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Despite Adversity Sweeney Kids Succeed ; Principal Cites Bilingual Education, Literacy Program and Dedication of Staff

Posted on: Monday, 24 October 2005, 12:00 CDT

By GABRIELA C. GUZMAN Journal Staff Writer

Sweeney Elementary School has the kind of students other schools use as a scapegoat for their low success rates.

Every student at Sweeney is eligible for a free lunch. About 70 percent of the students are learning English. A little less than 50 children need more than extra help in school and are designated as special education students.

Even with all this adversity, Sweeney is something of an island on the city's south end. For years, it's made the grade on high stakes tests, while neighboring schools have not.

Pam de la O, the school's principal for the last two years, says there is no one thing occurring at her school that produces these results, but a mixture that creates this formula for success.

There's the bilingual education model that gradually introduces English to Spanish speakers. There's the literacy program that saturates classrooms and students' days in school with letters, vocabulary and reading.

At the core, she says, is the experienced and dedicated teaching staff.

"They never ask for compensation. They stay as long as they need to," says de la O of the 34 teachers and assistants.

Talk to some of the school's veteran teachers and they say they don't leave new teachers to fly solo.

"We really do take them under our wing," says Sandy Sena, a fifth- grade teacher and a 12-year veteran at Sweeney.

That nurturing is evident in the fourth-grade team.

Before becoming the fourth-grade bilingual teacher, Selina Gonzales, was an assistant at Sweeney, where she's worked for eight years. Likewise, Margie Acua was an assistant for five years at Sweeney, before becoming a special education teacher three years ago. She is also part of the fourthgrade team.

As a daily practice, the fourth-grade team drags chairs to a child-sized circular table in Gonzales' room for their 30-minute lunch break.

Over meals of Frito pies, mashed potatoes and corn, the five teachers and an assistant talk about how well or how poorly students performed in the morning assignments, their families and other chit chat.

As a group, they average about eight years of teaching experience. The teachers range from two veterans with 16 years each to a teacher in his second year.

Mutual respect for each other's teaching methods is their basis, they say.

"We all realized we are all doing the same thing, with a different style and that's OK," said Helen "Gaye" Baca, one of the group's veterans, with 16 years at Sweeney.

Because of their cohesion, they are able to adopt new teaching methods.

Years ago, the fourth-grade teachers decided to group students by their skill for literacy. Now, the teachers also group students by levels for math.

"The kids were at such different levels it was too difficult to meet all their needs," Gonzales said, during a recent lunch.

Organizing students by skill makes teaching much easier, said Danny Martinez, the other 16-year Sweeney veteran.

Keep moving

Each morning, the students move among the four classrooms that are across the hall from each other for their math groups. Later in the day the same shuffling happens for reading groups, where skill levels range from learning basics to the few who are above grade level.

The groupings are not rigid and students move up, and even down, depending on their performance in class and on assignments.

"We are always assessing" (the) students' progress, said Gonzales.

Teacher quality and constant checking of the students' achievement levels are two marks of successful schools, regardless of its demographics, according to the Education Trust, an independent nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C.

If a well-trained teaching staff works well together, provide a rigorous curriculum and truly believe all students can learn, there is little that cannot be achieved, said Alan Gottlieb, an education program officer with the Piton Foundation in Denver that researches high-performing schools. "There are some teachers that really believe all students can learn and act like it," he said. Gottlieb likens sustaining academic achievement in schools that have a large number of minority and poor students to having all the stars align. Having a better economic mix within a school is best, he said.

The school's success is noteworthy, but it is not where it should be, de la O says.

While the school met standards for the federal law of No Child Left Behind, the bar was not very high.

About 24 percent of thirdthrough fifth-graders had to be proficient in math to be marked as meeting standards, which the students just barely achieved. Likewise, about 40 percent of those students were proficient in reading -- the marker the school needed to reach.

"It's not as high achieving as we want it to be, but we grew a lot," says de la O, referring to district administered tests at the beginning and end of the school year. According to those tests, Sweeney students improved by a number of grade levels during the year, but many were still behind.

Rising bar

Next year, the bar goes up and so do the stakes.

Test scores of students in special education did not count toward the school's overall score last year, because there were not enough to qualify as a subgroup.

But this time around, those scores will count, said de la O. Instead of learning in isolation, as in the past, special education students are being taught in regular classrooms this year.

The idea of having the students learn together made regular education teachers and their special education counterparts nervous.

"I was really scared," said Priya Dolloff, a second- and third- grade special education teacher.

Some recent research shows that children who are not labeled as special education students act as models for those who are special education.

Kathy C de Baca, a thirdgrade bilingual special education teacher, said she is already seeing social and academic growth in her students.

Another concern is the roughly 100 new students at Sweeney, whose skill levels are low, de la O said.

The school tweaked some tutoring programs for lowachieving students, placed set daily times for reading and math to occur in each classroom, and shuffled some arts programs for the students this year.

Every Wednesday, Robbie Rivera -- a fifth-grader with freckles that dot his cheeks -- helps Monica Granados, a second-grader, with mastering the alphabet and reading aloud.

Monica has a bright yellow sticker on her folder, which indicates she is just learning the basics of reading. Monica, along with 89 other secondgraders, comes into Helen Pacheco's class to participate in H.O.S.T.S, which stands for Helping One Student To Succeed.

For 30 minutes, the secondgraders are given one-on-one help with fifth-graders, but most mentors are adults, who range from retirees to attorneys.

Each student is at a different level and each child is prescribed a plan to reach grade level, Pacheco said.

The magic of the program is not the lesson plans, but the one-on- one help the students are given.

"You can take it all away and just keep the adults that care about them, that's the whole magic," Pacheco said of the program's volunteers.

Showing

improvement

On average, H.O.S.T.S. students' skills improve two grade levels in a year, Pacheco said.

Last year, the program served students with low skills from all grades, but this year the school is focusing on the second grade to get younger students closer to grade level sooner, said de la O.

If the students do well on the tests next spring, it will be a testament to the teachers and all the support staff's hard work, said Matt Martinez, the school's assistant principal.

Getting students to test well weighs on every teacher, said Sena, the fifth-grade teacher and 12-year veteran at Sweeney, but for her, seeing the growth of individual students is just as significant.

"For me it's more important, I think," she said.

Source: Albuquerque Journal

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