey: researching what the best schools in the nation were doing to educate their kids.

“We have good schools, but it turns out there is a whole layer above us,” Severson said. “There are incredible things going on all over the country.”

Over the past year, innovations have begun to take hold in Roseville’s high schools. The goal is to prepare all students for college, or the workplace, which requires higher academic skills than in the past.

Many of the efforts are still in the design stages. The district is looking at everything from the way teachers teach and interact to the way they grade assignments.

This year, for the first time, the school board mapped out numeric goals to improve achievement. The board, for example, wants to reduce by 5 percent the number of students with D’s and F’s in freshman English, Algebra 1 and geometry. Currently, schools have 18 percent to 30 percent of students failing those critical classes.

“You don’t get better until you acknowledge where you are,” Severson said.

Technology key learning aid

One of the most visible changes has been technology.

At Oakmont, English teacher Flinn began using the Blackboard online system this year in numerous ways, from audio grading to online discussions about literature.

At Granite Bay, math teacher David Laughrea is using an interactive white board in his classroom. On the large touch screen, he works through algebra and trigonometry problems in class. After class, he uploads them to the Web for absent students and those needing further review.

“It’s amazing. It helps me so much,” said Julian Capili-Lewis, a sophomore in Laughrea’s Integrated Math 1 course, which covers Algebra 1 and other concepts. Capili-Lewis said he failed the same course last year, and is doing better, thanks in part to the help of technology.

The high-tech additions are spreading gradually throughout classrooms, said Debbie Latteri, a teacher at Roseville’s Independence High School who is helping coordinate training.

“It has blossomed,” she said, noting that 175 of the district’s 500 teachers are trained to use Blackboard. Those who monitor their students’ usage have found many online as late as 9, 10 and 11 at night.

“They may be brain-dead at 7:30 in the morning, but they are fired up and learning at night,” Severson said.

The efforts in Roseville have caught the eye of the Placer County Office of Education: “They have researched very thoroughly what’s effective and they’re acting on it,” said Renee Regacho-Anaclerio, county associate superintendent.

Roseville’s educators, she added, have been candid about their desire to improve and willing to share their experiences with other districts.

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