TPS needs to be blunt about challenges, interim leader says – Tulsa World

Two months later, some school board members — including the only one who did not support her appointment as interim superintendent — have already begun discussing the idea of making her temporary duty assignment a permanent gig.

With threats of a state takeover still looming over the state’s largest school district, would Johnson accept or even compete for the job if a wider search is launched?

It doesn’t get any simpler than her answer:

“Yes, and yes.”

Running a school district that serves 33,000 kids and is the city’s third-largest employer is a big job on its own.

But Johnson is doing so while also contending with State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ unrelenting demands for proof that local leadership can produce rapid, significant improvement in student achievement indicators.

The Tulsa World went to Johnson, who has a proven track record of individual school site turnaround efforts, to get answers about her short-term strategies for the district she attended as a child and where she has dedicated her entire professional career.

Why was she willing to take the helm during a time of crisis and extraordinary scrutiny?

“When folks have judgment around what can be done and what they don’t believe is possible, that’s when I get the most excited,” Johnson said. “Are there challenges that we have before us? Absolutely. But it’s unfair for there to be an inaccurate narrative that we are not producing students who are going on to be amazing.”

Homegrown leader

Johnson attended Whitman Elementary, three different middle schools — then-Anderson Middle School, Deborah Brown Community School and Gilcrease Middle School — then McLain High School, where she graduated in 1994.

She laughs when recalling how all-business she was as a teen, but it seems like foreshadowing now.

“I was always involved in leadership roles. I was senior class president, I read the morning announcements — anything I could do,” Johnson said. “I even walked around with a briefcase in high school and wore suit jackets.”

During her high school years, she explored the possibility of going into broadcast journalism under the mentorship of a local TV newswoman.

In the end, her love of writing, speaking and reading made her believe that teaching those subjects would be a better path for her.

She majored in English education at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, completed a teaching internship at Muskogee High School and then came right back to Tulsa to begin her career at TPS in 1999.

She later completed a master’s degree in school administration from Northeastern State University and a doctorate in education from the University of Oklahoma.

Johnson earned the honor of Teacher of the Year at her very first school, Monroe Middle School, before going on to work as a dean, assistant principal and then principal. She worked for several years as executive director of student and family support services for the whole district and her most recent role was as chief learning officer.

Becoming full superintendent of a district under the gun of a possible state takeover would come with career risks — but some of those she already accepted by becoming interim superintendent.

Johnson said she and her husband of 23 years and their children, who are 16 and 20, discussed all of the many considerations for her personally and for their entire family at that juncture.

She concluded there was no alternative but to step in and “serve the district that served me, pour into the community that poured into me.”

“I feel that it would be a continuation of us moving in the right direction in leadership and it would allow us to not go backwards, but to continue forwards with the charge that we have before us,” Johnson said.

Turnaround experience

Johnson spent years in the trenches working in schools with high concentrations of students living in poverty and struggling academically.

She affectionately calls them students who are “most at-promise,” rather than most needy.

She took on principalships of three schools on the state’s “needs improvement” or “F schools” lists — Academy Central Elementary School, McLain High School and Central High School.

Her “blueprint” for getting performance indicators in those places trending in the right direction is something that still informs her work today.

It goes something like this: First identify the gifts and talents of faculty and staff members, set high expectations and goals for improvement — then doggedly track them, hold herself up as a servant to support the entire team, and then get out of people’s way and give them full credit for their successes.

“I set some strong goals from the beginning that we will be a premier school, we will not be an ‘F’ school, and students will learn how to read,” Johnson said. “Alongside that is really just firing our families up around their role as their child’s first teacher and making sure they were aware of all the things they could do to help us, as well.”

Reality check

Johnson said she believes TPS needs to be more blunt with parents and the community at large about its greatest challenges.

“What we have to do is a much better job of telling the truth. What is the actual issue here?” she said.

For starters, new, extreme rates of chronic absenteeism since the pandemic are stifling student growth, and the state holds schools to account for those rates.

“What can parents and families do? Send your children to school every day,” Johnson said. “We need help with that.”

Students who miss 10% or more of a school year for any reason are considered chronically absent. Statewide, Oklahoma schools received a D for attendance on the most recent state report cards, with almost 20% of students meeting that definition during the 2021-22 school year.

The rates were even higher in Tulsa, with 45.38% of students classified as chronically absent in 2021-22, compared to 22% in 2018-19. On the most recent state report card, an alternative middle school was the only secondary TPS site to receive an attendance grade above a D.

