Carla Lovett presented Newpoint Education Partners’ improvement plan for Newpoint Pensacola High and Newpoint Academy last night. For the Escambia County School Board, the plan was too little, too late. The board voted to terminate the contracts for both the Newpoint High and Middle schools.
Let’s add some perspective to this saga.
NEP is an education management company. According to its website, “the Newpoint executive team has collectively led the development and launch of over 75 schools and is keenly aware of the financial and support resources necessary to facilitate the start-up of a new school or the takeover and continuation of an existing school.” The company claims to have extensive experience in the design, launch, and operations of charter schools.
Lovett has been part of the NEP executive team since June 2008. She is NEP’s Vice President of Curriculum and Instruction and has led the curriculum and instructional elements of Newpoint since the organization’s inception. She has been instrumental in the continuous improvement efforts and adaptations of Newpoint’s educational models to ensure and improve their academic effectiveness.” She is no rookie.
Lovett was formerly the Supervisor of Secondary Education, Curriculum and Instructional Services at Bay District Schools in Bay County, Florida. She was also the start-up director for Newpoint’s high school in Bay County and supervised the Pensacola Newpoint charter schools. The Pensacola School Director, John Graham, worked for Lovett and NEP in Bay County and was part of the NEP system before coming to Pensacola.
Lovett is the expert on Florida high school education. How could she have allowed Pensacola Newpoint High to not have the proper systems in place for attendance, student records, grades and graduation requirements? Shouldn’t those systems have been part of the school’s design, launch, and operations?
Lovett ran secondary education for a Florida county, has worked for NEP for eight years, and has set up and run charter high schools in the state. Newpoint Pensacola High is completing its fourth year of operation. This proposed improvement plan should have a standard operating procedure by now.
These are my notes on what Lovett proposed to fix the problems at the Pensacola schools:
- Hire a strong and experienced school leader. We’ve already begun the process of identifying the person.
- Hold that leader accountable for implementing policies, procedures and following through on these policies, procedures and ensuring that everyone on staff is implementing those items and recruitment initiatives. The school director will be in charge and responsible for all three schools to ensure consistency and cohesiveness. I understand that the assistant director working directly underneath the school director would be expected to and held accountable to ensure processes, procedures and rigorous educational environments are being maintained.
- Over the summer, we would think that under the new director’s leadership, we would evaluate each current staff member to determine their capacity to meet the high expectations that the leader would set. Any staff member incapable of implementing the required processes and procedures and performing the job at an exemplary level will be replaced.
- Evaluate client responsibilities of each staff member and redistribute duties and/or assign staff to ensure that all job duties are completed thoroughly and correctly.
- Implement a strategy to attract and retain high-performing staff, particularly teachers. These strategies may include increased compensation, bonus structures and other incentives.
- Provide intensive staff training for teachers, records clerks, administrative assistants, guidance and ELC personnel. We would request assistants from the district staff for this training to ensure that we’re all working together to achieve expected results.
- Then, starting in the summer and continuing through the next school year, administration will attend all the state trainings and principals’ meetings.
- School staff will work closely with district staff to address concerns with FOCUS and regarding students in all areas. Specifically, the school staff and management will work closely with the district staff to address concerns regarding grade reporting. Consensus will be reached, and the protocol will be implemented with all the teachers at the school.
- The school director and assistant director monitor all classrooms weekly. They will also have weekly improvement meetings with staff members who are not ensuring rigorous classroom procedures. This will be documented on an improvement plan tool. EMO representatives will conduct school monitoring visits bimonthly.
- We will establish and maintain a clear protocol for acquiring and maintaining student records, which has already begun, by the way.
- Establish and maintain a clear protocol for student supervision and discipline incidents.
- We’ll reactivate. Unfortunately, our parent advisory or parent organization has dwindled away. The participation has not been strong. We’ll reactivate a parents’ advisory board and give them more structure to be regularly involved in the school staff and board to ensure transparency. The advisory board will comprise three parents from each school, a staff member from each school, the school director and one of the school’s board members.
- We would request monthly meetings with the district staff to maintain open lines of communication and address concerns on both sides promptly before we get to a position where either side is surprised.
- We will also request to appear before the county board at a regularly scheduled monthly workshop to provide a report to answer your questions and ensure transparency.
- Finally, we will work very hard to reestablish a professional relationship and collaboration with the district.
Most of these items are High School 101. A professional management company that has launched 75 schools should have had these systems in place, at least, by its fourth year of operations.
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The other bothersome point by Lovett, who heads curriculum for the entire NEP system, was her description of the curriculum at the Newpoint high school as a “blended model.”
“So as to the Apex concerns, they don’t necessarily tell the whole story and it’s difficult to explain, especially in front of a crowd, how the blended learning model is used,” said Lovett.
However, the school’s website doesn’t mention a blended model. The high school curriculum is an entirely digital curriculum provided by Apex Learning. The school district found that students in Spanish, Pre-calculus and Geometry were completing only 20 percent of required work in the Apex system, but were still getting credit for the classes.
If Apex is the cornerstone of the high school curriculum, how could a student pass a class by doing 80 percent of his/her work outside of Apex?
It doesn’t make sense and lends credibility to allegations that teachers were pressured to change grades for students to graduate—especially if the grades don’t match the work in Apex.
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However, I do believe that Lovett and NEP were genuinely surprised that Superintendent Thomas recommended the termination of the Pensacola charters. After all, they had gotten away with these problems for over three years, received A grades, and had gotten bonus checks from Governor Scott. They had little reason to believe the district would shut them down.
And that is what Thomas has to explain. How could a charter school go without the proper attendance, grading and records for three and a half years before the district became concerned? And why?