New York, NY —
There’s a common presumption among school reformers that the best way to deal with a failing school is to shut it down and reopen it with a whole new staff. But others believe it’s possible to make change from within. WNYC’s Beth Fertig reports on one program in New York City that seeks to improve struggling public schools by changing the overall learning environment.
PS 85 in the Tremont section of the Bronx was a chronically failing school. For years, only 4 out of 10 of its elementary students were reading on grade level, making them unprepared for middle school. It was also out of control.
Principal Ted Husted knew the challenges were enormous when he took over three years ago. But he didn’t blame his teachers – or at least, not most of them.
HUSTED: Yes, I will admit like in any New York City school there were some teachers that needed to be motivated to either leave the system or go back to school and re-educate themselves. I found a lot of teachers that really just needed to be given permission to be creative about their thinking, needed to be empowered to do what they knew kids needed to do in the classrooms.
Husted divided his 1200 students into four mini-schools based on learning styles. But Husted’s reforms ran into a roadblock: student behavior. It was especially obvious during a new lunchtime recess.
HUSTED: The injury rate in our clinic, in our health clinic at lunch time went through the roof. Because kids weren’t used to having that space and they weren’t used to getting out, and just running and playing.
Meanwhile, Husted’s reading scores barely budged. And it turned out the two situations were linked.
GREICIUS: One child tantruming in a kindergarten class of a second year teacher can effectively derail instruction not just for a day but for a whole year.
Greg Greicius is a senior vice president with Turnaround for Children, a non-proft that specializes in helping schools deal with both the environmental and academic issues. Greicius is a former special education supervisor for the city. He says a few troublemakers can be contagious in schools like PS 85, which are located in poor communities and typically have a lot of inexperienced teachers.
GREICIUS: The critical issue is being able to separate out which ones really are the highest-need kids, which ones really need mental health services, which ones need support from a social service organization, which ones’ parents need housing, which ones need help from an immigration lawyer.
Turnaround for Children started working with PS 85 last fall. Its coaches created an intervention team and taught the school how to sort out which students needed what kind of help, and how to link them with services from local providers. The school was also required to hire a full-time social worker.
Turnaround also trained the teachers at PS 85 in classroom management. This year, 49 percent of students met state standards for reading – a 13 point gain over last year. Almost three quarters met the standards for math. The school is literally flowering.
PALMA: It’s been about 4 months, completely immersed in the rainforest and the problems of deforestation…
Second grade teacher Mario Palma shows off a rainforest his students have built in the hallway outside his classroom. The kids made tall trees made out of cardboard, along with leaves and birds.
PALMA: They used all recyclable materials, they used orange juice cans to make a tucan (laughs). It’s so amazing to see what can be done once you get all the behavior stuff out of the way.
Palma is in his second year of teaching. He says he’s controlling his students better with tactics he learned from Turnaround for Children.
PALMA: Maybe acknowledging someone who’s distracted by bringing your body into close proxitmity with a student as opposed to even speaking to them, using signals to get their attention, having certain hand movements so they know when it’s time to move. Really kind of just avoiding excess noise and maybe intervening in a less combative type of way.
Turnaround for Children was started by a child psychiatrist 12 years ago. It’s funded by several prominent philanthropies. A few years ago, Dr. David Osher, of the American Institutes for Research, was hired to conduct an independent study of its work with six failing middle schools in the Bronx. He says test scores went up and fewer students were suspended. Osher says these results show why staff development can be more effective in some cases than shutting and reopening a school.
OSHER: It will be hit or miss. Because most of the new principals will also not have been prepared for this. And many of the new teachers will not have been prepared.
That’s important, he says, because thousands of schools risk being closed under sanctions imposed by the No Child Left Behind law – an expensive solution, especially when union rules in New York require teachers to stay on the payroll.
Turnaround for Children says its complete model costs around 300 thousand dollars per school. The schools pay about half that expense, mostly by hiring a social worker. Some schools have only opted for a few of its services. But a study of those getting the full package – including PS– saw their reading scores go up an average of 15 points in less than one year.
TEACHER: I’m going to give you a few minutes of free time. Because you worked hard. They did!
Even at PS 85 there are still a few hiccups. A fourth grade teacher cried recently when students misbehaved before a field trip. But the principal says suspensions are down this year. And ten year old Angelina Novas agrees bad behavior is rare now.
ANGELINA: Kids are getting more attention. So I think that’s what kids want is more attention.
Principal Husted sees a number of reasons for his school’s success. He credits the Bloomberg administration with giving him more freedom over his budget. And though critics complain there’s been too much testing, he says that’s okay if it forces teachers to pay more attention to struggling students – so long as it’s not just about numbers.
HUSTED: Children want to please adults the adults in their lives, they really want to be successful. But if you can’t adress some of the issues and give them the coping mechanisms that they need to focus on what they need to do, you’re going to fail.
Turnaround for Children is planning to expand its efforts inside and outside New York City. Meanwhile, a research group called Mass Insight in Boston is planning to work with partners around the country on turnaround zones to see if these kinds of reforms can help failing schools without shutting them down. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.