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June 2005
School Dept. gets late windfall of funds
Posted Thursday, June 30, 2005
The $819,000 in federal money is targeted to help failing schools.
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The Providence School Board will spend $80,000 to hire an artist to carve school logos out of tree trunks at the city's middle schools this fall.
The $80,000 is part of $819,000 in Title I monies that the federal government gives to high-poverty schools. The catch is that the School Department says it didn't get the $819,000 -- and $503,829 in state funds -- until early April, a few weeks before classes ended.
Although additional money is always welcome, school officials said that the money arrived so late in the school year that it made it difficult to plan appropriately.
The deadlines only added to the urgency. The money must be spent by Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year, while the state money must be allocated by Friday, the end of the state fiscal year.
At Monday's School Board meeting, some board members questioned why the $503,000, awarded by the state Department of Education for academically struggling schools, arrived so late.
"The state came upon these extra funds targeted for middle schools and they gave us this money three or four weeks ago," said Mark Dunham, the district's chief financial officer. "We're trying to spend the money as fast as we can."
(Dunham later said that both pots of money had been awarded the first week of April.)
In response to a question from another board member, Dunham said that the last-minute nature of the process "drives us crazy, too."
But Education Commissioner Peter McWalters said that his department has been meeting for many months with Providence about how the Title I monies could be used.
"I can't believe they're saying that we sprung it on them in April," he said yesterday. "These are sophisticated plans. They weren't done in 24 hours."
McWalters said his department could not release the Title I funds until Providence had completed plans for a federal Reading First grant. He said it took most of the winter to make sure that the School Department's Reading First plans complied with federal guidelines.
"I'm proud of what the city did with it," McWalters said, referring to the schools' plans for the Title I money. "They spent the money exactly where they needed to."
Elliot Krieger, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said Providence was notified about the state monies -- typically used for summer programs -- in early April, three months before the end of the school year.
"I don't think this was a surprise," he said yesterday. "We got a fully detailed plan from Providence on April 8. That doesn't seem last-minute to me."
Unfortunately, Dunham said, the Title I monies can't be used to pay for some of the basics that Providence desperately needs, such as art and music teachers, social workers and guidance counselors. The money can't be used to replace leaking roofs or antiquated heating systems because it is supposed to be spent help failing schools improve.
As Dunham put it, "The headache is trying to explain to folks why we are not using the money to fill next year's budget gap."
The district faces a $5-million budget shortfall next year and is looking at cutting varsity athletics and guidance counselors to help fill the gap.
"We cannot use this money to put a classroom teacher in front of 26 kids," Dunham said of the Title I funds. "But we can use it to hire a teaching assistant. We can't use it to buy a math book. But we can use it to buy a calculator."
In other words, Title I money is meant to supplement, not replace, local money for education. The federal government does not want public schools using its money to fill holes in their budget.
Providence will spend the Title I money on textbooks, visits to homes of truant students, training for parents and teachers about the new student code of conduct, and transition programs for students moving from elementary to secondary school.
The state money, targeted at failing schools, will pay for summer programs, including teacher training, credit recovery classes for high school students and a five-day induction program for new teachers.
At Monday's School Board meeting, School Board member Maila Touray repeatedly questioned why the department was spending $80,000 to hire Michael Higgins, a Providence artist, to run a series of motivational assemblies at the district's eight middle schools.
Higgins will help each school create a logo. He will carve the logo out of a tree trunk, paint and shellac it, and bring it back to the school, where it will stand as a permanent structure.
"Have you looked at where we could better spend this money?" Touray asked. "Don't we have other priorities that are more critical?"
School Board member Bert Crenca raised similar concerns and asked why the $80,000 wasn't put out to bid.
Frances Gallo, chief of administration, said that the district did not seek proposals on the $80,000 because Higgins is a sole vendor, which means that no one else performs the same service.
"Kids don't have a sense of pride in their schools," she said. "This will help build a sense of ownership."
The School Board voted 5-3 to approve the artist-in-residence program, with Robert Wise, Touray and Grace Gonzalez voting against it and Dilania Inoa abstaining.
Schools have new behavior policy
Posted Tuesday, June 28, 2005
The code of conduct emphasizes intervention rather than punishment.
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The Providence School Board has approved a code of conduct that aims to keep students in school rather than find ways to kick them out.
