Dr. Phillipps' Education Blog: MacBooks

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Monday, January 11, 2016

HA's Lower School - A Value Proposition

Every year, as a part of my introduction to our Lower School Holiday Concert, I make a statement about the value of the education provided at Houston Academy. In particular, I have pointed out that, while many schools across the country have cut their arts funding, Houston Academy has actually increased our commitment to the arts. One thoughtful parent, who cared enough to email me, questioned my statement, particularly in response to the value proposition of spending money on a Houston Academy lower school education.

Before I go into the value proposition of HA, let me make one crucial point: I am a fervent supporter of our public school system. The future of the nation and the future prosperity of Dothan depends largely on the success of our public schools. Moreover, my wife and I are both products of the public school system. In fact, my wife has spent most of her career in Title I schools, including a stint in inner city Memphis, Tennessee. I have a great deal of respect for what our public school teachers and administrators do on a daily basis, especially given how they have been handicapped by inadequate funding, misguided “reform” efforts, and needless bureaucracy and paperwork -- all of which have been imposed upon them by people who are not educators. So, in enumerating the benefits of a Houston Academy education, I, in no way, mean to be critical of the public schools and the people who work in them.

In my 26 years working in independent schools, I have come to understand that independent schools must provide our students and families with some sort of “value added.” That is, we need to offer our families some benefit or advantage that they are unable to get in the public schools or elsewhere. At the core of our value proposition is our mission:

Houston Academy is an independent college preparatory institution. Our mission is to prepare all our students for responsible participation in a global society by providing an excellent learning environment and opportunities to achieve their highest academic, social, and creative potential.

These two sentences capture what makes a Houston Academy lower school education worth the tuition. We offer a mission that is very different. The goal of the public schools is to graduate kids from high school; the goal of the local Christian schools is to provide a Christian education; the goal of Houston Academy is to graduate kids from college.

In fact, we are the ONLY school in the Wiregrass whose mission is explicitly college preparatory. This means that, in everything we do, from 3P to 12^th grade, we are working towards the goal of giving students the knowledge and skills to be a successful college graduate. Houston Academy also wants to produce global citizens and to push students to achieve their highest creative and social potential. HA has a different mission from other area schools- not better, necessarily -- just different.

In practical terms, more than anything else, what we offer is rigor. As I have told parents and students who are worried about grades, “We will not apologize for our rigor.” We hold our students and teachers accountable to an unwaveringly high standard of excellence. At the same time, we provide a loving and nurturing environment in which our students receive the support they need to be successful. Still, no one should pay tuition for his children’s school to be easy. College will be hard; life will be hard; and we want our children to have the tools to be successful in both college and life. My own three children work hard at HA, every single day, and to them this is “normal.” They don’t get particularly stressed, they just do their job, because they are used to learning, and they are used to doing what they need to do to be successful.

Holding our teachers to a higher standard is another aspect of that rigor. No, we do not have “high stakes” testing, and our teachers do not have to fill out reams of paperwork; we prefer they spend their time teaching. As I have said in my blog, we have not adopted Common Core because we are teaching children, not standards. Our teachers are evaluated by the degree to which they pursue and achieve goals that they, themselves identify in conjunction with their Head of School.

Houston Academy also hires teachers with strong credentials who are compulsively driven to succeed. Unlike most other schools in the Wiregrass, every single one of our 3P-6^th grade teachers has a four-year degree and is certified in her field. To me, taking your child to a preschool where teachers are neither qualified nor certified is a little like taking your child to a dentist who has never been to dental school. Despite some people’s perception, preschool is not free play. Lessons should be planned by certified teachers to meet the developmental needs of the individual students in the class. It’s a purposeful exercise that requires a teacher to have education, training, and practice. It’s as much a science as it is an art.

Nevertheless, having outstanding teachers is not enough to ensure student success. The literature has consistently supported the notion that students thrive in a smaller classroom environment. We believe education is an intimate exercise. Fundamentally, your tuition dollars ensure that your child has a small student to teacher ratio. We have teacher assistants in every classroom through 1^st grade. Moreover, while the student to teacher ratio in the Dothan City elementary schools is 18:1 (20:1 in the magnet schools), the Houston Academy Lower School student to teacher ratio is 8:1.

