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Uploaded: Wednesday, May 13, 2009, 12:41 AM
Low-achiever program intrigues school board
College Bound takes aim at the achievement gap, with some apparent success in a pilot program
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by Chris Kenrick
Palo Alto Online Staff
Excited by the apparent early success of a pilot program aimed at narrowing the "achievement gap," Palo Alto school board members Tuesday asked how the program's benefits could be extended to more children.
College Bound, a program being piloted this year with 19 fifth-graders at Barron Park Elementary School, has been "truly transformative" for 10 of the students and produced solid gains for the rest, Barron Park Principal Cathy Howard said in a mid-year report.
Howard said she is awaiting more data, including STAR test results, to assess the program more fully.
"Achievement gap" is the term used to describe differences in student performance based on race or ethnic background. For years, it has been a challenging top-priority of Palo Alto school officials.
Intrigued by the early reports and by the enthusiasm of College Bound teacher Sharareh McDaniel, board members wanted to know if and when the program could be implemented at other schools.
"How do we replicate something like this?" board member Barbara Klausner asked. "Can we get the enthusiasm without burning out the teachers?"
Howard said College Bound has taught her that "there isn't a magic wand. We didn't expect to find one and we didn't. It's more time, more hard work and a commensurate increase in achievement.
"It's creating a culture of universal achievement at the school. It's allowing no excuses for us as staff members for not believing every child can learn -- and no excuses for the students," she said. Howard and McDaniel said the excitement generated by the program has spread through the whole school.
College Bound students show up for school two weeks early -- Aug. 10 -- to get a head start on academics as well as on positive approaches to learning. Howard draws on the research of Stanford University psychology professor Carol Dweck to instill "growth mindsets" in the students.
In addition to the two-week head start, College Bound students commit themselves to extended classroom hours on certain days of the week, and their parents agree to provide strong support at home.
One key to the program's success is that the regular classroom teacher is also the College Bound teacher, providing consistency and enabling a high level of trust and understanding with families, McDaniel said.
Of the 10 Barron Park students who experiened "transformative" gains in academics and school commitment, none had parents who had attended college, eight speak a language other than English at home and nine qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches.
Four of the 19 College Bound participants benefited academically from the program, although the changes in their attitudes and motivation were not as dramatic as for the 10 first mentioned, Howard said. Two others made solid progress in their academics and their attitudes, but Howard said she would not describe their experiences as "transformative" because they began with many advantages the other students did not have. Three others were special-education students and one of them, a particularly hard worker, has made solid progress though still performs below grade level, she said.
Howard plans to extend the pilot program next year to 16 third-graders and 15 fourth-graders as well as continuing with fifth-graders.
Asked about long-term plans for the College Bound program, Howard said, "It's hard when you're just piloting something to get too far out on a limb."
School Superintendent Kevin Skelly said he is "enormously excited" by the potential of College Bound but cautioned, "We need to get more data.
"We need to see if it works, see if it can be replicated, see which pieces can be replicated. I hope the board would give us through next year and the year after to see and report."
Skelly and Assistant Superintendent Virginia Davis noted that certain federal funds are available to pay for programs like College Bound for economically disadvantaged students.
School board member Melissa Baten Caswell asked Skelly for a document describing what the pilot is, how long it is expected to last and the measurements used to evaluate it.
"I do believe we have a lot of kids in this district who could use some intervention, and this sounds attractive," Baten Caswell said.
"A lot of parents might think, 'Wow, that sounds like it might help my child.' So when will it be available for them? We just have to really clarify that for the public," she said.
In other business Tuesday, board members discussed proposed new textbooks for Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 and authorized a solicitation of bids for summer maintenance projects.
At the start of the meeting, Skelly called for a moment of silence in memory of JLS teacher Stephen Carothers, who died May 5, as well as Jean-Paul "JP" Blanchard, the Gunn student who died on the Caltrain tracks the same day.
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Posted by parent, a member of the Gunn High School community, on May 13, 2009 at 3:34 pm As a parent who has volunteered for years in Nixon, Terman, Gunn, I am very happy to see the effort going towards finding a solution to the achievement gap. If any youngster is a student in Palo Alto schools, he/she is entitled to the same chance to succeed as any other student. Once these students begin falling behind, things snowball for them. I'm thrilled that we might have found a program that works. I hope that support for the program is across the board.