Months in the making, the behavior policy takes a mostly incomprehensible 60-page document and condenses it to 12 pages. It establishes four expectations: that students come to school on time and ready to learn; that they respect themselves and others; that they plan for the future; and that they ask for help when needed.
It also spells out the expectations and the rights of students, teachers, administrators, parents, even community partners. The code, for example, says that every teacher must create a positive learning environment. It also says that every teacher must receive the tools and support needed to perform their jobs.
The policy groups negative behavior into four levels, from the most minor infractions (pushing and shoving, and talking back) to the worst, including possession of a gun or drugs. The code spells out the consequences for each type of behavior.
Sometimes, the problem is handled by the teacher. As the behavior escalates, school administrators and parents are involved. And with the most serious infractions, the police are called.
Rather than focus on punishment, the policy emphasizes intervention and restitution. As Frances Gallo, chief of administration, put it, it's about teaching the child how to behave responsibly and modeling that appropriate behavior for him or her.
"Rather than remove the disruption, this is about keeping the child in school," Gallo said. "It's about healing the child rather than allowing the problem to grow and fester."
Not everyone was comfortable with the code of conduct.
In a letter to the board, Steve Smith, president of the Providence Teachers Union, said he was opposed to the policy and asked that the board postpone voting on the matter.
Paul Vorro, the union's executive director, said the policy gives individual schools too much leeway over how they enforce aspects of the policy, such as the dress code.
But his main complaint was that teachers are already overburdened, and, with a proposed reduction in guidance counselors, he said there would be few support staff left to implement the plan.
"These services don't exist at the elementary school level," he said, referring to guidance counselors. "When in the school day will they have time to work on this?"
Gallo said the district will hire seven people this summer to train teachers and principals to administer the policy. The School Department will draft a letter that teachers can send to parents explaining their child's behavior and the appropriate consequences. Principals will receive training during their summer retreat.
But Gallo also said that the department will require middle and high school teachers to take four classes, one each in child development, conflict resolution, diversity training and de-escalation tactics.
Jonny Skye, youth opportunities facilitator, said several teachers have expressed reservations about the cell phone policy. The code forbids students -- and teachers -- from using cell phones during the school day but does not prohibit them from having them on campus.
Cell phones, she said, are a fact of life.
"They're in our schools," she said. "We don't have the right to confiscate them. Now at least we have a clear policy."
Skye said some staff had expressed concern about the regulations on CD and MP3 players. The regulation states that students can use these devices during independent learning but they can never be used during regular classroom instruction.
Skye emphasized that the policy is just a beginning. It is a foundation on which schools can build, adding their own nuances. She said the plans will bring consistency to a system in which there is considerable variety in the way discipline is imposed from one school to another.
In the end, the School Board voted 5 to 3 to approve the code, with Robert Wise, Grace Gonzalez and Maila Touray voting against the plan and Dilania Inoa abstaining.
The board did, however, postpone a vote on a student bullying and harassment policy until the board's lawyer has had a chance to revise some of the language.
Central students counter school's negative image
Posted Wednesday, June 22, 2005
BY KAREN A. DAVIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The horror stories began even before the school year started.
Stories of daily fights with weapons, classrooms devoid of learning, fires in bathrooms and frightening hallway scenes in which freshmen would be picked on.
After all, this was Central High School.
The problem was, the outsiders' depiction of Central did not match the reality. And the reputation -- based on fact and fiction -- did not measure up to the desires of Central students who sought a positive high school experience.
So this year, a group of Central High School students set out to make change and make sure that the good things happening at their school were no longer overshadowed by a bad reputation.
The teens teamed up with What Kids Can Do, a national nonprofit organization created four years ago with the goal of giving young people a platform to express their opinions. The project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the MetLife Foundation.
The organization has worked with students nationwide to get adolescents' viewpoints into books, school curricula and research of trends and learning patterns.
At Central, a primary objective was to spread the word about the many good things going at Central and document how the school with the bad reputation has managed to turn itself around.
Overall, the Central project aims to illustrate "the power of what young people can accomplish when given the opportunities and supports they need and what they can contribute when they take their voices and ideas seriously," said Bianca Gray, the school's redesign coach.
The students, led by Gray, have spent recent months spreading the good news and voicing their ideas on the Internet, in newsletters to students and their families, and through photographs and broadcasts on public television, according to Gray.
