Example of a turnaround school

Turnaround charter getting high marks for college prep
By Martha Woodall

Inquirer Staff Writer

As Mastery Charter School at Thomas prepares for its first graduation next month, good news is pouring in to its South Philadelphia campus.

In a neighborhood where district high schools send 16 to 24 percent of their graduates to college, 93 percent of Thomas' seniors will attend.

It has been only five years since Mastery took on Thomas and became the first operator in the city to convert a troubled middle school into a charter. Yet Thomas was one of 22 charter schools nationwide lauded this spring by a New York educational-reform group for achieving dramatic academic gains with low-income students.

What's especially sweet for Mastery is that this year, for the first time in its nine-year history, Mastery students have cracked the Ivy League ceiling. One Mastery-Thomas grad will attend the University of Pennsylvania; another is bound for Columbia University.

"I'm thrilled," said Scott Gordon, Mastery's founder and chief executive officer, who recalled nervously handing hoagies to students at lunch on Mastery-Thomas' opening day in 2005.

"I remember how scared we were," the businessman-turned-educator said. "This was our first turnaround. It was a big deal."

Mastery is on the cusp of another milestone. In the fall, the charter organization will take over three elementary schools and for the first time will be able to educate children from the primary grades through high school.

It's the realization of a dream for Mastery, which opened its first charter in 2001 as a high school.

Mastery's success with the high school, a demanding college-prep model, led the Philadelphia School District's then-chief executive, Paul Vallas, and the School Reform Commission to ask Mastery to take on Thomas.

The next year Mastery tackled Shoemaker, a troubled middle school in West Philadelphia, and in 2007 took charge of Pickett, in Germantown.

Mastery has followed the approach it pioneered at Thomas: It turns middle schools into charters and adds a grade each year to reach 12. All four Mastery charters meet the academic standards of the federal No Child Left Behind Law and have for nearly every year they have existed.

Ten days ago, the SRC selected Mastery as one of six nonprofits that will take over low-performing district schools as part of Superintendent Arlene Ackerman's Imagine 2014 initiative. Slated for conversion to Mastery charters are Harrity, Mann, and Smedley.

As charter conversions, the schools continue to enroll students from the neighborhood instead of drawing them from across the city, as most charter schools do.

When Mastery embarked on its turnaround at Thomas, staff members were not the only ones who were apprehensive. Students who had been seventh graders at Thomas Middle School were not sure what to expect that first day as they approached the building at 927 Johnston St. to begin eighth grade at Mastery-Thomas.

"At first I was nervous," said Keenan Burton-Sessons, 18. But then he noticed that once-dirty hallways were clean and that walls that had been scarred by graffiti in the spring were painted in bright, engaging colors.

"I thought, 'Oh, man. What is this?' "

Salma Zeb, 18, who had a string of substitute teachers for science and social studies for most of seventh grade, wasn't sure whether Mastery's changes went beyond the cosmetic.

"I expected disappointment because Thomas had disappointed me since the sixth grade," she said. "When I walked in, there were teachers standing there, shaking hands. It seemed like the atmosphere was so different, but I was still cynical. I had to give it time."

She and several classmates quickly decided the changes were genuine: Teachers had high expectations. Instruction continued after school and on Saturdays. Bad behavior was not tolerated. Students were expected to attend college. And at Thomas, where many seniors will be the first in their families to go, staff helped them navigate the maze of college applications.

Islam Hafairi, who will study aerospace engineering on the main campus of Pennsylvania State University, remembers sitting in the auditorium the first day, listening to the principal talk about all the changes.

"He was telling us what would be different," Hafairi said. "That's when most of us realized this wouldn't be like Thomas. We were here to learn, and we went on from there."

Mastery methodically moved students through their academic subjects; introduced Advanced Placement courses, including calculus, biology, and literature; required juniors to complete internships; and provided nurturing and support.

"It was like a new world, basically," Zeb said.

"The same students who you saw in Thomas fighting every day - here, you don't see them fight at all," said Burton-Sessons, who nailed a perfect math score on his SATs and will attend Columbia on a full scholarship.

"I think what changed and made the students change is they got respect from teachers," he said. "They thought their teachers cared."

That sense of caring, Burton-Sessons said, helped students believe they could succeed. "They have something to look forward to. They have a goal."

Zeb, who received a hefty financial-aid package to attend Penn, agreed.

"I think people really have changed their attitudes and their outlook on life," she said. "Basically, they could see they've been given another chance and should take advantage of it."

Statistics show that's what has happened with the 87 members of the Class of 2010 who will graduate June 18. Not only are 80 registered for college, but nearly two-thirds will attend four-year schools, including Ursinus, Ithaca, Penn State, Temple, and La Salle.

