John Musso from the American School Business Officials joins Saul Wagner from Hertz Furniture on The Balancing Act to discuss the importance of classroom furnishing and design when it comes to teaching and student learning.
Rural
Blog Entries
Recently I was looking through old paper files in the Learning First Alliance (LFA) office and happened upon a successful grant application that LFA had received some years ago to gather, record, and disseminate the knowledge, skills, and approaches successful school districts use to ensure their students achieve to their highest abilities. The project resulted in a publication called Beyond Islands of Excellence that, indeed did chronicle what goes into an effective public school system and profiled districts whose students had benefited from their wise, effective leadership. I was struck by how much the scope of work described in the successful grant application articulated the concepts and big ideas that LFA organizations and their leaders still work diligently to implement today. ...
I may be able to afford my connection costs, but staying plugged-in is not cheap; a comparison of Comcast and Verizon shows prices between $69.99 and $100.00 a month, before taxes, for varying internet and cable packages. For low-income families, prioritizing access comes after purchasing food, making loan payments, buying clothes and filling up the car with gas. Yet in the digital age, it’s becoming evident that children without basic technological skills will be at a disadvantage in the workforce and society. ...
In 2001, The Learning First Alliance wrote a report titled “Every Child Learning: Safe and Supportive Schools – A Summary,” which advocated for systemic approaches to supporting positive behavior in our nation’s schools. The Alliance argued for school-wide approaches to improving school climate, safety and discipline: “In a safe and supportive learning community, civility, order, and decorum are the norms and antisocial behaviors such as bullying and taunting are clearly unacceptable.” Ten years later, schools across the nation continually contend with the harsh and terrifying realities of bullying and the sad reality is that we still have a long way to go when it comes to ensuring a safe and supportive environment for our nation’s children. Fortunately, recent attention to the issue suggests that we are all beginning to take important steps in the right direction. ...
We hear a lot about urban schools—their performance, the challenges they face, how we can make them better. We don’t hear nearly as much about rural schools, despite the fact that almost half of our public schools are rural and about a third of America's students attend these schools.
Rural schools face challenges similar to urban schools (such as poverty and high mobility rates), as well as unique challenges related to attracting and retaining staff, capacity to apply for large competitive grants, access (or lack thereof) to providers of supplemental educational services and more.
But there are a number of successful schools and districts that are overcoming these challenges and helping rural students meet their potential. South Dakota’s Wagner School District is one such place. The district, located next to the Yankton Sioux Reservation, has one school that serves grades pre-K through 12. Its diverse student population is overwhelmingly poor. It has a high mobility rate.
Yet students in Wagner graduate at a higher rate than others in South Dakota. And Native American and high school students outperform their peers across the state on standardized assessments.
Critical to the district’s success is technology. By embracing initiatives ranging from a one-to-one laptop program to online AP courses to iPod touches that help differentiate instruction for kindergarteners, this district is truly using technology to enhance student learning.
Wagner Superintendent Susan Smit recently told us more about this remarkable district.
Wagner: A Rural, Diverse District
Public School Insights: Tell me about the Wagner School District.
Smit: Wagner is located in rural South Dakota, along the Missouri River at the base of the state. It’s a beautiful part of the United States.
We get federal impact aid under Title VIII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We're right next to the Yankton Sioux Reservation, which is a checkerboard reservation. It was one land mass at one time, but pieces have been sold by different entities through the years and now it's a checkerboard. One piece of land may be reservation, the piece next to it may not be.
We're a rural community with changing demographics and a diverse population. The two primary demographics are Native American and non-Indian. When I came here six years ago, we were under 50 percent Native American. Now ...
[Editor's note: This is the second in a series of three posts on school-based health centers. Yesterday we briefly reviewed evidence supporting the use of these clinics. Today, Linda Gann talks about how her district founded two such centers. Soon Jennifer Danielson will take us through a day in the life of a nurse practitioner and tell us how her school-based health center has impacted kids.]
School-based health clinics have shown a great deal of promise in improving health outcomes for students, decreasing Medicaid costs at a time when every penny counts and even in potentially raising academic outcomes for low-income students. But yet there are only about 2,000 school-based health clinics (SBHCs) in the United States. Why don’t more districts take this approach? Does it seem too expensive? Too risky? Too separate from the district’s academic mission?
We recently spoke to Linda Gann, Communications and Special Project Coordinator in Colorado’s Montrose County School District RE-1J, to learn more about how her district came to embrace SBHCs. She also told us about her experience planning and implementing the district’s first school-based health clinic three years ago and its second a few months ago. Some keys to their success? The clinics get all their funding outside the general fund. They keep the community engaged in and informed about these efforts. And they consider not only the physical but also the mental health needs of students.
SBHCs alone will not close the achievement gap. But in Montrose, they are part of a broad strategy to address the needs of its growing Hispanic community. And that strategy appears to be working—for example, the district has a 20% higher graduation rate for Hispanic students than the state does.
Here's the story as Gann told it to us in a recent phone conversation.
About Montrose County School District RE-1J
I think from a researcher’s standpoint our district is almost a perfect universe, as far as data analysis goes. We are located in west central Colorado. We are five hours away from Denver. We are about 1,100 square miles, with two distinct communities. Montrose is about 30,000 people. Olathe is probably about 8,000 people. So we are not very large. And we are separated from our neighboring districts by open space, so it is really easy to tell where our school district stops and another one starts.