The project included the creation of a Central High School Web site, complete with an online journal that allows students and teachers to express their viewpoints and feelings.
The Web site has interviews and facts about the school, comparisons of the school 40 years ago and today, updates on class projects and snapshots of what student life is like.
Students say the project has helped the school improve.
In a recent interview, Jessenia Cepeda, Chantra Sek and Dalida Alves said the student body has more pride and school spirit. And they see more evidence of teachers who care and fewer incidents of students challenging teachers' authority.
The hallways are cleaner and suspensions have decreased, Gray said.
Shane Lee, a junior, said addressing the school's poor reputation was key to helping to turn things around.
"The reputation of a school can affect people within the school as well as on the outside," he said. "It can definitely affect a student's attitude coming into the ninth grade. If our school has a negative reputation, what inspiration do we have?"
Speaking from his experience, Lee said a student might enter the school with a defensive attitude and act up in class while attempting to fit in.
Before he learned differently, Lee said, acting up was the way to be cool.
Alberto Diaz Jr., a junior, said he had a similar attitude.
After he realized that the school did not live up to its bad reputation, his behavior changed.
He decided to stop being the class cutup and got involved in student government, said Diaz, who is president of his class.
Students say it's not just their attitudes that have changed and helped rally school spirit.
The school's debate team was revived this year and its football team played in the championship game of its division, and claimed the title after the opposing team was found to have had an ineligible player.
Central added a multicultural course that has been popular. Its drama club recently staged a performance that drew an audience of 600 people.
The Web site is called "Inside Out: How a School Turns Itself Around."
The second edition of the online journal, which came out earlier this year, sets out to dispel the myth that school is boring.
It makes note of a roller-coaster building project undertaken by students in Richard Gagnon's physics class, and how students in Richard Gurspan's theater class worked to write and perform a play.
With topics such as "Straight Talk," "Did You Know?" and "Learning In Action," the Web site seeks to inform and promote school spirit.
"Did you know that in 1964 Central graduated 175 students (compared to 245 in 2004) and that 87 percent were white?" "Or, that bowling was the favorite activity of female students in '64 and that half of the female graduates wanted be a secretary."
The national What Kids Can Do organization supplies the Internet address, design and overall organization, Gray said.
Gray said Central students involved in the What Kids Can Do program came up with the idea of visiting Bannister House, a nursing home, and conducting food drives for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
They also hosted Central Idol, a talent show based on the popular Fox TV series American Idol.
Now, instead of mumbling when asked where they go to school, Central students can respond in a different way, Diaz said.
"I'm proud of our school," he said, noting all of the things happening during the school day and the many after-school activities that have begun.
"There's a lot of people [here] trying to grow up and mature," Lee said.
The What Kids Can Do team has spent the better part of this school year informing their peers about opportunities to get involved with teams, clubs or projects.
The students plan to continue their work next school year, with even more emphasis on getting parents and teachers involved.
"I'm very proud of our school," Alves said. "I'm happy with the [positive] attention Cental is getting now. Even though we're not up there [in test score rankings], we're changing for the better and heading up the ladder."
For information, go to www.whatkidscando.org/centralhs/home.html.
Walking the Line, Day 3: The personal approach may be key at Perry
Posted Tuesday, June 21, 2005
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
In January 2004, the Oliver Hazard Perry Middle School became the first school in Rhode Island to be classified as needing corrective action under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Rather than impose an improvement plan, schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson told the Perry staff to come up with its own. This is the last of three articles on Perry's status 18 months later.
Derrick Vincent, a sixth-grader at Perry Middle School, watches as the teacher records data for a science experiment.
PROVIDENCE -- Miss Raftery dims the lights in her sixth-grade science class. She flips on a flashlight, shining it on a large sheet of white paper.
"Notice how the light, when it's at an angle, covers a much larger area," she says. "But when it's at 90 degrees, the beam is very focused."
Think about what you just saw, she tells the class. Breaking the students into pairs, she asks each group to figure out which angle delivers the greatest amount of energy to the floor.
The classroom hums with the quiet buzz of conversation. Nancy Raftery moves from one table to another. She gives the class a hint. Think about spreading peanut butter on a cracker compared to a slice of bread. Which object would have the most peanut butter?
Some students are still stumped. She darkens the room again, puts a penny on the floor and shines the flashlight on it.
"Which angle would produce the most energy on this penny?"
