Article

Outside experts and Newark union join forces to help students of Newton Street

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 • BY JOHN MOONEY• Star-Ledger Staff

A half-hour before first bell, the teachers of Newton Street School in Newark file into the auditorium for an unusual assembly.

Standing on the stage are some strange bedfellows: their longtime principal, a group of Seton Hall University administrators and leaders of the powerful Newark Teachers Union.

The speakers announce they are there to help the school reverse its poor performance and get right with the mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind act, which this year forced Newton and 49 other perennial problem schools in New Jersey to restructure.

The group pledges Newton will be a different place.

"We're at a precipice: What do we do?" Joseph DelGrosso, the union's grizzled president, asks the teachers that December morning. "What can we do as educators to make a school better?"

It's a question underachieving schools in New Jersey have been wrestling with for decades. It's also a riddle the state spends one of every 10 dollars in its $33.3 billion budget trying to answer.

A tentative plan presented to the district months since that assembly suggests major changes at Newton Street, including large-scale transfers of teachers and administrators, intensified special education programs, and maybe even a longer school day and longer school year.

The partnership at Newton is a radical example of school reform that will be watched closely, certainly one of the more unusual strategies being tried in 50 New Jersey schools ordered to restructure under NCLB.

In other places, the challenges are as different as the solutions. At Marquis de Lafayette School in Elizabeth -- where a stumbling block is the large number of students who are not fluent in English -- officials chose to bring in a new principal and assistants; at Orange Middle School, where nine in 10 students are from low-income families, the school has been divided into five units.

In Newark, where schools have been run by the state for a decade, district officials think they are onto something so novel it could be a model for reform. But the partners face an uphill struggle in a school where a quarter of the enrollment are special-need students, including a handful who are deaf.

"There are good things going on in this school," said Angela Christmas, a humanities teacher of more than 15 years. "But something is happening somewhere that we obviously need to get in line."

INTRIGUING EXPERIMENT

The specifics of the plan are still a work in progress.

Seton Hall is providing the experts, the union will bring the political influence and credibility, and the school is the laboratory for change. But given such challenges, will a new team of advisers matter?

Principal Willie Thomas, who has led Newton Street School for 31 years and is an institution in the neighborhood, says he is curious what will come of it. He has seen his share of attempted reforms to his school but is hopeful.

"I'm looking for change, too; we need change," he says. "And if I'm the problem, tell me. ... But it's put up or shut up."

Making this swirling experiment more intriguing is the fact it is taking place in a city long known for high-octane politics and led by a new mayor, Cory Booker, who has trumpeted alternatives to the traditional public schools, including vouchers and charter schools.

Whatever happens in the coming months at Newton, a school of nearly 500 students pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, there's a lot to be done.

The building containing the second-oldest school in the city -- its first bricks were laid in 1874 -- is closer to the grit of the nearby housing projects than the gleam of University Hospital across South Orange Avenue. Sixty percent of the students are poor enough to qualify for subsidized school meals.

Newton is almost entirely African-American, and some families have been sending their children there for generations. Rahmana Muhammad attended Newton and now has seen four of her own through the school.

Working in customer service in the nearby Pathmark supermarket, she said the school has done well by her, but she knows it's a challenge to get parents involved.

"It's hard for parents, I know that," she said. "But I work, too. You have to make the time."

Given the nationwide challenges of serving impoverished and minority students, it's little surprise Newton wound up on the federal list of schools needing to be restructured.

In 2005, perennially low scores brought a damning state review of the school. It found professional-development training for teachers did little to prepare them for the realities of the classroom. It also noted the building was in disrepair, and, for all the testing, there seemed to be no analysis of the data to guide future instruction.

Even Newton's identity as a "School of Science and Technology" was questioned, with the report noting a dearth of computers and few even connected to the Internet.

Since then, computers have gone online and additional tutors and teacher coaches have been assigned to Newton as well as other low-performing Newark schools. Reading, writing and math classes have been expanded, and there is more analysis of test scores, officials said.

There has been improvement in reading and writing scores. Still, fewer than a third of the sixth- through eighth-graders passed all sections of the tests last year. The school's younger students did better, with up to 60 percent hitting the mark, and the school met the math requirements. But the law is unsparing in its requirements.

So in September, the administration had no choice but to introduce radical reform.

'NO EXCUSES'

The boldest step by far has been the district's decision to bring in the powerful teachers union and Seton Hall.

Led by Charles Mitchel, a former Newark assistant superintendent and principal who directs the university's Center for Urban Leadership, the Seton Hall team of a half-dozen academics has conducted interviews with staff members, observed classes and analyzed data.

Mitchel, one of several former Newark administrators on the team, is bold in his ambitions, saying there will be a "new Newton."

"There are no excuses for the failure at Newton right now," he said recently. "We're putting ourselves on the line."

The reform aims to involve teachers as never before. "Study groups" of Newton teachers are being asked to make recommendations about what is needed, and additional professional development is sure to follow.

And in a highly unusual move, a "governance committee" of union, academic and district representatives has been formed; it ultimately may share power with the principal and district over budget, hiring and policy.

Addressing one of the most glaring issues raised in the state review, district officials moved new special-education staff into Newton this winter, hoping to mainstream more children.

At least 10 classrooms received a new coat of paint and other renovations, no small thing in a century-old building.

Most controversial of the moves will be any reassignment of teachers or staff. That's where the union comes in. DelGrosso, the union president, has told teachers he will secure them a transfer of their choice if they prefer to go, under a promise from Superintendent Marion Bolden.

"We're not going to say the contract supersedes innovation; it needs to complement innovation," DelGrosso said.

Such talk is a departure for a union accustomed to challenging the administration and getting its way -- and which lately has been the target of a nasty public campaign by a conservative group accusing it of failing children and protecting bad teachers.

It may be no coincidence the union is finalizing a new contract and DelGrosso is up for re-election in May. The union also has been in open conflict with Booker and his talk of vouchers. But the union's 67-year-old president insists his work at Newton is unrelated and not about politics.

"The era of protests and picket signs are at an end," DelGrosso said. "If I can make Newark public schools look good, I'll look good."

So far, longtime staffers are cautiously waiting to see what happens.

Teachers have been alerted to the transfer option, and so far none has taken it. District and union officials say about a dozen teachers and administrators ultimately may be targeted for transfer, including the two vice principals.

The veteran of the two, James Carlo, said: "I can't worry about it, as it's not in my hands. But I would hate to go. I love this school."

Christmas, the veteran humanities teacher, said the talk of transfers and other radical changes can be unsettling, but said it can be a motivating force, too.

"It just means I'll have to step up my game," she said.

Laboratory for a rare alliance

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