(Advance Registration and Ticket Required)

Planning and Implementing a Comprehensive Information Technology System in Support of Breaking Ranks
Date: Friday, March 9
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Phoenix Civic Plaza
Rooms: #1–5
Fee: $160.00

This workshop will explore how a comprehensive information technology system can be used to implement the 21st century education reforms such as those contained within NASSP’s nationally recognized publication Breaking Ranks: Changing an American Institution. Session participants will gain a working knowledge of how technology is critical to the successful implementation of educational reforms; what skills/competencies students (and staff) will need to compete in an information-based global economy; and, how a technology-supported decision support system can improve teaching, learning, and management. Also, a demonstration will be provided on how technology can assist educators in developing curriculum and managing learning by aligning standards, instructional resources, assessment strategies, learner profiles, and staff proficiencies.

Throughout the workshop session, participants will be provided tools, templates, and guidelines that will assist them in planning and implementing technology initiatives that will support and enhance the recommendations proposed by Breaking Ranks.

Workshop Presenter
John R. Phillipo, Chief Executive Officer, CELT Corporation, Marlborough, MA

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The Principal as Ethical Leader
Date: Friday, March 9
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Phoenix Civic Plaza
Rooms: #22–25
Fee: $180.00 (Includes copy of The Principal as Ethical Leader)

“…Every detail of school life, from the interior of the principal’s office to the way the school cafeteria operates, from the schoolwide policy that governs the giving of grades to the rules that deal with the way students move through the halls can and often does have moral significance.”
(Beck, “Why Ethics? Why Now?” The School Administrator, p.10)

Clearly, current issues that plague the principal have ethical implications. The ethical behaviors that are part of a principal’s leadership are not spelled out in policy statements and in operational handbooks. With the increased complexity of current ethical issues, there has been more attention focused upon ethics and ethical practices for the site administrator.

• Understand and apply the skills and behaviors that comprise ethical leadership
  
  
• Analyze the ethical beliefs and attitudes that influence the behaviors and actions of the school, the district, and the community;
  
  
• Examine the alignment that exists between the principal’s ethical system and that of the school in which the principal works
  
  
• Clarify one’s personal and professional code of ethical leadership
  
  
• Develop strategies to examine and implement an ethical framework for leadership.

During the workshop, participants will examine the ethical frameworks that support leadership and the decision-making process. Participants will discuss the ethical codes of selected business and professional organizations. They will also compare and contrast ethical perspectives in reacting to the organizational codes of ethics. Workshop participants will refine and develop their own ethical framework in the contexts of job-alike problems and activities. In addition, participants will respond to checklists and questions that probe their ethical considerations and will review a case study focused upon ethical issues typically facing the school principal.

Workshop Presenters
Max McMillan, former Principal, Boulder Valley Schools; Training Consultant, and Director, The Colorado Assessment Center, Boulder, CO
Rene Townsend, Coordinator, Educational Administration, California State University, San Marcos, CA

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Data Driven Process for Implementing Breaking Ranks and Analyzing School and Student Progress
Date: Friday, March 9
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Phoenix Civic Plaza
Rooms: #16–20
Fee: $170.00 (Includes copy of Breaking Ranks: Changing an American Institution)

A team from the Northeast & Islands Regional Educational Laboratory, a program of the Education Alliance at Brown University (LAB) will demonstrate accountability strategies and tools that are being utilized to assist a group of high schools implementing the Breaking Ranks recommendations. In this interactive session, participants will learn about methods, tools, and technology that high schools can use to plan and implement changes based on Breaking Ranks as well as examine progress on Breaking Ranks school reform and the improvements in student performance that result. Participants will:

Become aware of the strong correlation between Breaking Ranks recommendations, the evaluation criteria for the U.S. Department of Education’s New American High Schools project, the new standards for high school accreditation of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, and other indicators of high school performance;

• Engage in an activity utilizing Breaking Ranks Self-Assessment Instrument that schools can use to guide a school’s planning and development of a Breaking Ranks Implementation Plan
  
  
• Interactively learn about methods and technology that can be used to examine multiple aspects of student performance and program effectiveness
  
  
• Interact with principals that have developed and implemented Breaking Ranks Improvement within their schools.

