Chief Academic Officer Terry Edwards talks about how Everett Public Schools has dramatically improved graduation rates over the past seven years.
Elementary
Blog Entries
Students can come to school with a lot of baggage. They may be feeling the stress of financial pressure at home. They may be dealing with a death or illness in their family. But as school counselor Barbara Micucci puts it, “Ultimately it does not matter the issues that kids bring to school. Schools are charged with educating the kids.”
This is where she and other counselors come in. We recently spoke with Micucci about the counseling profession—why it is important, how it has changed over the years and the challenges it faces. She also told us about her own work and some of the strategies that led her to be named the 2010 School Counselor of the Year by Naviance and the American School Counselor Association. Key to her success: visibility, and a desire to engage parents as partners in the educational process.
Micucci has been a counselor for over 20 years and is currently working at Caley Elementary School in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. She was selected from a field of extraordinary school counselors across the country and plans to use her new role to call for strategies to ensure that every elementary school across the United States has a school counselor.
Why Have School Counselors?
Public School Insights: Let’s start with a very general question. Why is it important for schools to have counselors?
Micucci: It is so important for a number of reasons. I think kids today are under a lot more stress and family pressure than they have been in the past. There are many reasons. Families themselves are very stressed. A lot of it comes from economic conditions. And aside from that, when I think of my school—and I am in a middle-class school in a suburban district—there are a lot of families where parents are divorced. There are single parent families. There are parents who have adopted children. I have a couple families where there's terminal illness. More families are coming with limited English proficiency. There are families living with other families because of ...
About two weeks ago, we posted a conversation with two leaders from Boston's City Connects (CCNX) program, which is working with 11 schools to link each child to a "tailored set of intervention, prevention and enrichment services in the community." The approach has helped raise grades and test scores for the mostly low income children in these schools.
We recently spoke with people in two CCNX schools. Traci Walker Griffith is principal at the Eliot K-8 School, and Kathleen Carlisle is the CCNX site coordinator at the Mission Hill School. Each has an insider's view of this remarkable program at work.
Public School Insights: How has City Connects worked in your school? What changes have been made since it began?
Traci Walker Griffith: A number of changes have occurred at the Eliot School. I came in as principal in March of 2007. In May of 2007 the school was identified as one that would take on City Connects.
We were fortunate because the mission and vision of the Eliot School aligned with City Connects in that we are serving the whole child--academically, socially, emotionally. So we have worked amazingly well together in identifying students’ academic and social/emotional needs. And as we began the program I found that the structures and systems that it offers—whole class review, individual student review, and providing a school site coordinator to maintain and sustain partnerships—really aligned with what we wanted to start at the Eliot School at the time.
Kathleen Carlisle: I would echo many of the things that Traci just said. The whole child philosophy especially stands out in my mind—that is a City Connects and also a Mission Hill philosophy. And I think that the presence of City Connects in Mission Hill has especially impacted the identification of student needs and ways to meet those needs, be they social/emotional, academic, health or family. I think there has been greater connection between supports and needs, and also consistent follow-up.
Public School Insights: Do you have a sense of the results of the City Connects work in your respective schools?
Traci Walker Griffith: When I came on at the Eliot, a school identified as underperforming and in correction, all of the pieces we needed to put in place to increase student achievement were aligned with what City Connects was working on: identifying services and enrichment opportunities for students both inside and outside the school; working with community agencies that in the past had difficulty working ...
An innovative program out of Boston College is making a big difference for children in 11 Boston elementary schools. City Connects (CCNX) works with the schools to link each child to a "tailored set of intervention, prevention and enrichment services located in the community."
Its efforts have gone a good distance towards closing achievement gaps between the low-income children in the program and children who meet state averages. CCNX's results offer powerful support for what should be common sense: When we address the challenges poor students face both within and beyond schools, they flourish.
A rigorous study (PDF) of the program's outcomes tells a pretty stunning story:
- The beneficial impact of BCNX [the former name of CCNX] on student growth in academic achievement (across grades 1 to 5) was, on average, approximately three times the harmful impact of poverty.
- By the end of grade 5, achievement differences between BCNX and comparison students indicated that the BCNX intervention moves students at the 50th percentile up to or near the 75th percentile, and the students at the 25th percentile up to or near the 50th.
