 Randy Zila, Superintendent of Schools for the St. Vrain Valley School District—who successfully guided the district through a financial recovery from a $13.9 million budget deficit— recently announced his intention to retire at the end of the 2008-2009 academic year.
Zila, 56, was hired by St. Vrain in July 2002. In addition to helping the district recover financially, during his tenure standardized test scores increased throughout the district. Zila and the leadership team he assembled implemented one of the state’s first post-secondary curriculum alignment programs.
He was named Colorado’s 2008 Superintendent of the Year. Education News Colorado recently sat down with Zila to pick his brain about the state of education in his district, the state and the nation.
Education News Colorado: What do you see as your biggest accomplishment in the St. Vrain Valley School District? Zila: I always try to focus on the kids. I think the major accomplishment of my tenure was that throughout the financial issues of 2002-2003, our student achievement continued to trend upward and continues to do so without any professional development days. All professional development time was eradicated during the financial crisis. The other major accomplishment was erasing an approximately $14 million deficit and putting the district back on a balanced financial footing.
Also, we were able to build the leadership team that we currently have in place. Administratively, we run pretty thin compared to other districts around us, despite what many may think. In reality, 2.4 percent of our budget goes to administration; over 82 percent goes to classroom instruction or support; and 16 percent goes to support services. When you look at a bigger district budget and those kinds of dollars going to the classroom, that’s notable.
EN: What challenges lie ahead for Colorado school districts? Is the state prepared to deal with these challenges?
RZ: I think the main challenge for Colorado is going to be funding for school districts (pre K-12 funding). If Colorado wants to have a world-class public education system, then the state will have to find innovative ways of supporting a system that mirrors the level of education that is apparent in our communities. We are one of the most highly-educated states in terms of the number of people with post-secondary degrees who live here. Supporting early childhood education (ECE) will be a critical issue if we’re going to close the achievement gap. The other big issue, for me, is access to educational opportunities among different socio-economic groups. The state is going to have to figure out a mechanism that will support ECE across the state and in our communities. This may mean more funding for ECE programs and a concerted effort to make sure that quality programming for all students exists. There are many issues that need to be addressed to ensure all children will have opportunities for not only post-secondary access, but also post-secondary success.
This is a critical issue if we are to sustain and educate a public that will compete in a global market as we proceed into the 21st century. The state is off to a good start with having conversations around P-20 initiatives. I believe the governor is getting a clearer picture and wants the state to move forward in supporting public education, and at even a higher level than previous administrations. This is a good thing, but soon the conversations must turn into action and not discussion.
EN: How has the move to standards-based education (SBE) impacted funding for schools in Colorado? Has funding changed to support SBE? If not, what needs to be done?
RZ: Funding to support SBE has been poor. I think most would agree that having a standards- based system is a good thing, but not the controls that the state and federal governments have connected with it. No Child Left Behind and its measurements have placed a punitive accountability system on school districts that may hinder their ability to move forward on reform, while keeping more focus on the measurement instruments themselves. By doing so, we place less importance on what students really need to know and are able to perform and more on measurement scores. Measurement should be a tool to help support school districts in making critical instructional improvements. I’m not sure all districts in Colorado can totally be standards-based with limited resources and still meet the highly-qualified teacher and adequate progress requirements. The bigger the district you are, the more issues you have in meeting adequate yearly progress; the smaller you are, the more problems you have with highly-qualified teachers.
Soon the conversations must turn into action and not discussion.
I am not confident that the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), when we first moved into standards in the 90s, did a good job of educating people about standards across the state. We certainly published school CSAP scores well. At this time, CDE is doing a better job of defining for districts what a standard-based system should be, as well as refining our current content standards. Not an easy undertaking but, hopefully, the communication will be much better with new leadership at CDE.
EN: Have unions played a role in education reform? Are unions barriers to real change, or can they play an integral role in reforming education?
RZ: Unions can play an integral role in reforming education, and it has to be done with collaboration and cooperation. But when we try to protect the status quo, that becomes a barrier to change. You can substitute “school boards” for “unions” in the same question, because school boards can also be a barrier to reform and change as well. For example, sometimes school boards will believe that it was good enough for them or their kids when they went through the system, so we don’t need to do anymore or average is good enough, and some boards have to control and micro-manage the system because of their elected position.
What you have are gate-keepers from different ends of the system who want to protect the status quo, and that can be an impediment to reform. State legislators can also be barriers to reform by creating new statutes and demands without state support for these new initiatives. With the education system we have in place today—if we are really serious about reform—we will need to look beyond the status quo. We even need to look at our governance model. There are many things we can do for reform, but we’re going to have to look outside the box.
EN: Are the governor’s efforts to reform education—the P-20 Council and CAP4K initiative—steps in the right direction? Do you think CAP4K will lead to meaningful change?
