Newton Public Schools (NPS) Superintendent Dr. Anna Nolin met with Fig City News at the start of the school year, as she did last year. This interview transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
FCN: What are some different perspectives you have about Newton going into this school year versus last year?
Dr. Nolin: I knew little about Newton last summer, but pretty early in speaking with folks, certain themes emerged. There were a lot of setbacks last year, but I’m really grateful that I was here last year because I do not know how you would explain to the next generation of educators what last year was, what it meant, and what it felt like to parents, kids, and staff. I’m grateful I was able to listen to all the parties even though there was a lot of stress and conflict. It will make this next generation of the Newton schools that much stronger. In some ways this feels like the real Year 1.
The NPS community has heard a lot about various initiatives. For example, Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, or MTSS, appears to cut across many different disciplines. What are some different things that parents might observe this year because of those efforts?
Dr. Nolin: Ten years ago MTSS was called Response To Intervention, or RTI, and before that, it was called Personalized Learning. It’s not a new concept, but a philosophical way to systematically address the needs of students. Families will feel change this year in K to 8. There will [now] actually be common assessments in literacy and math, including 3-year benchmark skill assessments to determine whether students have mastered grade expectations.
NPS has used benchmarks in literacy [called iReady] in some areas for the last three years, but utilization and data analysis was inconsistent. That data will now be used to group students into intervention blocks, or extension blocks for students who have already met expectations. A committee in each school building will analyze those data points and make quarterly recommendations for how to address needs.
We’re adding the math benchmarking Renaissance’s Star Math, and also using eduCLIMBER, which documents interventions for both struggling and advanced students. We’ve also rescheduled all of the elementary schools to ensure that there’s the same amount of instructional time for each subject area, as well as for intervention and extension. Also, starting this year, we have the same curricula for reading, ELA, and mathematics in each K-5 class.
However, we need to communicate assessment data without also alarming families, right? That sometimes your kid is not going to be above grade level. Otherwise, they would not need to be in the grade they’re in. Also, reports need to be understandable. Everyone who has a child – from a person who reads well to a person who doesn’t – should be able to understand how their kids are doing. Assessment data is different from report cards, which are a mix of many types of content, as well as educators’ judgment. Assessments measure specific skills – for example in geography, social studies, or science. We’re looking forward to creating that kind of consistency across the district.
Going into this year, teachers were somewhat islands unto themselves, and there’s been no consistent way to identify the most successful instruction practices. I interviewed a ton of teachers this past spring – teachers who had extremely high growth in English language arts on both reading assessments and MCAS for three consecutive years. We discussed what they’re doing, and what they need to continue to get those results. They said they need a consistent curriculum, intervention, and materials that they don’t have to create. The district should provide the materials, but the teachers need to adapt those resources to meet the needs of the kids. They strongly wanted the district to help them be more targeted, and to be able to use their instructional expertise rather than have to create content.
Consistent tools also help educators diagnose what is actually happening for a student. When you’re sharing a child among, for example, interventionists, math teachers, and special educators, a consistent interface is really important so the team is working on the same skills with the same information. Therefore, we’re about to have a much more unified teaching experience at the elementary level, which is the foundation that the rest of the district rests on.
FCN: What about these same topics at the secondary level: MTSS, curriculum, and assessment?
Dr. Nolin: We have a new Secondary Assistant Superintendent [Dr. Gene Roundtree], and I want to give him some time for his entry plan. But as we did for Elementary schools last year, we will audit our secondary schools this year [to identify] what we need to get that kind of responsive data assessment and teaching system in place for secondary.
In addition, we are doing a math curriculum audit from pre-K to 12 to take a look at our courses, our vertical alignment, and our materials. We’re pretty light on formal math curriculum and materials past grade 5. Are students getting to the kind of advanced coursework we want them to get to? Are they mastering the coursework all along the continuum? I need to do that audit before I can give you our MTSS proposal that will come for budget season this year. Both high school math department heads are involved, as is Brian Marks, the middle school curriculum board manager.
