Pasco’s Vision

Guiding Principles

The three guiding principles for Pasco’s Vision: A Community of Connected Schools are Continuous Progress, Continuity of Caring, and Ensuring Equity and Excellence. These guiding principles provide the philosophical basis for policies that direct the work of the schools in Pasco County. They are the theoretical underpinnings for choices of curriculum design and teaching methods as well as facilities construction and support services. These guiding principles embody research-based evidence that supports models of team planning and teaching, an integrated curriculum system, and a learner-focused school organization. The future schools of Pasco County will be designed to manifest these guiding principles.

Guiding Principle 1: Continuous Progress

Elementary schools in Pasco County have implemented a framework of continuous progress, multiage classrooms with the intent to enhance students’ academic, social/emotional, and physical performance. Continuous Progress has application across all levels of school in Pasco County, and is defined as a curriculum which allows a student to progress at his or her own rate, within a framework of high expectations, without conforming to an externally imposed time limit on learning or a fixed amount of subject matter in a fixed amount of time. Continuous Progress requires that students should neither spend time on what they have already adequately achieved nor proceed to more difficult tasks if they have not yet learned material or acquired skills essential to that new level of knowledge. To clarify the meaning of this concept, the following definition of Continuous Progress has been developed:

A continuous progress approach to school organization seeks to enable and encourage each student to progress at his or her own rate of development. This method offers flexible academic expectations and opportunities while valuing a commitment to educating each student. The continuous progress philosophy supports the belief that given the right conditions all children can learn. It provides opportunities for flexible organizational patterns and may include non-traditional teacher assignments to allow for optimal student growth and the expectation of success.

A significant feature of Continuous Progress is the “blurring” of ages across grades. The extended placement of children in a multiage or nongraded classroom assumes a variable rate of skill attainment and removes the issue of grade level advancement within a two to three year period. A second feature is the emphasis on interactive teaching and engaged learning. These interactions occur frequently among students of varying ages and/or ability levels. Instruction is designed to meet the needs of students as individuals, rather than students as a whole group.

Continuous Progress relates to a fluid approach to high levels of academic achievement. Students are encouraged to progress through stages and levels of learning when they are developmentally ready to do so, rather than according to a predetermined age, grade, or curriculum level. The term also refers to a flexible approach which involves: 1) setting high standards and expectations for learning; 2) encouraging of cross-age and/or cross-ability interactions among students for the purpose of contributing to student learning progress; and 3) using developmentally appropriate instructional teaching/learning strategies which include interactive and process learning opportunities.

Guiding Principle 2: Continuity of Caring

The organization of school classrooms into houses, teams, and/or Learning Communities, prekindergarten through adult, create learning environments that permit Continuity of Caring—the second of the three guiding principles that provide a framework for Pasco’s Vision: A Community of Connected Schools. The principle of Continuity of Caring creates stable and secure learning environments where all students can achieve.

Recognizing the results of early influences in children’s readiness for school, the district invests in high quality, comprehensive preschool services. These services, located in communities with the highest poverty rates, are an intentional connection of families with elementary school programs. There is also an extensive after-school childcare system available to parents throughout the district.

As students enter and progress through the schools’ learning environments, they stay on a team with the same group of teachers for two or three years. Houses, teams, and Learning Communities offer students the opportunity to work together and learn from a consistent and familiar group of instructional staff, support staff, and peers for more than one year. With the increased number of schools that must accommodate ever-growing numbers of students, the placement of students into houses, teams and Learning Communities creates smaller, more personalized school settings within the larger school facility.

In multiyear learning environments, students, teachers, and parents have more time available to build purposeful, nurturing relationships that foster open and productive communication. These strong bonds between home and school emulate the comfortable feel of a family and may begin as early as the preschool years. These ongoing relationships encourage learning and supportive dialogue that promotes high levels of student achievement. Communication about curriculum and student learning is provided across school levels, elementary through adult education, connected through the school feeder pattern. This purposeful Community of Connected School arrangement that accommodates families and neighborhoods whose children move through the same elementary, middle, and high schools.

An extension of Continuity of Caring is shown in the variety of learning opportunities available to meet individual student learning needs. Flexible school schedules, a balanced school year calendar, summer learning experiences, and extended day or after-school programs are available for students. Formative information regarding individual students’ talents and interests are assessed in secondary students using aptitude and interest inventories, which assist in school and career advisement. Advanced learning opportunities are available through adult education, dual enrollment programs with colleges and universities, internationally renown advanced learning programs, on-the-job training experiences, advanced placement classes, and programs for gifted and talented students.

Continuity of Caring demonstrates that students are valued. Decisions in the classroom, in the school, and in the district are made based on this value that considers the whole child — his/her academic, social, emotional, physical, and aesthetic needs. Opportunities are provided for students to grow and progress in all of these areas, contributing to the development of a well-rounded and well-adjusted graduate and citizen. Caring for students is exhibited throughout all functions of the district school system. For example, by providing nutritious breakfast and lunch meals, by designing new school facilities based on how students best learn, and by making sure that students are safe while at school and on the school bus, the district affirms this value of caring for children in the every day business of schooling.

Guiding Principle 3: Ensuring Equity and Excellence

As the American education system strives to achieve an equitable, quality education for an increasingly diverse population of students, it is also challenged to elevate the standards for academic performance that apply to all students. It has become necessary, therefore, to define quality as Ensuring Equity and Excellence, the third guiding principle of Pasco’s vision.

To ensure equity and excellence for all students, it is an expectation for all schools and the district to focus on continuous improvement. Continuous improvement in Pasco County is based, in part, on the body of effective schools literature, which describes school improvement as a process in which all stakeholders (school administrators, teachers, parents, students, business partners, and community members) are involved.

This planning process requires the school-based members of an improvement team to work in a collaborative and proactive manner to identify school problems and concerns, select improvement strategies, take action, and monitor and evaluate results. As part of the problem-solving process, the improvement team uses disaggregation tools to analyze demographic, student and staff performance data. These data provide the school improvement team with indicators that identify progress and point the way toward systematic, continuous improvement.

The process further requires that all participants fully endorse two fundamental beliefs about schooling: that the school is teaching for learning for all, and that equity in quality is the overall goal of the school. Together these two fundamental beliefs provide standards for measuring the degree of quality that exists in Pasco County schools. The excellence standard assures that the overall level of achievement in a school is high. The equity standard assures that high achievement remains consistent for all students, regardless of socio-economic status, cultural heritage, cognitive level, or physical ability.

Ensuring Equity and Excellence enables all students to be successful learners in a district that values and pursues continuous improvement.

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Documents that Support the Vision

Living the vision (Strategic Plan) - As the District School Board of Pasco County continues its ambitious approach to long-term strategic planning, it remains committed to the individual value of each student. The Strategic Plan reflects the current thinking of stakeholders in designing schools that will address the complexity of living and working as successful citizens in the 21st Century.

Graduate Outcomes of Learning - All graduates of Pasco schools must have a firm grasp of knowledge and skills needed for success in postsecondary and workforce environments. The learning outcomes for the decades ahead build on skills and abilities in critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, communication and teamwork.

Schools of Tomorrow - What might it mean to live and learn in the schools of the future? The 2010-2011 Vision Committee sets the stage for future learning environments in Pasco County schools. An innovative glimpse into what schools may become.