Planning for Results:

A Public Library Transformation Process

Summary:

With a rapidly changing employment environment, educational institutions will feel heavy responsibility for preparing young people to qualify for jobs, and providing experienced workers with the re-training or skills they need to maintain their current positions or attain new ones. Few endeavors are as critical to the future of St. Charles as is education. Fewer still are as pivotally affected by changing population, rapid growth, property values, and societal needs. What will St. Charles County's educational institutions face in the coming years? How can we prepare to meet the requirements of many people with varying educational needs? What needs to be done to meet the future head-on?

Because St. Charles is such a demographically varied county, educational planning is and must be unique to the target area. For example, the St. Charles School District has encountered a slight drop in student enrollment while Francis Howell, Ft. Zumwalt, and Wentzville schools are growing steadily. General standards of education are set by the state, yet schools are given some latitude in emphasizing local standards and objectives.

The Missouri School Improvement Standards are designed to set at least minimal qualitative and facilitative levels, and compliance is assessed through visitations teams, self-study, and through interactive associations of teachers, support staff, parents, and students. One of the critical issues with standards is understanding the level they seek to establish. While they may address many criteria -- academic, facilities, extra-curricular, credentials, etc. -- for the most part, state standards establish minimum satisfactory levels. Most, if not all, public and private schools in the county meet, and usually exceed stated minimums. Local impetus drives the degree to which schools function above acceptable levels and to a large degree which standards their local schools will accept and follow.

Evaluating education is an ongoing process that encompasses many factors and sources of information. The Wentzville School District involves multiple groups and target respondents in assessing the quality of education delivered. The District conducts exit interviews with graduating seniors and makes a sincere effort to resurvey graduates five years later. The five year follow up surveys permit a retrospective examination of the how well the educational process prepared former students for post-high school education, professional or technical training, and for assuming roles in adult life. The primary difficulty is, of course, maintaining comprehensive contact and mailing lists, since many students leave the area after graduating.

The Wentzville District also invites the insights of it's "Officers' Council", comprised of the officers of the district's various support groups, including such organizations as the PTA, Academic clubs, Band Boosters, Athletic Boosters, etc. These officers meet twice yearly to advise the administration and recommend improvements to the system. Additionally the district engages some 50-75 volunteers to form focus groups to study various issues applicable to education, and to prepare consensus views of critical issues for presentation to the Board of Education.

The planning and evaluative efforts are major factors in helping schools attain their objectives. For the most part, school systems have a broad charge to provide real-life content to their educational programs. For many students, the school's objective must be to develop the essential skills and knowledge needed to successfully prepare them for post-secondary education. At the same time, the institution must acknowledge that completion of high school will construct the terminal education level for another number of students who must be equally prepared to handle the immediate challenges of everyday life. Therefore it is incumbent on the system to have clearly stated curricular goals, to have consistent and constant assurance of teacher quality, and to have strict, but equitable method of assessing and demonstrating student knowledge. As a corollary, there must be a very tight tie between instruction and assessment. Simply put it is imperative that tests cover comprehensively, but exclusively, material that has been presented during formal instruction.

Emerging technology has been adapted to schools and education, and has, in itself, yielded greater reinforcement to instructional strategies designed to increase learning and the meaningfulness of material taught. It is, for example, increasingly important that teachers be taught to use technological resources to augment and expand the teacher's lesson plan. To maximize technological aids schools must develop and implement on-going training to prevent resources from outstripping staff expertise. Schools must provide continuing education opportunities for professional and support staff to acquire and maintain computer and electronic information skills in order to fully use technological potential. It is nearly imperative that someone at each location becomes sufficiently proficient in hardware, networking and usage to serve as the site's technical resource coordinator, acting as in-house instructor, troubleshooter, and guide. As new schools are built, the necessary infrastructure can be designed in, but retrofitting existing facilities is difficult. Local and Wide Area Networks greatly ease the distribution of information, but funding the hardware, in-class computers and terminals, and providing first-class information access does not come easily. Distance learning and multiple distribution of presentations has great potential, and is currently being used to some extent, but needs to be expanded in the future.