College adviser Debi Durso said the remaining seven seniors planned to attend two-year schools. Six are taking placement tests at Community College of Philadelphia; one plans to enroll at Camden County College in January.

"I have known these kids since eighth grade," said Durso, who taught them English, shepherded them on campus tours, visited their homes, and helped their families fill out financial-aid forms.

"We talked about college when they walked in the door in eighth grade," she said. "As we have gone through the years, I was 98 percent sure they were all going on to college."

Durso, a former district teacher, said: "I feel like we raised them. We showed them there's more out there. But it comes down to them - the determination and passion. . . . They're great kids."

But Debbie Elliott, whose daughter, Courtney, will attend La Salle in the fall, called Mastery-Thomas a "great school" and said she believed it deserved plenty of credit for the students' success.

"Courtney was always a good student, but I think Mastery Charter really helped her," Elliott said. "She's dedicated and really matured here. I couldn't see her anywhere else."




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Contact staff writer Martha Woodall at 215-854-2789 or martha.woodall@phillynews.com.








Find this article at:
http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20100523_Turnaround_charter_getting_high_marks_for_college_prep.html

Using the iPod for Reading

iPod, iListen, iRead

The learning landscape is shifting under our feet. It's an exciting and momentous time for technology advances in learning, from the explosion of interest in online courses to free videoconferencing to powerful new devices at lower cost, such as the iPad. Having worked in educational media and technology beginning in the 1970s, I dare say that more change has happened in our field in the last four years than the last 40.

Last fall, I presented our Digital Generation project [1] at a conference in Hangzhou, China, organized by professor Michael Searson from Kean University, a leader in providing teachers-in-training with global perspectives, curricula, and study abroad. There, I learned about a creative use of the iPod for helping young students master reading, writing, and much more. I tell this story at greater length in my upcoming book, Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools (Jossey-Bass, June) [2].

In 2005, Kathy Shirley, technology director for the Escondido Union School District near San Diego, observed a teacher conducting "fluency assessments" of her students, spending a full day in individual sessions with students, marking on worksheets the pace, accuracy, and expression of each student’s reading. The school had to hire a substitute teacher for the day.

Shirley, an Apple Distinguished Educator, had been using an iPod to record her own voice memos. The light bulb went off: Why couldn’t students' readings be recorded on an iPod, on their own time, and reviewed by the teacher, on her own time? More importantly, could the act of students recording and listening to their readings improve their skills? Escondido's majority of 53 percent Latino English-language learners made the search for a better way even more urgent.

In 2006, the iREAD (I Record Educational Audio Digitally) project started as a pilot program in Escondido, with six teachers of English language learners working with low-performing readers, content experts, and IT staff. This year, more than 100 K–8 classrooms are using 1,300 iPods, and the program has expanded to include readers at all levels. Students use the iPods with external microphones to record their reading practice and assessments. The iPod Touch, with its larger screen, Internet access, and applications, enables a better multimedia experience, as students download audiobooks and songs and read along with the text of stories and lyrics.

Teachers are trained to use the iPods, microphones, iTunes, GarageBand for audio production, and other digital tools. Student and teacher recordings are uploaded to iTunes, where teachers create playlists for each student. Students, teachers, and parents can then review progress, creating a powerful learning loop between all three.

The “Missing Mirror” in Language Instruction
As Shirley describes it, ‘‘Voice recording using the iPod provides that instant feedback loop, as students can easily record their fluency practice and listen immediately to the voice recording. It's difficult, especially for struggling readers, to 'step outside themselves' during the moment of reading. They are concentrating so hard at the act of reading that they have no idea what they really sound like. The iPod does something that even the teacher cannot do, provide a means for the student to receive feedback by listening to their own recordings. The iPod is very much like a mirror for students."

In 2008, the Canby, Oregon, district also began experimenting with the program, led by technology director Joe Morelock, also an Apple Distinguished Educator. Canby, a district of nine schools and about 5,000 students, now has about fifty classrooms using iPods of various types and the project has extended into high school, where students are listening to audiobooks and using video cameras to analyze their presentation skills.

Evidence of Student Outcomes
Escondido and Canby classrooms are seeing large gains in the speed of student reading, one part of reading fluency. In a Canby fourth-grade classroom of sixteen students, from the fall to mid-year assessment of reading fluency, when average increase in word count per minute (WCPM) is 12, the average in the iPod classroom was close to 20. (WCPM measures the pace of reading; accuracy is another component of fluency.) Most students achieved more than double the average expected.

In an Escondido fourth-grade class of ten students, average increase was 48 WCPM in just six weeks. At the start of fourth grade, all of the students lagged behind the 120 WCPM goal for third-grade completion. Within the six-week period, more than half of them had caught up and surpassed the goal for fourth-grade completion, making more than a year’s progress in that period.

