because of great leadership being brought in and giving them flexibility to do things that they knew they needed to do, they are now some of our highest performing schools in the state. The analogy I use is eight years the children were poor, lived in public housing, many of them lived in single parent homes where their parents were under-educated because we didn’t do a good job with them either. Black, Hispanic, speaking a different language -- all the reasons we sometimes use as excuses as to why the children can’t learn. Eight years later, after a lot of work, the children are still poor, they still live in inner city housing, and all those variables are still exactly the same. But those children are performing at levels comparable to any of our highest performing schools in the state. Which are models for us to take away from those best practices to share with all of our schools.
Partnerships with business, industry and parents are key to progress Alabama Living: You mentioned flexibility as a factor. Bice: Yes. For teachers and others to be able to come together and develop curriculum, outside of things we have typically done in education.
start to get the services their children need, how do they ever get there?” So it’s our responsibility to break down that bureaucracy to the level that it can be accessed at the local level. Alabama Living: The Common Core came under some attack during the last legislative session. Is there anything the public needs to know about this that hasn’t already been said? Bice: I was involved with this when it first was set up in 2007. It was a time when a group of governors and a group of educators thought, “We’ve got 50 states that are working every so often to redo their standards for math, and the English, language arts and algebra can’t be that different in 50 different states. We’re spending enormous amounts of money and time for different states to be doing what they could do collectively, possibly learn from each other and
standards that were developed through that collaborative and brought it back to Alabama. Alabama educators, teachers, principals, university faculty and laypersons, which is the way we’ve always done it, took those and Alabama standards to look at the two and compare them. They took the best of both and combined them into what we refer to as Alabama’s College and Career Ready Standards for Math and English Language Arts. We don’t report our work to anyone outside of the state of Alabama. When people ask me what’s the big difference between our previous standards and our new standards, this sounds awfully simple, but it’s really a change in the verb. In our old standards it would say, “Compute three digit numbers to come up with the correct sum.” In our new standards in the same grade it would say, “Given this real world situation, based on what you’ve learned, determine the mathematics that is required to solve the problem. Work with three or four of your peers to come up with as many solutions to it as you can. Choose the one that you feel best answers the question and explain to the rest of your class why you chose that solution.” The arithmetic is still the same. Alabama Living: Right.
Bice: Still adding three digit numbers. But what we’re asking Teachers are encouraged to come up with ideas outside of what students and teachers to do difhas typically taken place inside Alabama classrooms. ferently is to think, work together Bice: [Yes,] to think outside the box. I don’t come up with something that’s even better and to solve problems. Which is, when you own a box, I burned all that a long time than what they could’ve done individually. talk with business and industry and higher ago because boxes don’t serve well to serve To me, that was, for lack of a better term, education, the skill set that has been missing. Under the previous way we have been the diverse population of students we cur- a no-brainer. rently serve in Alabama. It’s more diverse So we came back and asked our board teaching, for almost a decade now, to pass than it’s ever been with poverty being our if they would be interested in us working a test. Now we want them to take what biggest challenge. We have to be able to re- on that, to which they said yes. We began they’ve learned and apply it to something align what we do and our limited resourc- working on the process of working with they may have never even seen before. es more strategically to meet the needs of 48 other states and a multitude of other That is what’s exciting. It changes the role those children. entities, pulling together the best of all the of the learner and it changes the role of the You know, I’ve worked in some of the states’ standards. We actually started with teacher. It also equips children to take on poorest counties in the state. I worked in all the states’ standards and looked at those situations and issues that they may have Coosa County for a while; it’s very rural, internationally because many of our gradu- never had the ability to do before. great place, wonderful people and very little ates now are going to be competing, not just economic growth there at this point. And within the United States, but for jobs inter- Alabama Living: So this is what you were many of those parents have lived there for- nationally. What can we do to make sure talking about when we started this interever and have needs for those children. I the standards get them there? We came up view. You’re changing what a high school look at these big white buildings here in with, throughout that process, input from graduate will be. Montgomery that are filled with bureau- every state that was participating before cracy, ours being one of them, and think, anything was finalized and finally came up Bice: Exactly. You know, I spent probably “How does that parent that may not even with a set of standards. Alabama, unlike the first six months on the job meeting with have the capacity to even know where to some other states, took the Common Core business and industry and higher education; Alabama Living: [To] think outside the box.
14 AUGUST 2013
www.alabamaliving.coop