edcircuit
Science Safety - Safer Labs, Safer STEM, Safer CTE, Safer Arts, Safer Cyber
Promotional banner for Safer Ed: The School Safety Podcast, with students walking in a school hallway and a prominent Listen Now button.
Home Assessment and Testing Big Changes Require Complete Communication
Assessment and TestingK-12Videos
Vicki Adams Stephanie Tucker Jo Hayes
2 minutes read

Big Changes Require Complete Communication

Hillsboro ISD, a TPAC member in Texas, explains how clear communication builds community support as it moves away from traditional accountability measures.

Moving away from GPAs and standardized test scores takes buy-in from the community.
A young woman in a 1920s cardigan working at an old telephone switchboard plugging patch cords into a wall of jacks while wearing a vintage headset black and
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinWhatsappCopy LinkEmail
Listen to this article (3 minutes 1 second)Listen to this article3 min 1 s · read by a computer voice
Play video: CoffeED: Hillsboro ISD (17 minutes 13 seconds)
CoffeED: Hillsboro ISD17 min 13 sedCircuit on Vimeo

Texas district’s communication effectiveness on the riseCommunication is key when you are making wholesale changes to an education system that has been running the same way for generations. That is what is happening in Hillsboro, Texas, Independent School District.

The district is a member of the Texas Performance Assessment Consortium (TPAC), a group of 44 districts in Texas who are looking to change the traditional accountability measures and standards that have been in place for generations.

orange flowersBut in order to move away from GPAs and standardized test scores, it takes buy-in from the community. I sat down with Superintendent Vicki Adams, Hillsboro Intermediate School Principal Stephanie Tucker, and Hillsboro High School Associate Principal Jo Hayes to discuss the challenges of making those kinds of changes.

One topic we discussed was the emphasis the district has put on communication with the parents and the community at large. That emphasis is paying off. As Superintendent Adams told me, “We have found through the surveys that we’ve conducted that the communication has improved greatly. I think, this year, we were up to 76% who feel that we’re doing an excellent job of communicating with them and only about between 7% or 12% feel like the communication is still not good.

“That is a complete reversal of what it was a couple of years ago when it was just about the opposite of that. They felt they weren’t getting communication in every avenue.”

They’re doing good work down in Hillsboro ISD, and the entire community will be better off for it in the long run.

About Hillsboro ISD

Hillsboro Independent School District is a public school district based in Hillsboro, Texas, that also serves a portion of Carl’s Corner. The Superintendent of Hillsboro ISD is Vicki Adams.

Further Reading

  1. Los Angeles Times – Students’ progress stalls on California’s standardized tests
  2. Sooke News Mirror – Technology increasingly being used to track students progress in SD62
  3. The Atlanta Journal Constitution – Georgia to search for alternative to standardized state tests

Related reading

More on Assessment and Testing

  • Vicki Adams
    : Author
    Superintendent, Hillsboro ISD

    The Superintendent of Hillsboro ISD is Vicki Adams.

    View all posts
  • Stephanie Tucker
    : Author
    Former Principal, Hillsboro Intermediate School

    At the time of the edCircuit interview (2018), Stephanie Tucker was principal of Hillsboro Intermediate School in Hillsboro Independent School District, Texas. She spoke with edCircuit about communicating with families and the community as the district, a member of the Texas Performance Assessment Consortium, moved away from traditional grading and testing.

    View all posts
  • Jo Hayes
    : Author
    Former Associate Principal, Hillsboro High School

    At the time of the edCircuit interview (2018), Jo Hayes was associate principal of Hillsboro High School in Hillsboro Independent School District, Texas. She spoke with edCircuit about communicating with families and the community as the district, a member of the Texas Performance Assessment Consortium, moved away from traditional grading and testing.

    View all posts
FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinWhatsappCopy LinkEmail
Banner about closing the digital safety gap in school filtering, featuring Circuits and CoSN logos with a Read Now link to CoSN.org/cybersecurity

Join Thousands of Other Subscribers

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Participate in the COmmunity

Promotional banner for Safer Ed: The School Safety Podcast, with students walking in a school hallway and a prominent Listen Now button.
Share Your Voice on edCircuit

Use EdCircuit as a Resource

Would you like to use an EdCircuit article as a resource. We encourage you to link back directly to the url of the article and give EdCircuit or the Author credit.

MORE FROM EDCIRCUIT