Before-and-after help yields results
MAKING PROGRESS | 2 schools soar in state rankings
As the closing bell rings at Evanston’s Willard Elementary, the desk of 9-year-old Marcello Africano is a rat’s nest of jumbled books and loose, crumpled papers.
In swoops Margaret Rothe for her daily rescue — part of a tailor-made support plan for the Willard fourth-grader. Rothe, a school social worker, quickly sorts Marcello’s mess into a neat stack and helps pack his bookbag with everything he’ll need for his homework.
(Al Podgorski/Sun-Times)
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“She just helps me so I’m more organized,’’ Marcello says.
Like other public elementary schools statewide that have seen big five-year jumps in test scores, Willard has found it’s not just what happens during class that counts. What occurs before and after the school bell rings — touches as small as Marcello’s closing-bell routine — is important, too.
Among Illinois schools, Willard, in Evanston District 65, and Smyser Elementary, in Chicago’s Northwest Side Portage Park neighborhood, stand out, based on their average state reading and math scores in third-, fifth- and eighth-grade in 2003 versus 2007.
In those five years, Willard catapulted in rank past more than 200 schools, landing among the top 10 statewide this year, a Sun-Times analysis found.
Smyser leapt past 167 schools, to the top 600 statewide. And it did so with an increasingly challenging student body. Since 2003, it’s gone from about half to roughly two-thirds low-income and minority kids, most of them Hispanic. And it has as many as 33 kids in a classroom, vs. Willard’s 22.
The two schools have much in common. Lots of before- and after-school help for kids. An emphasis on higher-order thinking skills. Requiring kids to explain answers in writing, just like state tests do. Homework — even for teachers, who discuss new books on teaching. And innovative, supportive principals.
Smyser’s ‘carrot and stick’
At Smyser, one teacher describes Principal Jerry Travlos as “the omnipresent positive parent’’ since his 2003 arrival. When Travlos walks the halls, some children run up and hug him.
For the third year, Travlos is using a “carrot and stick’’ approach with kids. Those who test below state standards have to attend twice-weekly “After School Counts” classes in reading and math. But doing so also comes with a reward, entitling them to three-times-a-week fun activities after school, things like bowling and cooking and dance.
Layla Erzrumly, a fourth-grade teacher at Smyser, has seen the results. Two of her low-scoring After School Counts kids turned things around academically after joining a dance activity.
“I got the most homework out of them because something else was the carrot for them,’’ Erzrumly says. “Kids will step up the academics to make time for the fun stuff.’’
Smyser is also in year three of holding Saturday classes for kids who are hovering just above or below the national average on scores. The goal is to boost some over the hump and ensure that others don’t backslide.
Abigail Gonzalez, a seventh-grader at Smyser, says that, at first, “I was kinda upset because Saturday and Sunday are the only days I get off from school.’’ But her mom encouraged her to go, and Abigail decided she likes the smaller class size.
“You’re one-on-one with the teacher,” says Abigail, “and she’ll explain things better to you.”
The Willard way
In Evanston, Willard is in its fifth-year of after- and before-school classes for low-scoring kids. In 2006, it added a drop-in homework club for students in fifth grade. In the words of fifth-grader Reese Dunkelbarger, that’s a year when “parents don’t get all the new stuff’’ kids bring home in math.
Also, trained parent volunteers huddle twice a week in the hall with small groups of kids, giving them fluency tests and helping hone their reading skills.
As part of a positive-behavior system, Willard kids get plastic chips for displaying “The Willard Way’’ — being “caring, respectful and responsible.”
The chips go into a class bank, and some teachers create special rewards for them. If one kindergarten class accumulates 4,000 chips, it wins a trip to the local ice cream parlor.
Principal Shelley Carey says the emphasis on positive behavior has cut the number of suspensions from 12 five years ago to none last school year and has helped with academics, too.
“With kids in class paying attention, learning goes up,” Carey says.
Five years ago, Willard also began crafting support plans for kids who didn’t qualify for special education but needed a boost. Interventions range from end-of-the-day “checkouts,’’ such as Marcello’s closing-bell routine, to rating a child’s behavior on a grid five times a day.
After four years of support plans, including checkouts last year with Carey, fifth-grader Leron Rainey has graduated to a checkout-free year. Even so, he often stops by the principal’s office on Fridays to give her a weekly update.
“It helped me a lot,’’ Leron says of his support plan. “It helped me stay on track.”
The walk-through
The principals at Smyser and Willard are both firm believers in “walk-throughs,” an increasingly popular technique.
At Willard, Carey usually walks the building alone, popping in to class rooms for about three minutes, just as the popular book The Three-Minute Classroom Walk-Through suggests. She can cover the whole school in an hour, and she does so three to five times a week.
She might do a walk-through just to “get the pulse’’ of the building, or she might focus on a specific topic, such as writing. The technique lets her identify ideas worth sharing and see who might need help or more materials.
“It’s not a gotcha mentality,” Carey says. “It’s getting a feel for where we are in the curriculum and being very visible.
“I consider myself the thread that goes through the building. But I want everybody to get on this loom that we have going on.’’
Smyser’s Travlos has lots of company on his walk-throughs. During two to four “peer walk-throughs’’ a year, Smyser administrators and two teacher volunteers peek in one randomly chosen classroom per grade for five to 10 minutes each.
“We love our peer walkthroughs,’’ says fourth-grade teacher Erzrumly. “Teachers love to go and see what’s happening in other rooms.’’
Armed with a checklist, they look for “walk-through essentials,’’ ranging from posted Smyser classroom rules to evidence of “meaningful discourse.’’ They also often have a particular focus, such as a search for signs of higher-order questioning or extended-response writing like that required on state tests.
They take photos of ideas worth sharing and even quickly interview students about what’s hanging on the wall or in their notebooks. Afterwards, the Smyser walkers create a Powerpoint presentation for the entire staff.
Initially, some teachers were wary about having so many visitors in their rooms. But now nearly every teacher has gone on at least one walk-through, Travlos says.
“It has provided a wealth of feedback and information on what’s happening in the classroom,” he says. “It’s helped foster sharing.
“At the same time, it’s helped us ask the difficult questions. Are the children learning, and how do we know? And, if not, how do we address it?”