Workshop Presenters
Thomas Billings, Secondary Education Professor, Salem State College, Salem, MA
Joseph A. DiMartino, Director, Secondary School Restructuring Initiative, Education Alliance, LAB at Brown, Providence, RI
Hal Hayden, Program Planning Specialist, Education Alliance, LAB at Brown, Providence, RI
Mary Ann Lachat, Program Leader Teaching and Learning, Center for Resource Management, Inc., South Hampton, NH
Nancy Mullen, Principal, Mount Pleasant High School, Providence, RI
Ann Papagiotas, Principal, North Reading High School, North Reading, MA

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A Comprehensive Look at Alternative Scheduling: Best Practices and Pitfalls
Date: Friday, March 9
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Phoenix Civic Plaza
Rooms: #36–39
Fee: $160.00

In this unique, one-day workshop, speaker David Hottenstein will draw from a voluminous database that includes high schools and middle level schools throughout the United States. He will share scheduling design, describe successful case studies, highlight instructional advantages, describe problem areas, and outline training programs for teachers, evaluation, models, and results.

Workshop Presenters
Leading the workshop will be David Hottenstein, a well-known national expert, author, and practitioner. Currently principal at Hatboro-Horsham Senior High School in Horsham, PA, Hottenstein has been a teacher, assistant principal, middle school principal, and high school principal for more than 27 years. He is recognized across the country for his efforts and success in leading an intensive block scheduling program at Hatboro-Horsham Senior High School. He tells you “how to do it right,” not just “what it is and the rationale for it.”

Joining Hottenstein in this presentation are Suzi D’Annolfo, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, Newington Public Schools, Newington, CT;
E. Don Brown, principal, L.D. Bell High School, Hurst, TX;
Rex Bolinger, principal, Angola High School, Angola, IN.

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Critical Issues in School Law for the Principal
Date: Friday, March 9
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Phoenix Civic Plaza
Rooms: #27–30
Fee: $160.00

Among the myriad roles called for by schools and their communities from today’s successful principal is one of counsel…legal counsel. To be effective, a building-level administrator needs to have a basic understanding of school law and the complicated issues which surround it. Divided into three distinct and critical topic areas, this workshop will bring participants an opportunity to obtain informed counsel from a distinguished duo of education professionals, each of whom will lend their unique legal expertise toward central issues confronting the current school environment.

Strategies for Litigation in Negligence
A discussion of the essentials of how to prepare for the possibility of litigation including: key planning steps, personal preparation, and support network. Primary emphasis will be on how these steps would gain applicability through litigation in the critical area of negligence, including, anticipation/response, rule writing and promulgation, faculty and staff meetings, legal contexts, and insurance. Participants are encouraged to bring their teacher handbooks to the workshop.

School Safety, Technology, and the First Amendment
The introduction of technology in our schools has brought with it a number of outstanding educational opportunities for our students. There are, however, critical issues of safety; for example, off campus webpages, chat rooms, access to potentially pornographic sites that raise critical questions of the operation of the school in light of First Amendment guarantees. What should the principal know regarding the law and how to balance student concerns and the school as the “marketplace of ideas”?

Religion in the SchoolsA Study of the Impact of the Most Recent Two Supreme Court Decisions on Prayers at Football Games and Vouchers.

Careful analysis will be provided to discuss these cases in the context of what we already believe about the principal’s role and religious activities involving the school. In addition, the presenters will discuss the status of voucher programs with specific reference in light of the recently decided case of Mills.

Workshop Presenters
Steve Permuth, Professor, Department of Leadership Development, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
Ralph Mawdsley, Professor, Department of Counseling, Administration, Supervision, and Adult Learning, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH

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Threat Assessment: Approach To Prevent Targeted Violence in Schools
Date: Friday, March 9
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Location: Phoenix Civic Plaza
Rooms: #40–43
Fee: $125.00

Over the past decade, schools across the country have experienced numerous incidents where students, faculty, or visitors to a school were killed. A study conducted by the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) and the Department of Education’s Safe and Drug Free Schools Program showed that in a two-year period of time (1992–1994) there were 105 school associated violent deaths. Eighty-five of these deaths were homicides and 20 were suicides. In all of these incidents—except two—there was a single victim. In two of these incidents there were multiple victims. Unfortunately, since this study was conducted there have been a growing number of incidents where there have been multiple victims.

