Talk Priority Schools

By Keith Gambill
President, Evansville Teachers Association

Conventional wisdom says that unions and school administrations are like oil and water—they don’t mix. But, the Evansville Teachers Association likes to challenge the norm. And, because of our bold partnership with the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation, I’m thrilled to announce that released this month were the results from the EVSC’s ISTEP scores, highlighting escalating results in our Equity Schools.

The three Equity Schools in Evansville are Delaware and Howard Roosa Elementary Schools and McGary Middle School, which were the corporation’s lowest performing schools.

But in just under a year, substantial gains were seen in the passing rate. When it comes to English /Language Arts, Delaware’s fourth graders saw a whopping 22 percent gain. Fourth and fifth graders knocked the ball out of the park in the category of math—each grade saw an increase of 29 percent increase. Howard Roosa’s fourth graders increased its English/Language Arts score by 10 percent. And, McGary Middle School eighth graders increased its reading and math scores by 7 percent. No small feat for schools considered low-performing a year ago!

Equity Schools started through a collaborative arrangement between the corporation and ETA. We spent several days of professional development learning about communication styles, making building decisions, developing action research projects and designing new, engaging classroom activities. Then, teachers were given the autonomy to decide the length of the school day; the number of days students and teachers would attend; how the school day would be structured; and strategies to be used.

These gains are proof that students can succeed when teachers and administrators come together to decide what’s best for kids.

Read more about Evansville at neapriorityschools.org.

By Lakisha Eason

A recent op-ed in the Boston Globe, titled “Visit Classrooms Early and Often, and Give New Tools To Principal,” examined the issue of teacher evaluations. The writer, Kim Marshall, believes that pay based on teacher evaluations could potentially be the solution to the nation’s achievement gap. However, Marshall points out that the system is flawed due to a lack of manpower to evaluate teachers, the difficulty in getting an accurate picture of day-to-day class instruction and the reality that teacher evaluations don’t reveal if students are actually learning what they are taught.

Marshall’s solution is that evaluations should be unannounced, teachers should be rated on a rubric scale in addition to their students’ gains on year-round assessments.

Many of the school improvement grants implemented in priority schools this year increase focus on teacher evaluations. What do you think about Marshall’s ideas?

By Christy Levings, NEA Executive Committee

How do you define leadership?  Is it being brave enough to try all new things when the comfortable that you know might be okay?  Is it taking a stand and giving it your all? Is it demanding excellence from yourself in order to support excellence in your colleagues?

I saw leadership at its best this week at Lincoln Elementary in Richmond, CA.  I saw talented professionals who are by anyone’s definition leaders.  Every employee in the school is demonstrating leadership – standing up and pushing themselves in order to move their children forward to be more successful in life.

Do not be mistaken, I am not talking only about the highly experienced and highly professional principal.  She is doing fabulous work and more importantly, she understands how to work with a staff of talented professionals.  As one teacher said, “She just gets it.”  She understands that respecting her staff and making decisions together allows them to feel respected as professionals. She also works to create a working environment that pushes and prods the entire staff to use their talents and unleash their creativity. read more »

By Paula Monroe, NEA Executive Committee

A very emotional four days in Denver-area schools showed opportunities and challenges ahead for priority schools.

Lake Middle School

The visits started at Lake Middle School, the school saved from closure last year by member and community organizing by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. This is the school NEA President Dennis Van Roekel visited in September with the superintendent.  I went with DCTA Executive Director, Carolyn Crowder and national and state association staff and met in the school library with approximately 10 staff for various lengths of time.  The site rep, Jim Goffred, was in attendance and provided a constant voice throughout the conversation.

Lake’s parents and teachers came up with a transformation plan and submitted it to the school board, but they were not allowed to do the transformation model.  The district identified it as a restart/turnaround model.  However, the turnaround model wasn’t actually implemented in the defined method.

Today they have divided the current student population into three different schools on one site.  read more »

By Paula Monroe, NEA Executive Committee

In the end, as so many had heard and didn’t want to believe, the Denver Public Schools School Board voted 4 to 3 to “reconfigure Montbello High School and its five feeder schools”. The decision came at approximately 1:30 a.m. on November 18. The Board meeting room was still packed. Students from Montbello who held up posters signed by the MHS students that read – Montbello High School 30 years old too young to die! – were in tears. Teachers and staff left in tears. It was very disheartening and disappointing.

That being said, DCTA did a great job of organizing community support and building a community coalition around saving these schools. read more »

By Len Paolillo, NEA Executive Committee

After several informative visits to priority schools in Dayton and Lima, Ohio, I was really looking forward to learning about the transformation process at Mount Pleasant High School in Wilmington, Delaware.  With the help of my knowledgeable guide, Marlene Lacy, a visual arts teacher and building rep for Mount Pleasant, I got to interact with many of the school’s educators.

My day began with a great conversation with Mount Pleasant Principal James Simmons III and Dr. Mark Holodick, the Superintendent of Brandywine School District. Through RTTT and SIG, Dr. Holodick says professional learning communities will have the greatest impact. The professional learning communities are currently working on common planning, common assessments and tracking student data to create quality and collaborative learning that is focused.

Len Paolillo, NEA Executive Committee member, enjoys lunch with Principal Simmons and staff in Mount Pleasant High School's student-run cafe.

Principal Simmons told me about how SIG enabled him to hire an additional guidance counselor to focus specifically on struggling students and a family engagement coordinator. The new family engagement coordinator has a large office with meeting space and they plan to add several computers to the office for family to visit and access the Internet. He also shared some of the business partnerships he’s formed to benefit students. AstraZeneca, a global biopharmaceutical company, is going to provide bicycles and clothing for the school to start a cycling club, in addition to providing mentoring. read more »

Priority schools are a natural focus of attention for NEA student members, and Tommie Leaders wants to make sure the word gets out.

Leaders is the 2010-2012 NEA Student Program Chairperson and he says extending the student program’s famous community outreach events into priority schools could help galvanize and grow student membership while helping pull the program out of a current media shadow.

Tommie Leaders, NEA Student Program Chair

“We’re trying to make what we’re doing better known. There’s a lot of press with Teach for America and other programs like that. We’re kind of sitting in the background right now,” says Leaders, a student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha majoring in elementary education with endorsements in math, language arts, and social sciences.

“Whether it’s through YouTube or Facebook, social networking or other media sources, we need to show our work with these schools. We need to take this work to heart and make it our own,” said Leaders. read more »

By Paula Monroe

Does it take every one to help students succeed?  Do students need a healthy breakfast in order to learn?  Is it important to provide a safe ride to and from school for our students that live to far to walk?  Is a clean and healthy teaching and learning environment important to all of us who work at a school site?  Is a school nurse who knows the students and community a valuable partner to the teachers and school staff?  What about the librarian or media tech, is their contribution to student learning important?  Does the extra help that paraprofessionals provide improve student learning?

You’re probably thinking, “Absolutely, of course!”  Why do I even need to ask those questions?  Well, one thing that was abundantly clear to me during my visits to Cleveland High School and Hawthorne Elementary School – our Priority Schools – was the invisibility of these dedicated and valuable members of the education family, the education team.  read more »