FCN: NPS has a lot of information on its website, including subject-by-subject curriculum. Are those descriptions what’s actually being taught inside classrooms?
Dr. Nolin: The curriculum website at the start of school was my attempt to audit the curriculum just to get a broad overview. However, many components of curriculum just do not exist in Newton. Our new Assistant Superintendent Teaching and Learning [Dr. Gina Flanagan] will soon present the twelve components that make up a good curriculum. NPS has the first two: identified standards by grade level, which is what is on the NPS curriculum site, and the general unit plans that will address those standards. What’s missing are scope and sequence pacing guides, academic vocabulary that goes with it like the list of materials used, and the vertical scope, which tells us the difference, for instance, between 9th grade math and 10th grade math. All of this is necessary before I can say that we have consistent curriculum. Right now, there is no formal set of resources that are given to teachers, so there is variance on what is covered. Our two high schools have very different course trajectories, and we need some time to rectify that and align it. So what’s on the website are ideally the items that are covered, but I can’t tell you right now the degree to which students meet with success on those, because there are no common assessments. Most school districts have at least four to six assessments a year, like little Wellness checks along the way. Did we cover this topic by a certain time period, and how did it go?
Newton has not had a formal curriculum audit, review, and writing cycle that I can see for the last 12 years. Other districts generally review every six years. We will soon present our 10-year plan to review all the curriculum and what stakeholders will be involved in each of those. It must have been terribly frustrating for the community not to have insight into the curriculum-review process. That created a black box, and parents would ask, “What is my kid really doing?“
FCN: It has been a stated priority of NPS several years to reduce racial achievement gaps. NPS, relative to other school districts in Massachusetts, has a wealth of resources to address this issue, so why do these gaps persist in Newton?
Dr. Nolin: When we looked at some of our Hispanic and black achievement data, we found that a significant portion of students rising into the middle school may be more than two grade levels behind in English Language Arts mastery. We should not be launching them into middle school with that type of deficit. The later you get into the schooling, the harder it is to address that.
Right now, we report on MCAS, SAT, and AP [scores] in this district. But that data doesn’t address those gaps in the year that we find them. For comparison, I was speaking with the Acton-Boxborough superintendent, and our data sets looked almost identical. So I don’t necessarily think that we are unique. Even an advantaged community like Acton-Boxborough is in the same situation that we are in, so I don’t think the solution is throwing money at it.
I don’t know how we can even diagnose what to do with some of our racial subgroup achievement and Special Ed subgroup achievements since the entire experience is very uneven right now. So I can’t tell you that if we just shored up a certain thing, this racial achievement gap would decline. My theory is that it partly involves questions such as: Are evaluators really finding out if our teachers are delivering the instruction that is expected? Is it rigorous enough for all kids? It is well-documented in literature that our understanding of different cultures and races does sometimes play out in the expectations that we have for students. Teachers may or may not have experience with diverse cultures, peoples, languages, and races. Does that come to bear on how they are able to meet the moment in personalizing instruction for all types of children? Maybe, but I don’t know and have to figure it out. We have to shore up other components to the instructional program in order to understand whether a particular item is the thing that most kids are struggling with.
There’s also a major absentee issue with students, as there is nationally, but Newton is definitely right up there in terms of chronic student absences, and there is a correlation between the students who are lower achieving and the number of days and minutes they have had in time on learning. So this is one of the reasons for the creation of the Family Engagement Office, directed by Christina Maryland, to reach out to families in a different way and come to be engaged with those families in a different way, because we are not even getting the kids to school, for a variety of reasons. I’m composing the team I think is going to take us to the next level on this.
FCN: The “Disability Advisory Group” is mentioned in many NPS communications, and prior to this school year the NPS website described its role in expansive terms, noting that it advises on all kinds of programs and services. What has this group done over the past year, and what programs are in place now due to their work? How are these different from the prior Understanding Our Differences programming?
