Here’s how two schools got off the state’s failing list

The official term is “Opportunity Schools.” They are the Georgia public schools that have scored, by alarming margins, below the state’s standards the previous three consecutive years, so the label also is known as the “failing list.”

Regardless of the words, they no longer describe Georgetown and Rigdon Road elementary schools.

They were two of the 10 Muscogee County School District schools out of the 141 in the state originally identified last year as eligible for a possible state takeover if Georgia voters on Nov. 8 approve Gov. Nathan Deal’s proposed amendment.

It reads: “Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow the state to intervene in chronically failing public schools in order to improve student performance?”

Two weeks ago, when the Georgia Department of Education released its most recent measurement of public school performance, called the 2015 College and Career Ready Performance Index, the failing list was reduced to 127 schools in the state and these eight in the county: Davis, Dawson, Forrest Road, Fox, Lonnie Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and South Columbus elementary schools, and Baker Middle School.

Those schools scored less than 60 on the 100-point CCRPI scale the past three straight years. If voters approve the proposed amendment, the governor would appoint a superintendent to lead a virtual Opportunity School District that could take over 20 eligible schools each year and control no more than 100 such schools at any time. The OSD superintendent could waive Georgia Board of Education rules, remove principals, transfer teachers and change school budgets and curriculum.

But thanks to their double-digit increase on the CCRPI, Georgetown and Rigdon Road have received a reprieve. Rigdon’s CCRPI soared by 12.4 points (from 51.2 in 2014 to 63.6 in 2015), and Georgetown’s jumped by 11.4 (from 51.6 to 63.0) — despite the state changing the standardized exams during that time from the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests to the tougher Georgia Milestones Assessment System. To put that improvement in perspective, the state’s average CCRPI score for elementary schools improved by 3.3 points (from 72.7 to 76.0) and Muscogee’s elementary school average stayed the same (at 66.2 in both years).

So how did Georgetown and Rigdon do it, especially with 100 percent of their students eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch? The Ledger-Enquirer visited the schools to find out.

Here is a summary of what we learned, highlighted by the district’s new K-5 reading and math curricula, which the Muscogee County School Board approved superintendent David Lewis’ recommendation to implement, starting last school year.

Georgetown

In her 10^th year at Georgetown, fourth-grade teacher Jessica Thorne said she cried when she read last year that her school was on the state’s failing list. But she also was motivated.

“It meant we needed to work harder because this was unacceptable,” Thorne said. “… We knew we needed to do more. Trying to find the solution, that was frustrating as a teacher. Doing things that had been successful in the past no longer were yielding the same results.”

LaVerne Brown, in her 10th year as Georgetown’s principal, explained:

“There’s more rigor. Kids are expected to know more and do more. Ten years ago, when CRCT was around, that was the minimum kids needed to know. Now, with the new Georgia Standards of Excellence, the rigor is higher.

“We’ve always been a Title I Distinguished School until we got on the Opportunity list. Our kids as well as our teachers, they couldn’t go from that minimum requirement to that higher standard. It was difficult. So we had to teach them critical thinking skills.”

For example, it’s not good enough anymore for students to know 3 plus 1 equals 4; they must explain why.

“Show me or tell me,” Brown said.

Because that’s what the state tests ask the students. They require “constructed responses,” meaning students must provide the correct answer instead of selecting it, or they might have to explain how they got the answer or even explain why a provided answer is wrong.

Brown tells her teachers, “I don’t care what you ask them, but the second question must be why. That’s your golden question. And if they cannot explain to you why, then we’ve got to go back and we’ve got to reteach.”

Reading Wonders

This is the second school year MCSD elementary schools have been using the Reading Wonders curriculum, costing $1,755,022 over two fiscal years. In return, the district receives $5,126,230 in free materials.

Part of Reading Wonders includes a practice called guided reading. Last week, third-grade teacher Stephanie Lazenby, in her second year at Georgetown, led a half dozen of her students through a guided reading session while the other students worked independently. She used a story called “The Disappearing Bees” to demonstrate the concept of cause and effect.

Before they read the story, Lazenby engaged the students by asking them, “If I tell you it started raining outside and I got wet, what caused me to get wet?”

Student: “The rain.”

Lazenby: “Why did the rain get me wet?”

Student: “It’s water.”

Lazenby: “Yes, but what caused me to get wet?”

Student: “Because you were out in the rain.”

Lazenby: “I was out in the rain, and what else? What did I probably not have?”