The students are quiet, focused, bent over their desks in concentration.
In an eighth-grade English class, the mood could not be more different. Students are talking, getting up and cruising the Internet when they should be writing a one-page essay.
The teacher tells one young woman to close the running shoe advertisement on her screen and get back to work. He pulls another young man away from the group and sits him down at a separate computer station.
Two teenage boys hang out in the back of the class, fiddling with the air conditioner. The teacher says these students have been having trouble all morning and he's giving them a chance to cool down.
A handful of students is sitting quietly, finishing assignments that are due at the end of the semester.
It's just this sort of unevenness in instruction that was highlighted during an independent evaluation of Oliver Hazard Perry Middle School in March.
While the SALT report said that teachers care for their students, it also found that teachers' expectations for academic achievement are not as high as their students' hopes. This means teachers are not challenging students to the extent that they should.
According to the study, "The inconsistent practice of effective classroom routines, such as beginning and ending classes on time, keeping all students on task and providing cooperative groups with a clear purpose, further confuses the students' understanding of what is expected of them."
But the study also said that sixth-grade teachers provide much more effective instruction and have higher academic expectations than the rest of the building.
"These teachers teach with a purpose and encourage their students to gain a deeper understanding of their subject matter," the evaluation says. "They nurture and support their students and expect their students to learn."
The big difference, says Luke Driver, one of three deans at the West Side school, is that sixth-grade teachers have an elementary school background while most seventh- and eighth-grade teachers have a high school background.
Elementary teachers are used to mixing up instruction, working with students in small groups and encouraging students to find their own solutions. And in elementary school, the teacher constantly makes connections between math and English, social studies and science.
Seventh- and eighth-grade teachers have been taught based on the old high school model, where, Driver says, teaching is compartmentalized by subject and students are seen as empty vessels waiting to be filled.
The lesson here is that middle schools should look and feel more like elementary schools when, in many cases, they have functioned like high schools. Not all children learn the same way. The challenge for schools such as Perry is to figure out how to personalize instruction to meet the needs of students who learn by drawing pictures or by taking things apart.
In Sabrina Antonelli's sixth-grade math class, the walls are papered with cutouts of trapezoids, triangles and parallelograms. Math vocabulary words line one wall, the rules of classroom behavior are posted on another.
Antonelli runs a tight ship. Wednesday's agenda is posted on the blackboard. The class begins by doing a math problem together, then breaks into pairs to solve a word problem that asks them to figure out the area, radius and circumference of three pizzas, each a different size.
Near the end of class, Antonelli asks each pair to share how they got their answers. Two boys have come up with a novel solution. In order to make the pizzas symmetrical, they measured the radius in two directions.
"When I was taught math, there was one right way," Driver says. "Now kids are given a chance to solve it their own way."
Sixth grader Luis Lopez, left, holds up a display of vocabulary words for his classmates, including Jose Cabrera, in Nancy Ware's English class.
When Perry was built in 1929 in the Hartford neighborhood, it was designed to be an assembly line of sorts, like the factories around it. Classrooms were arranged in rows and the primary method of instruction was the lecture, called chalk-and-talk.
"One brand of product was delivered and students either got it or they didn't," Driver says. "Those who didn't get it dropped out and found a low-skill job in a mill."
But the mills are long gone. Today, students can't get a good job, much less succeed in college, without being literate.
At Perry, however, most students do not read at grade level. Nearly two-thirds of the eighth-graders did not reach proficiency on the basic-understanding section of the state reading test and 93 percent didn't reach it on the analysis and interpretation portion.
"Something happens between fifth and sixth grades," says Nancy Ware, a sixth-grade English teacher. "All of a sudden, the punctuation is gone. Kids forget their capital letters."
Brenda Lucier-Traynor, a sixth-grade bilingual instructor, says, "It's like they're a blank slate, like they've never written an essay before."
That's why the entire district has adopted a program called Read 180, which sets aside extra time for students who are reading at least two grade levels below their peers. The program is very explicit: every 30 minutes, a timer rings and students move to a new task.
In Ware's room, a group of sixth-graders reads quietly in one corner; another reads along with a computer-based program and a third group works directly with Ware.
Although some teachers complain that this approach is too regimented, Ware likes Read 180 because it holds the students' attention, encourages them to work at their own pace and allows the teacher to work with individual students. "The goal is to provide more one-on-one attention and, with 26 kids, the only way to do that is to break them into small groups," Ware says. "The kids love choices. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach."
