Summary

Under the leadership of Superintendent Nancy Wingenbach, the suburban Orange City School District took the following steps to help ready its increasingly diverse student body for a rapidly changing workplace. 

  • Curriculum integration of 21-century skills
  • Shift from teacher focus to student focus–from teaching to learning
  • Expansion of focus beyond learning to real-world skills application
  • Professional staff development
  • Collaborative lesson design
  • Technology integration

Within two years, the district realized greater student involvement, higher test scores, and a ranking of Excellent with Distinction. The district’s key leaders group, made up of union and district leaders and board members, continues the process, working in person and on Moodle. _________________________________

Case Study: Orange City Schools

The Orange City School District, located in a suburb of Cleveland, has long been known as an exceptional public school system, ranking among the best in Ohio and throughout the U.S.When Dr. Nancy Wingenbach accepted the position of superintendent in 2008 after serving as the Director of Educational Programs for ten years, the socioeconomic makeup of the area was changing. The district was welcoming students of more diverse backgrounds into the community and at the same time was engaging in the process of integrating 21st-century skills into instruction.  According to Dr. Wingenbach, “We saw that we had excellent learners and test takers, but the transition to applying their skills and knowledge was difficult for many of them.  We knew that our students would face a rapidly changing workplace. And our student body was becoming more diverse. So we had to look hard at how we could best serve those needs.” 

Setting New Goals

The Orange City School District prided itself on its creative teaching team and had always done well with core academics.  But the conscious integration of 21st-century skills into the curriculum was a new venture. The district set the goal of preparing students for success in the 21st century and shifting from a teacher focus to a student focus—from teaching to learning.

District leaders had been working with the Schlechty Center for School Reform for several years, recognizing the need to address a changing society and doing focused work on assessment, building a vision statement, connecting with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and reviewing the implications for the district and the student body. 

According to Dr. Wingenbach, “We wanted to get a working knowledge of what 21st-century skills would look like in action. And we wanted to reach beyond the test score data to a narrative about each student that incorporates a range of information, including the application of skills.”

The district leadership team recognized that 21st-century skills provided a core concept that united all other endeavors, with a focus not only on the learning but also on the application of skills.

Professional Development and Lesson Design

An extensive professional learning program now supports district teaching staff in integrating core academics and 21st-century skills. Teachers have worked together to develop a rubric for 21st-century skills, so that skills such as creativity, innovation, and collaboration are a part of daily classroom activity and measured in terms of student progress. 

“This helped us make it real—to understand what 21st-century skills look like in the classroom on a daily basis,” said Dr. Wingenbach. The rubric, which the district continues to refine, ensures that collaboration, technology, life and career skills, and other 21st-century skills are considered as lessons are designed.  

The professional learning program has helped teachers understand that the focus on 21st-century skills builds on what they were already doing. According to Dr. Wingenbach, “We recognize that teachers have always included these skills to a greater or lesser degree.  However, in the past we had no vocabulary for these activities, so we had no way to talk about or measure them. That is now changing.”  

Teachers lead a lot of the staff development in the Orange City School District. “If our teachers come up with something they  believe important to the continued refinement of instruction,   we provide  opportunities for sharing and for application,” said Dr. Wingenbach, “For example, our very effective literacy program was developed this way over a period of several years as teachers collaborated in research, design, implementation and evaluation.”

Educational Technology

The district had always been rich in technology and had been recognized locally and nationally for its technology use. However, according to Dr. Wingenbach, staff had to re-think its technology use in light of truly supporting the goals of 21st-century skills integration. “We were not always using technology to the best advantage—and of course the students were way ahead of us—we were working on it but we had had a ways to go.”  

The district began to use blogs to develop writing skills; integrated the weblog, distance learning, and other technological opportunities such as voice threads to enhance learning and communication; and is now experimenting with the iPod Touch as a 1:1 model.  In the words of Dr. Wingenbach, “Our intent  is to incorporate and embed technology into our learning structures across the disciplines.”

Impact

Over the last two years, the work in the areas of individualized instruction, real-world learning, and 21st-century skills has lead to greater student involvement and improved test scores, moving the Orange City School District from the Excellent to the Excellent with Distinction ranking, one of the few districts in the state to achieve this goal.

“We are finding that the way we are teaching is more relevant to students’ experiences inside and outside of the classroom, “ said Dr. Wingenbach. “For example, we recently involved our eighth graders in the Dancing Classrooms program, which really brought togetherall students no matter their background or special needs.  .” This program allowed all students to work together collaboratively to build physical and social skills as well as create a performance that demonstrated their learning in an authentic way. 

The district is also working on pro-actively identifying students at risk and providing them with core academics and individual assistance.  As the student focus continues, staff has recently noted a group of students using Facebook to collaborate on reviewing their notes before a test.

Continuing the Work

The district key leaders group, made up of union and district leaders and board members, meets to continue working on the work in person and on Moodle, an open source course management system used to provide documents for review, discussion, and choice activities.  The group has recently come together to read and discuss Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, on the topic of why some ideas survive and others die.  

“The goal is to capture the stories that communicate to different audiences who we are and what we are about beyond the test scores,” said Dr. Wingenbach.  The work is purposeful, to broaden community support “in a way that impacts both the heart and the mind.”

For more information, please visit www.orangeschools.org.