- For multiple outcomes, the treatment effects were largest for students at greatest risk for academic failure. For example, English language learners experienced the largest treatment benefits on literacy outcomes, by third grade demonstrating similar report card scores to those proficient in English in comparison schools. In fact,as a result of BCNX, there was no longer an achievement gap between these students.
- After grade 5, the lasting positive effects ofthe BCNX intervention can be seen in middle-school MCAS scores. The size ofthe positive effect of BCNX ranged from approximately 50% to 130% as large as the negative effects of poverty on these scores.1
We recently caught up with two of the program's leaders: Dr. Mary Walsh, its Executive Director, and Patrice DiNatale, its Director of Practice.
Public School Insights: What is City Connects?
Walsh: City Connects is a systemic, evidence-based approach to school-based student support. It involves assessing, in conversation with teachers and other school staff, each child in the school at the beginning of the school year and then developing a tailored student support plan based on that student's strengths and needs in four areas: academic, social emotional/behavioral, health and family.
That support plan involves accessing services, supports, resources and enrichment for the child, both school-based resources as well as, and importantly, community resources. A trained professional with a Master’s degree—either ...
A new study finds that children who enrolled in the Harlem Success Academy (HSA) charter school did better than those who tried to enroll but were not selected in the school lottery. This type of study, which compares the fate of students who won the lottery with that of those who lost, challenges the notion that the best charters do well merely because they select students who would do just as well in any other environment.
But the study also suggests that there might be limits to the charter model.
For one, the study reveals a few differences between students at HSA and their peers in traditional public schools. Students who entered the lottery but lost did substantially worse than those who won. But those who never entered did worst of all. This finding suggests that the lotteries might attract students who are more likely to succeed. Perhaps they or their families are more motivated, savvier, or able to draw on resources the other students lack.
One group that is noticeably absent from the HSA lottery: students who are still learning English. A full 21 percent of third graders who had never enrolled in the lottery were English Language Learners. Compare that to the four percent of ...
I'm of two minds about Joan Kronholz's recent piece on the value of competition. You need look no farther than the resurgence of "academic bees and bowls," Kronholz writes in Education Next, to see that competition is making a comeback. That could be good news, but we have to learn how to spread the academic wealth beyond the winner's circle.
There's much to like in Kronholz's article. It exalts nerdy things like spelling bees and celebrates the grit of students who rise to the top by studying very, very hard. It makes clear that those students aren't idiots savants who relate better to dictionaries than to people. And it reminds us that some knowledge is valuable or even fun for its own sake.
But Kronholz doesn't really acknowledge just how limited the reach of these competitions really can be. Sure, some ten million children across the country participate in the Scripps spelling bee, but that's still a fraction of eligible children in schools. And I'm fairly sure that too few children from our neediest schools are advancing to the finals.
Is it possible to bring the spirit of the Scripps spelling bee or the Intel Science Search to more schools and communities? Some years ago, a friend of ...
Louisiana’s Greenlawn Terrace Elementary is a small school achieving big things. It is one of the top-performing schools in its district, a feat made even more impressive given the high rate of poverty of its student population. In fact, the school was recently named a High-Performing High-Poverty School by the Louisiana Department of Education, one of a very few neighborhood schools in the greater New Orleans area to receive the honor.
We recently spoke with members of the Greenlawn community to learn how they do it. Two major themes emerged: their school environment, which is caring and safe for students, parents and staff, and their focus on data.
Principal Katherine “Kitty” Croft, special education teacher and department chair Marguerite Hymel and Title I extension teacher Amy Lang told us more.
Public School Insights: How would you describe Greenlawn Terrace Elementary?
Croft: At Greenlawn, everyone in the school, from the custodial staff to the principal, shares the same vision.
I have been at the school almost 25 years, and that stability, of course, adds to what goes on here. And we are a small neighborhood school, with about 370 students. But when I first came, this was a large school. We were almost 700 children. I took home the yearbook so I could memorize the teachers. But now we are a small, suburban school tucked in Kenner, Louisiana, behind a very busy street. I love it.
Our population…When I first came to the school it was about 66% white, 33% black. Today it is about 41% white, 33% black and 25% Hispanic. We have always been a Title I school, which means that we are always “at-risk.” We have right now about 85% free or reduced price lunch students.
I have always loved psychometry. I figured when I was in graduate school that there would always be ...
Hallelujah! A recent study shows that an improvement strategy may actually work at scale. And it may even work well. What a relief after a spate of studies suggesting that nothing ever really works for anyone anywhere. But control your enthusiasm. Even this promising strategy has fallen under the budget axe.
