Q&A: Parkway Superintendent Plans More Student Tests

new superintendent is settling into his new role.

Keith Marty took over the reins officially on July 11, though he's been visiting the district regularly since his hire was announced in January. So far, he's been meeting staff and preparing for the new school year, which begins in about a month. Not much has surprised him, though he said he appreciates the kindness and support of the staff and the community thus far.

One of the biggest adjustments, Marty said, is getting used to the size of the district. Marty was most recently the superintendent of Menomonee Falls School District in suburban Milwaukee, a district with about 4,500 students. Parkway is about four times that size.

"I went to an activity on Friday where all the facility people were present, and it was like 350 people there," Marty said. The size of the group surprised him a bit. "That's about how many teachers we had in the district I was in."

But, he said, Parkway is organized similarly to his previous district. So it's just a matter of getting to know more faces.

Find out more about what he thinks his first challenges in the district will be in the first part of a Q and A with Marty:

Patch: What do you see as the most important issue facing the district in the next school year?

Keith Marty: I think I was hired on the premise that we're going to implement fully Project Parkway. It was developed with a lot of community and staff input, and it's a good strategic plan. It's very thorough. It's got components that address students, but also others to address how the organization is going use resources and operate. So the major goal from the board to me is to implement that and make sure we don't lose sight of that good work; that we hold people accountable for what the plan is addressing, and that we keep, year by year, implementing that plan to its conclusion. And it will take several years. So that's really a major focus, and I'm excited about that because it is such a good plan.

Patch: Do you have any experience with strategic plans like this?

Marty: Yes. Actually, my old district has a long history of strategic planning. And personally, I facilitated plans in other districts. So I'm very familiar with the development of plans—in large districts, too, because I developed plans in districts like Green Bay and Madison (Wisconsin), which are about the size of Parkway. So I'm familiar with how to make it work in larger districts.

Another thing that I'm really believe the district needs a strategic plan around our facilities. It would be a facility plan that would not just be concerned with the present situation, but also what education is going to look like 8 to 10 years from now and how that will impact our facilities. So from technology to how we really are thinking about educating kids—do we give them more application opportunities? And then how can our community use our facilities fully?

So I want to introduce a planning process that would really get us focused on our facilities. I'm tentatively calling it Facility Planning 2020. So we think about where do we want to be by 2020, from both things that will need to be replaced and educational needs.

Patch: Where'd that idea come from?

Marty: The district I came from had so many facility needs when I became superintendent that I introduced this. We did what was called Facility Planning 2010. And it served us so well. It was one of the first decisions I made as superintendent, and it was actually something we lived by. I'm convinced that this district, with more facilities, can certainly benefit from that.

Patch: When you say "Where will education be in 10 years in terms of technology" do you want to look at wiring classrooms? What goes into this?

Marty: Yeah, that's part of it. I think schools of the future are going to be more flexible in nature. Schools used to be built, or in many cases maybe still are constructed, with classrooms that are all about the same size. But maybe we should think of schools being more flexible for small or large groups. And schools should include not just solid walls, but maybe we can make rooms from small to big. And desks—the way kids use technology, tables are a better way of planning for the future, not individual desks that can't hardly hold a student yet alone technology.

If we're serious about application, and connecting students on the secondary level with adults and businesses, maybe some of our learning is going to occur outside of our building. So, how do we let that occur?

Also, there's so many changes with special needs children. There's much more attention to therapy and setting up living opportunities within schools so that special needs children can leave that environment not just with academic skills but with full life skills.

Patch: Back to Project Parkway, what's the next thing to be implemented? I know you guys have approved , and are changing. What's the next part of that plan?           

Marty: We're well on our way to developing common, ongoing assessments. The state test is really more a one-time-a-year test. We want to develop more assessments so that our teachers will know where our students are on an ongoing basis—and not just one teacher in one classroom, but a group of teachers working together.

One of the things we're initiating with our staff is professional learning communities, where teachers in each building will really use data. If the third-grade teachers got together, they would be able to look at common assessments on spelling and vocabulary. They can see how each classroom is doing. Maybe one teacher is doing something unique that's making test scores in that environment really good. So they could talk about practices, they can talk about creating knowledge and skills around students. So it’s really using information.

And then making those ongoing tests more transparent with parents, so parents aren't just plugged in on a quarter basis or on a grading period. Instead, they're really knowledgeable of what's ongoing.

So that's a big piece of ongoing work; and that's not a one-year piece. That's a multi-year piece.

Patch: There's been the big cheating scandal in Atlanta, and there's so much pressure on teachers to make sure their students make the grade. In light of those stories, do you think assessments are the best way to show teachers are doing their job?

Marty: Well, there's an example of the state testing, the bureaucratic testing. What I'm talking about is systems that aren't high stakes. We aren't talking about things we're going to put in a newspaper or you're going to report on. In many a sense it's like going to the doctor on a regular basis for a check-up, and then using that information to make sure students are progressing. And if the progression isn't as quick or as fast as we would like, why isn't that occurring? What more do we need to do?

From a purely ethical standpoint, high-stakes testing drives a lot of bad behaviors. Adults are worried about their jobs. But we're talking about a more natural way of assessing students. We're trying to get a group of professionals really using information to their benefit and driving instruction rather than just simply having a curriculum.

When I was a teacher in the '70s, I was given a curriculum and told to teach hard. And I did. But while we had tests, we didn't think a lot about assessments on an ongoing basis. So we'd have the big unit test, and if someone got a C, we didn't say, well could we have prevented that if we had done that unit test with other checks along the way. I think we're becoming much more conscious that if we're really serious about student growth, a key to that is not just delivery, but also awareness of where the students are at.