A pilot study of reading achievement using the Iowa Test of Basic Skills also showed impressive gains. A group of 12 fifth-graders in Escondido using iPod Touches averaged 1.8 years of reading progress in six months, compared with a matched group of students at the same school who averaged .25, a quarter of a year’s increase. Both districts are planning larger-scale studies of reading achievement.

Reading Success Becomes Contagious
I had a chance to visit Central Elementary in Escondido this May and was bowled over by the level of student enthusiasm for using iPod apps for reading, writing, geography, mathematics, and more. In these classrooms, students are leading their own reading. They want to practice their speed, accuracy, and comprehension. The iPod makes personal a process that has been painfully public. No struggling reader likes to have his or her weaknesses exposed in a group, in front of the entire class or their reading circle. The iPod enables more intimate, 1:1 reading instruction between a student and a teacher listening to each other’s voices in audio files.

As the students get excited, teachers get excited, too. Success becomes contagious for everyone involved. As Morelock puts it, ‘‘This is the secret sauce to all of this: teacher motivation. We have heard teacher after teacher say, ‘This has totally transformed my teaching!’ ‘I’m having more fun and being a better teacher.’ ‘I’m never gonna retire.’” One teacher told Shirley, ‘‘Using iPods with microphones has engaged students more than anything I’ve ever experienced! These tools allow even the softest speaker to be heard and motivate even the most reluctant reader.’’ Another said succinctly: ‘‘There’s less of me talking and more of them doing.’’

A classroom set of thirty iPod Touches and a cart costs about $12,000. The iPods can be supplemented with five desktop or laptop computers for students to produce media, such as podcasts. It is a less costly model than the 1:1 laptop classroom and right-sized for elementary students, who can hold the key to their literacy in the palms of their hands.

Resources on iPods in Literacy
Shirley and Morelock have created a Web site and a [3] from these iPod projects, including videos of classroom scenes and teacher interviews.

See Julie Johnson’s third-grade classroom blog [4] from Canby, including how her students downloaded Yoga for Kids podcast and the Pocket Yoga app to relax during test preparation.

The iRead project in Escondido was covered in a May, 2010 story in the local North County Times. [5] The photo shows a student showing me her iPod screen, but it should have been a photo of superintendent Jennifer Walters, who joined the classroom visit that day. Her advocacy for this cutting-edge application of technology has been a critical factor in its success.



This article originally published on 5/17/2010
Edutopia: What Works in Education © 2010 The George Lucas Educational Foundation • All rights reserved.

What do you know about....?

Asperger's Disorder is a milder variant of Autistic Disorder. Both Asperger's Disorder and Autistic Disorder are in fact subgroups of a larger diagnostic category. This larger category is called either Autistic Spectrum Disorders, mostly in European countries, or Pervasive Developmental Disorders ("PDD"), in the United States. In Asperger's Disorder, affected individuals are characterized by social isolation and eccentric behavior in childhood. There are impairments in two-sided social interaction and non-verbal communication. Though grammatical, their speech may sound peculiar due to abnormalities of inflection and a repetitive pattern. Clumsiness may be prominent both in their articulation and gross motor behavior. They usually have a circumscribed area of interest which usually leaves no space for more age appropriate, common interests. Some examples are cars, trains, French Literature, door knobs, hinges, cappucino, meteorology, astronomy or history. The name "Asperger" comes from Hans Asperger, an Austrian physician who first described the syndrome in 1944. An excellent translation of Dr. Asperger's original paper is provided by Dr. Uta Frith in her Autism and Asperger Syndrome.

http://www.aspergers.com/aspclin.htm

From What to How

Published Online: May 11, 2010
Published in Print: May 12, 2010, as From What to How
Commentary

Common Standards: From What to How
How Common-Core Standards Should Influence Teaching
By Douglas B. Reeves





Will the recently released draft of K-12 standards from the Common Core State Standards Initiative provide a degree of coherence in academic expectations for students, teachers, and education systems that has not previously been available in American education? Or will this effort be one more failed reform, distinguished more by enthusiastic presentation than by successful implementation? The answer depends not merely on the standards documents, but also on the degree to which policymakers and leaders are willing to link the clear intent of the standards to the reality of the classroom.

We should first acknowledge that, in a nation committed to “local control” of education, any attempt to draft common standards represents courageous and difficult work. The standards-writers deserve our thanks, if not always our agreement. But while I applaud the rigor and specificity present in much of the standards document, I must challenge what seems to be its central premise: that standards are merely the “what” of education, while the “how” must be left to the discretion of individual schools and teachers.

In the introduction to the English/language arts standards document, for example, the writers declare: “Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the standards” [Page 2]. And they then say, “The standards define what all students are expected to know and be able to do but not how teachers should teach” [Page 3]. Such statements undermine what is otherwise a document with a great deal of promise.

