Which has a greater influence on a child's life? The seven or so hours that the child spends in school each weekday, or the greater number of hours the child spends outside school? Educators in high-poverty communities know that it is often the latter. If vulnerable students are to succeed in school, the school must reach out to the families and communities of its students. Although many individual schools have mastered the art of effectively teaching vulnerable students, school districts have the greater challenge of creating systemwide solutions. So what can district leaders do to support the learning of their most needy students?
As part of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation's Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids initiative, we have studied numerous school districts to identify best practices for serving vulnerable students. We conducted site visits and superintendent interviews in four school districts: Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Miami, Florida; Montgomery County Public Schools in Rockville, Maryland (a suburb of Washington, D.C.); Cleveland Public Schools in Cleveland, Mississippi (in the Mississippi Delta region); and Federal Way School District in Federal Way, Washington (a suburb of Seattle). We also researched and conducted phone interviews with representatives of Boston Public Schools, Chicago Public Schools, and Union City Schools in Union City, New Jersey. All seven school districts are geographically, culturally, and linguistically diverse. (See www.schoolmatters.comfor data on the districts' demographic makeup.) We observed four recurring challenges across the districts. But we also saw numerous innovative solutions that district leaders have successfully employed in response to these challenges.
CHALLENGE 1: The Achievement Gap
When Jerry Weast became superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools in 1999, he commissioned a comprehensive analysis of the so-called "green" and "red" zones in Montgomery County (Maeroff, 2006). The analysis revealed that higher- and lower-performing groups were divided along both ethnic and geographic lines. Green zones were high-income areas with little crime and primarily white residents. Red zones were characterized by poverty, immigrant populations, and high crime. Although the school district showed high levels of student achievement overall, student achievement was much higher in the green zones.
The district implemented an aggressive plan; its mission, according to Weast, was to "green the red zones." First, the district capped classes in redzone schools at 15 students. Focusing mainly on kindergarten, the staff also reengineered the curriculum to focus on literacy and ensure smooth transitions between grades. With these and other changes in place, red-zone schools improved significantly, and the district's overall performance data reflected this improvement.
In 2001, Superintendent Tom Murphy of the Federal Way School District noted that overall academic performance had been improving in the district, but there were disparities in how Latino, American Indian, and black students performed compared with their white and Asian peers. To address this gap, the Federal Way Public Schools created an Office of Equity and Achievement to examine student achievement data and develop meaningful solutions.
When the Office of Equity and Achievement researched college acceptance rates among minority students, it became clear that many students had not passed enough advanced placement (AP) courses in high school to be considered competitive candidates for college admission. In most cases, these students had not taken the rigorous middle and early high school classes that would prepare them for AP classes. The district implemented "pre-AP" courses to prepare students for AP courses in the higher grades. Since the program began, the achievement gap has narrowed (Federal Way Public Schools, n.d.).
In Union City, New Jersey, a new technology program developed by a district middle school teacher has helped students drastically improve their scores in several academic areas. Through the program, called "Pod People," 3rd and 4th grade English language learners receive iPods to help them learn English aurally. Using the iPods, teachers can tailor lessons and homework to individual students, enabling them to progress at their own pace. This customization has yielded impressive results: On two statewide standardized tests, the students at Union City approached, matched, and often exceeded state averages (Rosero, 2007).
In the Boston Public Schools, white and Asian male students have consistently outperformed their Latino and black peers. To address this disparity, Boston created "10 Boys" clubs in 44 schools at the start of the 2006 school year. Principals in each of the schools selected 10 Latino or black boys who were struggling academically. These boys received extra tutoring, attended group lunches, and went on outings with their principal to build a sense of community and improve their test scores. According to Ingrid Carney, a district superintendent who oversaw the clubs' implementation, the clubs aim to "break through this peer pressure of kids thinking it's not cool to be smart" (Jan, 2007). In the program's first year, nearly half of the 236 students in the clubs advanced at least one level in either math or English on state tests. Boston plans to implement the club in the remaining 144 schools in the coming year.
CHALLENGE 2: Lack of Parental Involvement
Four years ago, the Federal Way School District underwent demographic changes, and Superintendent Murphy understood that it needed new ways of reaching out to parents. He created a Family Partnership Office to bridge the gap between parents and schools.
Trise Moore, Federal Way's family partnership advocate and head of the Family Partnership Office, has children of her own in the Federal Way schools, and she naturally connects with parents over their desire for their children to have equal education opportunities. She schedules regular meetings with parents in which she sets only a partial agenda, leaving room for them to ask their own most pressing questions. (Barron, n.d.).
Rudy Crew, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, has a vision of involving all parents in their children's education. He told us that his goal is toflip the switch from supply-side parenting to demand-side parenting. Parents in poor communities [must] learn to be demanding consumers of public education.
Crew saw the benefit of parental advocacy in his own life when his father, a janitor at IBM, asked the company executives which courses their children had taken to prepare them for Ivy League universities. Crew's father told him to give a list of these courses to his school counselor and demand to be enrolled in them.