Dr. Nolin: The October 8th [2024] School Committee meeting will feature an overview of the Office of Student Services. This department oversees special education services and child-referral processes. MTSS has a real hand-in-glove relationship with student services because before you can recommend a child for an IEP and testing, you have to say that you have eliminated instruction as the cause of the need for special Ed. Often several years of substandard or sporadic instruction can look like disability, even if it isn’t. This department is responsible for 504s, all psychological services, all social work services, and all preschool services – in addition to any sort of migrant and homeless services. It is much, much more than Disability awareness curriculum. Further, curriculum around disability is a hand-in-glove with the Office of Teaching and Learning.
Disability is a protected category under our civil rights obligations. We’re always discussing how we can ensure that students with disabilities are front and center in the classrooms in positive ways, and not just as people we accommodate for. For example, the curriculum of Understanding Our Differences (UOD) was very groundbreaking and innovative in the ’70s, preparing the environment for students with disabilities to not only receive their legally mandated accommodations, but to have a community around them that allowed them to learn as themselves.
The Disability Advisory Group and the updated curriculum have the same goals. Every teacher in the Newton Schools should have a toolkit allowing them to give an integrated disability awareness and disability understanding into their day-to-day operations. It was not ideal for an outside group to come in a few times a year for conversations about disability, instead of integrating it into how we do business. As an example, the new literacy curriculum has a character education backbone, around kindness and empathy and all of the values that I think UOD upheld. The Student Services department and the director of MTSS created lessons for every grade level with toolkits that can be used when something comes up in a classroom. Lots of things happen day-to-day in a classroom, and teachers have to process that on the fly. Giving them the right resources, scripts, and having people with live disabilities help with that is what the Disability Advisory Group is about. They’re advising on those pieces. Our job is to listen to lots of community constituents, but there is no one outside agency or person writing this curriculum.
FCN: There’s a statewide ballot question this November to no longer have MCAS be a high-school graduation requirement. Without asking you to make a specific Yes or No recommendation, a lot of the community would value hearing your thoughts on this issue.
Dr. Nolin: I think it’s a good idea to take our temperature on a regular basis about how we are doing in certain areas. I was a teacher before MCAS and teacher when MCAS came into play. And I think what they hoped would come from the use of that assessment has morphed over time. It tells us a lot of really good things. It does not tell us everything. So I’m not opposed to MCAS. I am opposed to increasing more and more testing in the way that I see it happening. For example, it looks like a social studies assessment is in the offing. It looks like they may be changing science testing. I would need to see more about that before I could really judge it. I think we could spend a lot of precious weeks on testing that I don’t want to lose from instruction. I have been a principal leading buildings using MCAS data that has been transformative, particularly in the area of writing. So I think if we could really focus on what we want the state testing to do and not just blanket test everything, I think that would be more helpful to me. But I’m not opposed to MCAS per se. I am opposed to over-testing children.
FCN: Let’s talk about Portrait of a Graduate – a project that you’ve said did not get as far as you had hoped last year. We know that’s continuing this year with additional groups that will be refining the data. What does this mean for Newton’s kids?
Dr. Nolin: So we’ll finish Portrait of a Graduate this year. In districts that have done this well, this becomes another way to demonstrate a district’s core values for what students can learn. This is why you’ve seen me really pulling for community input on this, because the state is dictating what’s being tested by MCAS. The district is full of curriculum experts like myself saying this is what we should study in terms of content. These are the skills that business people and families and schools should all be caring about. These skills take students beyond high school and into the world of work and higher education. I don’t think any district wants to simply be measured by test data, but also with what other skills our students have. But we need to define those skills. In districts that use their Profile of a Graduate well, they take each of their courses K to 12 and they say, “In this course, we are going to focus on these particular skills that the district has identified.” Students therefore develop a set of competencies that are content-agnostic and helpful for their growth overall. Many districts also use portfolio assessments to help to show those skills, and they use internship experiences and early-college experiences to also further drive those experiences. Oftentimes that comes with career exploration and internship work, as well. We don’t have those experiences hard-wired into our school system yet. Portrait of a Graduate will be a good North Star pointing toward those types of programs.
