The Southern Union Office of Education, under the leadership of Murray Cooper, director, is pleased to acknowledge and congratulate Adventist Christian Academy – Raleigh (ACA-Raleigh) of the Carolina Conference, and Forest Lake Education Center (FLEC) of the Florida Conference for obtaining their Level 1 HRS Certification through the Marzano’s Program of High Reliability Schools.
The Marzano Program of High Reliability Schools (HRS) is supported by 50 years of educational research, and was created by Marzano Resources as a process of five levels that support schools through their transformation into organizations that take preventive and ongoing improvement steps to ensure success for all students.
The five HRS levels include Level 1: Safe, Supportive, and Collaborative Culture; Level 2: Effective Teaching in Every Classroom; and Level 3: Providing a Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum. Together with Level 4: Standards-Referenced Reporting and Level 5: Competency-Based Education, they form a hierarchical system or process that schools can utilize to measure, monitor, and certify their effectiveness.
The North American Division has moved toward a Standards-based Education for its schools, and the Southern Union Office of Education has dedicated its resources to supporting continuous growth through learning, assessing, and confirming that educational organizations are highly reliable at Levels 1-3. These three levels form a solid foundation to effective teaching and learning, and they are complementary to the Southern Union Edge, which commits that schools across the Union will provide education that is GREAT for God-Centered, Results-Oriented, Environment that Nurtures, Aligned with Standards, and Team Effort.
Both schools, ACA-Raleigh, under the leadership of Lizette Trawick, principal, and the support of her staff, and FLEC, under the leadership of Linette Colon, business manager; Stephanie Cooper, vice principal; Melissa Davis, vice principal; Jeff Foote, principal; and Scott McCoy, vice principal; along with their Faculty Leadership Team members, and their entire staff, have responded to the call for schools to learn and grow through an ongoing improvement process using the same language and focus in order to achieve better outcomes for the students and adults in their schools.
These two schools, dissimilar in both setting and size, with ACA- Raleigh serving 148 students in preK-10, and FLEC serving 690 students in preK-8, have worked hard to create a culture that is positive, nurturing, and Christ-centered, and to prove that fact through data results and performance validation.
While schools in the Southern Union may choose to learn and assess educational effectiveness of Levels 1-3 by comparing their current performance against a set of indicators and using data results to improve and track progress on their own, it is commendable that ACA-Raleigh and FLEC — two different schools united in common principles and purpose, chose to undergo the highly rigorous and formal process of getting validated and certified through the Marzano High Reliable Schools Program. These schools have now created a context or space where students and educators can thrive in a safe, supportive, and collaborative environment.
The Southern Union Office of Education salutes both schools for their systems-thinking; their commitment to data and evidence-based processes; and their dedication to ongoing improvement in teaching, learning, and assessing their school culture for safety, support, and collaboration. Achieving certification in Level 1 provides a firm foundation upon which those schools may add Level 2 – Effective Teaching, and Level 3 – Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum, which, together, describe the three levels of commitment or what schools must do and become, as they journey towards Standards-based Education and as they design a GREAT education for all.
Southern Union | May 2024
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