Recognizing the benefits of this kind of parental involvement, Miami-Dade actually funds a program that teaches parents to challenge the district's practices on behalf of their children. The district's community-based parent advocacy center, Parent to Parent, encourages parents of students with disabilities to advocate for their children.
CHALLENGE 3: Children Who Begin School Unprepared
Today's students have to squeeze in more courses, extracurricular activities, and volunteer engagements than ever before, but in most districts, the school day and year have not gotten any longer. Jerry Weast of Montgomery County emphasizes early childhood education as the solution. The school district has established free prekindergarten programs in its most vulnerable schools. These programs are aligned with the Head Start classrooms in the same building, and Weast plans to expand this offering to the whole district.
Montrell Greene, former superintendent of the Cleveland Public Schools in Mississippi, found that many children in the district were unprepared for kindergarten, and their families moved so often that they continued to fall behind as they progressed in school. Once a month, the schools have early release so that the Head Start and elementary school teachers can participate in vertical planning (teachers in each school meet across grade levels) and horizontal planning (teachers meet by grade level across the district). Vertical planning ensures that children in Head Start learn the skills they need for kindergarten. Horizontal planning allows teachers to structure curriculum so that a student who moves to a different school in the district will not be more than a few weeks behind or ahead of his or her new classmates.
Cleveland Public Schools also partners with the Excel by 5 Partnership and Mississippi State University to maintain a resource center for parents and teachers of young children. The resource center functions as a library, with books and other educational materials available for children and parents to borrow. One stated goal of the center is that each child look at 1,000 books before entering kindergarten. Every time a child looks at a book, he or she puts a penny in a jar. When the jar is full, the child gets to bring home a book or toy to keep. When children tire of a book or toy, they can exchange it for a different one at the resource center. Teachers say that the resource center is "like a candy store!"
CHALLENGE 4: The Teacher Quality Gap
At the start of the 2007–08 school year, Chicago Public Schools became the largest district in the United States to offer teachers performance-based pay. Its new program, called Recognizing Excellence in Academic Leadership (REAL), operates in 40 high-need schools that serve 24,000 students. (The district has more than 600 schools serving more than 400,000 students.) Every staff member in participating schools has the opportunity to earn a performance bonus: up to $8,000 for teachers, $5,000 for principals, and $1,000 for janitors and clerical staff.
Although performance-based pay is often controversial because it naturally favors those who teach high-performing students and may encourage grade inflation, Chicago mitigated those concerns by initially using schoolwide performance as the primary factor in determining bonuses. During the first year of implementation, 75 percent of the bonus amount is linked to schoolwide achievement on standardized tests, and 25 percent is linked to teachers' individual classroom performance, which is assessed through classroom observations. After the first year, every participating school receives professional development support and training, and teacher performance becomes a more significant factor, with 40 percent of the bonus amount linked to classroom observations and individual classroom achievement.
Schools using the REAL program employ three mentor teachers who earn an extra $7,000 annually for spending one period each day helping other teachers. One lead teacher in each school (earning an extra $15,000) helps the principal evaluate teachers and provides support and oversight to the mentor teachers. In most cases, teachers have already been providing the kind of support that REAL institutionalizes but have never been compensated for their extra time and effort. With the REAL program, the Chicago Public School District has formally rallied all school staff around the students' success (Rossi, 2007).
Chicago Public Schools also implemented the Autonomous Management and Performance Schools initiative in 2006 to reward high-performing and rapidly improving schools. This program gives well-managed schools showing improvement in student achievement the ability to operate with the flexibility of a charter school (Dell'Angela, 2007). Schools can choose to be autonomous in one of six areas, including budget, operations and maintenance, calendar, and teacher induction (Chicago Public Schools, 2007). Most schools choose to have budget autonomy, which allows them to purchase supplies and textbooks without having to obtain district approval. A growing number of schools are choosing to have autonomy over the calendar, which enables them to spend extra instructional time on some days and bank the additional minutes to allow for full days of professional development. Because the district's top-performing schools have greater autonomy, the district's central office can better concentrate on schools that need more help (Chicago Public Schools, 2007).
When Rudy Crew began his tenure in Miami-Dade, he identified 39 failing schools and began an aggressive school improvement plan. He interviewed the principals in these "zone schools" and eventually fired or relocated 15 of them. "I decided who could change and who couldn't," he explained. He then gathered all of the teachers in the zone schools and presented his new plan: longer school days, more instructional days each year, intensive professional development, and a higher salary. Teachers were given the option of staying on these terms or transferring to other schools within the district. Crew held a hiring fair directly after the meeting to replace teachers who opted out of the improvement plan.
Solutions That Meet the Challenges
All students, regardless of race or socioeconomic status, have a right to the kind of education available in high-performing schools. The seven school districts described here are moving toward providing this kind of education. The district leaders looked critically at their data and then developed innovative solutions tailored to the needs of individual students and families. These districts have launched large-scale programs, but the solutions are anything but one size fits all.
