InFocus featuring WPS Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Susan Dargie

From the 22 News Plus Studio, this is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Hello everyone and welcome to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host Patrick Berry. We are here in the 22 News Plus Studios once again. Today we're talking about education. In the fall of 2024, in the elections, there was a ballot initiative about eliminating MCAS from our graduation requirements here in the Bay State. And a couple of other things, financial literacy, some of the challenges that are facing our local school districts. So I am excited today to have Ms. Susan Dargy. She's the Director of Curriculum and Instruction with the Westfield Public School System. Joining me here in the studio, Sue, thank you so much for coming in. I appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me. So yeah, in November 2024, it was put out to the voters, the voters of Massachusetts, what do we feel about the MCAS exam? I'm a parent of two kids who went through the Westfield Public Schools and I'm torn over it because there has to be a certain element of consistent measuring. But a lot of people hated the MCAS, so we voted to get rid of it. Why? Well, and I think that when that ballot initiative passed, there was some immediate confusion that came to light that we did not vote to eliminate MCAS as an assessment given to all students in Massachusetts public schools. We voted to eliminate the score requirement, a specific score to achieve competency determination. So saying that students cannot graduate from high school unless they achieve a certain score on each of the MCAS tests. So now knowing that, so MCAS is still there. The kids are still taking it. They've eliminated the minimum achievement on MCAS to graduate. Yes. In favor of other measures, because as you said, we need to have standardization across courses, across classrooms, across cities and towns. Whether in Gloucester or Westfield. Yes. And we want that to continue because it helps us to make sure that we're implementing high quality curriculum and that our students are learning the frameworks that Massachusetts has said are what students will learn from pre-K to 12 in Massachusetts. MCAS came through that idea that we wanted to have this measure, but then it became the graduation requirement made it so that students who learn differently, students who have different abilities. And I think we found that as a society, we've learned that, that children don't all learn the same as when you and I were in school. Even back then, we didn't learn the same. We were just kind of forced to. But yes, that a one-size-fits-all test should not determine whether you can graduate because it's negating the work that you've done over the many years in school. So originally MCAS, when it was proposed, was supposed to also have assessment-based tests that were more of demonstrating your skill and knowledge. So as an educator, is any standardized test, are they valuable? Or is every individual class, all right, this kid got an A in math, this kid got an F in math, whatever it is, or is standardized tests even valuable or not? Or you look at it as individual school? I believe that standard... And my data colleagues who love the data and call themselves data nerds, they would say, yes, standardized testing is valuable because it is standardized. You mentioned grades. Grades are highly subjective. One teacher's A minus compared to another teacher's C plus. We've gotten better at developing rubrics, sharing that information with students ahead of time, saying this is the expectation, this is how you will earn the A, this is how you will earn the B. We've moved towards standard spaced report cards in our K to 4. Students don't get ABC letter grades. They receive M for mastery, S for slow... P for progressing, S for slowly making slow progress, and N for needs improvement. So it's more of a growth mindset to say, these are the skills we need to be mastered. And the range that we're saying they probably will be mastered is grade 4. But some students may master some of those skills in grade 3. Some may take until grade 5 or grade 6. So the standardized measure is a good measure. But when that's the only data point we're using to say you get a diploma or you don't... So if it's the only data point, then that really hurts the student. Right. It can hurt the student. And I think that is what we heard loud and clear from Massachusetts voters that included educators, administrators, teachers, parents, students who came up through that system. Which the nice thing is now that that has passed, students who did not receive the competency determination, so they were able to get more of a certificate of completion of high school than a diploma, they are now able to come back and request that their transcripts be reviewed and that they be awarded the diploma. And we have had individuals do that. They go through my colleague, Dr. Christine Shea's office. She's the director of assessment and accountability. But we review the new determination. And if they met it, then they can be awarded the diploma because anyone now that's passing the courses that have the standards measured by MCAS, as long as they are achieving a passing score. And then there may be other local requirements, like they have to do community service. So they have to submit a portfolio. It can be what the local, the school committee decides. Graduation is a local determination. So we decide how many credits, what do they have to do. We are up on our first commercial break. Stay with us. We've got plenty more to talk about when it comes to local education. We're back in a moment. