 Standards-Based Schooling Brings Success to Chugach District April 18, 2002
The Chugach School District, which serves about 214 students in three Prince William Sound area villages, won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for Excellence last month; the first time the prestigious award for innovative, customer-oriented service has gone to an educational entity. Officials and students of the school met with 20 legislators today to share their story of success. "This will work everywhere, you just have to have the courage to try it and the leadership to see it through," said Richard DeLorenzo, the Chugach superintendent who has helped the district apply the Baldrige principles of customer-orientation and continual measurement and improvement to "reinvent" its educational process to fill the needs of its students, parents, and community. DeLorenzo told legislators that since the district began its effort seven years ago, it has seen its national ranking of student performance jump from the 28th to the 71st percentile in reading; from the 53rd to the 78th percentile in math; and from the 22nd to the 65th percentile in spelling. Chugach students also exceed the state average in passing the high school competency exam. The prestigious Baldrige award recognizes enterprises that embrace a system of customer-orientation. In setting out on its standards-based path, Chugach's administrators worked with parents, students and businesses to see what they wanted their schools to achieve, and set out on an innovative path to achieve those goals. The district covers the communities of Whittier, Tatetlik and Chenega Bay, and also includes the Chugach Extension Program. "What this district has accomplished is nothing short of amazing," said Rep. Eldon Mulder (R-Anchorage) co-chair of the House Finance Committee. "While some people were still talking about quality schools, Chugach was using innovative principles to establish student standards and help them achieve them. The results speak for themselves, both in student performance and in national recognition." Mulder chaired the joint meeting of the House Finance Committee, the House Special Committee on Education, and both the House and Senate Health, Education and Social Services Committees, where the superintendent, staff, board members and students from Chugach told the story of their district's success. Nathaniel Moore, a 17-year-old Chugach student from Whittier who received the Baldrige award from President George W. Bush at a March 7 ceremony at the White House, explained to legislators how the district has foregone traditional A, B, C grading and class ranking in favor of a process that requires students to achieve and demonstrate mastery of essential skills at specific levels. Contrary to the traditional Carnegie unit model, which emphasizes how much time a student spends on a subject, the Chugach program focuses on student mastery of skills and attainment of standards. Students are grouped by achievement level and are not promoted until they demonstrate mastery of skills, and they are measured frequently to monitor their progress, Moore said. Devon Totemoff, a 16-year-old Chugach student from Tatetlik, explained the district's Anchorage House, a residential facility where Chugach students spend several days each year to learn, practice and expand their skills in personal responsibility, problem solving, school-to-work transition and other areas. Other elements of the Chugach program include integrating technology, teaching through the context of community service, teaching personal health practices, encouraging cultural awareness, and easing transitions from education to employment. The district's teacher contract also provides for performance pay, encouraging all educators to help each other make continual improvement in clearly identified teaching practices, DeLorenzo said. The district's success has also drawn the attention of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has provided $5 million to Chugach to help with its transition, and to help it share its experience with 14 other districts that are working toward reorienting their educational systems on the Chugach model. "When we started looking at school districts who wanted to change to help their students, we scoured the country, and it turned out one of the best in the country was the Chugach School District," said Tom VanderArk, a representative of the Gates Foundation. "We make investments where we see leadership, and the opportunity to make an impact. We have great interest in what these districts are doing, and we'll keep talking with (DeLorenzo) and the other superintendents to further expand this work in Alaska and other states," VanderArk added. Legislators enthusiastically praised the Chugach students, staff and board members for their achievements, and expressed hopes that the district's successes could be replicated elsewhere in Alaska. "Too often the public pays attention when something goes wrong in rural schools, and so it is a pleasure to take special note of a rural district that is obviously doing things right," said Rep. Con Bunde (R-Anchorage) a member of the Finance Committee.
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