But it takes more effort to do Read 180 right. The teacher must stay on top of each activity to make sure that the students aren't cruising the Internet.
Perry students also have trouble solving problems, according to the SALT report. Students think that problem-solving means completing routine math problems rather than conducting in-depth investigations, developing new questions or explaining their solutions.
It isn't surprising, then, that only 2 percent of the school's eighth-graders met the standard for problem-solving on the math portion of the state assessment.
"Because they lack understanding and skills," the report said, "they do not persist when faced with challenging classroom work."
To help fill these gaps, the district has adopted a computer-based math program called Plato. The software monitors the child's progress through a series of mini-tests, which the student must pass before moving to the next level. The software also keeps track of how many minutes the student is working on math and how many minutes he or she is off doing something else.
"The feedback is immediate," Driver says. "When they get it right, they move on."
But something intriguing is going on here. Student test scores on the Plato program shot up between September and May. In some cases, the increase was two, even three grade levels.
Then why are the same students tanking on the standardized state assessments? Driver thinks it's because students don't take the state tests seriously.
"We think the kids don't understand the importance of the test," he said. "They don't buy into the purpose. They're taking a nap."
The trick is figuring out how to motivate students so they take the state assessments seriously because, under the federal No Child Left Behind act, schools are penalized if their students do not show steady improvement.
If the assembly-line approach to teaching children is a thing of the past, then teaming is its future. In the fall, the some 600 students not in special education or bilingual education classes will be placed in clusters of 100 students each. Four teachers will work as a team with each cluster and the students will stay together for classes.
The hope is that these teachers will get to know their students so well that if one starts skipping class or another withdraws, the faculty can respond right away.
The hope is that this will create a sense of belonging for students who feel lost among the 850 students.
And the hope is that teachers will not only have a chance to talk about how their students are doing, but collaborate on lessons that help children connect the dots between different academic areas -- social studies and literature, for instance.
As Driver puts it, "We're no longer going to be that factory where you have rows of kids pumped out like widgets."
A climate shift at Perry Middle School
Posted Wednesday, June 15, 2005
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
In January 2004, Perry Middle School became the first school in Rhode Island to be classified as needing corrective action under the federal Leave No Child Behind law. Rather than impose an improvement plan, then schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson told the Perry staff to come up with its own. This is the first of three articles on Perry's status 18 months later.
PROVIDENCE -- A thin green line runs down the middle of the hallway.
When the bell sounds, Luke Driver, Perry Middle School's dean of discipline, stands in the corridor, quietly reminding students to walk to the right. As he does, he hands out Perry Bucks, which resemble dollar bills and may be used by students to buy paper and pens at the school store.
It sounds so simple: walk to the right. But that thin green line has become a symbol of a newfound sense of order at this once-troubled West Side middle school.
Driver, a former English teacher at Perry, doesn't mince words.
The old Perry Middle School had a "toxic climate," characterized by adversarial relationships between administrators and teachers.
"The public's perception was that Perry was four things," Driver says, "Dirty, dark, dangerous and deserted."
Today, Perry Middle School, a cavernous 75-year-old brick-and-concrete relic with some 850 students, is a very different place than it was 18 months ago.
According to a recent evaluation by a visiting team of teachers, "The culture of Perry Middle School has improved significantly. Teachers and administrators work together. Students like coming to school and parents feel welcome. Recent renovations make this school a comfortable and inviting place to learn."
Scores on standardized tests remain dismal, however. Hardly any of the students in grades six through eight met the state standards in higher-level math skills and only 20 percent did in basic English.
But Driver says the school couldn't begin to tackle student performance until a sense of order was restored to the building.
"Last year," he says, "we had more suspensions than we had kids. It was a profoundly negative" school environment.
The first thing that the staff did was institute four student rules: attend school, come prepared and ready to learn, prevent/ resolve conflicts and respect yourself and others.
Those rules were posted everywhere -- in the classroom, the hallways, the cafeteria. Teachers talked about the rules in class; the principals, now called deans, discussed them in assemblies.
Slowly, the school climate began to change.
But that was only the first step. Perry Middle School staff, in partnership with the May Institute, an educational and behavioral consultant, began analyzing the existing data on discipline.