Make no mistake: class size matters. The research has consistently shown wide-ranging and lasting benefits from smaller class sizes. Smaller class sizes have a positive and significant relationship to higher standardized test scores, higher “cognitive and non-cognitive skills”[1] (e.g., effort, motivation, and self-esteem), higher academic achievement, higher salaries as an adult, higher college graduation and attendance rates, and lower incidence of poverty.[2] In fact, there have been quantitative studies that have shown that student-teacher ratio is the single most powerful predictor of student improvement in reading and math.[3] The reasons for these positive outcomes are obvious. In smaller classes, teachers are better able to meet the individual educational needs of the students, there are fewer distractions, fewer behavioral problems, and the engagement of students is increased.[4] Plus, with a decreased teaching load, teachers have more time to plan innovative lessons.

In addition to the intimate environment in the regular classroom, we have full-time enrichment teachers in every conceivable area (library, computer, foreign language, art, music, character education, and PE). Other schools may claim that they offer these enrichments, but they don’t have full-time, certified teachers dedicated to these pursuits, and the students do not take part in these disciplines with any consistency. To this end, our financial commitment, in terms of faculty development and faculty resources, is unmatched. We have a:

Full-time teacher with a Master of Fine Arts teaching 5-6 grade chorus (pursuing a doctorate)
Full-time band director with a music degree (pursuing a master's degree)
Full-time lower school music teacher with a bachelor's degree
Full-time lower school art teacher with a master's degree
Lower school art assistant, with a bachelor's degree
Full-time Spanish teacher, with a bachelor's degree
Full-time PE teacher, with a master's degree
Two, full-time PE assistants, with a bachelor's degree
Full-time computer teacher, with a bachelor's degree
Full-time library and media specialist, with two master's degrees
Full-time library assistant, with a bachelor's degree

We also offer:

Smart boards in every classroom
A yearly, lower school musical
Instruments and band instruction to every student in 5^th and 6^th grade
iPads in every lower school classroom
1:1 MacBook Pros in grades 5-12

Perhaps the most meaningful aspect of our “value added” is the support we provide to help our students be successful in our highly rigorous environment. HA now has three, full-time learning specialists who work with students who are struggling or who have special needs. Two of these teachers are trained in the Orton-Gillingham method for dyslexic students, one is a speech therapist, and the third has a special education degree and a master’s degree.

Finally, in my short time in Dothan, I have found that most people will concede that HA offers the finest, college preparatory education in the region, but many people feel that HA is unaffordable. For preschool, we are nowhere near the most expensive option in Dothan. For lower and upper schools, when you compare “apples to apples,” and include fees that other schools charge, our cost is quite competitive. Moreover, we offer substantial financial assistance to those who qualify, making the cost of an HA education well within the reach of most middle-class families.

In short, when you are looking at the value of paying tuition, it’s important to look long-term. In the history of Houston Academy, 100% of our graduates have been admitted to a college of his or her choice. Over the past two years, our senior classes of approximately 50 students have earned $6.4 million in college scholarships. That is remarkable, even if one controls for the educational level of our parent body. We offer smaller classes, more opportunities, more rigor, and more support than any other school in the Wiregrass. The evidence shows that a Houston Academy education gives your child a better chance to be successful in college and in life; this all begins in lower school.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Major Improvements in Communication

Dear HA Family:

Earlier this year, after I finished meeting with all of our HA teachers, I posted a blog in which I noted what our teachers thought were HA’s greatest strengths. Foremost among these strengths was our sense of family. As a part of the same conversation, the faculty shared with me the areas that most needed to be improved. In short, our teachers consistently indicated that our most significant shortcoming was a lack of communication.

Since July, our leadership team has been working assiduously to remedy that shortage of communication to parents and staff. Today, we officially launch the Tandem Calendar as a major step towards keeping all our stakeholders informed. The directions for registration are linked here, but let me briefly outline what this amazing technology will do for the HA family.