Consider the best features of the proposed common-core standards, which include a refreshing emphasis on nonfiction reading and writing at the elementary school level. The document suggests that 65 percent of elementary school writing should be explanatory or persuasive in nature, while most current elementary writing is dominated by fiction, fantasy, poetry, and personal narrative.

The standards also make clear that teachers in social studies and science are responsible for teaching and assessing reading, writing, speaking, and listening as well, a directive that is particularly important at the secondary level. Recent research suggests that while teachers are widely aware of the importance of evidence-based instructional practices in writing, they are not likely to apply them in secondary social studies and science classes.

The standards for grades 6-8 are particularly strong, and will for many schools represent a significant improvement in the preparation of students for high school. If taken seriously, they will lead to dramatic increases in the attention given to the teaching and assessment of reading and writing in these grades. The case for improved quantity and quality of nonfiction writing and reading at this level is supported with an impressive collection of research.

The standards-writers not only make clear the importance of greater rigor in our expectations of what student literacy should be, but also demonstrate convincingly that most students now fail to read and write at the levels suggested by these standards. Indeed, students are rarely asked to read and write with this degree of complexity.

The standards-writers deserve special commendation for their emphasis on kindergarten reading and writing. While I continue to hear the evidence-free argument that it is not “developmentally appropriate” for kindergartners to read and write, the standards document demonstrates with authentic examples that students can rise to the challenge. Writing, or failing to write, by the ages of 5 or 6 is not a reflection of brain development, but a consequence of adult expectations.


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The false “what-how” dichotomy, however, threatens to reduce the standards-writers’ accomplishments to rubble. In their introduction, for example, they also say that “the standards do not mandate such things as a particular writing process or specify the full range of metacognitive strategies that students may need to use to monitor and direct their thinking and learning” [Page 2]. They might as well have written, “While the evidence suggests that obesity is a national tragedy with enormous personal and financial costs, we completely support your decision to dive into a smorgasbord of sugared water and junk food.” After all, recommending diet and exercise would be too close to mandating a “process,” something these standards eschew.

Any careful reading of the standards makes clear that process and content are essential components of effective education. The document very clearly does not regard every expression of professional judgment as equally valid. The writers, properly in my view, would require that 4th grade students “produce coherent and clear writing in which the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience” [Page 18].

The document also provides very explicit requirements for persuasive, informative, and narrative writing at each grade level. The expectations for revisions, research, correction, and adherence to conventions all have clear implications for teaching methods and instructional leadership.

With a majority of states having agreed to embrace the common-core standards, this moment is too important to let slip away. Now is not the time to weaken before those who think that “local control” implies a constitutional right of indifference to evidence. Standards take us halfway up the mountain. If we are to reach the summit, then teaching and leadership, not equivocation and indecision, will take us there. n

Douglas B. Reeves is the president of the Leadership and Learning Center, headquartered in Englewood, Colo.

Vol. 29, Issue 31, Pages 32-33










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What top performing schools have in common

Secrets to Success
What top-performing schools have in common

By Karin Chenoweth



There is never one single factor that is at the core of a successful school: no one structure, or one curriculum, or one set of policies and procedures that, if every school in the country were to adopt it, would transform them into high-achieving schools. Schools are complex organisms that can’t be changed that easily.

But there are some characteristics that they all share. I call them, for want of a better term, “it’s being done” schools to distinguish them from the “run-of-the- mill schools” and the all-too-common “crummy poor-kid schools” that I describe in the book. Here are a few.

1) They teach their students. This seems like a flip thing to say, but it is at the heart of high performance and improvement. In “it’s being done” schools, educators think deeply about what their students need to learn and how to make sure they learn it. They begin with their state’s standards, but in most cases they are not limited by them. Teachers in these schools teach increasingly complex and sophisticated material, aiming for their students to exceed standards—which helps ensure that they meet them.

They use the verb “to teach” properly. That is, they do not say what many teachers around the country say: “I taught it, but the kids didn’t get it.” Although common, this formulation actually makes no sense.

2) They don’t teach to the state tests. All these schools make sure their students know what their state’s tests look like in terms of the format, and they try to ensure that their students aren’t surprised by the material or the kinds of questions asked. Some of them make a big deal of state testing day with pep rallies, and some do a bit of test prep in the form of giving practice tests. But none of them spends a huge amount of time teaching their students what will be on the state tests or teaching them how to “bubble in” a scoring sheet. They teach a rich, coherent curriculum tied to state standards. For the state tests that are a bit more sophisticated and high-level, such as the Massachusetts MCAS and the New York Regents, the schools might spend more time teaching directly to what will be tested, but that is because those tests are more closely tied to a set of high standards.