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Posted by Barron Park parent, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on May 13, 2009 at 5:13 pm Yes, at least they can help 10 kids. If it is true.
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Posted by Mom, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on May 13, 2009 at 9:23 pm Oh, gee. Big mystery. At-risk kids get more time and attention and resources, and problems get solved. And people start looking for some magical reason! Oh brother.
Let's try to remember that educating our kids has to remain a priority, we can't set something up, coast, and rest on our laurels -- it doesn't happen magically. Sometimes, some kids need more resources and attention. Let's remember THAT while we're planning on spending a few hundred million to pack hundreds more students on each of our high school campuses (instead of even considering opening our third campus).
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Posted by palo alto parent, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on May 14, 2009 at 8:27 am Some students will need extra help and getting them extra resources is a good thing to do. But some students may need extra help because they were passed on from grade to grade instead of getting early intervention. Some new reading and math programs don't do as good of a job as the more traditional methods of the past. And in the past, students were grouped in elementary according to ability so that they could get the help they needed. But that is now discouraged if not outright banned. In other words, there can be many reasons for students' low achievement but they (educators) can't see or admit some of their favorite programs/policies might lead to a larger number of students falling behind.
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Posted by another parent, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on May 15, 2009 at 7:34 am palo alto parent, you are so right and this is why we need to spend the extra money in 5th grade when equitable programs in k-4 would have done the job for free!
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Posted by bp alum, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on May 16, 2009 at 3:03 pm No one has answered the question that was posted on one of the other threads about what the school is doing wrong that prevents the other interventions for working. One thing is that the kids do not get the message that there are high expectations for them. The principal does not let the teachers reward academic achievement (sticker charts for doing homework, things like that). Also, the results of this program can't be that much of a surprise. Social scientists reasearched this phenomenon some 40 years ago by telling teachers to treat the black kids like they treated the white kids and vice versa. Lo and behold, the white kids who wre told the teachers held lower expectations for them started to perform less well and the black kids who were told they were smart and expected to succeed started to excel. For this we need a $50,000 program? Why doesn't the school just create and hold high expectations of behavior and achievement for the kids? And also, if the program is for at risk kids, I'm just wondering how that white child of college educated parents is at risk in any of the ways that every other College Bound program defines it?
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Posted by Can we start thinking?, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on May 16, 2009 at 10:03 pm Folks:
Think about what our advantaged students do at home. think about our kids summers. It isn't about race, it is about opportunities. For the students in the College Bound program, their summers and homes are not rich in the same way my kids' lives are. Many of these students also don't have experience with college, with what college preparation is, etc.
Education is about helping those less advantaged. It is astonishing that so many people seem to only care about their own kids. What's wrong with spending a relatively small amount of "extra" money on poor kids? Especially in a community that gets more funding for schools than virtually anyplace else in the state. If we can't look out for our few poor kids here, we have absolutely no moral authority.
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Posted by bp alum, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on May 16, 2009 at 10:10 pm What's wrong with it is that only maybe 10 of those kid were at risk in the normal definition of the word, and they were passed along for five grades before having their education repaired by an expensive intervention. This after the school spent a disproprotionate ampount of money on that demographic all along, and the principal said there was not so much as a dollar for GATE materials, let alone funding for pullouts or any sort of meaningful differentiation. That would be ok if the school had managed to produce some results for the huge amount it spent, but it didn't. The $30,000 it got for this ended up helping what? ten? at risk kids and rewarding other parents with a special program even though their kids were not at risk while excluding other at risk kids who applied. Now it is getting $50,000. Why doesn't the school just improve its teaching and actually hold high expectations for the kids in the first place? Because it doesn't. I know. We were there.
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Posted by another alum, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on May 18, 2009 at 11:04 am i couldn't agree more. but regardless, we still have groups of third and fouth graders who now need extra help and this program is useful for that. why shouldn't the district pay - churchill and the board are not watching that principal with objective eyes.
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