They began asking questions: Why are students getting in trouble? When are the problems occurring? Are some teachers reporting more infractions than others?
What the staff discovered surprised even them.
80 percent of Perry's 748 students are well-behaved.
15 percent get in trouble occasionally.
Only 5 percent constitute the "frequent fliers," the students who get kicked out of class on a regular basis. Yet, Driver says that those frequent fliers took up 65 percent of the staff's time.
The teachers also discovered that the majority of students are suspended for defiance, disrespect and disruption, not more serious offenses like smoking or fighting. They got in trouble for talking in class, challenging a teacher's authority or simply refusing to sit down.
So the staff created a room where unruly students could calm down and discuss with an adult how they could have handled the situation differently.
The Student Planning Center is in the basement, but it does not feel like a dungeon. The walls are painted in pastels. The room is Spartan -- a few desks and chairs line the walls -- but it is clean and well-lit.
On a recent spring day there, Mercedes Olivares, an eighth-grader, says she was asked to leave class for chewing gum, then spitting it on the floor.
"I missed the garbage can," she tells the teacher, Dorothy Kurbiec.
"What did you do?" Kurbiec says. "Tell me the truth."
Olivares concedes she shouldn't have been fooling around in class, but says she often has trouble with this particular teacher.
"The biggest complaint we hear from kids is that adults don't listen to them," Kurbiec said. "So we give them an opportunity to tell their side of the story."
Afterward, Olivares says that coming to the planning center is "much better than before, when I would have gotten detention or gotten in trouble with my parents."
Students spend one class period in the center and then return to class. The goals are twofold: to remove the disruptive student so instruction can continue and to give the student an opportunity to reflect on what he or she did wrong.
"When I was a teacher," Driver says, "I was interrupted 104 times in one period."
After the third incident, the child receives detention. After the fourth, he or she is referred to a team of professionals who meet with the child to figure out what's wrong. Is there a problem at home? Is the student acting out because he is having trouble with math? Is there friction with one particular teacher?
"The Student Planning Center is an attempt by faculty to gain control of the building," Driver says. "We're putting kids on notice that there are immediate consequences for inappropriate behavior and sending them back with a plan so it doesn't happen again."
The program seems to be popular. All but 10 teachers have sent students to the center, which has had 705 referrals since it opened in November.
"Most of the kids who come here don't come back the same day," Kurbiec says.
But it's not just the students who are learning a whole new set of behaviors. Teachers have had to change the way they discipline children. Before, adults often yelled to be heard: Stop running. Stop talking. Put those papers away.
Now, the adults are trying to lead by example.
"Nice job walking on the right," Driver tells a student, then hands her a Perry Buck.
"I don't do those," the student says sullenly.
Driver later says that the student has just returned from the Training School. It's a wonder that she has shown up at all.
By computerizing the data on student referrals, the faculty found that more than 50 percent of the student referrals are made by new teachers. What that says is that the less-experienced staff need more help with classroom management.
"Before we were reactive and punitive," Driver says. "Now we're trying to be proactive and positive."
But Perry also needed to find a more effective way to deal with frequently disruptive students and the ones who commit more serious offenses, such as fighting.
In an urban school, it makes no sense to suspend students because they wind up at home without any adult supervision, since both parents usually work. Suspension, in effect, becomes a reward for misbehavior or chronic tardiness.
So the faculty created the focus room, a place where students who have committed more serious offenses like pushing and shoving or yelling obscenities can spend the day writing and reflecting on their behavior under the supervision of a social worker.
Students lose their privileges here, including picking what they want for lunch. If they behave, they can earn back flavored milk and dessert.
"It's all about taking individual responsibility," said school social worker Francine Connolly, who calls herself the "Mean Momma." "I've had days when it was a total nightmare with kids yelling and throwing books. I've had kids taken away in handcuffs."
All it takes is one negative leader to set off the rest of the class.
"These students are smart, charismatic, well-spoken and they are using all of those talents to go negative," Driver says. "They excel at getting negative attention."
The key is to teach them that they can have just as much attention by being good.
"What I see is a school that's trying to change," Connolly says. "The kids are better behaved. They want the adults to be in charge. I have more days like this now."
This refers to a recent afternoon when the two dozen students in Connolly's room were staying put and concentrating on their assignments. Soft New Age music played in the background. When two visitors appeared, the class stayed focused.
