A Dinner Discussion with Dr. Daniel Domenech, Superintendent of Fairfax (VA) County Public Schools

A Forum — June 15, 1999

Dr. Daniel Domenech, Superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), provided his thoughts on education reform, the process of change, and the implementation of the Virginia Standards of Learning to a group of education policymakers on Capitol Hill. FCPS is the 12th largest school system in the United States and consists of 234 schools and centers with 157,000 students. The system has approximately 40 percent minority students with approximately 20 percent on free and reduced price lunch. The average SAT score for FCPS is 1095; at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology it is 1450. But the overall number for the County is misleading: while the upper and middle-income (generally white) students are achieving at high levels, there are large clusters of poor (generally minority) students who are failing. The demographics of Fairfax County are no different than those of the District of Columbia or New York City.

Domenech began by making a few remarks prior to questions and discussion. He opened his comments with a description of the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOLs), the state academic standards, to be mastered by students in grades 3, 5, and 8. When the first SOLs were given in 1997-98, 97 percent of the schools in VA failed and only seven percent in Fairfax County passed. Because Fairfax County is such a high performing system on all other indicators, the question asked by all was, "What is the correlation between the tests and student performance?" The thinking was that the tests, and not the students, were faulty. Domenech said that what was an otherwise good idea and sound educational policy of measuring performance fell apart when it came to the assessment aspect due to political reasons. Some members of the State Board of Education wanted to have higher cut scores in order to push for high achievement. However, because the curriculum was not yet aligned with the test, the students performed very poorly on the tests. When the results were reported, there was an overall feeling of shock, surprise, disappointment, and disbelief at the school level. Domench said nothing is served by having an entire school system characterized as failing, and it is expected that the performance of students and schools will improve as the curriculum and assessments become aligned in the next several years.

The SOLs did demonstrate, however, a discrepancy in achievement between majority and minority students. Domenech decided to use the SOL tests as a way to determine which schools needed the most help in ensuring high academic achievement for all students. He said he wanted to instill an attitude of equal achievement for all students, not just an attitude of equal education for all students. The challenge, said Domenech, is to figure out how to create an environment where all teachers believe it is their job to help all children learn and to determine how the system can best help teachers do this. Domenech described three strategies he is pursuing in FCPS to achieve these goals (all of which will require large amounts of professional development):

1. Children need extended learning opportunities. Time should not be a factor. It doesn’t matter how long it takes for a student to learn something; we, as educators, just need to make sure the student learns it.
2. Children have different learning styles; therefore, teachers must understand how to teach to those different learning styles.
3. Resources are needed to achieve strategies 1 and 2, for funding activities such as full-day kindergarten and additional hours in the school week and year.

Using the results from the SOLs showing which schools were performing poorly, Domenech decided to create a program called Project Excel. The program is designed to help 20 schools with concentrations of low-income students and low achievement ensure that every student succeeds in school. County dollars and contributions from the private sector will fund the program. There is a strong focus on accountability. In three years, if the schools have increased performance, they will get performance bonuses; if performance has not improved, the schools will be reconstituted. The Excel Schools program will rely on the three strategies described above and will be a highly visible experiment to see if increased resources and major changes in the way children are taught will result in higher performance.

Questions and Discussion

Q: There are few large school districts with affluent citizens who are willing to make the kind of commitment you have outlined in the Excel Schools program to provide resources to help all students, especially the needy ones. How do you get support from the school district and the community to increase funds for the Excel Schools and to target public funds on low-income schools?

A: I appealed to the business community and county leadership and said that the schools must be supported and improved in order to develop the workforce needed by today’s employers. There are 19,000 jobs that cannot be filled in Fairfax County. We must have an educational system that can prepare people for those jobs. While citizens are willing to provide additional money for the Excel schools, there is a quid pro quo: They will provide the funds and we will provide the results.

Q: Why put graduation requirements on students in the Class of 2004 when schools won’t have their accreditation affected until 2007? Isn’t that unfair to target the students before the schools?

A: I don’t have a problem with having the students meet the standards in 2004. It will take work, but we can do it, if we are creative. We have tied ourselves down to an organizational structure that is outdated in terms of providing the learning kids need. We should recognize that some kids should be able to graduate at age 14/15 and some will need to take until they are 21.

Q: What about year-round schools?

A: I support year-round schools. When you look at the things we do because it has to do with our convenience and nothing to do with children learning, you realize how stupid it is.

Q: As an administrator, can you use more flexibility to make better use of the resources you have?

A: Absolutely. We don’t go after competitive grants because it takes too much time to write the proposals, and I don’t have enough staff for that. I’d rather have a certain amount of guaranteed funding and the flexibility to use it the best way I can.

Q: How can you build parental support for and involvement in reform initiatives?

A: You have to satisfy all parts of the community. Some parents see us putting resources in the low-income schools and want to know what special services their children are getting. We have the International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement (AP) classes in every high school so that resources are provided to that group as well. We also offer an AP High School Diploma (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC is the only other school district to do so in the U.S.).

Q: How would you address the issue of providing more resources to needy students in a less affluent district?

A: In some districts, it is a very difficult situation. In New York, for instance, each school is practically its own school district, so that the amount of resources varies dramatically from school to school. In some cases, it is almost like legal segregation. You can have a very affluent majority school district right next to an impoverished minority school district and there is nothing you can do about equalizing resources.

Q: How do we get change into the classroom and the message to the teachers?

A: We must change the value system. We use old solutions to old problems, like adding more teachers to classrooms. We must change attitudes about how children learn, not just add more teachers who have outdated attitudes. We are looking at 19th Century solutions to 21st Century problems. This demands leadership from the principal and the superintendent who declares reform to be the mission. The superintendent must communicate with, involve, and reach out to parents. It’s important for the federal government to use its bully pulpit about serving all children and providing the resources where needed, because some kids have extra needs. I question why we can’t use the same philosophy of the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), where we spend a certain amount of money for a certain number of kids because of their individual needs, and apply that same logic to children who are economically disadvantaged rather than physically disadvantaged.

Q: Looking ahead to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, if additional funds were provided for high school reform, how would you use the money?

A: I would use the money to institute block scheduling, to create academies with interdisciplinary studies, to reduce class size, to create smaller units in schools, and to extend learning opportunities for students, before and after school, on weekends, and during the summer. I would also look at how to better prepare children by teaching algebraic concepts in elementary schools, so they get the basics a lot sooner. That would require different kinds of teaching and teachers at the elementary school level. Funds would have to be used for professional development to accomplish all of these changes.

Dr. Domenech started his career as a sixth grade teacher, then became a program director for the Nassau Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), the largest intermediate school district in the State of NY. He went on to be Superintendent of Schools for Long Island’s Deer Park Schools and South Huntington School District and the Second Supervisory District of Suffolk County, before joining FCPS in January 1998. He served as President of the American Association of School Administrators, which has a membership of 16,000, in 1998-99.

 

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