The Tandem Calendar updates school events in real time. You can find our calendar linked at the top, right-hand side of the main page of our HA website. Just click on the “calendar,” and it will take you to a monthly view. You may then click on any given event to get driving directions, details, contact information, etc.

The most convenient feature of the Tandem Calendar is the notification feature. Parents may register and set up your account with Tandem to receive:

text message alerts,
HA calendar updates on your personal calendar (Outlook, iCal, Google, etc.),
email alerts when ANYTHING is put on the calendar, and
any changes made to events that are already scheduled on the calendar.

In addition, you can choose which activities and events to track so that you will not receive information in which you are uninterested. So, for example, if you register to “track” JV baseball, and Coach Ryan wants to notify the parents that a game is cancelled, the calendar will automatically be changed. If you are registered, you will be notified via email and/or text message that the game has been cancelled, and you will also be notified if and when the game is rescheduled. Your e-calendar will automatically change as well if it is also tied to Tandem. For more information on the advantages of the online calendar, I encourage you to read the FAQ from the Tandem calendar website.

I should emphasize to those of you who might have concerns about internet privacy that your information will not be used by anyone for marketing purposes, and the calendar does not link you to social media or internet search engines. Tandem calendar is only for your convenience.

Also, to keep everyone informed of the activities and accomplishments of our students at HA, we are now using social media and our web page in place of the traditional PTO weekly email. We are doing this for a number of reasons. Our first reason for this change is that Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter (@HARaiders) allow us to link articles and videos about our students that appear in the local media and on the world-wide web. Our second reason is that social media has a unique ability to reach EVERYONE who is interested in the happenings at HA; plus, it has the added bonus of being able to promote our school and students to the larger Wiregrass community (and beyond). The third reason for using social media is that email does not reach all of our stakeholders (former parents, alumni, grandparents, etc.), and email addresses change—sometimes, frequently. Furthermore, while email is a one-way conversation, social media allows a multi-directional conversation. Parents and students can comment, post pictures, promote events, and congratulate each other. You may have already noticed that we have posted videos, segments from local television news stories, and links to live streaming of our events. All of that would have been impossible with email, and much of the information parents received might not have been very timely. Finally, research that tells us that our younger parents do not even use email on a regular basis. One statistic I saw indicates that less than 40% of people ages 18-27 check email, daily. In fact, ask someone in that age demographic, and they will probably tell you that email is passé.[1]

Keep in mind, too, that you do not need to be a registered Facebook user to look at our Facebook page for updates on our students. Registering for Facebook does have the advantage of allowing you to receive instant messages and updates from Facebook on your smartphone, but you can click on the Facebook link on our webpage and find out what is going on at HA without being actively engaged in social media in any way, shape, or form.

Truly, though, the digital age is here. We can either embrace social media and teach our kids how to use it responsibly, or we can attempt to ignore it. I firmly believe, however, that we ignore social media at our own peril. Students need our guidance and support more than ever in this increasingly interconnected world. Moreover, as a college preparatory school, we need to prepare our students to use the social media outlets they will be expected to use in college and in the 21^st century workforce.

Our hope is that our HA family and the Wiregrass community can use the Tandem calendar, social media, my blog, our counselors’ blogs, our video streaming, PowerSchool, and our MacBook and iPad programs to keep informed and involved in Houston Academy. We also hope we can use our technology inside and outside the classroom to provide a truly global education. It is not enough for our program to be 1-to-1: we need it to be 1-to-world.

If you have any difficulties with the calendar, or if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me (phillippss@houstonacademy.com) or our technology staff of Melanie Woodcock (woodcockm@houstonacademy.com ), Aaron Beeson (beesona@houstonacademy.com ), and Joey Keener (keener@houstonacademy.com).

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/technology/21email.html

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

The Best Way to Predict the Future Is to Invent It: Harnessing Technology in Schools

While perusing social media, I revisited an article I had read earlier this summer Independent School magazine:

The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Invent It: Harnessing Technology in Schools

Here is the quote that I believe is particularly apropos to HA:

Just as the hybrid gas-electric motor represents a key to our energy future, hybrid thinking can take us farther down productive educational paths. Instead of the either-or debates that have characterized so much of education reform (phonics vs. whole language, computational skills vs. mathematical thinking, face-to-face instruction vs. online courses), it’s time we take a both-and approach — weave the best traditional elements of teaching with inventive digital learning to create a truly fresh approach to education.

