Who Stands with the Owl Corps?

A letter from the Publisher

In 1995 I started School Wise Press to provide education leaders the same level of professional design, writing, and numeric literacy in accountability reporting that professional sports teams and financial institutions have. Our premise was simple. In this new era of accountability, schools’ and districts’ reputations would rise and fall based on the perception of staff, parents, and voters of their ability to provide evidence of learning. Learning is difficult to measure, of course. But those who measure it would have the power to determine both the quality of that evidence and the quality of its interpretation.

Just as the craft of reporting results about schools and districts is lagging when compared with sports or finance reporting, the art and craft of measuring learning’s progress itself is lagging. We believe one reason for this is the scarcity of talented practitioners. Another reason is that those who govern and manage school districts and schools have a hard time identifying those talented practitioners.

Hence the Owl Corps. We have an owl’s eye for talent in this field. Those eyes are largely the eyes of our senior director, Bob Ryan, who led the research, evaluation, and assessment group at the Los Angeles County Office of Education. He prides himself on finding great people and matching them with challenges that draw out their talents fully.

This summer Bob spent 100 days searching for the best team of talent in the state. Under his direction, the directors he has recruited—Phil Morse, Tom Barrett, Jim Baxter, Patrick Lee, Bob Mange, and Howard Herl—have more than 150 years of combined experience to offer to leaders who want to survive and thrive during this difficult economic downturn.

We are also fielding the Owl Corps because we believe in the power that wise assessment can bring to teachers and students when put to work in classrooms.

Look no further than Poway USD, where enlightened district leaders like Ray Wilson and Deputy Superintendent John Collins developed a fierce focus on benchmark assessments and asked teachers to vote to opt in, school by school. Now teachers are sharing their results in grade-level professional communities across the entire district, and students are setting their own goals, coming to teachers when they feel they’re ready to move on. (Click here if you want to hear their story in their own words.)

More is possible. Wiser uses of better measurement can help expand the limits of the possible. We intend to contribute to this happier future of greater possibilities. I hope you’ll join us in doing so.

Steve Rees
President and Publisher