By Carol P. Bartold

Oct. 19, 2016:  At the October 13 Bronxville Board of Education long-range planning meeting, school administrators described work done to date and presented plans to expand The Bronxville Promise from awareness and understanding to practical application and measurable results.

Dr. Mary Giuffra, board member and chair of the new Strategy and Curriculum Committee, stated that a strategic five-year plan, in progress, seeks to give context to how the district assesses progress, makes changes, and continues to evaluate the concept of the Promise. The ultimate goal is to establish the Promise’s dispositions of innovation, leadership, critical thinking, and engagement with the world as the foundation for pursuing a sound 21st-century education.

“This is our vision,” said Dr. Rachel Kelly, assistant superintendent for human resources and pupil services. “We know we need to conceptualize what we believe in. This has led us to ask strategic questions in terms of how to instill the dispositions in our students.”

As Dr. Mara Koetke, director of curriculum and instruction, explained, the goal of the strategic plan is to anchor the work of the school district in The Bronxville Promise. She presented three categories of implementation--curriculum, assessment, and school culture--that are in progress or about to be put into action.

The Bronxville School has already entered into a curriculum partnership with Teachers College Columbia University Reading and Writing Project. The program, in existence for more than 20 years, engages in ongoing research of the most innovative and cutting-edge methods of teaching reading and writing. “It is one of the most well-researched programs in the country, if not the world,” she said, and added that teaching materials are constantly updated.

Within the Reading and Writing Project, Bronxville teachers are designing a vertically aligned reading and writing program from kindergarten through eighth grade that will establish progression built upon from grade to grade. Koetke stated that she believes the alignment of the program units will give students long-term success as readers and writers.

Project Based Learning, another curriculum-based initiative, is an inquiry-based instructional mode. “We believe it encompasses all the aspects of the Bronxville Promise, especially innovation and leadership, that leads to engaged citizenship,” said elementary school Assistant Principal Adrienne Laitman.

In Project Based Learning, teachers collaborate to design an experience that poses a challenging, meaningful, and authentic problem to students. The challenge involves a process of sustained inquiry during which the students try to discover the solution to a problem over a period of time. At the project’s conclusion, the students present their solutions to an audience outside the classroom.

“We’re hitting assessment on a few fronts,” Koetke said. While there will never be a shortage of external assessments, she added, the district is establishing opportunities for students to gain self-awareness of their growth and engage in self-assessment.

Elementary school Principal Tricia Murray noted that rigors of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Program equip students to gain understanding of their own level of development. “Kids will look at their work versus the expected standard and be able to assess where they are and bring their work up to the next level,” she said.

E-portfolios, kept by Bronxville High School ninth- and tenth-graders, and to be introduced each year in the ninth grade, provide an online space for students to keep a record of their work across the four dispositions of The Bronxville Promise. Through a partnership with EdLeader 21, a national organization of school district leaders that is designing assessments around critical thinking, students are given prompts that help them reflect on their work and growth in their e-portfolios.

“We are looking at national and international assessments that measure literacy,” said Mara Koetke. To that end, 85 students aged 15, selected randomly by the testing organization, will take the internationally benchmarked PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) exam in November.

Last, Koetke said, the implementation plan will address the school culture and will examine if the appropriate culture is in place at the school to achieve The Bronxville Promise. The district will work with Challenge Success, an organization from Stanford University, to administer a survey to all students grade 6 through 12.

Among the topics the survey will gauge are students’ feelings about teacher support and care, how much cheating goes on, and the amount of worry academics causes them. “We can get a sense of how our students compare to those in similar districts,” said high school principal Ann Meyer. In the fall of 2017, a team of students, parents, administrators, and teachers will take the survey data to Stanford University and discuss an action plan.

“The goal is always excellence,” Dr. Mary Giuffra emphasized. “The Bronxville School values excellence for everybody.”

Pictured here:  Members of the Bronxville Board of Education at the October 13 meeting.

Photo by N. Bower