Student: “An umbrella or a jacket.”

Lazenby: “So because I went outside without an umbrella or a jacket, the effect was?”

Student: “You got wet.”

Lazenby used a marker on the dry-erase table to draw a “graphic organizer,” depicting cause and effect.

“It helps the kids to think critically,” Brown said.

The students turned to “The Disappearing Bees” story.

Lazenby asked them to predict: “What do you think caused the bees to disappear? … Even though they sting and buzz in our ear and get on our nerves, we really need bees.”

Student: “Someone sprayed chemicals on the flowers.”

Student: “Maybe there were germs.”

Student: “Maybe they don’t have any more honey.”

Lazenby: “OK, we’re going to figure out why.”

Georgetown third-graders read on a level as low as kindergarten and as high as fourth grade, Brown said. She asks her teachers to conduct guided reading sessions with their students at least three times per week and every day for the students on the lowest level. The sessions last 30-45 minutes.

Other initiatives

Here are other initiatives Brown believes helped improve Georgetown’s CCRPI:

▪  Faculty analyze the school’s strengths and weaknesses in weekly grade level and data team meetings, then select and monitor targets to improve student performance aligned with the state standards.

▪  The superintendent’s reorganization of the district’s central office allowed a region chief and content experts to give each school more attention.

▪  An attendance recovery program gave students more chances to make up work.

▪  Teachers are “making every minute count” in the classroom.

▪  Continuous self-assessing and reflecting on teaching practices.

Although the results of the 2016 Georgia Milestones haven’t been reported yet, the Georgetown folks already have evidence their improvement indeed continued this year.

In October, the district implemented at its 13 lowest-performing schools a pilot program called Achieve3000, a Web-based system that delivers differentiated instruction in nonfiction reading and writing. On a computer, students in a class read the same content in news articles from the Associated Press and National Geographic, but Achieve3000 tailors the complexity of the text to each student’s reading level.

MCSD will spend $630,000 over three fiscal years for Achieve3000.

Georgetown improved its overall reading level on Achieve3000, expressed as a Lexile, from 346 on Oct. 15 to 454 on May 16. The grade-level equivalencies for Lexiles are up to 400 in first grade, 140-500 in second grade, 330-700 in third grade, 445-850 in fourth grade and 565-950 in fifth grade.

Georgia’s standards assume students will read on at least a 1300 Lexile level by 12^th grade. The average U.S. high school senior graduates with a 920 Lexile level, according to Achieve3000, based in Lakewood, N.J.

Thorne’s fourth-grade class was honored for making the largest average Lexile gain in the district, from 382 to 546. She said she cried again when she saw that Georgetown had improved enough to move off the failing list.

“It was just excitement and anticipation,” Thorne said. “I can’t wait to see where this is going to lead Georgetown because the children work hard and the teachers work hard and the admins work hard, and now to see some of the fruit of that hard work, it’s very rewarding.”

Brown told the Georgetown teachers during their CCRPI improvement celebration, “We made this gain, but now the harder work starts. Now we have to keep this momentum up and even increase it.”

Rigdon Road

Five miles away from Georgetown, Rigdon Road has a similar story.

A banner outside the school proclaims Rigdon as a “Title I Distinguished School FY 2012. Ten consecutive years of making AYP.”

AYP stands for Adequate Yearly Progress. But what was adequate then is considered substandard now.

Charleen Robinson, in her eighth year as Rigdon’s principal, said she and her staff believe being on the failing list “was not a true indication of what was going on at Rigdon. Nevertheless, we were not deterred but determined to improve.”

They started what she called “a transformational process,” which included the following initiatives:

▪  A comprehensive needs analysis of every component of Rigdon’s instructional practices.

▪  Developing an increased understanding of how CCRPI points are calculated and earned.

▪  Modified teaching strategies to help all subgroups reach their academic potential.

▪  Bringing in experts from around the district, state and nation to conduct professional development for the faculty.

▪  Monitoring by the school’s leadership team of the plan’s effectiveness and making necessary adjustments.

All of which, Robinson said, boosted the “children’s understanding of what they were doing and why they were doing it, helping them to take more ownership of their learning.”

enVisionMATH

This is the second school year MCSD has used enVisionMATH in grades K-5, costing $960,815 over two fiscal years. In return, the district receives $3,899,718 in free materials.

“It’s helping the teachers to teach more in depth, because now the children have to write and explain,” Robinson said. “It’s helping teachers to see where the problem is.”