3) They have high expectations for their students. They assume that their students are able to meet high standards, and believe their job is to help their students get there. They do not assume that their students are so crippled by poverty and discrimination that they will never be able to meet high standards. They talk with their students about going to college or into high-level technical training.

4) They embrace and use all the data they can get their hands on. They want to know how their students are doing, and they know that classroom observation by teachers, though important, is fragmentary and doesn’t allow overall patterns to be observed. State test data, district data, classroom test data, and any formative-assessment data they can find are all eagerly studied.

When they are lucky, they are able to use their district’s or state’s data systems to give them the tools they need to analyze the data. But if the district doesn’t provide the data in the form they need, they come up with their own ways of charting and displaying data, because they consider it so important.

5) They constantly reexamine what they do. Tradition is never invoked as the only reason something is done, the way it is in crummy schools. If the data show that the way they teach reading isn’t getting all kids learning to read, teachers research and incorporate new methods of reading instruction. And that same willingness to examine what’s not working and make changes extends to every area of school life. The discomfort this causes teachers cannot be underestimated. It can be very difficult for teachers to change long-established patterns or to diverge from what they learned in their university teaching programs, but these are the logical consequences of putting student achievement ahead of everything else.

6) They are accountable. They know they have an obligation not only to their students but to their communities to demonstrate that they are doing the job that has been entrusted to them—to educate future citizens. And, in a kind of extension of that obligation, they are competitive in a way that many educators have traditionally not been, at least outside of sports. If another school nearby outperforms them, they are the first ones to try to figure out what that school did and try to incorporate that new information into their own practice, so they can beat that school the next year. And most are quite open about sharing the data with the students themselves, explicitly teaching students that poor performance on an assessment simply means that the students and teachers need to work harder and more effectively, not that the students are in some way deficient.

7) They use school time wisely. They establish classroom and school routines to ensure that endless amounts of time are not spent going to the bathroom, getting out and putting away books and materials, and going from one activity or class to another. School time is time for instruction, and instruction is treated as something almost sacred.

Most of the schools establish uninterrupted blocks of time for instruction so that classes aren’t disrupted by bus announcements or by students being pulled out for speech therapy or counseling. Using time wisely doesn’t mean, by the way, that the kids don’t ever have fun or move around or have recess. But it does mean that students are engaged in productive activities just about all the time.

8) They use the community. They organize outside mentors and volunteers, ask local organizations and companies for specific help, link with outside social-service agencies, and welcome outside scrutiny as a way of helping them see themselves more clearly. This is in direct contrast to many crummy schools, where outsiders are viewed with suspicion and are often explicitly kept out on the assumption that they would be disruptive. Schools work with local colleges that help train teachers and direct research projects, retired neighbors who read to children, and service organizations like the American Legion and the Kiwanis Club that donate money for school clothing.

9) They expand the time that students—particularly struggling students—have in school. Different schools do this in different ways. Some have before- and after-school classes during the school year, as well as summer school. Some have year-round calendars with intensive tutoring done during the intersessions for children who haven’t yet learned what they need to learn. Some use their federal Title I funds to pay for the extra time; some get grants from other sources, such as the federal 21st Century Community Learning Center program or local foundations or organizations. But they all figure out ways to get their children more time for instruction, and they do so with the same kinds of resources (often involving federal funds) that are available to most schools in poverty and within the parameters of teachers’ union contracts. Many also see that extra time as an opportunity for enrichment for students, and they offer all kinds of interesting classes, such as music, drama, and sign language.

10) They like kids. This characteristic seems almost too simple to include in a list, but the fact is that in too many schools, and not just crummy poor-kid schools, the dominant emotion among teachers and administrators seems to be a kind of contempt for students—and their parents—that can only grow out of dislike. At “it’s being done” schools, students are brought into conversations, student work is highlighted and proudly displayed, and older students are explicitly taught to be the role models for younger students. Teachers tell affectionate stories about their students and boast about the work their students have done. Principals know many of the students by name, and often something about them. The struggles that students have outside school only increase the regard teachers and principals have for what they are able to achieve in school. Such respect never translates into expecting less from students, but into appreciating the effort.

11) Principals are a constant presence. Although all principals are called out for meetings to the central office or other places, the expectation in “it’s being done” schools is that, for the most part, principals are in the building and walking the halls, conferring with teachers, looking at student work, and interacting with students and parents. They do not hide in their offices. Many of them
say that they do their paperwork when children are not in the building. Depending on how big the school is, some principals even stop in on every class at the beginning of the day. It is the principals’ version of the medical practice of “doing rounds.” They are gauging the pulse of their buildings. And when they quietly slip in to observe instruction, teachers and students hardly even notice, because the principals are not hostile intruders but nearly constant presences.

