2006 – West Wind Education Policy

Report of the Focus Groups to Discuss Bold and Innovative Ideas

Posted on November 1, 2006June 2, 2021 by West Wind

Reading Time: 2 minutes

In 2005, the Iowa General Assembly created the Institute for Tomorrow’s Workforce (ITW). The ITW is charged with focusing elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education on what children need to know to be successful in Iowa’s global workforce. More specifically, the General Assembly asked the ITW to provide a “long term forum for bold, innovative recommendations to improve Iowa’s education system to meet the workforce needs of Iowa’s new economy.”

In 2006, the Iowa General Assembly passed legislation termed “Pay for Performance.” The legislation called for a pilot study of 10 school districts with pay-for-performance programs where teachers’ pay is based on student achievement, among other factors. An executive order by the governor contracted that work to the ITW. The legislation also directed the ITW to create an education efficiency and improvement plan for Iowa.

In order to inform the pilot study and improvement plan, the ITW contracted with Learning Point Associates (LPA) to conduct background studies. Under the contract, LPA will convene advisory work groups, conduct focus groups and a phone survey, meet with interest groups about their preliminary findings, and publish a final report by January 2007. LPA contracted with West Wind Education Policy, Inc. (West Wind) to conduct the focus groups. West Wind is a small company based in Iowa City, Iowa, providing policy analysis, professional development, and leadership training to district, state, and national leaders and advocates for public education.

Seven focus groups were conducted around the state, with 100 total participants. In September and October 2006, focus groups met in Muscatine, Oelwein, Fort Dodge, Sioux City, Council Bluffs, Centerville, and Des Moines. The focus groups were held in neutral locations in small towns and urban areas in order to gather a wide range of perspectives. Participants represented an array of interests, including educators, administrators, higher education, students, parents, community members and activists, business owners and managers, and senior citizens.

Questions were posed to each focus group to elicit the participants’ ideas, concerns, and priorities. Analysts at West Wind analyzed the results and prepared the following report for LPA and the ITW. An accompanying Technical Report is available with additional detail from each focus group session.

Library image (cc) Brooks Elliott

Perspectives on Georgia’s High Schools

Posted on March 1, 2006October 10, 2019 by West Wind

Reading Time: 3 minutes

[box class=”grey_box”]A report on the Regional Focus Groups on High School Redesign and the Work of the High School Redesign Advisory Panel. Prepared for the Georgia Department of Education School Improvement Division.[/box]

Download the Full Report (PDF)

Educators and the public in Georgia share a growing concern about the capabilities of the public education system going forward into the 21st century. Despite our best efforts, changing demographics, economic realities, and challenges to democracy put pressure on the system as a whole to improve. The good news is that much is being done to assess the current and future needs of students and to adjust or redesign our education systems accordingly. Over the past several years, the nationwide emphasis on early literacy and standards-based education reform opened the doors for improved student results. While many of these efforts are paying off in the early grades, improvements have not yet taken hold at the high school level nationwide or in Georgia. Rather than attempt to make incremental improvements to a system that is widely recognized as needing large-scale reform, the Georgia Department of Education has approached the challenge to improve student performance as an opportunity to redesign its high schools at the levels of both student and system outcomes. Initially, the Department endeavored to provide answers to three broad questions:

How do we create a sense of urgency and action in the high schools across the state in a way that motivates redesign and leads to improved student achievement?
How can the Georgia Department of Education align resources to affect high school improvement?
How can the School Improvement Division collaborate across the Division and the Department as a whole to help align inter- and intra-agency work to improve high school?

With these questions in mind, the Georgia Department of Education directed substantial resources to support secondary school improvement. In late 2004, the Department created the position of Coordinator of High School Improvement. It also directed a majority of its federal Comprehensive School Reform grants to high schools and middle schools. With the Board of Regents, the Department launched Education Go Get It in February, 2005, which is a program to encourage Georgia’s youth to embrace education in high school and beyond. Once these programs were in place, the Department began to plan the first steps toward its much larger goal of comprehensive high school evaluation and redesign.

In April 2005, the Department convened an Advisory Panel on High School Redesign, comprising leaders of statewide education associations, Department staff, and community partners. The Advisory Panel helped conceptualize the focus groups as forums for public engagement and information gathering. In August and September of 2005, the Georgia Department of Education organized a series of high school redesign focus groups, hosted by the Regional Education Service Agencies, with the purpose of identifying core areas for focus in Georgia’s effort to lead the nation in improving student achievement. The Department contracted West Wind Education Policy, Inc., an independent entity based in Iowa City, Iowa, and with no ties to the state of Georgia, to conduct the regional High School Redesign Focus Groups.

After collecting and analyzing focus group results, analysts at West Wind developed a series of recommendations based on those data. The Advisory Panel was again convened in December 2005 to review the findings and draft recommendations and again provide their input. The result is this report. It is hoped that the Department will use this resource as it develops a vision and state action plan for the redesign of high schools toward the goal of leading the nation in preparing high school students for education beyond high school and for their chosen fields of work.

Continue reading by downloading the full report (PDF).