Measuring
success inside the classroom
Higher test scores are the target, but
numbers don't tell the whole story
Sunday, October 10, 2004 • BY JOHN MOONEY •
Star-Ledger Staff
Watching over her third Back to School night at Newark's
Eighteenth Avenue School, principal Barbara Ervin took
comfort in an evening when all was hopeful.
Parents, grandparents and, increasingly, the aunts and
uncles who are raising Ervin's students applauded the
teachers. A slide show pulsing with R&B music celebrated
Eighteenth Avenue's successes and flashed its pledge to do
"whatever it takes."
Outside the auditorium, Ervin mingled in the hall where
children crowded around a table of cookies and families
streamed off to classrooms. It was the end of a long
day.
Three weeks into a new school year, that late September
day began with a visit from state officials, the advance
team for a small army that will come to demand improvements
at the school, one of the state's low performers under the
federal No Child Left Behind act.
Eighteenth Avenue School, like hundreds in the state,
has this year to improve its performance and move off the
federal watch list.
On Back to School night, Ervin didn't mince words: It's
all about test scores. "They need to rise more," Ervin spoke
into the microphone. "But we will get there. We will move
on."
The school's success this year in the lives of 300
children, however, cannot be measured solely by numbers on a
chart.
Look in any classroom.
Up one of the stairwells that frame the old brick
building and through the second-floor hall that could use a
coat of paint, teacher Melissa Martins beamed. Her special
education class was having a good day.
The half-dozen kindergartners and first-graders had just
finished turtle drawings that the teacher hoped to laminate
in her spare time, as long the machine was working that
day.
She pointed to one young boy who was a handful last year
but was doing well with the support of therapy that helped
the boy relax. She clicked off an audiotape that brought the
sound of ocean waves into the room.
As Martins lined up her group for bathroom time -- its
own ritual of rules and routines -- Gregory Rochester passed
by and cheered the good behavior. Rochester's title is
crisis teacher, a busy job of "putting out fires," as he
puts it, situations where teachers and students need help
when all else has failed.
Around the corner he poked his head into Felicia
Sanders' third-grade classroom. No work for him there,
either. "Ms. Sanders, you have a bunch of scholars in here,"
he said.
Sanders' students range from struggling readers to one
girl recently absorbed in a novel meant for fifth-graders.
In a lesson that would prove a challenge for all students
and their teacher, a boy's journal writing won the ultimate
compliment, one of that day's small triumphs.
"Davon is on the ball today," Sanders announced to the
class. "I am proud of him."
NEW FACES
First built in 1876 and expanded a half-century later,
the sturdy four-story building of carved granite and ornate
trim sits in a neighborhood in the Central Ward familiar
with violent crime and economic hardship.
More than 90 percent of this mostly African-American
student body are poor enough to qualify for subsidized
meals, starting with a hasty breakfast at their desks; as
many as a quarter have asthma.
And those faces in the classroom change constantly. The
school's biggest hurdles are both the students moving in and
out -- already 30 new kids since the first day of school --
and teacher turnover as well. Only about a third of the
staff of 70 have any more than a few years of experience in
the classroom.
Many of this year's roster met in late August when a
dozen teachers came in to ready their classrooms for the new
year.
Faith Blasi was new, switching careers through the Teach
for America program, a pipeline for the district. Dorothy
Zignauskas was almost a decade at Eighteenth Avenue and in
her 30th year in the district, brought her husband and son
in to help lug the boxes and move furniture around her
room.
Labels like "low performance" and "failing" didn't seem
to deflate anticipation.
"You can't dwell on it," said Derrick Davis, the
school's new vice principal and a former fourth-grade
reading teacher. "In the meantime, we have to deal with the
real things, the day-to-day things."
Like many other poor urban schools subject to reform
efforts here and across the country, Eighteenth Avenue has
witnessed its share of changing programs and expectations.
There was the state's promise-filled takeover of the
district in 1995, the ambitious Abbott vs. Burke reforms
launched in 1998, the district's sudden shift in how to
teach reading this year.