Although the principals are important leaders, they are not the only leaders. Other administrators and teachers, and sometimes parents and community members as well, sit on committees that make important decisions for the school, decisions such as hiring, curriculum, school policies and procedures, Title I spending, and much more. The academic term for this is distributed leadership. In most cases, this is part of an explicit practice to institutionalize improvement so that it is not reliant on a single individual. The principals in “it’s being done” schools are well aware that many schools have improved only to fall back again when their principals left. These principals are consciously trying to build the kinds of enduring structures that will outlast them.

12) They pay careful attention to the quality of the teaching staff. In many of the schools, teachers and sometimes parents sit in with administrators on interviews with potential new teachers. Sometimes the interview panel asks potential teachers to teach a lesson so it can gauge the quality of instruction the teacher offers. Often the schools will test out teachers before hiring them by allowing them to student teach, substitute teach, or teach summer school. Principals and other administrators regularly sit in on classes to evaluate and recommend improvements. “I taught . . . for four years and thought I was a pretty good teacher, but until I came here I felt I had never taught a lesson,” says teacher Wendy Tague, of Elmont High School, in Elmont, New York, about the help she received from administrators and fellow teachers. And teachers do not just drift into having tenure protections—they must demonstrate their knowledge and skill and take recommended steps to improve before they get that third- or fourth-year contract that guarantees them tenure protections under most union contracts.

13) They provide teachers with the time to plan and work collaboratively. The principal or an assistant principal spends a great deal of time building a schedule so that teachers have time to work together. The most common strategy in elementary and middle school is to schedule an entire grade to have “specials” (usually art, music, or physical education) at the same time so the teachers can meet. And those meetings are carefully structured, often by the principal in early days, but later by the teachers themselves. Teachers review data, go over student work, develop lesson plans, and map curricula. These are working meetings, not gripe sessions, and even though initially they require a great deal of effort, eventually they lighten the workload of teachers by allowing them to share responsibility for instruction.

14) They provide teachers time to observe each other. In crummy schools, teachers will hardly know what another teacher across the hall is doing, much less a teacher on the other side of the building. Good teachers learn to close their doors and keep their heads down so they won’t be noticed and interfered with. But in “it’s being done” schools, teachers are encouraged to seek out and observe colleagues who have perfected a particular lesson or are trying something new and want feedback about whether it is clear and coherent. This helps all teachers become better teachers. Gary Brittingham, principal of East Millsboro Elementary School, in Delaware, says that he “rarely walk[s] into a classroom without seeing a model lesson” anymore. At the elementary level, providing such time takes careful planning and sometimes requires principals and assistant principals to take over teaching responsibilities. At the secondary level, it often involves teachers using their planning time to observe their colleagues.

15) They think seriously about professional development. The general theory among these schools is that if students are weak in a particular area, the teachers need to learn more about it. Teachers and administrators seek out the best sources of information and training they can find, so that the teachers become better teachers. “I was not as good a teacher with four other principals” is what 75-year-old fourth-grade teacher Mary Anderson says at Lincoln Elementary School in New York. It should be noted that the emphasis on the quality of professional development is what distinguishes the “it’s being done” schools, because just about all teachers have been subjected to professional development in some form or another. Nearly all veteran teachers in the country have a professional-development horror story about sessions that wasted time and money and did nothing to deepen their content knowledge, understanding, or pedagogical skill. The professional-development session that stands out in my mind as emblematic of all waste-of-time sessions is the one in which I saw a big ball of yarn tossed from teacher to teacher, with about half an hour taken up to demonstrate that people and topics are woven together in an elaborate web. That kind of professional development isn’t typical in “it’s being done” schools.


They assume that they will have to train new teachers more or less from scratch and carefully acculturate all newly hired teachers. They’re aware that new teachers often don’t know the first thing about classroom management, standards, curriculum, assessment, reading instruction, or even how to physically set up a classroom. To noneducators, this might seem remarkable, because most teachers enter the profession with degrees in education. But teachers and principals in the “it’s being done” schools widely agree that, for the most part, university education programs do not even begin to prepare teachers for teaching.

In many cases, schools assign consulting teachers or new-teacher mentors to help induct new teachers into the profession. But they also must carefully retrain experienced teachers who have come from other schools, where they may not have been exposed to effective instruction. Principals in “it’s being done” schools talk about liking to have a mixture of veteran experience and new enthusiasm, but they know that they have to work hard to make sure enthusiastic newcomers are channeled into being productive professionals.

