Owens 80% Pass - Bracey Goofed up

[Arthur Hu <ArthurH@TANGIS.COM>]

Me thinks that Bracey _has_ goofed this time. The test scores reported
are % passing tests set at a fairly basic level (as opposed to the WASL
and MCAS which are deliberately set at impossible levels), such rates
can be achieved at schools if they teach basic skills intensively. On
the other hand, I think teaching greek letters in algebra in grade 5 is
pretty goofy.

Bracy says nobody can score at 99th percentile, but that's not what
the article says.

z42\clip\2000\06\owen.txt
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8976-2000Jun6.html
School Defies Its Demographics
By Kenneth J. Cooper
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 7, 2000; Page A03

But there is no worrisome "achievement gap" between Owen students and
peers elsewhere. Since 1991, better than 80 percent of Owen students
have passed the standardized tests in math, reading, writing and
science that Michigan requires of fourth- and fifth-graders each year.

For two consecutive years in the late 1990s, every fourth-grader at
Owen mastered the math test. In 1998-99, the latest year for which
scores are available, 94 percent of the fourth-graders passed the
math test, and 80 percent passed the reading test. Ninety-four
percent of the fifth-graders passed the science test.


DETROIT -- An animated Emily Shahan leads her class of peppy students
in reading aloud a scribble of numbers, symbols and
letters--funny-looking shapes that literally are Greek.

"Gamma to the power of alpha, times gamma to the power of beta,
divided by gamma to the power of alpha, equals . . ." they read off
the chalkboard before them. Shahan shuts off the recitation before
anyone can venture an answer, then taps a student to explain how to
solve the math problem.

"When you see multiply signs, you add the exponents. When you see
division signs, you subtract the exponents," Adriana Reaves
volunteers confidently--and correctly.

Adriana is 11. She and her fifth-grade classmates are studying
algebra, a subject usually not taught until high school, or perhaps
in suburban middle schools or other advanced programs. But this is an
elementary school, and it stands smack in the middle of urban
desolation a couple of miles from downtown Detroit.

Requiring fourth- and fifth-graders to study algebra is the most
dramatic example of the high academic expectations at Owen School,
whose students have shown extraordinary achievement for about a
decade even though 80 percent are poor and more than 90 percent are
black. Nearly all live in a dreary neighborhood where, on many
blocks, vacant lots overgrown with tall weeds outnumber the
dilapidated wooden houses still standing.

In cities across the country, and elsewhere in Detroit, similar
schools that enroll mostly poor, minority students have generally
lagged far behind in the new standardized tests being used to decide
who moves to the next grade or gets a diploma.

This persistent pattern of failure has emerged as a main point of
political debate about education, with everyone from President
Clinton and his potential successors to congressional leaders and
governors calling for tough actions to fix public schools where
low-income students aren't learning as they should.

But there is no worrisome "achievement gap" between Owen students and
peers elsewhere. Since 1991, better than 80 percent of Owen students
have passed the standardized tests in math, reading, writing and
science that Michigan requires of fourth- and fifth-graders each year.

For two consecutive years in the late 1990s, every fourth-grader at
Owen mastered the math test. In 1998-99, the latest year for which
scores are available, 94 percent of the fourth-graders passed the
math test, and 80 percent passed the reading test. Ninety-four
percent of the fifth-graders passed the science test.

Owen outperformed students statewide by 22 percentage points in math,
21 in reading and 56 in science. Owen students outdid peers in Grosse
Pointe, an affluent lakeshore suburb, by 11 points in math, 3 in
reading and 29 in science.

Only in writing did Owen trail the state (17 points) and Grosse
Pointe (36 points). But it was an off year for Owen: The passing rate
in writing had been a stratospheric 94 percent a year earlier, before
inexplicably tumbling to 42 percent.

Owen is unusual but not unique in having low-income students with
high test scores. Five studies published in the last year have
identified several hundred schools around the country that have
defied statistical odds and beaten the achievement gap. The number of
such schools is comparatively low, though: The Education Department
has counted about 7,000 schools that serve the poor and rate as
academically low-performing.

The exceptions to the pattern of low achievement seem to disprove the
notion that demographics is academic destiny. But there remains a
bedeviling question about the schools where low-income students
nonetheless reach high levels of achievement: How do they do it?

"People want to know what my secret formula is so they can
manufacture it and spread it around everywhere," says Patsy Burks,
Owen's principal for a dozen years. "I can't tell them. I don't know
what it is. There's too many things you have to do. It's not just one
thing. It's a combination."