The fundamental nature of education has evolved from the rigid teacher-as-instructor to much more of an environment in which teacher-as-coach prevails. The inflexible systems of the past have given way to much greater teacher-student interaction, toward flexibility in both the methods and manner of instruction, and to maximizing each student's potential. The group dynamic between teachers, students, and parents to affecting in-class learning has increased in importance, and the relationship among teaching, support, and administrative staffs has and will continue to evolve in close interdependence. There is a distinct impetus toward scientific and technological education. American students do not fare particularly well in international comparisons, and there is more than a little concern about maintaining the nation's technical superiority in light of decreasing student skills.

In all respects, pre-collegiate education demonstrates a complexity that requires the full understanding and participation of all that are involved. Increasingly the need for cooperative efforts among many parties will be paramount in delivering a relevant and important educational foundation. Schools will continue to face the challenges of preparing a diverse population to assume their life-roles and to meet the challenge life brings to them. The degree to which this county's schools are able to deliver the quality needed is dependent on many things -- money, expertise, dedicated teachers, expert board and administrative guidance, financial and fiduciary responsibility, and always the ability to change as the times, the students, and society require.

Higher education similarly has evolved into a very different institutional endeavor serving a very different client base. Where post-secondary education was, at one time, a privilege of the wealthy few, colleges in general and particularly community colleges are enrolling a growing number of students who come from virtually every social and economic strata. The Open Enrollment philosophy supports equal access to virtually everyone who seeks admission, but places the mantle of responsibility for coaching and developing students unprepared to handle college level work squarely on the teaching staff of the college itself. Thus it may be mandatory for colleges to provide remedial courses for those who did not master fundamental skills in elementary and high school. It may be necessary for faculty and instructional facilitators to cultivate the potential of those who have the desire, but not the foundation to succeed at higher education. It requires of the instructional staff, a firm commitment to the success of all; not just the natural student-achiever, but of all that enter the class.

Skill is a natural and economic resource. Unskilled labor in the United States competes with unskilled labor worldwide and with devastating results. The American unskilled labor pool cannot compete efficiently with Bangladesh, China, Korea, simply because of the economics of scale, wage, and regulation. Therefore there is a serious driving force to increase the intellectual and physical skills of as many citizens as possible. In 1964, nearly fifty percent of the American labor pool was considered unskilled. Today that figure hovers at around ten percent. In 1940, forty percent of age-appropriate Americans had attained a high school diploma. In 1940 a sixty percent drop out rate brought little public comment, yet today, a seventy-five percent completion rate is not good enough; twenty-five percent without a diploma is far to high to be acceptable. Real wages for those who possess only a high school diploma have dropped in the last fifteen years, less so than the wage levels of those who did not complete high school, but a statistically significant decrease that well defines the diminishing availabiltiy of unskilled positions. Conversely, real wages for those who have attained two or more years of post secondary education have risen greatly, confirming the need for educational attainment, skill / knowledge acquisition, and demonstrable ability to meet the demands of a competition which constantly raises the bar to new heights.

A second trend in higher education is the refining picture of student demographics. The traditional full-time, away from home, parentally supported college student is far less common than in previous years. Many more of today's students attend classes part-time and work regular jobs than has ever been the case. At the St. Charles County Community College, some 75 percent of students enrolled also work, and nationally nearly 50 percent of students matriculate part time and work full or part time. One result of the changing demographic is a corresponding change in the service and performance expected of educational institutions. Students expect to be treated as customers of the institutions, not students. They expect a degree of flexibility in scheduling, participation, and access to resources that traditional students did not consider important. Moreover they expect a higher degree of life relevance to the material taught, the sequence of curriculum, and of the targeted knowledge development.

The changing expectations of legislatures, boards, and funders constitute a third trend in higher education. All three expect a high degree of accountability from institutional administration, staff, and faculty. All three require not just reports, but have greatly come to expect proof of performance as demonstrated by student skills, testing, and, as applicable, in completing licensure requirements. Institutional credibility and its continuing eligibility for funding require full accountability -- What did students learn? What specifically are faculty qualifications to teach? To what degree have institutions provided facilities to support, enhance and improve classroom instruction? To what degree has the institution emphasized the quality of learning?