Driver broke the silence to ask the students in the focus room a few questions.
"What do you do when someone is bugging you?" he says.
"Go to the teacher for help," one boy says.
"Try not to start an argument," another says.
"What happens if the person keeps after you?" says Driver.
"Tell the principal."
"Let your Mom know."
"Join a peer mediation program."
Many students now say that school is the best part of their day and the worst part is 2:25 p.m., when they have to go home. They look for ways to stay after school, whether it's dance club or intramural sports.
But it's time for Perry to focus on the academic side of the equation.
"Now that schoolwide discipline has improved, this focus gets in the way of the school shifting to a more balanced focus that includes academic achievement," the visiting team of experts wrote.
Instill academic rigor across all classes, the report said. Share the secrets of teachers who are teaching well so that the entire staff can learn from their successes. Find innovative ways to build bridges with parents.
Driver says Perry is very much a work in progress. He uses the metaphor of a construction project to illustrate where the school is and where it has to go:
"We've found the site, built the foundation and assembled all of the different materials," he says. "Now we're getting ready to build."
Tomorrow: How after-school activities build self esteem and help improve academic performance.
School Board hears public's take on system
Posted Tuesday, June 14, 2005
The information was gleaned from surveys and public meetings held in conjunction with the search for a new superintendent.
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Less than half of the 262 people who answered an online survey said that the Providence public schools are on the right track.
What's unusual is that parents and teachers felt the same way about the school district: 47 percent said the school was making steady progress.
The information was gleaned from a Web-based questionaire created by Community Matters, a Providence company hired to gather the public's input on the next superintendent. The city is looking for someone to replace Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson, who recently left to run the Fort Worth, Texas, school system.
Two companies hired by Mayor David N. Cicilline's search committee, chaired by Brown University President Ruth Simmons, reported to the School Board last night on the results of a series of public forums and the status of the search process.
Those respondents who spoke favorably of the school district cited its strong and consistent math and English curriculum, gains in student achievement and higher student expectations.
"It has been an incredible challenge for teachers and students to get to the place where we are," one survey participant wrote. "We need continuity so we can continue to see gains and success."
Those who said that the district was not headed in the right direction mentioned cuts to valuable programs, disciplinary problems and frustration with the administration's management style.
One person wrote that "the administration seems more concerned with test scores as an indicator of student success and is failing to look at the overall well-being of the students and whether or not they will be prepared for the real world."
Nearly two-thirds of all participants said that raising student achievement was the top priority, followed closely by finding a solution to the school funding crisis.
Fifty-seven percent said that the district needs to strengthen relationships between schools and families. In fact, Latino parents said that the schools need to make them feel more welcome. They called upon the district to hire more Latino teachers and more bilingual support staff. They asked schools to become more conversant with the cultural backgrounds of their diverse student body.
"Seventy percent of the system is now Latino," one person wrote. "Isn't it time for a superintendent that reflects this interest?"
"Melody Johnson created a culture of insularity and suspicion," another person wrote. "She did not respond well to communities of color, especially the Latino community."
Community Matters also presented a number of findings based on comments from parents, students, teachers and community leaders, who attended a half-dozen public meetings.
Here's some of what they said:
School climate is a problem. Some principals say they spend more time on discipline than on teaching. Students report feeling undervalued while parents report feeling uncertain how to help their children learn. Teachers feel an acute frustration with the limitations of the school buildings and the lack of adequate materials.
Many social, emotional and mental-health needs of children go unaddressed, especially in the wake of recent cuts to social workers and guidance counselors. Bullying continues to be a problem, as do teen pregnancy and the dropout rate. Meanwhile, immigrant families are struggling to negotiate a new culture and are hard-pressed to deal with the intense cultural pressures that new students encounter.
Diversity is not treated as a strength. The schools haven't found a consistent approach to celebrate the diversity of its students and parents.
The quality of teaching is a deep worry. Teachers' expectations are too low and the quality of teaching is uneven. There is a widespread feeling that students are not being prepared for the next stage of their lives.
The next step is choosing approximately 20 semifinalists from the pool of more than 50 applicants. The 19-member search committee will meet to make those selections on June 25.
Edward Hamilton, president of Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler, of New York, said his firm will provide detailed resumes on each candidate. Some of the candidates submitted their own applications; others have been recommended by colleagues, educational leaders, even reporters. Some candidates have said that they are not interested in the job, but, Hamilton said, if the search committee likes them, it can contact them again.
