How Failing Schools Are Learning
to Succeed
Out of place and low on hope,
Allenbrook Elementary School crouched in a gritty
neighborhood on Charlotte's west side not far from the
sprawling Chemway Industrial Park tank farm.
Daily, youngsters trudged in. Most got free lunches, and
almost all shared fleeting friendships and doubtful
futures. Suitcase families meant one in three would leave
for another school each year. Only slightly more than one
in four read at grade level. The bulk of teachers left
each year.
Allenbrook had a sole distinction. Three years ago, it
was ranked as one of the 15 worst schools among the 2,000
in North Carolina.
In May, Allenbrook gained a more desirable distinction
when a prestigious group of educators and the Chase
Manhattan Foundation honored it as one of America's six
most dramatically improved schools. What happened?
Enter the ABCs of Public Education, North Carolina's
nationally acclaimed school accountability program, with
its focus on teaching the basics, setting high standards,
rewarding excellence and rejecting mediocrity.
“Believing we can make a difference for children and
celebrating each success along the way is the driving
force here now,” says Cathy Hammond, the principal
assigned to Allenbrook in 1997.
Celebrating? In June, when Allenbrook students had met
her challenge to read 7,000 books during the school year,
to their delight, she dyed her hair blue, kicked off her
shoes, and locked herself in “jail” behind
black paper bars for a day. In three years, the
percentage of students reading at grade level had
doubled. Those doing math at grade level had soared from
half to nine out of 10.
“Allenbrook,” says Lew Smith, director of the
National Principals Leadership Institute at Fordham
University, “mastered the herculean challenge of
bringing about significant rather than superficial or
illusory change.”
Four years after the North Carolina General Assembly
enacted the School-Based Management and Accountability
Program, such turnarounds are becoming increasingly
common, and not just in urban centers like Raleigh,
Charlotte and Greensboro.
They can be found in rural Halifax County at Pittman
Elementary School in Enfield, or at Hoffman Elementary in
the town of the same name in Richmond County. They're
similar, whether set in industrial back lots or the
tobacco farms of eastern North Carolina.
Visit small McIver Elementary School, in Lillington, to
watch ABCs of Public Education in action.
“Don't expect the Taj Mahal,” says Larry West,
whose daughter Samantha is in the third grade this fall
on a campus of three brick buildings that date to the
1930s. “But the roofs aren't caving in, and we've
got a good core of teachers and a principal who've rolled
up their sleeves and refuse to put up with any
nonsense.”
As at Allenbrook, emphasis on basics has paid dividends
here. In the 1994 school year, fewer than 16 percent of
the youngsters at the Halifax County school could read at
grade level.
This year, with an enrollment of about 270, the figure is
close to 70 percent. It has been higher, but changes in
ABC standards, along with the increasing difficulty of
teaching, have taken a toll.
For example, in Raleigh, June Atkinson, director of
instructional services at the N.C. Department of Public
Instruction, notes that the number of Tar Heel students
with limited English proficiency has doubled since 1996
— when the ABCs program was beginning — to
37,251. That impacts even small schools like McIver.
To overcome poverty, limited resources and home
environments that often aren't conducive to learning,
McIver principal Jeffrey McCain has initiated such
programs as “reading buddies,” in which
fourth-graders are assigned a staff member for intense
tutoring in reading and writing.
Similar to Allenbrook, expectations for teachers, parents
and students have risen since the inception of ABCs.
West, former PTA president and a Halifax native, cites an
example.
“Samantha began kindergarten here and has now had
three teachers who all focused hard on homework,” he
says. “They recognize you don't just learn between 8
in the morning and 3 in the evening. They push parents to
get up involved. They even set up afternoon classes after
school where you and your children can be involved
together.”
Parents deserve credit themselves, too. McCain says
they've become more involved at McIver, although as with
most schools, that's a chore. “We've got about 120
PTA members, but a few tote the load for the rest,”
adds West.
Since the turnaround in the middle 1990s, composite math
and reading scores have placed 70 to nearly 82 percent of
McIver students at grade level. “Math is an exact
science that you either know or you don't,” says
McCain. “Reading's different. Our kids don't do much
reading outside, because parents aren't there to motivate
them. We try to fill that gap.”
Like McCain, few if any educators are satisfied with
outcomes from North Carolina's pioneering program. But
ranging from U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley,
who calls it “a model of educational
accountability,” to teachers like one at Allenbrook,
who says “instead of blaming the children, we began
to see it was the adults who needed to define their
beliefs and change accordingly,” the ABCs of Public
Education program obviously makes a measurable
difference.
“The easiest way to gauge success is to look at the
trend line of students at or above grade level,”
says Henry Johnson, associate superintendent for
instruction and accountability service in Raleigh.
The chart resembles the Nasdaq stock market, minus the
downturn of year 2000. “In the past seven or eight
years, the line for all students was moving steadily
up,” adds Johnson. “With the advent of the
ABCs, the slow curve went up at a much faster rate.”
At the onset of ABCs, says Johnson, roughly 52 percent of
Tar Heel students statewide were at grade level.
“This year we're talking about close to 70
percent,” he says. For teachers, principals and
parents accustomed to glacial movements in test scores,
that's meteoric. How has it come about?
Go back to the State Board of Education, the General
Assembly and Gov. Jim Hunt. All had a hand in creating
the ABCs program, enacted in June of 1996. In addition to
basics and high standards, they stressed maximum local
control. If it sounds like they had McIver Elementary
School in mind, maybe so.
“We push for the school ourselves,” says West,
the parent. “When we ask for help it sometimes gets
lost between here and Raleigh, so we take care of our
own. We're concerned about what goes on in that
school.”
The ABCs program sets standards for each elementary,
middle and high school. They can be dubbed schools of
expected growth, schools of exemplary growth, schools of
excellence or schools of distinction. Those that come up
short, like Allenbrook in 1997, fall into the category of
low-performing.
But in Raleigh, Louis Fabrizio, director of
accountability at the department of public instruction,
says other states tried merely measuring performance,
then soft-pedaling the outcomes. “Our ABCs program
is the first time a state looked at data school building
by school building,” he says. “Historically,
for the last 20 years, we had statewide testing, but data
was reported at a district level.”
Now, while poorly performing schools have no place to
hide, the state doesn't leave them dangling. They get
help in a hurry. “We send in teams comprised mostly
of teachers and principals on loan from other schools,
and we have a permanent staff that helps,” adds
Johnson.
And don't forget money. “We specifically reward the
certified staff in the school that excels, based on test
scores one year to the next,” says Fabrizio. In
schools that meet exemplary growth and gain standards,
teachers can collect $1,500 and teachers' assistants,
$500. In schools that make expected growth, teachers are
eligible for $750 bonuses, and aides, $375. North
Carolina's incentive program, the largest of its kind in
the nation, costs $140 million a year.
“More importantly,” adds Fabrizio, “we not
only identify those making exceptional growth, but those
that are low-performing. Other states just grade. We have
something in place to go in and help.”
Michael Ward, superintendent of public instruction, is
among education officials who concede the ABCs program
has created some concerns. “We have to be attentive
to unintended consequences, such as teaching to the test,
or spending too much time on practice tests,” he
says. “I suspect that's rare, but we hear enough
about it to be concerned.”
But in Charlotte, Eric Smith, superintendent of the
102,000-student system, says that before ABCs of Public
Education, the low point for Allenbrook Elementary was in
August, three years ago. Seven out of 10 of its teachers
left that year. Parents had no confidence in the school.
Now, he says, they believe again. —Edward Martin
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