Last week Jeff Hudson from the Davis Enterprise had an excellent piece that was generally about the persistent achievement gap, but also looked specifically at Patwin Elementary school.
As my regular readers are well aware, I have long been very concerned about the achievement gap. One of the most concerning aspects is that, even among high socioeconomic families – that means families that are college-educated, families that make a decent income – there is still a gap, indeed perhaps a wider gap, between the achievements of Asians and Whites and those of Hispanics and African Americans.
Writes Mr. Hudson, “The Enterprise spoke last week with Patwin Elementary School Principal Michelle Flowers. At Patwin, one effort that seems to be paying dividends is the adoption of a ‘block schedule’ during parts of the school day.”
“When I got here (as principal) two years ago, we implemented our language arts block schedule, where kids are grouped based on their current abilities and are taught very focused skills in the area of language arts,” Mrs. Flower told the Enterprise.
“The block schedule involves moving some students from one classroom to another for part of the school day, grouping students who have similar learning needs to work in that subject area for an hour or two.” the Enterprise reported.
“This helps, especially when teachers have big classes, and students with a variety of abilities,” Mrs. Flowers told the Enterprise. “It allows kids to get really targeted instruction, whether it’s enrichment (for students who are already scoring well), English Language Development (for students who are learning the language), or intervention (for students who have significant gaps in their skills).”
Recently my niece and nephew moved in with us and enrolled at Patwin Elementary. They are in fourth grade and first grade, respectively. We wanted to get them into Davis schools to give them the best possible chance to succeed.
Both children have had challenges both in their past upbringing, and now in their transition to Davis schools. One of the persistent complaints I have heard is that while Davis schools are outstanding in helping the typical high-achieving Davis student, they do less well with kids who are not at the top or have special needs.
That has not been our experience at Patwin. The teachers have been outstanding – they are supportive, they will spend additional time helping the students, and they are extremely caring.
Mrs. Flowers is definitely hands-on, and knows my niece and nephew very well already. She been nothing but helpful and supportive.
We can talk about educational programs, we can talk about blocks and new structures, but providing that crucial compassionate support is something that I think goes unnoticed in most of these test situations.
How valued do children feel in their school is probably as important as how involved the parents are in their education.
As Mrs. Flower indicates, the problem of the achievement gap is not going away, despite the fact that Patwin’s API has risen dramatically from 847 just two years ago to 894 this past spring.
“There’s still a discrepancy [in API scores],” Mrs. Flowers told the Enterprise. “I don’t want to imply there’s no achievement gap at Patwin.”
The Enterprise reported, “But she does think progress is being made by using test results to see where students aren’t picking up skills, and going back to reinforce learning in those areas. ‘The assessments are supposed to guide the instruction – That’s sort of a philosophical change,’ Flowers said. ‘You don’t go through the lesson plan and wonder why kids didn’t pick up things. You look at the assessments and either re-teach, or adjust the strategies you’re using to teach certain concepts. That’s a focus of the district this year.'”
For me, as a first-time parental figure with children in school, it is a huge challenge and transition. However, at least I feel like the school, the Principal, the support staff, and the teachers are on our side and we are working as a team.
There is still a lot of work to be done, district-wide. As I have reported and commented previously, in 2010, in a city like Davis with the educational resources that we have at our disposal, there is no reason we should have this kind of achievement gap. The fact that the gap holds, after controlling for socioeconomic status, is very disconcerting, but I will sleep better at night knowing that my niece and nephew are in good hands.
Hopefully this is not an isolated case.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Here’s a link to Hudson’s article in the Enterprise (9/17/10), referenced above:
[url]http://search.davisenterprise.com/display.php?id=69838[/url]
One of the persistent complaints I have heard is that while Davis schools are outstanding in helping the typical high-achieving Davis student, they do less well with kids who are not at the top or have special needs.
That has not been our experience at Patwin. The teachers have been outstanding – they are supportive, they will spend additional time helping the students, and they are extremely caring.
We also had two kids go through Patwin, and we had a similar positive experience. One in particular went from a “special needs” situation to a high achiever category.
Welcome to my world Greenwald! Nice to see some praise for the Davis Public Schools. Our family relocated back to Davis after a military career where our kids experienced sub-standard schooling. The DJUSD educational specialists blitzed our kids with special instruction, and we are happy to report that they are now on track with their peers.