“At our secondary sites, we know that pre-pandemic, we had some students that truly struggled with what it meant to come to school on a regular basis because of a lot of factors,” Johnson said. “Post-pandemic, it has hit an all-time high. We feel like a lot of that has to do with students connecting to jobs and just a lot of helping their families out.

“Chronic absenteeism is a serious focus for us. We need help with that.”

Then there’s the challenge of having a qualified teacher in each classroom when the students get there.

With five weeks left until winter break, TPS still has about 100 certified teaching vacancies across the district, with particularly acute needs for those serving English learners and students with special education needs.

A coinciding wave of baby boomer retirements has left TPS relying more heavily on rookie teachers who need a lot of extra support and training.

As of October, almost one-fourth of TPS teachers have less than two years’ experience. Additionally, since the start of the fiscal year on July 1, the district has had 235 emergency teaching certificate requests approved by the Oklahoma State Board of Education — an increase of 42 from one year ago and 91 compared to October 2020.

“We have some great emergency- and alternatively certified teachers who look like they should have been in education this whole time,” Johnson said. “However, there’s also an initial challenge of getting them up to speed with what it means to be a teacher and what it means to be an educator.”

Lastly, Johnson feels there is a serious need for TPS to better explain the nuances of its student literacy scores and how the community can help address the continuous nature of this critical challenge.

“It’s absolutely not true that 88% of our kids can’t read. It’s false, not accurate and a gross misrepresentation. And it’s not fair for our district to carry the stigma that our kids cannot read,” Johnson said.

The district’s partnership with Reading Partners is a simple way concerned citizens can make sure more early readers are on track to read at grade level by third grade, by volunteering just one hour per week.

“If you look at levels of proficiency across our state, we are struggling as a state in this area. But even a child scoring ‘below basic’ level (on the state test) still does not mean they can’t read. It means their amount of comprehension is still a struggle.”

The timeline

As a condition for receiving its current state accreditation, TPS is now being required to provide monthly updates to the Oklahoma State Board of Education.

Specific requirements placed on the district include creating a plan to train all TPS teachers in the science of reading, creating an improvement plan for each of its 24 schools that received an “F” on the most recent state school report cards, and the developing and publishing new internal controls to prevent embezzlement.

TPS began using academic interventions for students based on the science of reading more than two years ago and is on track to implement professional development on the science of reading for all of its elementary school teachers in early 2024.

In addition to the monthly reports before the state board, Johnson and other TPS officials are meeting regularly with representatives from the Oklahoma State Department of Education to discuss the district’s academic progress.

Two of those state officials are even touring schools to have in-depth conversations with educators in the field to see the challenges for themselves, and TPS has been offered helpful advice and even access to things such as a new holiday-time tutoring program the state will be launching, Johnson said.

Despite Walters’ threats of additional punitive measures if progress to his liking is not made within months, Johnson said given the district’s faculty shortages and high concentration of students living in poverty or learning English as a second language, a realistic timeline for a complete academic turnaround is three to five years.

“Right now, it’s a bit premature for us to land at a place where we can say what’ll happen at the end of the year,” she said. “I can say that our district and our teams are working every day, looking at data on a consistent basis, monitoring progress, going into classrooms, talking with school leaders and other team members who work in various spaces and places, moving in and giving more support so that we can have the most successful year that we can have.”

TPS will also try to avoid “test fatigue” before annual state tests in April by delaying the district’s own spring progress test until after.

When asked what TPS parents can do about the target on the district’s back, Johnson said she worries that a greater sense of urgency is needed.

She said deeper, daily check-ins on each child’s progress “would go a long way to support what we’re attempting to do at our school sites.”

“Asking their children daily, not just how are things going at school, but ‘Let’s talk about each class,’ ‘Let’s look at your grades in PowerSchool (online parent portal),’ ‘I received the weekly grade update from TPS, let’s discuss that,’ ‘What type of supports can I give you for X, Y, Z class?’ Johnson said. “That would be tremendous help from our parents and guardians.”

Johnson isn’t just talking the talk here. Her own 16-year-old child is among the district’s 33,000 students in her charge.

Young students don’t just need academic content. They need encouragement and support at school and home to become responsible, self-aware learners who are mindful of academic expectations, time management, organization and preparation, Johnson said.

“My own child is taking a class that she enjoys but is a challenge for her,” she said, with a little laugh. “It’s critically important that I’m asking her questions about how hard have you studied? Are you being responsible? Are you aware of the expectations in the classroom? What do you need to do in order to be better prepared for the next test or quiz?”

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