16) They have high-quality, dedicated, and competent office and building staff who feel themselves part of the educational mission of the school. This isn’t something that is highlighted in any of the previous chapters of my book, but in my thinking about all the schools I visited, it stands out as a feature they share. The reason this is important is that it means the principals and assistant principals are able to focus on the core of their job—academics—and don’t have to spend huge amounts of time on the logistics of running a building. In crummy schools, visitors’ first impressions often consist of buildings that are dirty and offices that are dominated by barely civil school secretaries who seem to spend a lot of time on personal phone calls. This phenomenon stems, at least in part, from the fact that, in too many places, schools are seen as jobs programs, not as places where important work demands competence from everyone in the building. A new superintendent of my acquaintance found that when he arrived in his poor rural district, seven of his eight principals were first cousins, and many of the teachers, teacher aides, building service workers, and secretaries were related to each other. He says his district is on the “friends and family plan.” Being related doesn’t mean that none of them were competent—in fact, the superintendent said he was surprised how many of them were—but it does mean that competence might not always be the deciding factor in who gets hired.

17) They are nice places to work. This was the biggest surprise. After all, these schools are achieving at higher levels and improving at faster rates than many people in the education world think is possible. It would be reasonable to wonder if the teachers and principals are nearing nervous-breakdown level. But, overwhelmingly, that’s not what I found. Mind you, the schools are not easy places to work. “We work really hard” is the most common thing teachers in these schools say. “It’s being done” schools have high and constantly rising expectations for teachers, who are expected to learn more every year to improve their skills and knowledge, and to work collaboratively with their fellow teachers. They also have students whose lives outside of school sometimes break teachers’ hearts. But because teachers’ work is organized in a way that allows them to be successful and take leadership roles, and because the atmosphere in these schools is one of respect, they are nice places to work.

Another quality comes through as well. These schools have the kind of camaraderie that comes from teams of people facing difficult challenges together, not unlike the camaraderie that is built in military units, sports teams, theatrical groups, and any other group that goes through an arduous process to achieve a common goal. As a result, they do not have the kind of turnover that many schools with similar demographics have.

When people leave, for the most part it is because they retire, or their spouses are transferred, or they are promoted to new positions of leadership, not because they are fleeing to teach in easier schools. Those schools with the longest and best track records have built a reputation of being good places to work, and have little trouble filling vacancies.

This fact points out that many teachers want to work with children of poverty and children of color if they can work in an environment where they will be helped to be better teachers. In other words, the huge attrition rates of new teachers in crummy poor-kid schools don’t mean that teachers do not want to work in schools with large populations of poor children and children of color, but that they do not want to work where they have to succeed or fail totally on their own.

Adapted from:

"IT'S BEING DONE":

ACADEMIC SUCCESS IN UNEXPECTED SCHOOLS

by Karin Chenoweth

WWW.HARVARDEDUCATIONPRESS.ORG

COPYRIGHT 2007 BY PERMISSION OF HARVARD EDUCATION PRESS

Change

"Change is not merely necessary to life-it is life" Alvin Toffler

Action the start of making something happen

"Action is the foundational key to all success." Pablo Picasso

Failure can lead to success

"I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed." Michael Jordan

Two Wolves

TWO WOLVES

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.

"One is Evil - It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

"The other is Good - It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Bill Gates helps with achievement in Atlanta

Atlanta enjoys long relationship with Gates FoundationBy Gracie Bonds Staples and Kristina Torres


The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

4:45 p.m. Saturday, May 8, 2010

The lack of philanthropic support for Atlanta Public Schools surprised Beverly Hall.

What she did about it demonstrates how corporate beneficence can be less about money than it is about belief. The school system just introduced 29 new examples.

Soon after Hall became superintendent in July 1999, she began reaching out to local organizations and businesses as well as national groups like the Wallace Foundation. She also called the Gates Foundation, making a pitch about funding an effort to break up Atlanta’s high schools into smaller learning communities.

She was met with a polite no. The foundation had funded such work nationally but officials said they were interested in assessing that work, not starting new programs. Hall turned once again for help locally, this time from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.

As the system set about moving ahead with what the superintendent calls its “high school transformation” program, the Gates people called back to acknowledge the progress. In October 2005, the foundation awarded Atlanta a $1.4-million planning grant for the program. A month later, they announced a $10.5-million implementation grant to help expand the program citywide.

“I think the fact that we had gone ahead carried some weight with them,” Hall said this week. “We had made a case and still moved forward.”

That move forward was the beginning of a long relationship the school system has enjoyed with the Washington state-based Gates Foundation, established by Bill and Melinda Gates. It is also being credited with Atlanta's strong showing recently in the annual Gates Millennium Scholars competition, which just honored 29 students from Hall's system.

Foundation officials are careful to note they have no special relationship with the city. They do not provide funding for the sake of helping individuals. Rather, they say they fund programs they believe can help children move ahead in school, graduate and enroll in college.

“We don’t have an Atlanta initiative or anything like that,” said Chris Williams, spokesman for the foundation. “We’re focused on investing in programs that work, not cities.”

Although the foundation isn't just handing over money, its work in Atlanta has touched several facets of the system and has been a kind of lifeline in turbulent economic times.

