Get It Right Podcasts: Ray Leone
Maryland PTA President Ray Leone shares his perspective on building parent understanding and support of the Common Core by engaging families and communities at the local level through public forums and open lines of communication.
Following is an edited transcript:
LFA: Welcome to Get It Right: Common Sense on the Common Core, a podcast series from The Learning First Alliance. Across the nation we've embraced the possibility of college and career-ready standards and their potential to transform teaching and learning. In community after community we see the potential these standards offer to help all children gain the knowledge and skills they need for success in the global community.
As the Standards come online, we see teachers, administrators, parents, and communities working together to align the standards with curriculum, instruction, and assessment. We see some communities struggle to move these standards into practice, focused almost exclusively on testing and on the high stakes decisions tied to it.
The ultimate success of college and career-ready standards requires that states and districts work together with principals, teachers, students, and parents as the work progresses. We know this collaborative implementation process doesn’t happen overnight. It requires time. Time to align the standards with teaching, curricular materials, and professional learning opportunities. Time to engage parents and community leaders to understand why these changes are important. Time to get it right.
To help those committed to the Standards and ensure their proper implementation, The Learning First Alliance is spotlighting communities working hard to get Common Core implementation right. Joining us today is Ray Leone, President of the Maryland PTA. Tell us a little bit just in context, Ray, of what the Maryland PTA has been doing in the adoption and implantation of Common Core Standards. How do you see the PTA's role?
LEONE: I see us on a big, general scale as more of a conduit for information. PTA is charged with putting the right information in the hands of parents and the community wherever and whenever we can. We got involved early with the Common Core Standards. About three years ago we started inviting the Maryland Department of Education folks to come to our board meetings and really share the information as it was being grown and seeded so that we understood from a grassroots perspective what things were going to look like well before it got here.
LFA: One of those activities as you describe the collaboration with the state department, as I understand it, as part of the Maryland rollout you worked with State Superintendent Lillian Lowery in a series of regional public forums, which were one part of how you were talking with parents and communities about understanding the new standards. Tell us a little bit about what those forums were like and some of the concerns that you may have heard or some of the things that came out of those conversations.
LEONE: We were discussing early on how to put the information in the parent's hands in multiple formats. Not just sending something home in a backpack and hoping it got there, but having some drives with information on it that principals were able to do instructive handouts at their school level.
There were top 10 sheets that came down monthly from the communications office of the State Department of Education. We were sitting down discussing how well we were doing with getting those kind of filtered out through PTA channels and through websites and postings. It blurted out of my mouth that why shouldn't we just open this up in a forum and really engage the parents with their own questions. Say, “Bring your questions here. Let's answer it.”
The PTA really wanted to make that the central issue that there had to be a conduit in which folks could talk honestly about what was scaring them and what their kids were going to be going through and be able to answer those questions with the right people, with a master teacher that knew what the curriculum, that sat on the curriculum development committees, who actually taught the stuff. And then a superintendent who was responsible for how the rollout really worked and what it looked like from a technology standpoint, from a regular standpoint in the teacher's classroom.
LFA: Those were a way for you to understand concerns and then the communication tools and ongoing dialogue that was structured from that time were really focused on addressing some of those questions and really listening to stakeholder concerns and then reaching back out to them to address their need.
LEONE: Absolutely. What spawned from that early on, I guess for about two years now, we've been meeting with not only the State Teacher's Association, but the State Department of Education almost monthly to continue to dialogue on those concerns and to get implementation guidelines and next dates. Now we're into the discussions on what the PARCC testing for us is going to look like and when the benchmarks for that are going to be established and when parents are going to see cut scores and actual scores from their individual students' work.
It's been a very enlightening thing for me personally, but it's been a really great collaboration of being able to get [parents’] concerns to their table and get answers back.
LFA: Nationally we are struggling with how to get information into the hands of parents, certainly on a state level, particularly as they implement learning standards.
What's the best way you think to really engage parents? What are you learning about engaging and informing parents, and how that might help other states or other advocates?
LEONE: What I've learned over my last year and a half as being president here is you have to engage families and communities where they are. What works in one school doesn’t always work in another school. Having the principal and the administration and the teachers in this school bought in to the same commitment is almost key. Having that good, honest conversation at the beginning of the year of what the school's goals are and what the PTA's goals are and then how that evolves dictates how your communication works.
LFA: What are you finding that parents are seeing? How do you know that they understand the Standards better? How do you know that they are buying in?
LEONE: I think a lot of the times it's in the level of questioning and answer that you start to see. When Common Core was first coming down the pipe, we had questions on “how are you changing the curriculum, how are you doing this.” We spent a lot of time teaching folks that it was a set of standards and not a curriculum, and that local school board is what dictated how that standard was translated into curriculum--and that [the standards] actually gave teachers a little more freedom. It actually gave administrators a little more freedom to do the mile deep inch wide as opposed to mile wide inch deep kind of methodology of teaching.
As it has continued to roll down, the level of questioning has changed considerably. Now the questions are more topic-related and trying to understand exactly how the English and the math look at both testing time and how it rolls out. I think you're finding that parents get very surprised at the level of work that their children are actually doing. That they're really being challenged at each grade level and they're learning how to do things different ways, and some parents you get quite confused and see a way of doing a math problem that wasn't the way that they learned and they see their child get that and I love seeing that interaction.
LFA: Ray, as this continues I know there is all sorts of speculation obviously about what's going to happen with the tests, and lots of people are concerned that as new tests come online that scores may go down, which will create some additional consternation. All of those things are at play. What are you most hopeful about over the next year or so about implementation of Common Core and particularly parent engagement in that?
LEONE: Well I honestly think that when the PARCC test gets through the validation stages that the questions start more aligning themselves to the individual curriculums and start really kind of gearing towards getting us good data at the end. I think those things will make the conversation far easier.
I think parents should just expect that first year is really what it is. It's a baseline and it's a line drawn that allows the teachers and administrators to say this is where our kids are and compare that to the Standard and say okay, this is where our teaching and curriculum have to bend and go in order to get us to where we need to be so that everybody is playing on that level field. I think if parents just take a step back and look at that that way that there'll be a lot less consternation over it.
LFA: Let me jump back a little bit to the role of the state level PTA and particularly in that ongoing kind of politicization of Common Core implementation Maryland has had, the politics have had an impact on what's going on in Maryland as it has in many, many states. What is the PTA itself doing to help kind of work with that or again to combat some of the critiques that may have been coming down, or to really help understand or people understand what's really at play in the Common Core?
LEONE: We have a pretty strong advocacy footprint [in the state legislative session]. But the reality is letting the political side of Maryland know the parent perspective and the parent expectation piece.
We've always wanted more rigor. We've always wanted more engagement with our kids and our students to learn everything they need to know to be college and career-ready at the end of the day. That's where our heart is at, making sure that our children are getting the best possible education that they can, and we think Common Core is the right tool for that.
LFA: Is there anything else you think we should talk about or we should know?
LEONE: Well I think in the long-term that parents need to realize that they aren't alone. The PTA is an organization that is set up to be an educated partner with them. That we can help direct answers and facilitate discussion wherever we need to.
LFA: Thanks so much, Ray, for taking the time to talk with us.