New Superintendent to Create Accountability Office for School System
Renee Foose says she's establishing environment of transparency, efficiency in Howard County.
Transparency is one of the first orders of business at her new job, according to the new superintendent of the Howard County Public School System.
To gain what she called a “higher level of accountability” and a “higher level of service to schools,” according to the Howard County Times, Renee Foose, 45, is creating the office of accountability within the school system.
Through Aug. 2, the school system is seeking applicants for its new position of Chief Accountability Officer.
The officer will produce an annual accountability report and oversee applied research, program evaluation, student assessment, internal auditing operations and technology operations and support, according to the job description. The salary range is $105,536 to $192,548.
Brian Meshkin, a school board member who said he made a pitch for the position’s creation at a board meeting in 2011, wrote this week on his blog: “I’ve said many times, you cannot manage what you cannot measure. And in creating this new position and the associated re-organization, she's cutting headcount and payroll in Central Office. Doing more and spending less. I continue to be so very impressed with our new superintendent.”
As Meshkin noted, Foose plans to shuffle staff positions, in addition to adding the accountability officer, to make the system more efficient.
Personnel adjustments will save the school system $20,000 annually, Foose told the Howard County Times, which reported the following shifts:
- Accountability office created, staffed by chief accountability officer and coordinator for continuous improvement
- Communications department consolidated to include print and TV in addition to public information.
- Student services and special education departments to merge.
Foose comes to the Howard County Public School System after serving as deputy superintendent for Baltimore County schools and assistant superintendent in Montgomery County schools. The former has a department of research, accountability and assessment; the latter has an office of shared accountability.
In her entry plan outlining priorities for her first 90 days, Foose wrote: "The Howard County Public School System is viewed across Maryland and the nation as an innovative, high performing school district. However...many stakeholders feel academic achievement at all levels has reached a plateau, organizational alignment to newly mandated initiatives is unclear, technological innovation is desired, and a strong spirit of collaboration and transparency must be embraced."
She told The Baltimore Sun that the changes she's proposing would facilitate "transtioning the school system to a new level."
Jack
12:51 pm on Thursday, July 26, 2012
For a lack of Common Sense......Honesty is free. Open the system to the public is free. Invite the public to participate is free. But, for some reason we need to hire an Accountability Officer first at 100K to 200K and spend years seeking answers. Sure they have finally hired a national clearing house to track our graduates but the data will be years coming. All this is time and money your children do not have. Common Sense means a simple phone call to HCC where you are told 26% of our graduates go and of those 1,000 plus children 2/3 need remedial ed and in 4 years only 11% graduate. The other 900 children are left with no job skills, in debt and disillisioned.
Common Sense tells you a lot is seriously wrong to have the so called great hcpss hide these facts while they spend years in research of their denial. Common Sense tells you it is time to fire the whole damn lot at the hcpss and start over.
Common Sense tells you it is time to stop throwing money to the charlatans in the hcpss.
EL
10:48 am on Friday, July 27, 2012
Your post confuses me.
"A call to HCC (Howard Community College?) where you are told 26% of our graduates"
- do you mean that 26% of students graduating from Howard County Public schools attend Howard Community College?
"2/3 need remedial ed"
- 2/3 of the 26% attending Howard Community College need remedial education? Is that what you are saying?
""in 4 years only 11% graduate"
- in 4 years only 11% are graduating from a 2 year community college? or in 4 years on 11% of the 26% referenced graduate from another school
(where is this information tracked? I thought your complaint above was that this information is not tracked - or only just going to be tracked)?
Trying to get what you are saying but am having a hard time...can you clarify?
Jack
11:39 am on Friday, July 27, 2012
The hcpss does not track their graduates once they leave. They are aware there is a large number who need remedial ed and the majority do not graduate from any college. They have presented you numbers such as 90% plus of their students do well on the state assessments. What they have failed to tell you is how low this standard is. In May they finally purchased a service through the national student clearinghouse to track their graduates in college. This information wil take years to gather and digest. The issue is serious as almost all hcpss children recieve no vocational. technical or career training and their only path forward is college where 90% of all hcpss graduates go. To understand how serious the problem is you can call HCC. HCC (the numbers changed slightly this year) in 2008 accepted 24% of hcpss graduating class as first time acredited freshman. This is about 1,000 students of which 2/3 needed remedial education and only about 13% of them (aprox 130 students) have graduated thus far.This leaves you with about 850 students who will not graduate. Even if we do not look at the rest of the hcpss graduating class at other colleges of which at least 50% will not graduate we are left with a huge discrepency between what the hcpss pesented as prepared and what the reality is.
Jack
11:47 am on Friday, July 27, 2012
We have been mislead by the hcpss into logically assuming all is well based on their standards. The reality if you look at the 4,000 students a year who graduate from the hcpss is about 50% need remedial ed and some where around 70% will never graduate college.
Jack
11:53 am on Friday, July 27, 2012
The Accountability Officer will be monitoring data like I just gave you and seeking solutions at a cost of 100K-200K per year and this will take some time. By then wany of your children will be subjected to this and sent out in the world unprepared. Would you like to wait a few years or should we use common sense and honesty to address the issue now? Keep in mind this is a game the hcpss has played since 2003.