Almost by happenstance, Burks does provide a clue about her
educational philosophy--and it's hardly a secret--when she hears the
name of Ronald Edmonds.

"Oh, oh," she exclaims. "My hero."

Edmonds was a pioneering education professor at Michigan State
University best known for his "effective schools" research, which he
conducted by visiting schools that worked and identifying their
common characteristics. What Edmonds discovered wasn't a whiz-bang
curriculum or a magical teaching technique, but education's
workmanlike equivalent of football's three yards and a cloud of dust.

His research isolated seven characteristics of effective schools: a
safe and orderly environment, a climate of high expectations of every
student, a principal who acts as an instructional leader, a staff
with a clear educational mission, a priority on classroom instruction
in essential skills, parental involvement and frequent testing to
monitor student progress.

It was 25 years ago that Edmonds completed the first round of his
research, which enjoyed a boomlet of popularity before losing out to
new educational fads that weren't as difficult to implement and
weren't based on careful study. He died in 1983.

"Some of the principles he had and believed in made a lot of sense to
me," recalls Burks. "I think the most important was: All children can
learn."

Edmonds has another disciple in Michael Cohen, assistant secretary of
elementary and secondary education in the Department of Education.

"I started writing about this stuff in 1979, and it wasn't exactly a
secret when I started writing," Cohen said. "We've known for a long
time what it takes to make effective schools. The real question is,
'Do we have the will and the capacity to make them on a large scale?'
"

Owen enjoys plenty of both from a dedicated principal who tries to
make sure students get what they need from a hard-working, stable
corps of well-trained teachers, all but one of them fully certified.
Other inner-city schools suffer from a revolving door of
inexperienced teachers still completing their professional training.

The school also benefits from small classes, so small that Burks
wouldn't disclose their exact size. A year ago, the pupil-teacher
ratio was 17 to 1, according to the state. She believes that student
turnover, which causes havoc with lesson planning at similar schools,
is also relatively low, though the school keeps no statistics.

Burks accomplishes all this with the same resources as similar
Detroit schools.

Margaret Horner, leader of the parent council, describes the
experience of her three children at the school as "fantastic. The
teachers . . . expected more from students than teachers did at the
other schools my children attended. Other places you could try hard
if you wanted to. Here, they make you try hard."

As she finishes lunch in the school's tiny lounge, second-grade
teacher Lynda Bartak says, "This is a nurturing school, in all the
good ways that word implies. But there is a firmness. We expect you
to do your work and complete it and be proud of it."

Burks says Edmonds supplied her with what she calls "do-how," but she
has clearly improvised a bag of her own tricks.

When Burks arrived at Owen a dozen years ago, she met with teachers
weekly to plot how to raise test scores. They devised a strategy to
rebuild the curriculum around the content of the tests and assign the
most experienced teachers to administer them in small groups. They
send notes home to remind parents to send children to bed early the
night before testing, then eat a good breakfast before coming to
school.

"I'm looking at all the variables that make the best testing
situation," Burks says. Self-assured teachers in groups as small as a
dozen children help calm down students so they'll do their best. And
she makes no apologies for what critics might scorn as teaching to
the tests or what others might describe as sensibly realigning the
curriculum.

"It's not fair to test something that's not been taught," Burks
maintains.

Samuel Casey Carter, author of a Heritage Foundation report on Owen
and 20 similar schools, suggests Owen hasn't dumbed down its
curriculum with the changes because Michigan has "an exceptionally
hard test. It's one of the few of these exams that's actually a
serious test."

Carter says he independently verified Owen's test scores, which
appear to be corroborated by scores in lower grades on the
Metropolitan Achievement Test-7--in his opinion, another of the
better standardized tests.

To increase contact with parents, who often won't show for teacher
conferences or parent council meetings, Burks has also come up with
some novel tactics. Report cards aren't sent home with students, but
must be picked up by parents.

Instead of regular council meetings, there is a monthly activity
featuring students to attract proud parents. Once, the distribution
of family photo albums was used as a lure.

Visitors must ring a doorbell to enter the school because the outside
doors are kept locked. Few outsiders gain admittance. The principal
rejects most requests to visit.

"I really suspect anybody who comes to my school and says it's a
phenomenon. It's not--if you're teaching," Burks says. "It's just
sort of dedication to the job."


© 2000 The Washington Post Company








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