The U.S. Secret Service, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education, has embarked on an examination of those cases where there were multiple victims in schools. The study is intended to learn as much as possible about youth that engage in multiple school shootings. Motive, patterns of behavior, family background, access to firearms, school climate, and relationship to family, school, and friends, are some of the issues being examined. The study’s aim is to learn more about why these individuals engage in this behavior so that schools and communities can do a better job in preventing them from occurring in the future. Approximately 40 cases will be examined in detail through the study, including interviews with those who committed the shootings. This session offers an overview of the findings of this study.

In addition to information on this specific aspect of school shootings, the session’s presenters will provide an overview—from recent Department of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services studies—of the state of school crime in the country.

The goal of this session is to provide the audience with the most scientific and up-to-date information on school violence and school shootings. Further, the audience will depart with a better understanding of steps they can take in their individual schools to help ensure these events do not happen!

Workshop Presenters
William Modzeleski, Director, Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C.
Bryan Vossekuil, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Threat Assessment Center/U.S. Secret Service, Washington, D.C.

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Middle Level Long Conference
Impacting Literacy: Comprehensive School Reform that Impacts Reading and Writing in Middle Schools
Date: Friday, March 9
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Location: Hyatt Regency Phoenix
Room: Phoenix Ballroom (East/West)
Fee: $100
*Please note Hyatt Regency Phoenix Hotel location for this workshop.

This year’s Long Conference will follow the tradition of previous conferences, i.e. a powerful keynote presentation followed by a panel of experts who react to the keynote and finally, the opportunity for participants to interact with presenters in smaller, more intimate groups.

This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. Katherine Mitchell, director of the Alabama Reading Initiative. Dr. Mitchell received her doctorate in reading from New York University and has had extensive experience with the reading initiative in the South Bronx, NY. Previously, Dr. Mitchell served as the director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment for the state of Alabama. In her current position, Dr. Mitchell created the Alabama Reading Initiative, which has grown from 16 to 264 literacy demonstration sites, including 29 middle schools, during the past five years. Dr. Mitchell is an engaging, dynamic presenter who will motivate and provide practical suggestions on how middle schools can implement effective literacy strategies.

The reactor panel will consist of representatives from the seven organizations who received contracts recently from the U.S. Department of Education ranging from $6.7 million to $13 million over a five year period to create comprehensive school reform designs for middle schools that include strategies, procedures, materials and teacher professional development for schoolwide reform. Panel representatives will react to Dr. Mitchell’s comments and discuss how literacy is addressed in their respective comprehensive school reform models. Organizations that will be represented on the panel include:

• Johns Hopkins University Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk: Talent Development Model; Doug MacIver
  
  
• Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation: First Things First; Robert Granger
  
  
• National Center on Education and the Economy: America’s Choice Design; Marc Tucker
  
  
• Southern Regional Education Board: Making Schools Work; Sondra Cooney
  
  
• The Success for All Foundation: Success for All Middle School; Robert Slavin
  
  
• Education Development Center, Inc.: ATLAS; Nancy Ames
  
  
• Galef Institute: Different Ways of Knowing; Linda Johannesen

Panel Facilitator: Susan Galletti, Galef Institute and former Director of Middle Level Services, NASSP. Closing comments will be made by a representative of the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI).

This year’s Long Conference reflects the history of the Long Conference which was first held more than 40 years ago, when a group of principals attending the New York Junior High School Conference were invited by Forrest E. Long to meet in his office during the dinner hour for an informal discussion of junior high school issues. This commitment to open provocative discussion of middle level education issues continues to be the hallmark of the Long Conference. It continues to be a place where concerned educators meet annually to consider the challenges and opportunities facing middle level education.

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