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Welcome back, everyone. Today, on today's In Focus, we're talking about education in our local school systems. Susan Dargy from the Westfield Public Schools is with us today. The first part of this conversation, we talked a lot about MCAS and so forth. But just to clarify, I want to make sure I understand it correctly. MCAS is still there. Every school in the state, all the students are still taking MCAS on the original schedule. But the final grade in high school is no longer used as a requirement to give that child a diploma. Did I boil it down? Right. Yes. We still have a graduation requirement. It is part of our graduation requirement in Westfield. So is Westfield the same as Ludlow, the same as Greenfield? Or are each school district different? Each school district develops their own graduation requirements based on recommendations from the state, a set of recommendations called Mass Core Requirements. And the Department of Elementary and Secondary Ed still expects all students to take MCAS. So I would say most districts would have that as an MCAS as a graduation requirement. There are some districts that we've spoken with who are making a certain score on MCAS, a requirement in their particular district. That's not something that we chose to do. But we set our requirements based on the recommendations and students are required to pass a number of courses that weren't as explicitly stated in our graduation requirements before this. So it's the courses that students would naturally be guided into by their counselors, algebra, geometry, algebra two, because those are the three levels or the three courses of math that were part of the 10th grade MCAS. So it's really just a different approach to how students are progressing. So now we're not just passing everybody. There's still requirements. Right. Right. So let's switch gears a little bit because you unknowingly talked about math and I want to get into math specifically. One thing I think a lot of people our generation hear a lot of is kids nowadays aren't taught basic financial literacy. I mean, I know you can only speak for Westfield, but I have to imagine most schools across the state or even the nation teach the most basic financial skills, right? I'm saying this hesitantly. Yes. No, absolutely. In Westfield, we have for many years financial literacy. A financial literacy course has been a requirement for graduation at both Westfield High School and Westfield Technical Academy. So financial literacy is a graduating. It is a graduating requirement. And in 2018, there was a revision of the history and social science frameworks. And those are the social studies frameworks and the financial literacy standards that are expected to be taught in every Massachusetts high school were put into that set of frameworks and formalized. And why that and not math? A lot of people will say, well, shouldn't those standards be in math? But they're really economic. They're in the economic strand of the history and social science frameworks. And what our math supervisor, Kate Perez, likes to remind us is that the math skills for the types of financial literacy that we're teaching at high school level are really the math skills from grade seven and eight. So we the thing about financial literacy that I think is great because it doesn't happen a lot in education is everybody agrees it's important, right? It needs to be taught. And even our middle school principal, Jesse McMillan, when he was developing some elective courses for students at the middle school, he surveyed the students, what would you like to learn? And this also happened at Tech Academy where they were asking students, what would you like to learn? How to do taxes. We want to learn about banking. We want to learn how to go into the world and participate as an adult in our society. The students are giving you that feedback. They are. Wow. That's awesome. And because we do teach financial literacy, we are able to equip them with these essential skills that can let them go into their adult life being proactive rather than reactive. We have a financial, a credit for life fair that is it's an annual event. It's one of the things that we hear feedback from the volunteers, the students, the staff that it's so impactful. And it's put on by a committee of volunteers. They do these across the state. I think Westfield probably has the best group of volunteers, I would say. We have people from the banks, the real estate agents, they're coming in and manning booths and the students walk through the gates and it happens in the Westfield High School gym. We have Tech Academy comes over there. We have White Oak School participates, St. Mary's. We invited Southwick. We invited Gateway. So we bring students over and they walk through that gate and they're 25 years old. They're given a credit score, which is random. That's exactly what it is. And they have to figure out they choose a career and then they get information about how much they make, maybe how much debt they have, because maybe they had to go to school for a number of years to do that. Is it realistic collegiate debt numbers that the kids get? It is. The committee is diligent about updating the information to make sure that it is up to date for what is the current landscape. And students, of course, they want to go to the entertainment booth, but then they find out, well, I also have to pay my utilities this month, so maybe I can't go to the casino and spend this much money. They apply for credit if they want to make a purchase on credit. They have to figure out if they can rent. Do they need roommates? I mean, they are just diving in. And these volunteers that are people in the financial world or working, you