“We‘re most appreciative,” Hall said. “With the budgets being slashed at every level, it becomes increasingly important for schools to receive philanthropic support.”

The foundation’s benevolence in Atlanta, however, isn’t just limited to the Atlanta Public Schools. In fact, Williams said Gates has awarded grants to a total of nine school districts, including Memphis, Pittsburgh and Hillsborough County (Tampa) in Florida.

“We have been working with all of these districts for over a year now,” he said. “Our relationship with Atlanta is special in that it is one of a handful of districts that we think are on the leading edge when it comes to work they’re doing in effective teaching.”

Early this week both Fulton and Gwinnett County public schools indirectly benefited from the foundation’s benevolence when it funded a $15-million grant project headed by Harvard University.

The districts were chosen along with four others to participate in a two-year program designed to determine what makes teachers effective in the classroom. The project also will study how well students perform in college.

In addition to covering students’ academic costs for any major and for as many years as it takes them to graduate, Gates scholars receive academic support, mentoring and leadership training, which is crucial to low-income minority students who are often the first in their families to not just attend college but graduate high school.

This year, 50 metro Atlanta seniors successfully made it through the stiff competition with the Atlanta Public Schools garnering 29 of those slots, the most for any district in the nation.

The school system’s strong showing was the result of an initiative the United Negro College Fund, the program's administrator, launched in 2008 to increase the number of eligible students.

For years, students from Atlanta schools applied for the full-ride scholarships but, when taken with the more than 20,000 other applications received each year, theirs weren't considered competitive.

“We were seeing strong students come through but they weren’t presenting applications in ways that would make them competitive so we came up with a plan to work with school districts to help them work with the students they considered strong candidates,” said Larry Griffith, vice president of the program.

After talks with district officials and then-Mayor Shirley Franklin, Griffith said they began holding workshops with students to help prepare them for the rigorous application process and with school counselors and other staff so that they could provide the mentoring students would need to market themselves appropriately.

Trina Scott, a counselor at Carver Health Science & Research, has participated in the specialized training since the initiative was launched two years ago.

The two-hour training, she said, covers everything from helping students tell their stories in the most compelling way to choosing the best person to write letters of recommendation and hitting the send button on their computers no later than 11:59 p.m. January 11, the deadline for submitting the application.

In addition to the training, banners were hung at the school touting the scholarship. Instead of “Got Milk” posters, “Got Gates” posters populated the walls.

Carver Principal Darian Jones said schools are encouraged each year to identify students with a grade point average of 3.3 or above as early as the junior year to apply for the scholarship and to hold meetings with them and their parents.

At Carver, he said, Gates alumni were invited to come and talk to perspective scholars about their experiences, to give them the extra incentive to complete the application. They even shared their essays to use as guides.

“They tell them they don’t have to stand in financial aid lines like other students because everything is paid for,” said Scott.

Students were encouraged to begin writing their essays over the summer.

“We tried to be much more intentional and it paid off,” said Jones.

Out of the 13 Carver students who applied, he said, five were named finalists.

One of them, Briahna Head, 18, said that while the tips she received to shore up her essays helped, the nomination and letter of recommendations she received from her AP biology teacher and mentor were the winning pieces of her application.

"They believed in me," she said.

Hall said she appreciates the supports the system has received for this and other programs.

“We‘re most appreciative,” Hall said. “With the budgets being slashed at every level, it becomes increasingly important for schools to receive philanthropic support.”

Hall said Gates’ support in Atlanta has helped in other ways, including with an “early college” program and with learning how to use resources better as budget cuts play havoc with planning. In February, Gates announced a three-year, $10-million grant for an Atlanta program to increase teacher effectiveness.

A contributing factor to that continued support is likely the system’s stable leadership. Hall has led the system now for nearly 11 years, a notable achievement given that the average tenure in urban school systems is 3 1/2 years.

“The revolving door of urban superintendents creates an unstable environment,” Hall said. “If you want a return on your investment, you want to make sure someone is there to see it through.”

Gates box:

Scholars and their parents will be honored at a 6 p.m. ceremony Thursday at Atlanta City Hall.

Recent Gates awards to Atlanta agencies and schools:

Atlanta Public Schools, $10 million to "Effective Teacher in Every Classroom" initiative.
Fulton County and Gwinnett public schools, $15-million project grant designed to raise student achievement and improve teacher quality. The project is being administered by Harvard University.
Emory University School of Nursing, $8 million to improve maternal and newborn survival rates in rural Ethiopia.
Lyrasis Inc., $128,472 to improve technology access in libraries serving low-income patrons and establish sustainable local funding to support the ongoing provision of this service.
University of Georgia Foundation, $331,678 to among other things support Georgia for the staff time needed to provide data for statewide matching and reporting of post-secondary outcomes.