A Hard Look for a Better School System
by Dr. Donna Hargens, Chief Academic Officer
August 31, 2007 - The next few weeks may be one of the most important periods in the Wake County Public School System's history. Next Tuesday, the leader of a team of independent auditors will present to the Wake County Board of Education the results of their comprehensive investigation into our curriculum and the system within which it is delivered.
Our superintendent, Dr. Del Burns, called for this comprehensive independent curriculum management audit last January. He said that while our school system's business functions are regularly reviewed by outside auditors and advisory bodies, that the WCPSS's very reason for being -- teaching and learning -- had never been reviewed by an objective, outside organization. He was confident that our schools are doing a very good job for most of our students, and he was confident that we could be doing even better.
Our school board agreed. A team of auditors from the International Curriculum Management Audit Center of Phi Delta Kappa International reviewed a library of documents that laid end-to-end would cover 8.6 miles, conducted hundreds of interviews and visited every school. They left no stone unturned as they compared our practice to five organizational standards. They reviewed our policies and governance, programs, assessment, instructional delivery, and resource allotment. They are now reviewing the data they gathered and drafting their conclusions.
While we wait to hear their presentation to the school board, it is very important for Wake County citizens to understand that the auditors will offer our school system few pats on the back. The report likely will not congratulate us for creating professional learning communities in our schools, delivering supplemental math instruction on our website, or fostering alliances with business volunteers. That is not what we asked for. Instead, the audit will set out a clear, independent vision of how we can better align our efforts to improve the achievement of every student.
We will receive recommendations that we can use to make our school system better: more aligned, more focused, more efficient, and more effective in serving our students. But undergoing the audit process itself is having a beneficial impact on our schools -- before we have seen a single finding.
For example, when the auditors interviewed staff members who support math instruction, they interviewed the elementary, middle, and high school senior administrators together. This reinforced WCPSS's emphasis on ensuring that all of our schools at every grade level are playing their role in working toward our school system's vision: that every child will graduate on time, prepared for the future.
We have also learned from a question the auditors asked many times: "What resources are available to a teacher new to the system to facilitate their ability to provide quality instruction to all students?" The process has taught us that we have many strong resources for teachers, but our efforts could be better aligned and communicated.
Dr. Doug Reeves, the chairman and founder of the Center for Performance Assessment, often states that students should not be held more accountable than the adults in a school system. Embracing accountability is a part of the WCPSS's academic culture. We have undergone an independent curriculum management audit because we want to ensure that our school system as a whole supports all 154 schools' continuous improvement. Each of our 136,000 individual students deserves no less.
The release of the curriculum management audit will certainly be a milestone in our quest to be not merely good, or very good, but outstanding in our service to children.