KC’s High School Reform Scores Early With Students

Sep. 20–It’s hard to know what would have happened without Kansas City’s high school reform called Achievement First.

Would Anna Nunley, a mother at 15, have made it back for her junior year at Central High School?

Would classmate Amber Purvey have turned around her failing grade in geometry?

Would the Central student who disappeared last spring after his stepbrother was shot and killed have returned this year, seeking out his “family advocate” to tell her, “I’m here”?

Some of those involved believe that the program — still looking for its wings in its third year — made the difference.

“I think I would’ve said school’s not for me,” said Nunley, now 16.

The initiative, supported by a $6.1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, hasn’t performed miracles yet. It has not bucked trends that suggest even effective school reforms need three to five years to show consistent academic gains.

But Rhonda Fenner, Central’s school improvement facilitator, sees a new atmosphere at Central, one of five schools now working on the reform. A school that has been “in chaos” because of some student behavior, she said, was able for the first time in years to bring all the students together for a back-to-school party this year.

More students districtwide — many taking the program’s developmental 9th- and 10th-grade classes — are now enrolling in core curriculum classes and passing.

And last year’s 10th-graders, the first group taking the state’s annual math performance test that had benefited from the 9th-grade developmental curriculum, raised the district’s math scores.

The scores still stand among the lowest in the state, and the district’s ACT scores still lag below the state average.

But change, Fenner said, has to start with the change in culture that many believe is taking hold.

“Now we can start doing it well,” she said. “I’m excited for this year.”

Change is hard

Reform isn’t easy. Education isn’t easy.

That much was clear as Central teachers wore out flip charts forming ideas at an Achievement First workshop before the school year started.

Small groups, working with district consultants, labored over how to strengthen the career-path themes meant to motivate students in Achievement First.

“We need more actual field exposure,” said one teacher in the House of Technology small learning community. “It needs to be more than just talked about.”

The truth is, pointed out another, “only a small percentage” of students passing through the technology curriculum are moving on toward technology careers.

The schools are melding a single reform model from two nationally renowned initiatives, First Things First and Talent Development High Schools.

First Things First, a nine-year-old initiative launched in the Kansas City, Kan., School District, established small learning communities within each school, revamped instruction and set up family advocacy networks in which teachers and staff are connected to students and their parents.

The Talent Development High School model, tested in Philadelphia schools beginning in 1998, uses extra classes in math and English in the 9th and 10th grades to strengthen skills students need to take on the core curriculum.

Kansas City, Kan., which includes elementary and middle schools in its initiative, reports higher graduation rates, fewer dropouts, greater attendance and improved academic performance.

Schools on the Missouri side need to be patient, said Mark Kenney, a consultant with the Institute for Research and Reform in Education working with the Central teachers. He also worked with KCK teachers.

“KCK is doing so well, and now people are thinking it was easy,” Kenney said. “But after two years, Kansas City, Missouri, is ahead of where KCK was after two years in getting the structural piece in place.”

Central, Northeast, Southeast and Van Horn high schools launched Achievement First in 2003 after a year of preparation. The Paseo Academy for Fine and Performing Arts started it this year.

Teachers have to do more, including developing the themed curriculum and embracing a family advocate role. They are expected to call or write the families in their advocacy group weekly and meet with them twice a year or more.

“Teachers are being pushed and pushed and pushed,” said Judy Morgan, president of the teachers’ union. “They’re getting all those extra duties, but they’re not getting extra time.”

Certainly some advocacy groups are working better than others, Fenner said.

A majority of the school board is encouraged by the early results, president David Smith said. “We think it’s the right thing to be doing.”

Board member Marilyn Simmons is unimpressed with the data, however, and believes the advocacy system isn’t working with teachers, who can’t give it the time it needs.

“The advocacy piece is a disaster,” she said.

But Achievement First’s directors believe the district is succeeding in bringing more teachers on board because of KCK’s success, and because the Achievement First model wasn’t dropped on schools from the top down.

The principals, working with their staffs, told Superintendent Bernard Taylor what shape they wanted their initiative to take, said Central Principal William McClendon. Principals drove the idea of mixing in the Talent Development High School model to strengthen student skills.

“We as principals asked for this,” he said. “We didn’t want to set kids up for failure.”

The next couple of years will prove critical for the district, said Janet Quint, a senior research associate with the nonprofit social and education policy research agency, MDRC, in New York.

The reforms Kansas City is using “all hold significant promise,” Quint said. People in the district should take heart, she said, “because these are programs that are making a difference. There are interventions that are mattering.”

Full speed ahead

So now the district really wants to hit the gas.

“This year,” said Phyllis Budesheim, the district’s executive director for Achievement First, “we want more rigor in classes. We want (career themes) aligned to curriculum. We want to teach in a way that students are engaged.”

They want to see the bottom line results in the schools’ test scores, said Kathleen Boyle Dalen, who serves as a liaison between the district and the Gates Foundation.

“Research says that dramatic changes take time,” Boyle Dalen said. “It can take years. But we’ve got to dig in now. The hard work is to make change for these kids right now while we have them.”

Program administrators also want to see more teachers nurturing students as Central English teacher Mary Caruso has with her advocacy group.

Caruso, Anna Nunley said, helped her find a comfortable day-care arrangement for her 1-year-old boy and guided her back into school, where she is preparing for a career in the health field.

It was Caruso who Amber Purvey went to for help when she was nervous about how to work with her geometry teacher to correct her failing performance.

Purvey, who is in Central’s business career academy community, wants to be an accountant or manage a business.

“We talk about careers,” she said. “We talk about how things are going gradewise. We talk about problems with other kids.”

Not only does Caruso learn more about the concerns and needs of the 16 students in her advocacy group, but the teachers in the community share important information with each other.

“I remember looking across the room when we had a meeting of all the community students,” Caruso said, “And I was thinking, “˜I know all these kids.’”‚”

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