According to Deb Viadero in EdWeek, a Stanford study "suggests that putting literacy coaches in schools can help boost students' reading skills by as much as 32 percent over three years." (The program focuses on K-2 classrooms.) And the more coaching, the better:
Teachers and schools that experienced more coaching sessions tended to spur bigger learning gains in their students. Some teachers recieved no coaching over the course of the study, while others had as many as 43 sessions.
The program seemed to work best in schools where teachers have real authority and strong relationships with their peers:
The schools where the most coaching took place were...places where teachers felt they had a voice in what went on in their building and where professional networks among teachers were already strong. (Those ...
Back in 2005, Idaho’s Sacajawea Elementary School was struggling. The school had had four principals in four years, had never made Adequate Yearly Progress and lacked direction. But that changed with the arrival of Greg Alexander.
Now in his fourth full year as principal, Alexander presides over an award-winning school. After making AYP the last two years and seeing tremendous growth in its Limited English Proficient students' reading scores in particular, Sacajawea was named one of only three Distinguished Schools in Idaho for 2009. What are the keys to its success? A focus on recruiting and retaining excellent teachers, a consistent discipline strategy, a strong reading program and a host of other efforts designed to meet students’ individual needs. Principal Alexander recently told us more.
Public School Insights: How would you describe Sacajawea Elementary?
Alexander: Sacajawea Elementary is located in Caldwell, Idaho, a suburb of the capital city of Boise, just a good 20 minutes away. I actually live in Boise and commute to this community. We have a neat facility. We are up on a hill, overlooking what is called the Treasure Valley. There is a story about a young boy sitting on the edge of a cliff off beyond our school, looking over the valley as the wagon trains came through. The sagebrush was so high that you could only see their canopies. And we look up at the Cascade Mountains. It is just a really beautiful campus.
On this beautiful campus we serve 500 students from pre-K through fifth grade. We are 60% Hispanic and 23% ELL, or LEP [Limited English Proficient], students. We are about 36% Caucasian students, and then just a few percentage of a variety of other students. We have 7% that have special education needs, and we are 90% free and ...
When Melissa Glee-Woodard became principal of Maryland’s Lewisdale Elementary School four years ago, it was struggling. The school was in the dreaded “school improvement” process because of the performance of multiple subgroups of students, and it needed change.
Change is what it got. But not the dramatic “fire-all-teachers” change that has been making the papers. Rather, Glee-Woodard inspired teachers, parents and students with a new vision. The staff began focusing on student data in a meaningful way. Targeted professional development addressed areas of weakness in the instructional program. And new summer programs ensured that students kept their academic success going even when school was not technically in session.
As a result, Lewisdale has made AYP every year Glee-Woodard has been principal. The National Association of Elementary School Principals recently honored her for her transformational leadership.
She joined us for a conversation about the school and its journey.
Public School Insights: How would you describe Lewisdale?
Glee-Woodard: Lewisdale Elementary School is located in an urban setting in Prince George's County, Maryland. We are in the backyard of the University of Maryland, College Park. It is a working-class neighborhood. 80% of our students are Hispanic. 17% are African-American.
All of our students walk to school each and every day, and we are a neighborhood school. Our parents are very actively involved. Anytime that you are outside in the morning, you will see a lot of parents either walking their children to school or dropping their children off in cars.
Lewisdale is also a Title I school. 84% of our students qualify for free or reduced meals. And 54% of our students speak English as their second language. So that gives you a general idea of ...
Our timing could hardly have been worse. On the very day we posted our story about the achievements of Carstens Elementary School in Detroit, the Detroit Free Press listed Carstens among the many schools slated for closure in that city. Why? Because there just aren't enough students to fill the building.
Carstens is a victim of Detroit's bitter economic struggles. As whole neighborhoods atrophy, even good schools like Carstens can face dwindling enrollments and end up on the chopping block. There are forces other than academic failure that can bring a school down.
Some observers have hailed the Detroit Public Schools' Emergency Financial Manager, Robert Bobb, for his vision of "New Orleans-style reform." But the story of Carstens should remind us that even the best plans can leave casualties in ...
SIGN UP
Sign up for our e-newsletter on public school success.
A VISION FOR GREAT SCHOOLS
On this website, educators, parents and policymakers from coast to coast are sharing what's already working in public schools--and sparking a national conversation about how to make it work for children in every school. Join the conversation!
