A year after getting $1.4 million in a federal grant for lowest performing schools, students at the Brooklyn Center High School are seeing test scores rise.
Brooklyn Center High School said goodbye last week to a year of painful changes. But as summer break begins, there are signs of growth and improvement.
A year ago, the school was branded by the state as one of Minnesota's 32 lowest performers. In the aftermath, a popular principal had to be let go. The school day was made an hour longer to allow for more reading and math instruction. Teachers faced heightened scrutiny through new evaluations. All this and more was done at a dizzying pace over the summer and the first few months of the 2010-11 school year.
"I have never in my 10 years teaching seen teachers trained as much and pushed as much as I have here," said visual art teacher Tabatha Waller.
The high school is not alone. Low-performing schools across the state must take steps to improve, either by accepting federal mandates for change to get additional funding, or by coming up with their own improvement plans.
At Brooklyn Center High, the effort appears to be producing results. Scores on district reading and math tests have risen significantly. Parents are calling teachers more and showing up more often in the classroom and at parent-teacher conferences. Some teachers see a change of attitude among students.
"I feel like the student work ethic has improved over the course of the school year," said English teacher Amanda Jones.
Still, Superintendent Keith Lester is ambivalent about the changes the school had to make in order to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal aid. He worries that too much emphasis is being put on test scores, rather than the total learning experience. He said the school and district have had to cram too much change into too little time. The first few months of school were bumpy, given the number and pace of adjustments.
"It's like putting a new engine in your car while you're on I-494. It's going to slow you down a little," Lester said.
Said Jones: "I'm not going to lie; it's been a stressful year."
That additional stress, Lester said, has resulted in more teacher turnover, although new high school Principal Jean Sorensen said the number is small.
"I know that we have people looking for other jobs, and I think this is one of the factors," Lester said. "We know because we're writing more recommendations."
Where the label came
Last year's designation as a failing school, announced a couple of weeks before the end of the 2009-10 school year, came from the state Department of Education. The department focused on schools that "persistently" registered the lowest scores on state tests. Independent reviewers spent two days at each of the 32 schools to catalogue contributing factors.
Many of the schools were in the state's poorest communities, with large numbers of students for whom English is a second language. Seven were in Minneapolis. At Brooklyn Center, state data showed that 13 percent of the students spoke limited English and 76 percent were eligible for free and reduced-price lunches.
Evaluators faulted the school for not using test score data enough to track student achievement and plan instruction, not addressing family needs, and failure to match teaching to students' individual learning needs. While many at the school didn't criticize the findings, they were disheartened by the stigma of being tagged as a failing school.
"My reaction was that we have so many wonderful things going on, but it seems like sometimes people just want to focus on our low test scores," Waller said.
With the designation came federal money: $1.4 million in a three-year federal School Improvement Grant (SIG). Another $900,000 should be on the way, said Lester.
Of the 32 schools on the list, 19 got SIG money, said Patricia King, director of the Education Department's Office of Turnaround Schools. As a condition for the funds, the schools had to make changes, choosing from a set of options.
Using the money
Brooklyn Center used some of the money to start a training program designed to make it easier for parents to get more involved in their children's education. The first meeting under the "Parents of Power" program drew 70 parents. "We were hoping for 20 to 25," Lester said.
Also, specialists were hired to help kids who weren't making the grade.
The flip side was the strings attached to that money.
One string for Brooklyn Center was replacing Principal Bryan Bass, a condition that Lester at the time called "the dumbest thing I've seen coming out of education in my [40] years in education."
Another was the longer school day. In addition, three evaluations were required of all teachers each year, including long-term tenured teachers, customarily evaluated only once every five years, said Sorensen.
As for the kids, it didn't take long for word to spread that school would be longer and harder starting last September.
"Some of my friends said 'the principal is gone and everything is changing,' " said sophomore Mai Lee. "They were talking about longer days and stuff. I was, like, 'we're going to be studying hard, we're going to have harder courses.'"
"The harder classes made me improve more," she said. "I'm just glad to see some of my friends and peers improving over the year."
Scores on reading and math tests administered by the district have soared. Last spring, 38 percent of students tested met or exceeded grade level expectations in reading. This year, that percentage jumped to 55 percent. In math, the increase was from 20 percent to 28 percent.
"In my opinion, that is a result of what's happened this year," Sorensen said.
Lester's take on the changes remains mixed.
"My reaction is that we're improving," he said. "We are growing. We are getting better. And my [other] reaction is that there is more to education than just taking a test."
Norman Draper • 612-673-4547
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