The Davis elementary schools are great. My two kids went to Patwin and it was the best years of their Davis education experience. Patwin, though, has changed a bit in that it seems to have grown a higher percentage of students with learning and behavior challenges… and I know teachers that work there that are becoming burned out with the level of challenge they face dealing with these kids and their parents. There are a lot of apartment complexes surrounding the school and a lot of low income families in the area (compared to other areas of Davis).
In our experience, it is the high school and to a lesser degree, the junior high schools that fail miserably to serve the less gifted and less advanced students. It is here that the achievement gap becomes more important, yet it is also here that the teaching establishment seems less tolerant, less caring , less creative and less motivated. My kids comment that starting with Junior high they got a lot of vibes from the teachers and administrators that they were just irritating if not a star student.
Certainly we should expect a progression to student self-sufficiency as the K-12 years progress. However, many kids lag and need more directive and supportive learning facilitation. At the higher grades, it seems that the Davis teachers are a bit corrupted by the higher percentage of good academic genes, and frankly get lazy about the job of teaching. I hear it all the time… smart kids without the academic genes falling to a place where they become unmotivated students and just do enough to get by… or not.
Jeff Boone’s comments:
I take a slightly different angle on it. I don’t think that there is necessarily teacher favoritism toward high performing students, but rather a structural problem in play, where students not quite performing up to standards may not get intervention in as timely a manner.
I observe that in the transition from elementary to secondary, parents seem to be more separated from the classroom teacher. There are no parent conferences. In the elementary schools, parents often stand outside of the classroom at afternoon dismissal and greet teachers, sometimes chatting about how the day went for their kid. At the JH schools, none of that; if anything, parents wait outside in their cars.
In elementary school, often each classroom has a virtual parent booster group to help with field trips, classroom parent volunteers, fill wish lists, etc. In all this activity, parents tend to develop relationships with other parents/families. In the secondary schools, the only notable organized booster groups are connected to performing arts (mostly music) and sports.
Although it’s important that kids become independent, I think the diminished parent contact with secondary classroom teachers means that parents are more in the dark about what’s going on. Only when the report card or progress report comes home do parents get clued in that something isn’t right. By that time, a few weeks of intervention opportunity may have elapsed.
Also, the main mode of communication at the secondary level is by e-mail. That works well for some parents, but not everyone communicates in the same way, nor favor using e-mail. Some parents actually don’t even use e-mail or have home internet connection. Roberson was quoted recently as saying that education is a partnership between the student, teacher, and parent.
It might be time consuming, but I would be interested to see if secondary students would perform a little better if classroom teachers made an effort to make more personal contacts with parents during the year (beyond Open House and Back to School Night).
Our students should all receive the individual attention they need but I think assuming that test scores between groups should be the same leads us to a slippery slope (please read Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron”).
The New Yorker has an interesting article this week which, in effect, says that we expect far too much from our public schools. Ultimately parents are still the most responsible people when it comes to their children’s performance.
Dr. Wu: Is this the article you mention?
[url]http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/09/27/100927taco_talk_lemann[/url]
wdf1: good points and I don’t disagree that parental involvement falls as the kids get older. I think there is a natural and positive justification for this, as parents are supposed to be growing self-sufficient adults. But, I think some parents drop the ball not staying more involved. It is interesting though… I don’t remember my parents being involved in my middle school through high school days… until I got in trouble. I think that was the norm. What has changed? I think there is another view that parents are staying TOO involved in their kid’s lives. Certain colleges have implemented strict rules and processes designed to extract parents Velcroed to their college-age sons and daughters.
Besides this, I think that there is always more going on in the classroom that parents can control or influence. When a student falls behind and is marginalized from inadequate attention, their motivation and self confidence decline. That is very difficult for a parent to resolve… especially as the son or daughter gets older and more independent.
Ken Blanchard markets a program named “Situational Leadership” which illustrates the problem I see. Situational Leadership is essentially a practical model for providing the right type of leadership based on the needs of the employee. The model factors the principle that leadership is largely learning facilitation and people progress in confidence and competence for any given role/subject/discipline. At lower levels, they require more directive leadership. At the highest levels the leader just needs to get out of the way and be available for questions. In the middle the leader needs to utilize coaching, teaching, modeling and encouragement skills. The employee progresses D1 – D4, and the leaders uses a matching S1 – S4 style to complement and meet the situational needs of the employee.