FCN follow-up: What are examples of competencies that are content-agnostic?
Dr. Nolin: We think using a computer is a competency, so we’re going to implement that in English, reading, science, and social studies – and that’s the agnostic part. That’s actually a content standard in the Mass. Department of Education curricula under media literacy. This would be more things like being innovative with technology and applying it for creative standards. Perhaps a creativity standard would be put out there, or an innovation standard, depending on what the community comes up with. We’ll be able to shape those competencies. Many folks believe that research is a core competency that cuts through all fields, and the standards are pretty light in terms of what DESE expects around research. But we know that it is a huge part of many people’s jobs. Critical thinking is an aspect that we better care about, I think.
FCN: What do you think might be something a lot of parents don’t really think about that much – but that their kids do spend a lot of time thinking about?
Dr. Nolin: Snapchat has an outsized hold on teenagers right now. I just graduated my last, and her school experience was different because of the pressures of the technology. I’m not sure parents really understand that. If they did, they would limit the amount of devices that their children had access to. I’ll give you an example this year. I got a call from a parent angry that the child had ordered DoorDash and had it delivered to the school. The student went to the back door of the school, the delivery person came in, they had a whole transaction, and then the delivery person left. The parent was blaming door security as the big issue. And I said, “OK, that’s all on my part. Now you own yours, which is this: Don’t give your kid a credit card and a DoorDash account that they can order food whenever they want, and simply tell them not to do it.”
The best question that was asked of me in my interview from Newton students was from a student leader at Newton South. He said to me, “We really need your help. We need you to know how to talk to our parents to help them understand that we don’t just want success and grades in the way they want it. We want to find lives of meaning and passion. How will you help our community talk about that, instead of grades?” That’s what was shared with me by real live teenagers in our system that I met and got to spend time with last year in various locations and projects – incredible future leaders in our country. They were feeling that there was this pressure for success of one type here, and then there was this craving for meaning and passion. I think we can have it all in school systems. In fact, I have staked my career on it. I think we can do it all. So we’re creating the listening and collaboration environment that would allow both of those things to be achieved – strong grades and feeding kids passions and hearts?
FCN: What are you looking forward to going into this year?
Dr. Nolin: Well, last year didn’t go exactly the way I had hoped it would go. I just think this is an incredible community, and I really feel that if we get it right here, we are a beacon for the nation and the world for how we can improve education, even in a high conflict environment. This is not an easy place to lead and learn. There’s a lot of competing forces and a tendency to be binary in thinking, and to pull apart from each other rather than pull together. Schools have always been a pull together kind of group, so I see it as a supreme challenge, but one that I can’t wait to take on. And there are so many good people in this community that want the same thing. It’s, “Can we stay in relationship and dialogue to do it for our kids?” It’s pretty exciting.
FCN: You are driving an arc of change here. Have you experienced a similar arc in the past?
Dr. Nolin: I’ve been in a couple school systems – Framingham, Natick. I think the problems are slightly different in each, but change management has some similarities everywhere. I’m relying on my experience, but I have just broken myself wide-open to listening, and I have to in this community. I think I’ve learned a ton, and that’s why I say I can’t imagine not having been here this past year, as tough as it was. I’m not assuming that the arc of change I am familiar with in any other system is the arc here. So I’m just trying to lead, listen, and make the best choices for the kids that I possibly can.
FCN: Anything else you would like to convey to the community?
Dr. Nolin: The new folks at Central Office are some of the best in the field, especially what they’re doing in the area of curriculum. I was a former curriculum superintendent, and I know this work well. We have a lot to do in a short amount of time. So we’re going to be really aggressive both in budgeting requests and in execution of professional development for our teachers.
