The school year may have started on September 8 for Princeton Public School students, but teachers and staff were up and running well before that.
On Wednesday, September 2, for example, teachers and staff gathered for an opening convocation led by Superintendent Steve Cochrane. It was a great day,” he reported afterward. “The teachers and staff returned with new contracts, but also with new excitement and a new sense of purpose.”
“Last year was what many might consider to be a perfect storm in the life of our district,” Mr. Cochrane observed in his remarks at the convocation. “We had to contend not only with protracted negotiations, but with our initial implementation of PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) testing С a huge undertaking С and then, in the spring, with six separate incidents of what we all came to know as swatting [prank phone calls that summon Special Weapons and Tactics teams]. It was an emotionally and physically draining year.”
Standing now “on the other side of the storm,” Mr. Cochrane used the September 2 event to welcome 45 new staff members (including 33 teachers) to the system, and to describe the challenges he foresees in the coming year.
“Fueled by a number of factors affecting education nationally,” these include “being pushed to focus narrowly on standardized tests for students and to distill the complex and collaborative act of teaching into a single number on a four-point scale.”
The widening academic achievement gap in this country “between those who have and those who do not,” is another source of concern, and race issues, not surprisingly, also figure into the mix. “In a post-Ferguson world, there is an even more undeniable need for schools to talk honestly and openly about issues of race, culture, expectations, and equity,” Mr. Cochrane said. “We owe that to ourselves and to our students.”
Technology’s “tidal waves of incredible promise for us as educators” also bring a “host of problems for us to avoid,” he warned, and “unprecedented levels of student stress” are worrying. “A recent American Psychology Study of over 1,000 high school students revealed that 27 percent reported feeling ‘extremely stressed,’” Mr. Cochrane pointed out. “And a 2014 study of over 200,000 college freshman revealed that only half reported average or above average levels of emotional health. The children in our charge are racing faster and faster to catch the brass ring of college admissions only to bring to it historically high levels of anxiety and depression.”
Using the art of sailing as a metaphor, Mr. Cochrane, who is entering his third year as district superintendent, suggested ways in which the Princeton Public Schools might “navigate” these difficult waters in the months to come, including becoming “a flagship for others to follow.” Guideposts include having a strategic plan in place for the “next three to five years,” and, more succinctly, adhering to the district’s single-sentence mission statement “to prepare all of our students to lead lives of joy and purpose as knowledgeable, creative, and compassionate citizens of a global society.”
First, though, there was a new school year to start, and by Monday afternoon Mr. Cochrane was eagerly anticipating “the return of children to our classrooms. Teaching, learning, and caring for children can be hard work,” he added, “but it is work infused with meaning and challenge, laughter and relationships.”
[Editor’s Note: See Princeton Housing Authority Chair Leighton Newlin’s letter to the editor in this issue applauding Mr. Cochrane and others’ efforts to address the minority academic achievement gap by providing transportation for children who live in public housing to attend after school programming for additional instruction and tutoring.