Just replace “employee” with “student”.
At the elementary school level, teachers seem to naturally handle the diversity of student confidence and competence. However, Davis, teachers for grades 7-12, in my experience, direct most of their attention at the D3 and D4 students and ignore the D1-D2 students. I think maybe because, in Davis, there is a higher than average percentage of D3 – D4 students.
Frankly it is harder work to lead or teach people lacking competence and/or confidence… and easier to coast with a curriculum and teaching style that mostly serves the high performers. I bristle at the constant message that parents are the problem, because I think it deflects the issue that we have a lot of teachers teaching grades 7-12 that coast.
There are two Davis Senior High Schools in Davis. There is the one that is fantastic – full of opportunities and enrichment that supports and engages the student in the learning process. Then there is the other school that either ignores the student, demeans or degrades the student or produces every kind of obstacle for engagement in the campus community. I’ve only heard about the first school and am much more familiar with the second school. It is not just the teachers, but the students are involved in creating these “two schools”.
I found that the Junior Highs are better, perhaps because they are smaller with less opportunity for segregating the students. With elementary schools – it really depends on which teacher your child gets. Some years are better than others.
Parent involvement, positive or negative, doesn’t seem to be the driving factor in which school your child attends.
To address the achievement gap we must address the role model gap. Until education gets real about making sure that every kid has the support they need coupled with a program that addresses the educational goals of the individual instead of the values we decide through a political process we want to inculcate in children public education will continue to fail far too many young people.
Ryan… if you mean Da Vinci & DHS, then I’d say there are 3 senior high schools… Da Vinci caters (IMO) to creative, naturally gifted students. King High (again, in my opinion) takes kids who are not flourishing in the DHS model, and by mentoring, caring, etc. draws the “gifts” that were hidden/unrecognized, from the students and nourishes them. Those in the middle seem to be the ones taught by the more mediocre teachers who prefer an “easy”, self-guided student, to those who require more of the teacher’s effort. And they seem, in general, to show this ‘preference’ in the classroom.
Jeff Boone: “In our experience, it is the high school and to a lesser degree, the junior high schools that fail miserably to serve the less gifted and less advanced students. It is here that the achievement gap becomes more important, yet it is also here that the teaching establishment seems less tolerant, less caring , less creative and less motivated. My kids comment that starting with Junior high they got a lot of vibes from the teachers and administrators that they were just irritating if not a star student.”
That was my experience too. The elementary schools had some bad teachers and bad pricipals, but enough excellent teachers and principals that really went the extra mile if your child was having trouble learning. My experiences at Patwin Elementary were mixed. Norm Enfield was a stellar principal. What followed after he left was a disaster. But there were some outstanding teachers at Patwin, and few absolute losers (I had my child transferred out bc one was so poor.) The junior highs (in our case it was Emerson Junior High) weren’t too bad, but it started to deteriorate when the original principal who had been there for something like 25 years died of lung cancer. I can remember having a parent conference with the new Vice Principal one time dressed in pajamas bc it was pajama day. Very unprofessional, and she was just a terrible Vice Principal – more one of the kids than a real leader. It is where the bullying started to get out of hand as well. By the time my kids arrived at DHS, things deteriorated rapidly and dramatically. Learning disabled kids were thrown together with discipline problems, not much testing was done if at all to find out what the learning disabilities were or how to address them, the counseling department was extremely arrogant rather than helpful. Discipline problems became a major problem, with gang fights, drug dealing in the front of the school – just a whole different atmosphere where the parents were seen more as a nuisance than a partner.
So far, Supt. Roberson seems to have a good pulse on what students need, especially those having learning problems, so I am actually somewhat hopeful. But the entire culture of DHS has to change, and that will not be easy to do. There are entrenched elements who are going to be resistant to any meaningful change. I’m keeping my fingers crossed…
“if you mean Da Vinci & DHS, then I’d say there are 3 senior high schools… Da Vinci caters (IMO) to creative, naturally gifted students. King High…”
DSIS also serves high school students, and it was a perfect fit for my son. My daughter also used DSIS in her junior high years and it was excellent for her at that age. She then decided to go to DHS for 10th – 12th.
Independent study is a very useful option for kids who aren’t being well served by the regular school model. But it does require a fair bit of parental involvement.