Students must acknowledge educational value in order to continue to pay tuition and fees. Taxpayers must buy in to the institutional mission and recognize goals accomplished in order to continue and possibly increase their tax-based financial support. Legislatures and state-based oversight groups must be presented with convincing, concrete proof of performance in order to continue state aid and to increase allocations for future development. Thus it is not possible to rest on institutional laurels, no matter how successful past endeavors may have been. Each year higher education must demonstrate its adaptability to change, its success in attaining goals, and its responsiveness to fluid and varying environments.

The evolving role of professors and instructors constitutes a fourth trend in college level education. At one time the college educator was a primary, if not the sole, source of facts about his or her discipline; information is now available everywhere, and thus the professorial role is not as much as the unique provider as it is the facilitator of learning. Educators find themselves charged with not only imparting subject knowledge, but equally with developing analytical and communicative skills, cultivating critical thinking, and instilling team-based rather than independent work and performance ethics. Similar to secondary school teachers, those at the college level are refining their outlook and techniques to promote greater student interaction and involvement, facilitating multi-disciplinary learning, and serving as developmental coaches rather than informational lecturers.

The technological environment and competition from private or proprietary institutions lay the foundation of the fifth trend. Technology is highly adaptable to the educational setting. Internet, electronic and fiber transmission capabilities expand the potential to deliver educational programs far beyond statutory boundaries or physical service areas. Virtually any class can, and for the most part, does use technological resources. Such services and capabilities are expensive. The Missouri Coordinating Board of Higher Education estimates technological expenditures of $5.6 million for the state's community colleges.

The potential value of expanding programs beyond the campus borders is unlimited. Online degree programs emanating from Colorado and Arizona are already up and running, and present their product free from residence restrictions, from facility charges, and from requiring students to be physically present at a common location. Private and proprietary institutions are mastering the art of "any time, any place" education through distance learning and electronic transmission of lecture formats, class readings, and examinations. The potential of such practice is enormous -- suitable students exist virtually anywhere and everywhere in the world. At the same time, there must be qualitative controls and means of assessing the acquired competence of those who complete distance learning sequences. The product must meet expectations and standards or regardless of its technological sophistication, it will fail.

To benefit from and exploit distance learning technologies, community college sometimes band into consortiums to more equitably and efficiently distribute their product. The St. Charles Community College has, for example, joined with the Mineral Area, Jefferson County, and East-Central college districts to present distance learning projects. This is particularly beneficial in that some service areas are not necessarily the same as, and indeed extend well beyond the institution's taxing area. Property taxes support about one-third of the St. Charles County Community College, yet it does not collect taxes from the entire county because the southwest portion of the county is in the East-Central Community College District. Similarly, its service area extends to Lincoln, Pike, and Callaway counties, but those areas contribute no tax-based revenue to the college's operation.

Community colleges particularly have seen steady increases in degree-student enrollment, but have also found distinct market niches in custom tailored training and education for business, governmental, and institutional clients; and in non-credit instruction in skill development or improvement classes, computer literacy, and basic education for the general population. Often using extant classroom and technical resources that would otherwise be vacant or under-utilized, the colleges have been able to greatly broaden their outreach and non-traditional roles to meet an ever-expanding public need.

Issues:

School enrollment in St. Charles County will continue to grow as population increases. Additional facilities, classrooms, equipment, teachers, and staff will be needed to meet the demand, and as a result increased costs will occur. How these costs are met will be dependent on the continued financial health of the county and the state, and the willingness of taxpayers to fund expansion of services.

The changing manner and method of delivering education will require greater technical and technological skills of the professional staff. Meeting the demand and providing continuing education opportunities will require more flexibility in scheduling, and greater out-of-class time for teachers. Tight controls will be necessary to balance expenditures with value-added, and to assure continuity in the quality of teaching.

Attaining educational objectives will require intense interdependence and cooperation among divergent groups. Parents, teachers, staff, administration, community, ancillary groups, libraries, and institutions will have to work together, each providing unique assets to contribute to the general good.

Establishing realistic and sustainable roles for each group will require clear communications and understanding of mutual and individual objectives.

Colleges and universities will be challenged with providing education to more non-traditional students as time passes. Greater scheduling flexibility, increased student emphasis on skill development and "getting the paper" to prove job related continuing education will require a continual evolution of curriculum, teaching, and facilities.