Along the way, the targets have changed, too, one year
aiming at "whole school reform," the next at budgets, now a
fixation on test scores that are central to No Child Left
Behind.
"The tablecloth keeps changing in the middle of the
meal," Ervin said later. "If we're doing well, they change
it. It is hard to get excited about a new rule, because we
know it may change."
This is not a woman to make excuses. Few in this
building do, and they pin high hopes on a new reading
series.
"We know the scores aren't where they should be, and we
are doing everything we can," said Stephanie Williams, the
school's literacy coach who assists and leads both teachers
and students. "I do whatever I can for these children to be
successful, and I know they will be."
But hurdles come in many forms -- including the school's
boiler, Ervin said. The oil-burning furnace was set for
replacement, she said. Contractors came in last year to take
a look at the job.
A new oil tank was erected in the teacher's lot to tide
the school over for the year. "They said it would be
temporary," Ervin said.
But a year passed, the summer construction season came
and went, and the heat will have to go on soon. And so will
the principal's juggling of classrooms to deal with a
problem she said would never be tolerated in most
districts.
"When the sun's hot, the oil from the tank's pipes let
out fumes in that corner," Ervin said. "We have to find
other places for the children."
MAZE OF RULES
Before the two people from the state Department of
Education rang the bell to enter the school last month,
Ervin and Davis were preparing their own questions for the
state.
"I need a few things cleared up," said Ervin, pulling
out her yellow legal pad and a binder marked up with Post-it
tabs.
The state officials will be followed by a group of 10
educators who later this month will spend five days
determining what needs to be done for the school.
Since Ervin took over the school in 2002, test scores
have improved, significantly in some areas. More than
two-thirds of fourth-graders in general education passed the
reading test last year, among its highest score yet.
But through a maze of formulas, the results haven't been
enough for the unbending federal and state rules: Hit all
the marks or else. The stickiest area is special education,
a growing population for the school as the district buses in
more students with disabilities.
The school is now nearing the fateful end of the No
Child law's cascading penalties, a point where even the
state isn't sure what will happen next. Under the law, it
has already been required to offer families a chance to
transfer (none have obliged) and provide them with free
after-school tutoring (11 participated last year).
President Bush said these schools would get extra help,
too, and last year Eighteenth Avenue received about $11,000
in additional federal funding, enough to pay for a share of
its after-school program and some new classroom projectors
and notebooks.
Now, the law says it's time for "corrective action," the
last stop before the school could be reconstituted
altogether with a new staff and principal.
The state's response is the intervention team composed
of state officials, outside experts, the district's own
administrators, and math and literacy specialists. In all,
118 schools will get such visits this year.
Sitting behind the piles of documents the school will
need to provide before the team arrives, Ervin put on her
best face. "I think we match up pretty well, but maybe an
outside look at the pieces will tell us we need other
things," she said.
NEW PROGRAM
Eighteenth Avenue is called a science and technology
school, but the emphasis is clearly on the reading and math
by which the school is judged. Every day, Felicia Sanders --
like every teacher in the building -- starts with the
required 100 minutes of reading instruction.
Seven years teaching, Sanders is one of the more adept
at the shiny new texts of the Harcourt reading series,
described by teachers as not terribly different from the old
program but less rigid.
She started the students on a story they read the day
before, pausing to ask questions and "build background," as
prescribed in the lesson plan that comes with the
program.
But into the second half-hour, the room drifted a
little, its rhythm shaken. One boy wanted to go to the
bathroom, then another. A voice over the public address
system asked for a teacher to report to the office.
"It's going to be hot today, maybe a little
uncomfortable," Sanders said. "But we need to stay
focused."
At the Back to School night last month, Dorothy Mitchell
was among the people smiling. She didn't bother to count how
many such evenings she's attended, now with a grandson in
fifth grade.
"They're getting better," Mitchell said of the school.
"They're finding more for the children. The parents are also
getting easier. I think they're pulling it together."
John Mooney covers education. He may be reached at (973)
392-1548, or jmooney@starledger.com.
© 2004 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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