From this point on, the selection process becomes completely confidential. Hamilton told members of the committee not to discuss candidates with the public. This differs from the last superintendent's search, in 1999, when the names of the two finalists became public.
Although it is operating under a tight deadline, the School Board plans to hire a superintendent before school starts in September.
Marchers rail against money for schools
Posted Thursday, June 2, 2005
"Our goal is basically, as parents, to make a stand and say that we're fed up and tired," says one demonstrator.
BY KAREN A. DAVIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Dozens and dozens of youngsters, parents and education advocates marched from Classical High School to the State House yesterday to demand adequate funding of public schools.
The marchers plodded through city streets during evening rush hour, wearing red T-shirts and carrying signs that read "Kids come first" and "March for our kids, March for our schools."
The demonstration was organized by Rhode Island ACORN. At the State House, marchers joined with a larger group of demonstrators from Working Rhode Island, a group that advocates for families from Providence, Pawtucket, Woonsocket and Central Falls.
The goal of the demonstration was to send a message to legislators and Governor Carcieri that public schools need more state money now.
"While our state leaders are still deciphering the budget, we need to send them the message loud and clear: Stop our children from suffering any more! Fund our schools now!" said ACORN member Vivian Moreno, a mother of three. "We need a statewide fair and predictable formula where every child in the state has access to a quality education and immediately our school districts need more money for the upcoming school year."
Stephanie Cannady, a march coordinator and a Rhode Island delegate to the national ACORN organization, said parents were moved to march after reading news reports about state officials pondering tax breaks for companies as they discuss curtailing aid to public education.
A recent report from Governor Carcieri said state officials discovered "newfound revenue." That revenue should be used to help restore vital programs that public school systems were forced to cut last year, ACORN members argued.
"Our goal is basically, as parents, to make a stand and say that we're fed up and tired," said Cannady, who has a son graduating from high school and a daughter in the third grade at Asa Messer Elementary. "For the past three years, this struggle [over funding education] has been an ongoing thing."
The Providence School Department faces a $13.7-million budget gap and recently held brainstorming sessions with parents to discuss the possibility of cutting sports, transportation, special education and personnel, such as assistant principals and guidance counselors.
Mayor David N. Cicilline has offered to give the schools $4.4 million. He has also lobbied for the state to help.
But state officials are not expected to finalize the budget until next month.
"I'm petrified," Cannady said. "I'm scared to death. I don't know what to expect [when school starts] in September."
Cannady said parents are not the only ones who are worried. Her daughter, Gloria, is nervous about what fourth grade will be like next fall.
She wonders whether she will go to school for only half-days and whether she will have art class, her mother said.
Nancy Evans-Lloyd, a parent who joined a local Save Our Schools coalition in March 2004, when the School Department made its first round of cuts in extra-curricular activities, said schools have become "pretty darn dry" and "unmotivating."
Three years ago the schools were doing so well [with education reform]," Evans-Lloyd said. "But the last three years they've just been chipping away and chipping away and chipping awayI think its discriminating against these kids who have these [artistic] talents."
In helping her daughter -- who's graduating from Classical High School --fill out college applications, Evans-Lloyd said she's learned that colleges look for students who have diverse interests and involvement in extra-curricular activities. For some students, that could mean the difference between being accepted or rejected, she said.
Evans-Lloyd came to the march with her son, Davis, a seventh grade student at Nathanael Greene Middle School. Davis said school became boring this year when students were no longer able to take such electives as robotics.
His mother said schools have already been forced to cut programs that fostered "creative-thinking, ingenuity and inventiveness -- the same qualities that business people are looking for" in employees.
Evans-Lloyd said many parents brought their children to "set a good example" and teach them that "you have to stand up for what you believe in."
Fred McLin, 21, who graduated from Johnson & Wales University two weeks ago, wore his black cap and gown to draw attention, he said, tucking a bullhorn under his arm, and to emphasize that many Providence students might not graduate from college if the state is not willing to invest in their education.
McLin said he was not expected to graduate from high school, having grown up in a tough neighborhood in Compton, Calif.
In order for today's youth to flourish, McLin said, they need more and after-school programs that promote positive activities and teamwork.
The way that schools are funded is "not a good formula," Cannady said. "What we're asking them to do is change it."
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