Last week, fourth-grade teacher Tondalaya Grier, in her second year at Rigdon Road, taught her students a lesson about comparing numbers.

Grier: “Who can tell me what we mean by compare?”

Student: “Greater or less than.”

Grier: “Or what?”

Student: “Equal to.”

Grier: “Can you come up here and show me what the greater-than sign looks like? Now, remember: The alligator wants to do what?”

Students in unison: “Eat the biggest number!”

Grier: “Right!”

enVisionMATH makes it easier for elementary school teachers to instruct the subject with detail and rigor, even if it isn’t among their strengths, Robinson said.

“It gives you procedures you can follow,” she said.

Grier also uses “gradual release” in her teaching style, summarized as “I do. We do. You do.” The teacher demonstrates the concept, then the class does it together, and then the students do it independently.

Grier showed the students a video from the curriculum comparing numbers by using place value blocks. The video asked the students to compare the height of the Taipei Tower in Taiwan, 1,670 feet, to the Willis Tower in Chicago, 1,450 feet.

“Because of technology and children watching TV, this makes them feel like they’re watching television,” Robinson said. “It engages them, and they’re learning.”

Grier stressed a point about the symbols that might have been lost in the video: “I don’t want you to memorize which way they have this, the greater-than and less-than symbols. Just because it looks like this doesn’t always mean it’s less than; it depends on which side the number is on. Does that make sense?”

Students in unison: “Yes.”

Robinson encourages her teachers to be aware of their students’ attention span. The general rule is to change an activity every minute multiplied by their age.

Differentiation

Fifth-grade math teacher LaTonya Leonard is in her eighth year at Rigdon Road. When she realized Rigdon Road had moved off the failing list, Leonard said, “We were ecstatic. I don’t really think there’s a word to describe that feeling. … It’s a lot of hard work when you’re considered to be a failure.”

It’s crucial, she added, to differentiate the teaching so all types of learners understand the material.

For example, Leonard’s typical math class comprises as many as 26 students. In that 90-minute block, she divides her classes into three or four groups. After the class-wide opening routine of 30 minutes, she devotes a range of time to the groups, depending on how much help they need. The groups she isn’t teaching at that moment work independently on an assignment.

“It’s a lot of review, reteach, recovery,” Leonard said.

Some students are tutored outside the classroom on certain days by an intervention specialist, funded by the federal Title I money. A school-based academic coach and two itinerant content specialists teach the teachers during their one-hour planning periods.

“They’re talking to teachers about their data and seeing what the teachers need help with,” Robinson said.

Leonard also uses a more human method.

“I look at the children and read their faces,” she said. “Every child is not going to tell you if they don’t understand something.”

Leonard tries to give her students at least 20 assessments in a nine-week marking period. Whether it’s a quiz or a test, she wants her students to have plenty of chances to show their progress.

Rigdon’s data team designs the school’s quizzes and tests based on the state standards, Robinson said. “Everything we’re doing is leading up to that assessment.”

Complicating the task, Leonard noted, is when the state changes the standards. A standard that used to be taught in a later grade might be moved to an earlier grade, so some students wouldn’t be taught that concept but would be responsible for knowing it. For example, determining the area of a floor plan used to be a fifth-grade standard but now is in third grade, Leonard said, so her current fifth-graders struggle with that concept now.

“Yes, we have enVision, but the bottom line is you have to see what it is the state wants the children to know so that they can become successful,” Leonard said.

To keep the momentum going, Robinson said, she relies on the assistant principal — her first year she has had a full-time assistant — to run the school’s operations while she meets with teachers and evaluates instruction.

“That helps me keep my finger on the pulse of what’s going on,” Robinson said. “When I go into a classroom, I know what I should be seeing instead of what I’m seeing. That helps me guide the conversation: ‘We talked about this in data team. This is what you’re supposed to be doing, and I need to see it.’”

She calls that method “glow and grow.”

“I give them as many glows as I can, but then I also give them a grow, at least one, something they need to think about,” she said. “I see every day what teachers have to do. I don’t believe in excuses. So when they come to me with a challenge, I don’t say, ‘Woe is us,’ but ‘What are we going to do about it? What are we going to do to cross that barrier?’

“We can’t control outside factors. Our control is what happens between 8 and 2:30. So we focus on that.”

This story was originally published May 21, 2016 at 3:51 PM with the headline "Here’s how two schools got off the state’s failing list."