This blended approach integrating digital learning with the power of face-to-face relationships, between teachers and students and among students as peer tutors, is proving more effective than either alone.

I watched Mrs. Snell's 5th grade class today. They had used their MacBooks to type a story in which they had to integrate their vocabulary words throughout the story. Now, certainly, this same assignment could have been done with pencil and paper, but by using their MacBooks, the students were able to integrate some practical, real-world technology skills into their assignment. First, they utilized keyboarding skills; second, they used a word processing program; third, they used their grammar check to make sure they were using appropriate grammar and punctuation. One student actually noted that they had originally used incorrect grammar, but they were able to correct their mistake before completing the assignment. In a sense, the student was getting instant feedback without having to wait for a teacher to provide it.

At the same time, the students were exhibiting a number of 21st century learning skills. They were using creativity to write the story, they were presenting their stories to each other (communication), and they were critically reacting to each other's work and evaluating ways that they integrated the vocabulary (critical thinking and collaboration). Of course, too, by actually using the vocabulary (as opposed to just memorizing a definition), research tells us that these 5th graders in Mrs. Snell's class will be much more likely to remember and use their new vocabulary words in the future (higher ACT scores!). Moreover, they had FUN doing the activity, and they were proud to share their stories with me.

THIS, is what you are getting at HA that I believe you won't get anywhere else in the Wiregrass -- technology and 21st century learning. It doesn't get any better than that.

Friday, July 26, 2013

The Technology Fee Question

Since posting my first blog post yesterday, I have received several emails from parents concerning the new technology fee that was instituted by the Board of Trustees last spring. Parents have asked me the following questions:

1). Why are we paying a fee that costs more (over the course of the lease) than buying our own MacBook would cost?
2). Can we buy our own device and bring it, thereby, avoiding the full cost of the technology fee?

Let me explain the rationale behind the lease (which predates my arrival, obviously).

I have been at a school for the last five years which has operated under a "bring your own device" model. In short, it was an unmitigated disaster from a pedagogical standpoint. When students "brought their own device" students had a wide range of devices. These devices varied from handheld devices, to tablets, to MacBooks, to Notebook PCs. Teachers were unable to plan or integrate technology into their lessons because the students had such varied devices with divergent capabilities within the classroom. Basically, teachers were relegated to having students surf the web.

In order for technology to be truly integrated into teaching and learning, I firmly believe students need to have the same software and devices as their teacher, AND the school needs to have some degree of control over what is downloaded onto the computers. Our goal, after much study and research, is for the MacBooks to be a transformational device -- a "game changer," if you will. Whatever, the quality of other devices out there, we think it important for the technology that the children use in the classroom to be the same.

In addition, if we allowed everyone to bring their own devices, we would not be able to pay for current program and lease (to which the Board has made a commitment). The technology fee does not merely cover the costs of the MacBooks, themselves. It is going to pay for infrastructure (such as wifi), server upgrades, software, hardware, repairs, faculty development and training, and staffing (which has had to increase with the 1:1 initiative). In short, if we let everyone bring their own devices, we would have to shut down the program we have, entirely. That being said, we are at the cutting edge of educational change in our region. Unfortunately, being on the cutting edge is expensive. The Board instituted the program at no cost to our stakeholders and gave everyone their MacBooks "for free," but we are going to have to charge everyone, going forward, if we want the program to continue.

I know that for most of us, an HA education is a huge financial commitment. However, it would probably surprise everyone to know that, while we have sound finances and operate in a fiscally responsible manner, HA tuition does not cover the entire cost of educating our children here. Our teachers are paid significantly less that the public school teachers in the area, and our tuition is significantly less than our NAIS peers throughout the Southeast. Obviously, we do not receive state funding, so fees like the technology fee are essential if we want to continue to provide the finest education in the Wiregrass.

I hope that addresses your collective concerns.

Dr. Phillipps' Education Blog