September's School Quality Working Group meeting was mostly focused on the structure of the group and our process going forward. The Quality Assurance subcommittee had asked for a discussion of their role and of whether they could proceed with their work before the Measuring Quality subcommittee determines what metrics should be used to measure school quality.

There was quite a bit of back and forth on this. In the end it was decided that the committee could start its work by laying some groundwork and making decisions on how any system would be implemented, reviewed, etc. I suggested that we might need to rename the subcommittees. Having the word "quality" in the name of the main group and two of the subcommittees was causing confusion, especially when people were shortening the names of all three to "quality committee." The group agreed and the subcommittees were renamed. The Measuring Quality committee is now called Metrics while the Quality Assurance committee is now Policy and Implementation.

I also raised the idea the the Policy and Implementation could be working on other EAC recommendations like determining how the new assignment plan should be monitored and what kind of data BPS should be making available.

The Community Engagement subcommittee reported that they had surveyed principals

In other SQWG news, Carolyn Kain, chair of SpedPac was overcommitted and decided to leave the group. She has been replaced by SpedPac vice-chair John St. Amand who will also take Carolyn's place on the Metrics subcommittee.

During public comment, three Teach Plus policy fellows, all teachers at the Roger Clap Innovation School, presented recommendations on measuring quality. They stressed professional culture, academic achievement, positive school culture, and curriculum and instruction as areas to measure. They also stressed retention of high performing teachers and school leaders, and handed out copies of a report on the issue.