In our district, we have 6,500 students. District-wide, 54% receive a free or reduced price lunch. But on the south end of our district, which is close to the ski resort of Telluride, the houses are larger, and there are more families considered upper middle class. The free and reduced price lunch population at the elementary school in that area is about 11%. On the north end of our district, the free and reduced price lunch population is 80%. ...
North Carolina’s Laurel Hill Elementary School is a model school. Its rural, diverse and high-poverty student population consistently exceeds state targets on standardized test scores, and the school has made AYP each year since 2003. It has also been recognized for its great working conditions.
But getting there wasn’t easy. In the early 2000s, one challenge stood out: The school failed to make AYP because of the performance of its students with disabilities (known in North Carolina as its “exceptional children”). Rather than throw up their hands at the daunting task of educating special education students, staff at Laurel Hill made lemonade out of lemons. They took the opportunity to study their school and its structure, revise its schedule and move to full inclusion. The result? A Blue Ribbon school that can confidently say it is meeting the needs of all its children. Principal Cindy Goodman recently told us about the school and its journey.
Public School Insights: How would you describe Laurel Hill Elementary?
Goodman: Laurel Hill is a pre-K through fifth grade community school. We have about 500 students and are located in an extremely rural community. We have a very nice facility, which is about 11 years old.
We have an outstanding staff that holds our children to very high standards for behavior, for academics…just high standards in general.
Public School Insights: What kind of population does the school serve?
Goodman: Our community, the little town of Laurel Hill, is located in Scotland County, North Carolina. The county currently has, and for a good while has had, the highest unemployment rate in the state. So it is a very poor area. Between ...
Granger High School in Washington State has garnered national attention for its remarkable journey from bad to great. Most Granger students come from low-income families working on farms in the surrounding Yakima Valley. Many are children of migrant workers. In 2001, Granger was plagued by gang violence, low morale and an astronomical dropout rate. Now more than 95% of Granger students graduate, and almost 90% go on to college or technical school. (See our story about Granger here.)
Granger principal Paul Chartrand recently spoke with me about the critical work of sustaining the trend. The overriding message I took away from our conversation: Forge strong personal connections with students and their families.
Sustaining the Turnaround Trend
Public School Insights: Granger High School has been described by quite a few people as a real turnaround story. Do you think that is a fair description?
Chartrand: I do think it’s a fair description. My predecessor, Richard Esparza, really started the turnaround. I took over last year, and we are trying to continue the trend. We have been successful in a couple of areas, and we are still working on it in ...
Editor's note: In the final of a series of four guest blogs on how teachers view parent involvement and engagement in public education, Renee Moore responds to Larry Ferlazzo's distinction: Parent Involvement or Parent Engagement?
Earlier today, we published Larry's response to Renee's posting, How Much Parent Involvement Do Educators Really Want?
Larry’s thoughtful distinction between “involvement” and “engagement” of parents is more than just semantics. We agree that the attitude of educators toward parents significantly determines the quality of response we can expect. For a more detailed look at the dynamics of trust in parent/ school relations, read the book Trust in Schools (Bryk and Schneider, 2002).
Larry is also right (as numerous studies and our own teaching experiences show) that any level of school/community/parent cooperation produces some positive effect on student achievement. My concern is that ...
Editor's Note: Yesterday, Hollywood producer turned Montana educator Peter Rosten sent us the following remarks about his school's innovative filmmaking program:
Greetings from Montana!
A friend of mine, Jan Lombardi, is the education policy advisor for Montana’s Governor, Brian Schweitzer. Recently Jan forwarded me a “Learning First” newsletter and pointed to an article titled “Learning in the Community: Teen Filmmakers Talk About Their Work and Its Impact on Their Lives”.
After reading this inspiring story, I reached out to Claus von Zastrow. Perhaps he’d be interested in a pretty cool media program here in the Bitterroot Valley in 
rural Western, Montana.
In 2004, we created MAPS: Media Arts in the Public Schools. (Be sure to visit our website and Youtube page.) The initial goal was to educate under-served, rural students in the media arts--and since ‘movies’ are cool, there was a healthy and eager response. ...
Sally Broughton's middle school students have had a greater impact on their rural community than do many people three or four times their age. The Montana Teacher of the Year has helped her language arts and social studies students successfully advocate for policies to improve life in their school and their neighborhoods. In the process, her students at the Monforton School have strengthened their grasp of history, civics, mathematics, research, writing, and public speaking.
Broughton's remarkable achievements have earned her the American Civic Education Award from The Alliance for Representative Democracy. She recently told Public School Insights about the indelible mark her students have left on Bozeman, Montana. They have much to show for their work: public restrooms downtown, a school-wide bicycle helmet policy, a community playground, and a sophisticated early warning system for local residents living near a vulnerable earthen dam. And the list goes on....
President-Elect Obama is urging Americans to devote themselves to civic and community service. Sally Broughton's students in Bozeman can show you how it's done.
Download our full, 16-minute interview here, or read a transcript of interview highlights.
PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: I've heard quite a bit about these very, very fascinating projects that you've done and that have actually managed to change public policy in your community. Could you describe how you go about this, and how these projects support broader academic goals?
BROUGHTON: Absolutely. We do something called Project Citizen. During that time, the children find a problem that can be solved by public policy and they investigate it. ...
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