know, alongside the banks and along. Yes. And it's really it's incredible. Interesting. I didn't realize financial literacy was so so advanced in the schools. Right. Because we are all recognizing. So at the state level, we applied for and received a financial literacy grant and it was about fifteen thousand dollars. We used it to pilot some software at the high school level. That was something we hadn't used before. And we are actually opening or beginning a business and finance innovation career pathway at Westfield High School. So that financial literacy opportunities are going to expand even more than students have now. But we also use that money because this was a K to 12 grant to purchase a number of books, games, games about money, statistics that we distributed across our schools so that we're making sure that students are being introduced to these concepts along the way. I was just talking with Jennifer Thielen, a third grade teacher at Westfield River Elementary School, and she was talking about launching her economics unit where students have to they have a budget and they have to make purchases and manage that. And she does it alongside another unit that it fits with. And so teachers are making these thoughtful decisions. Yes. Of how to develop these skills. Excellent. We are up on our second commercial break. We've got plenty more to talk about. When we come back, we'll talk about some of the other challenges that our local schools are facing. Stay with us. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Welcome back, everyone, to today's In Focus. We're having a discussion about education in our local school system. I'm very excited and happy to be joined across the desk today by Susan Dargy from Westfield Public Schools. Sue, thank you for joining me. We've covered MCAS and graduation requirements, financial literacy. What are some of the other challenges that you and other educators, not just in Westfield, but everywhere, what are some of the things you guys face every day that you're battling? Well, I would say one of our largest challenges right now would be students' ability to self-regulate, the behavior challenges that sometimes come from mental health concerns, from trauma. Did COVID exacerbate the mental health problems among our students? Absolutely. Really? Is it that they're just not resilient enough or they got stuck in their house for, what, a year and a half or something like that? I think both of those factors are at play, and I think it depends on the age level of the students when it happened. They had three months at home with no in-person school, and we did our best to engage, and we did do some work with students, but we saw very quickly the challenges of virtual. But then the year we came back, it was every other week students were in person. So that was an extended period of time to have gaps in learning. In-person, playground interactions, people interactions. All of it, people interactions. So I think isolation of especially a lot of our older students led to more of that mental health need, and our younger students really lacked that. Even playgroups, young students, young children before they come to school, if they're engaging in playgroups and going to the museums with their parents, they're getting lots of different experiences. But that was a period of time where that wasn't happening. So definitely that, it was all, we were already noticing though, to be honest, there were lots of discussions about a decline that we were seeing with students' behavior, their ability to self-regulate. I mean, I think a lot of this is coming from the screens. So that was already gaining a lot of momentum that we knew we had a problem. COVID did exacerbate it, and we've sort of been battling back ever since. We're still not back to pre-COVID levels of student attendance. We've made a lot of gains. We have a great attendance task force that is run by our Director of Safety and Operations, Chris Rogers, that has been operating for really a long time. And so they were able to help support the schools and come up with new strategies. We have Title I is one of our funding sources. It's a federal grant. And we use some of that money to have mentors for students and to have family engagement outreach. But it all comes back to the parents. The parents have to understand, you got to watch how you act in front of your kids, expose your kids to other kids' interactions, monitor it, just to make them a better human being, basically. Right. And I think it is a partnership between educators and parents. And the more we can communicate and work together to address needs as they arise, the better that is for the student. And whether it is the behavior challenges or the academic, we have a lot of our students that require intervention. So what that means is that all students are learning the same curriculum. And we use instructional strategies that are considered best practices. Teachers attend professional development, collaborate with each other. So students are all getting this, we call it Tier I instruction. And for a number of our students, 75 percent or more, that's enough. But we have, right, that need to have some type of intervention to help them to get to whatever that grade level benchmark is. So that's a challenge that persists because intervention requires staff. And, you know, with budget, which brings us to another. But unfortunately, we're out of time. So, you know, mental health and budgeting is always a struggle in our schools. Stephan talked about that. Sue, thank you so very much for giving me some insight into these important educational topics. Great seeing you again. Thank you. Great seeing you, too. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry.