Beyond Test Scores: The Real Skills Our Kids Need for Future Success

Dr. Jim: [: 00:00:00

We might be reaching a point where we have to admit that test score obsession isn't serving our students well, and that we need to rethink how we educate our and prepare our kids for the future. What would that even look like? Where would we start and how would we put that into motion? Those are a handful of the questions that we're gonna be tackling in today's conversation .

schools, one of his favorite [: 00:01:00

He and his wife are raising a family of twins, sixth grade boys a. Third grade boy and three pets, A black lab named Calamari, a bearded dragon named Na-cho, and a tortoise named Pepper. He's a proud parent and dedicated to what's best for his kids at home and across West Islip, and he he believes that the work they do every day is important and still believes that education is the greatest ca-reer in the world. So with all that, Paul, welcome to the show.

Dr. Paul Romanelli: Hey Jim. Thanks so much. Great to be here.

season of the show is gonna [: 00:02:00

I think one of the things before we dive into the meat and potatoes of the show is for us to get a better understanding of who you are and a good place for us to start.

Is to understand some of those defining moments in your career that helped shaped you as a leader and as an educator.

Dr. Paul Romanelli: Yeah. Thanks so much Jim. So happy to be here today. And I'd really have to say that I. Defining moments in my career really come from the students that I've met along the way. Whether that's students in my classroom as a classroom teacher or as a building or district administrator.

And I think that you run into students along the way that have these unique tal-ents. And that also have. Amazing ways of demonstrating, mastery of certain subject areas that you're learning or even just different subject areas that you're not in bringing different ideas into the classroom.

And being so proud [: 00:03:00

Dr. Jim: I like how you mentioned that some of those defining moments were driven from the student side more so than anything else. And I think one of the things that I'm curious about is. Having never worked in the K through 12 space, I don't have firsthand experience of this, but I know a lot of teachers and administrators just through the nature of what I do.

And one of the things that's often said is that a lot of people don't really under-stand the day-to-day of what we do as administrators or educators. And the rea-son why I'm going down this track is that you've, me, you mentioned that it was the students that had the most impact. So tell us a little bit about.

Maybe one or two of the success stories that you've had from the student per-spective that really reengaged you and your passion as an educator and adminis-trator.

olutely. You can take a look [: 00:04:00

I've loved the opportunity to get to know our students in the district. One of the things that we do in the district, the beginning of each year is, I'll go with some of our board of education members and tour the buildings. And one of our prin-cipals this year actually just had students lead the tour this year.

He seated the rights to the building over to the students, and they walked us around with a, uncensored approach to the building and talked about all the dif-ferent successes that they've had. In their time at middle school and their time at high school and the things that were interesting to them about school and things that weren't so interesting to them.

really we had a student this [: 00:05:00

Flag football team. And we started that up last year. We had our inaugural season the girls made the playoffs. They, and we're starting actually this year expanding even, not just having a varsity team, but also adding a JV team this year as well, because we had such a great interest in the sport.

So to me it's all about the. Students advocating for themselves and advocating for, what's important to them in their education. We love to listen to what they have to say, and then we love to see them be successful when it all comes to fruition.

Dr. Jim: So it's interesting that you talk about student advocacy and creating the space for students to offer that feedback or suggestions, but it's easier said than done. So what I'm. I'm curious about is what were some of the foundational things that you established at a district level or as a leadership team that helped create the environment for students to be vocal about those things and bring those up?

Because oftentimes [: 00:06:00

Dr. Paul Romanelli: Yeah, that was as you mentioned, this is my third year as superintendent, year one. The initial goal was just to be out there, be visible, be someone who, students felt comfortable approaching. And also when we were making a decision on something I. Not just making it from the top down, but involving students in the decision making process and families as well.

We put out anytime we're launching a new initiative in the district, we will put out surveys to students, to parents, to staff to think about, is there something that we're not thinking of? Or is there any sort of input that we can we can get from our students to make this stronger.

We just recently redesigned our lobby of our auditorium at our high school. And we had students in our architecture class, give their plans and their ideas about what it should look like. So it was different than actually what we were thinking, but it's, it looks a lot better. We have two beautiful screens mounted.

ithin the building. And just [: 00:07:00

Switching gears a little bit. It. I'd like to get a better sense of the district in gen-eral. So this is your third year in the district. Take us back to, that, er, those early days where you were just starting out. What was the landscape of the district like?

Dr. Paul Romanelli: So we have about 4,000 students in the district. We have four elementary schools, we have two middle schools, and we have a high school. So seven buildings to travel around, on any given day. Just a tremen-dous sense of pride across the district about West Islip and what it means to be a West side sub lion walking into classrooms.

One of the things that I love is that if you ask a student. What they're learning, they're able to tell you it's not just, an activity that they're working on. It's really what they're learning. You know what the standards are they're trying to master and they want you to be there.

here. Everybody is when you [: 00:08:00

And you see the students, rising to the occasion because of that.

Dr. Jim: That sounds pretty solid as far as a foundation that you walked into. When you think about your, first handful of months or even your first year, what were some of those some of those hotspots that you're like, oh, I need to keep an eye on this as a potential area for us to improve?

I think you mentioned it before, Jim. It's just, a move away from a traditional model and I think that, not everybody is as comfortable, taking risks and jump-ing into new ways to. Incorporate student voice in the classroom or new ways to assess students and really understand, how they're, how their, each of the indi-vidual students are learning in the classroom.

the district level. What was [: 00:09:00

Dr. Jim: And how did you communicate that out to the various stakeholders in the community and across your students and families as well?

Dr. Paul Romanelli: Yeah. I think that it's all about establishing a culture in the district that encourages risk taking and that encourages innovation and encour-ages new ideas. And that just as we encourage students to have things like. A growth mindset and, you're gonna get there.

You're just not there yet. We have to do the same thing with our educators as well. We have this unbelievable team of educators here, and I think sometimes people just need permission, to try new things out, to, if they have an innovative idea and that they want to try it out in the classroom, make that your classroom observation for the year, when I'm coming in to visit.

Do something that you haven't done before and that you want feedback on. And that'll be just establishing that safe space where, let's say that a lesson doesn't go exactly perfect. That's where the magic happens. You're talking about teaching and learning.

You're talking about [: 00:10:00

Dr. Jim: I like your emphasis on innovation and risk taking. But education as in general in broad terms isn't known for being particularly nimble or innovative when it comes to shifting directions. And what I keep thinking about, and I ref-erence this in the beginning of the show.

Education has been under the test score obsession for quite a while. So when you're talking about encouraging innovation, encouraging risk taking, it's hard to move the needle from where you are to that. So how did you get people to stepwise make moves towards that innovation culture?

talking today, Jim, we had a [: 00:11:00

The things that he saw that were really impressive. And, just by reading that, it gave us an opportunity as an administrative team to talk about, all right, what are some of the things we have already going on in the district that can be celebrated and what are some areas we might want to take a look at in terms of bringing in new and different ideas?

And we also, decided that we really wanted to bring in the community to that discussion. We had a community film screening of the film most likely to Suc-ceed. Talked about, looking at new models and looking at different ways of as-sessment. In that film specifically, there is a school, high tech high that they fea-ture, and it is a non-traditional type setting.

hat are some things we might [: 00:12:00

What are some things we might reject? And it leads to a really amazing conver-sation about, what school can look like and why we want our schools to be structured in the way that they are.

Dr. Jim: So when you take the steps that you took, yeah. You talk about the dis-trict-wide book study, what school could be talked about the the movie that you saw, what did that uncover or expose in terms of the status quo that you thought, okay, these are the things that we need to really focus in on shifting away from so that we can build this new educational landscape that's gonna bet-ter serve our students?

Dr. Paul Romanelli: Yeah. So all of that, really led to a big discussion, amongst our team of teachers, administrators, parents, students. And we kept coming back to this one idea that, we had read this article about Google and how they had been hiring employees at the company.

, top, things like that. And [: 00:13:00

It was the employees who were able to. Who were excellent critical thinkers and problem solvers, who were really great effective communicators on their teams, and were able to work collaboratively with one another. So we started to have that conversation and talk about, all right, we know that there, I.

Are going to be, jobs out there in 15 years that we don't even necessarily know ex exists. But we do think that we can identify the, the skills, knowledge, habits, and attitudes that students need to be successful in life after school. And if they're equipped with those, then it doesn't matter what the job necessarily is.

We feel that they, or the career we feel that they can be successful. No matter what. We worked together to identify what was important to us as the West Isop community.

did as a dis-trict and this [: 00:14:00

Dr. Paul Romanelli: I described before, we surveyed the community, we sur-veyed our staff, our students, our families and we talked about, all right we've done this book study, we've done this community film screening, we've read these articles.

We've been having all these discussions. What do you think is the most im-portant skills, knowledge, what are the most important skills, knowledge, habits, and attitudes our students need to be successful? In life after school. And it was amazing to see that there were, as we asked, we gave like a top 20 type ideas.

And we, we saw a trend emerge. When we, whether we asked students or par-ents or staff, about what the most important elements were. We kept hearing the same. Ideas from people. We had a couple that emerged, that we identified. We had about six different areas.

bout, you and I mentioned it [: 00:15:00

So that was. Something that we identified six areas based on, thousands of re-sponses that we received from our community to really identify these were the areas we wanted to focus in on. And, this is what should be going on in our classrooms and this is what should be going on to prepare our students for life after school.

Dr. Jim: So I hear all of that and I'm taking the approach of somebody that's sit-ting in the audience, I'm a Gen Xer, so school wasn't taught the way that you're describing it was a whole different thing. So I'm I might hear this and say, oh, this is just a bunch of soft, squishy stuff that doesn't really do anything.

ly turning into capabilities [: 00:16:00

Dr. Paul Romanelli: And I love that question because it's like you can talk about, oh, you should have authentic assessments in the classroom and things like that, and they should be aligned to real life, and you can give examples like what goes on in our music classrooms or what goes on in physical education, you see all the time when a student has to play a piece of music and you watch them play it, that's an authentic assessment.

They either can play it. Or they can't, and you can give some pretty specific feedback about notes that they can hit or they can't. But the big piece has been, how do we apply that into our science classrooms, into math, into English, so-cial studies, things like that and develop those more authentic opportunities for students.

So what we did was we really, we developed, based on those six different ideas there, Jim, we developed a West Islip profile of a graduate. And then what we went on to do is in those different six areas. We identified. All right if we've said that it's important for our students to be balanced, what does that look like in a K to two classroom?

[: 00:17:00

What does that look like in each of the individual subject areas? If I want to be an effective communicator, what does that mean in the ninth grade social studies classroom? And that's driving a lot of our discussions that we have. I talked a little bit about observations before, like the pre-observation process when you're coming in as an administrator to observe a classroom, talking about putting the profile of a graduate right there on the table and saying, all right, which of these elements are you looking to?

Bring into the classroom today, and if it is being an effective communicator, all right, tell me a little bit about that. How's that gonna look? And then the post ob-servation is about that. It's not about whether you did X, Y, and Z or the whole gotcha mentality that I was describing before.

oking at it is, defining the [: 00:18:00

Dr. Jim: What was the, when I think about that work, you're describing and eat-ing the elephant exercise where you're, you have these capabilities or competen-cies that you want to drive towards, and then you're breaking them down into the pieces or the elements that build into that, and then you're breaking that down into what does that look like, or what does good look like at grade level?

That's a lot of work. I'm taking the position of maybe in another administrator that's listening to this saying how in the world how much time is involved in getting that granular and building a rubric at the grade level for how this trans-lates into into the learning, into the competencies that are demonstrated?

What was the timeline that it took for all of that to get fleshed out and operation-alize at the classroom?

's it's a lot of like really [: 00:19:00

And I think the most important thing there was really just the involvement is that we had many people that, bought into this idea that we need to be invested in, what our classrooms look like to help develop this profile. And, it was a slow process, but it was, starting with the committee on, all right.

We've now identified these six, let's now take a look at what each of them means. And then when we broke it down at each, elementary, middle, and high school levels, we had a group of elementary teachers and administrators. We had middle level, and we had high school level.

And just really digging deep in talking about what are some things that we al-ready do in these areas, and then what are some things we want to be doing in these areas, to help this develop. So it's definitely. A team effort. There has to be a lot of buy-in and just involvement from across the district's.

Really important.

hard enough to break it down [: 00:20:00

So you have to change that process too. So what went into that development piece of it. So you're getting your educators equipped to readjust or adjust the way that they're teaching so that this becomes effective. What did you do in that space?

Dr. Paul Romanelli: Yeah, I think that's a great question because one of the biggest, I'm sure you've heard this term before, Jim, the initiative fatigue idea is that, sometimes educators see something like this profile of graduate that's out year one and they figure I. All right, this thing's gonna be gone in a year or two, and we're just gonna, this is the, we'll be on to the next idea.

f a graduate. We're going to [: 00:21:00

We've had our. Seen some great ideas at our high school where we have a stu-dents are highlighted with a postcard home about if they're demonstrating a spe-cific profile trait. Staff members are highlighted for that as well. We see, back-packs with the profile on it, classroom signs with the profile displayed all over.

And I think that keeping it at the forefront is really important. And then also just the idea that, there's a lot of this, I mentioned it before that. We're already doing. And so I think it's important for educators to see, all right you know what if I'm trying to help my students be critical thinkers, I'm already doing X, Y, and Z, but maybe here's some new ideas I can incorporate.

So it's not, a completely new idea. It's more celebrating all the things that we're doing really well already, and then bringing new ideas to build upon that.

le to measure from a student [: 00:22:00

Let's bring it down to a subject level. So you have those attributes that you want to measure, and you're in, let's say a middle school science class. How do you bring that into the actual coursework that's being taught?

Dr. Paul Romanelli: Yeah. I think that's really where the work comes in. You mentioned middle school science as your example, and it's, talking with we ac-tually have our directors working with their departments this year just talking about, all right. I. Let's go through each of our department meetings.

saying, all right, now that [: 00:23:00

Let's get into the more granular piece or about that, middle school science class-room, and taking a look. We actually have this all posted on our website as well, Jim, so that people can dig into it and see when we're talking to parents about this. All right.

Take a look at what our middle school science classrooms are doing to build confidence and giving different leadership opportunities in the classroom, in sci-ence and, seeing different examples of scientists, throughout time that maybe look like a student themselves that they can relate to.

So different ways to, to build that, in different subject areas are really endless. And I think that it's, that's part of the beauty of education is that it's more of an opportunity where this is a framework. This isn't just saying, all right, we're teaching the kids to be confident today.

he next big step here really [: 00:24:00

Leaving at a higher level towards the end.

Dr. Jim: Yeah, and we'll get to the measurement piece of it 'cause that is on my radar. But the other thing that I'm wondering about is if I put myself in the mind of a student. And it doesn't matter what era of student you're talking about, it could be a student from the fifties all the way to today.

There's probably a group of students that's sitting there looking at all this stuff and saying this stuff isn't important. I'm never gonna use that in real life. So how are you connecting these competencies to like real world implications that they'll have to deal with? How are you connecting those dots within the classroom?

ht. There has to be a buy-in [: 00:25:00

You know what I. I'm learning this here and this is something I can, that can be useful to me in life outside of school. And maybe if I'm not using, it's exactly the skill that I'm picking up is gonna be helpful for me. Just the example that I can give, in our CTE program at our high school, we have a number of graduates that have gone on to lead companies in the manufacturing industry that work in top positions there.

And our students have gone. To really see what's going on firsthand. They've had internships there and students have come back and told us, all right, you know what? We really need this this CNC router, or we really need this hos ma-chine because that's what we see as the industry standard right now, and that these companies are using, and we're using, this in the classroom, so we need to upgrade it to, X, Y, and Z.

Dr. Jim: And we're taking that input from students. We're putting that into our budget planning process and we're getting, that type of equipment so that stu-dents can have that sort of real life experience that they're bringing into the workforce afterwards.

w is that there the tendency [: 00:26:00

Dr. Jim: What have you observed so far? I.

Dr. Paul Romanelli: I think you kinda hit the nail on the head there. And the retention piece I think is really key. And it's that we are designing I'm not gonna say we're a hundred percent there. We're making a shift towards designing our assessments in a way that's really performance based.

a move away from the Regents [: 00:27:00

And you can't graduate unless you pass the Regents exam. So there is a buy-in now though about this whole idea of performance-based assessments, that there may not just be one method to demonstrate mastery of learning. There may be an opportunity for students to create a portfolio to showcase their learning.

To, really be able to put on a demonstration of their learning publicly to teach a concept, let's say, to a group of other students or to parents in a learning show-case type model. So there are many different ways that students can show their, a demonstration of their mastery of learning that don't align to that traditional model.

tandard-ized assessment. And [: 00:28:00

One of the things that I'm thinking about is that this is a work in progress and you're looking at some of the problems that exist in terms of capabilities at the student level, and you're trying to triage for that, but you still have to color with-in the lines when it comes to state and federal requirements potentially.

Dr. Jim: So how are you bridging the gap between the two?

Dr. Paul Romanelli: Yeah, so it's interesting we're living in this in-between world, but we have been for a long time, and I think that the state is really start-ing to catch up, to these ideas. And we're really happy to see that we have cours-es that already have. This type of stuff embedded as the, of the final assessment.

say, the final assessment is [: 00:29:00

Music, the movements, the all the piece. And it's finally performed at the end. And there's a rubric that evaluates, the performance and you get true feedback. And there's a reflection piece about different ways that you could incorporate things to help that improve in the end.

And that's something that students take with them and remember forever, so to that retention point that you made, I think that's really the key there. And some-thing else interesting, Jim, is that. I experienced, a few years back during the pandemic I worked in a different district, but we had a number of English lan-guage learners who were not able to graduate because of one Regents exam, let's say, that they just could not pass.

And when New York State lifted the Regents requirement for a number of ex-ams that year. All these students graduated and they were able to, move forward with their lives based on this one readings exam that was holding them back that were, they were retaking over and over again.

So it's not about [: 00:30:00

And, there are students that demonstrate mastery on the Regents exam. They do really well with that kind of model and they're able to ace that and, they do re-tain the information, but. Just the whole one size fits all model for the growing, diverse student population that we see across Long Island and across our coun-try just doesn't work anymore.

Dr. Jim: The thing that I like about what you're doing within your district is that it. The approach seems to move away from the rote memorization components. Your best test takers are often the ones that are really good at memorizing stuff. And then there's a gap in terms of the application where when you have to move from theory to execution.

at least what I gather from [: 00:31:00

One of the challenges with what you're describing is that you're building the air-plane as it flies, and when you do that, it's gonna be tough to evaluate progress or even successful progress.

So how are you tackling that challenge currently?

Dr. Paul Romanelli: Yeah. I love that that way of putting it, the whole, I feel like that's the only way to be, the building the airplane as it flies. I love that, that approach. And I think that right now since we've been able to identify specific subject areas and grade levels that we're focusing on, developing students to be-come more balanced, let's say, or confident or, creative problem solvers, things like that, we can pinpoint, specific assessments as they already exist in classes and take a look at.

[: 00:32:00

I envision this as, number one. Students even taking a benchmark for, beginning of the year and end of the year about, themselves in terms of confidence and where they are and then where they are at the end of the year and what sort of things help them to get to whether they declined or improved and why they at-tribute that.

We also have been talking about. Getting an alumni group together which we're really looking forward to and really presenting this idea of the profile of the graduate to our alumni, who have graduated, let's say five, 10 years ago. I. And talk about, all right. This is one of our initiatives in the school district right now.

Do you feel [: 00:33:00

To answer your question, Jim, I think that right now we're more at the. Qualita-tive level where we do need to embed, some more quantitative type ideas, to re-ally look at some of this hard data and see the impact that it's having for stu-dents. We're having these, one-on-one conversations.

Dr. Jim: We're having, lunch with students to talk about these topics. We're see-ing, talking to teachers about different subject areas and things like that at the granular level. But we want to really get more hard quantitative data on this.

t, to what you're describing [: 00:34:00

Dr. Jim: So if people wanna make that leap, what are the key elements that they need to get started on so that they're building from a solid pro foundation to make this pivot?

Dr. Paul Romanelli: I think a couple things. Number one defining what's im-portant to your community is really to me the number one step because every community is different. And although this profile of graduate work is not neces-sarily something that's only taken place in West Islip. We have a unique West side slope profile of a graduate that's important to our students, our staff, our community.

And it's been developed, incorporating their feedback. So I think number one is identifying priorities within the community and opening up those lines of com-munication with all different stakeholder groups. And really the second part of that is that, encouraging that whole idea of just trying new things and, allowing people to take risks in the classroom.

eces to consider. Number one [: 00:35:00

Or offers a professional development session for colleagues. And then the other piece is. Which is so powerful is having students share with the, their staff, what the positive impacts that they've seen from things like performance-based type assessments, or opportunities to have a voice in their demonstration of mastery of subject matter, and the assessment process.

I think that students that have really benefited from that. And who are successful and who staff can relate to and say, Hey, you know what? This kid is gonna be really successful in life after school and it's because he's had these opportunities, or she's had these opportunities. I think, goes a really long way.

ng with success that, speaks [: 00:36:00

Paul, if people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to find you?

Dr. Paul Romanelli: Oh, they can go on our website and look me up there, the West Side of Union Free School District website or definitely follow me on Twitter at Romanelli Paul on Twitter and or x now I should say. And always happy to connect and love when people reach out.

Dr. Jim: Really appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing what you're do-ing within your district. And I think driving to more of a competency based ed-ucation plan makes a lot of sense. And especially when you're actually taking those competencies and applying it to real world scenarios, and especially that project driven work that you're talking about.

I think that's a really strong piece of the puzzle. But I think before. You started doing the blocking and tackling of this transformation. What I really think is important to emphasize and what stood out to me is that how this was a commu-nity driven effort. And when I say community, it's not just students.

ducators as well, and giving [: 00:37:00

And then you have to make it real. And I think that relationship. Or that lesson is really important for a lot of district leaders to keep in mind this can't be some-thing that's top down driven. It's gotta be bottom up driven in order for it to have impact impact and also get lasting momentum for change.

n next time where we'll have [: 00:38:00