RZ: I do think the P-20 Council and CAP4K are steps in the right direction, but they’re going to have to be maintained. Discussion is great, but what actions are to follow? How are they going to be supported? How are they going to be implemented and when? We need to examine those systems. My question is whether we have all the right people in place to make this happen.
What you have are gate-keepers from different ends of the system who
want to protect the status quo, and that can be an impediment to reform.
EN: Tell us about the post-secondary curriculum alignment program you helped implement during your tenure. What impact did it have? Why is this issue important?
RZ: Three to four years ago, we opened up communication with the colleges around us, and we had discussions about what our St. Vrain kids are doing well and what they are not doing well. We continued to have a variety of conversations and sent our people out to meet with department people at these colleges. For example, we found out that our kids aren’t doing well in technical writing and science classes, so we increased the required standards and graduation requirements in science and technical writing. Critical instructional strategies that needed to be taught were identified. We’re still measuring the impact. The science standards were in place about a year ago, as we aligned our science standards with new curriculum and formative assessments. We also increased our math graduation requirements. People get confused when we talk about increasing our graduations requirements. They think that means increased classes and seat time. Instead, it means going more in-depth with the standards to increase the probability that our students will be more successful in their post-secondary opportunities.
We’re really working hard at what we call our “pathways” model. All our high school students lay out a four-year plan, which is flexible and can change. We require all students to be full-time students. We also now have financial literacy as a graduation requirement, but it’s flexible; students have three different ways to achieve it. Our business community stepped up to become a valuable partner and provided a lot of materials to help develop the financial component.
Alignment is important for the success of students, so they can be successful beyond high school. I want students to make decisions based on their strengths, not their weaknesses. For me, it’s about having a seamless system, not having separate levels of school. There’s a transition from elementary school to middle school, then from middle to high school. How can we make those transitions seamless and go smoother?
Part of the reason to have these standards in place is to ensure that students are meeting them along the way. In St. Vrain, we must find innovative venues to support all children so they are successful along their journey, and we can benchmark that success or have interventions that support them. Our thinking is concerned about starting at pre-school and creating a system that is flexible and addresses the observable and perceived barriers.
Interestingly enough, over 90 percent of our freshmen say they want to go to college. What happens over the next three years? Kids from poverty don’t see a way to do it. We must continue to advocate for kids and to make strong connections to academics for kids along the school systems continuum. One way to achieve that success is to build successful pathways for students that enable them to reach higher expectations and the universal standards that we have set; then maybe universal accessibility will be reached, too.
EN:How can school districts close the achievement gap? Is the gap better addressed by dealing with racial or socio-economic differences?
RZ: A critical element in closing the achievement gap is investigating how a district allocates resources and, more importantly, how we advocate for our children. We can’t allocate resources on an equal basis; we must allocate on an equitable basis, meaning some schools need more resources than others.
And we need to be willing to make decisions that allow universal accessibility to our education system, no matter what background a child comes from. We have to look at how we communicate with families. We have to get parents involved, which is something we have talked about for years, and we still have not found the right key to parent involvement. We certainly see some schools where it happens, and see some that have none. We have to think outside of the box for ways to get parents involved.
We may have to rethink how we do school and what that may mean for a given community. We can’t kid ourselves about the socio-economic issues in our communities, because there is a high correlation between low socio-economic status and low achievement. We do know that all kids can learn, but for many of our educators, they must believe it.
We can’t allocate resources on an equal basis; we must allocate on an
equitable basis, meaning some schools need more resources than others.
The other big issue to closing the gap is having the right teacher in the right position at the right school. Sometimes we don’t have our best teachers where we need them most.
To really close the achievement gap means professionals really having the right belief system.
EN: Should teachers be graded according to their students’ performance on state or other standardized assessments? What system of pay would you endorse?
RZ: Schools ought to be assessed according to student performance. Teachers need to be working with their student data to make instructional modifications, adaptations and accommodations.
I came from a pay-for-performance system. It’s a little different than what people think. I’m not sure pay-for-performance in our current educational system is going to be successful because of the halo effect and other related issues, such as the resources to maintain a differentiated system without state or community support. There’s not enough money.
It’s very difficult to use money as the major motivational tool to increase student performance. I philosophically don’t believe it’s going to be the silver bullet that improves student achievement. If you want to reward principals, managers and other instructional leaders, you will probably see more of an improvement in student achievement. I’d rather see a pay-for-performance system reward a unit, like a school, not just a few of the teachers. But the critical elements of a pay-for- performance system would have to be effectively defined with benchmarks to identify performances and best practices, an underpinning of supportive accountability, and not be punitive.
EN: What’s next on your agenda?
RZ: I’m going to take a little break. My wife and I want to spend time with our grandchild. This might be the time to sit back and get in touch with our values and our family. I’m going to do some writing and reading.
Who knows, maybe I’ll come out of retirement to help another district. Only time will tell. I am not used to free time on my calendar, but I do know it is time to smell the roses for a little while.
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