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STAR LEDGER - 8-1-07 Grim report indicates Paterson isn't ready to regain school control More than 15 years after the state takeover of Paterson schools, the district still has problems in its bookkeeping, cannot ensure teachers are properly certified and, until this year, didn't have an updated curriculum...And that's the appraisal from the state itself.
7-29-07 'The numbers still don't add up' ...
"In spite of major changes, three Newark schools fall short of federal (NCLB) requirements..."
Grim report indicates Paterson isn't ready to regain school control
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
BY JOHN MOONEY
Star-Ledger Staff
More than 15 years after the state takeover of Paterson schools, the district still has problems in its bookkeeping, cannot ensure teachers are properly certified and, until this year, didn't have an updated curriculum.
And that's the appraisal from the state itself.
State Education Commissioner Lucille Davy yesterday released the latest monitoring report on New Jersey's third-largest district, the first step in determining whether to start ceding control back to local officials.
And one week after recommending that state-run Jersey City and Newark schools get at least some control back, Davy said Paterson had made the least progress of the three. She said significant improvements were needed before a transition could begin.
Among the most damning findings was the lack of a curriculum until this year that aligned with the state's current standards and tests. The new curriculum is now developed and will be integrated into classrooms for the first time this fall, officials said.
"We all know the curriculum is the critical first step," Davy said yesterday. "And if it is not clear and not articulated in the classrooms, the chance of performance being what it should be is slim."
The state standards are a decade old, and many of the tests date nearly as far back. But when asked how the curriculum could lapse for so long in Paterson, Davy said she preferred not to cast judgments on the state's past oversight.
Similar questions arose last week when Davy announced that Jersey City and Newark would only regain some local controls, although none in the area of instruction, despite as much as two decades of state control. Newark has since appealed the findings.
"I can't speak to what has been happening before this, only what is happening now," Davy said yesterday.
Davy reiterated yesterday that the state has revamped how it monitors schools and will offer assistance in a more targeted way under a new system called the Quality Single Accountability Continuum.
This winter, Davy appointed a fiscal monitor in Paterson to more closely watch the district's finances, and several recommendations in yesterday's report reflected his findings.
Efforts to reach Paterson officials yesterday were unsuccessful, including Superintendent Michael Glascoe, who was appointed by the state in 2005.
The superintendent "has been waiting to see the report since Friday, and he would like the opportunity to review it in its entirety," said spokeswoman Laura Constable.
Glascoe replaced the previous state-appointed superintendent, Edwin Duroy, who left under a cloud of scandal over millions of dollars in alleged waste and mismanagement in the district's facilities office. Three men have since been indicted or pleaded guilty to charges related to the scandal, including bribery.
But others in the community said yesterday they were hopeful the district has turned a corner. One prominent advocate raised her own questions about the fairness of the state's new monitoring process, but said the overall findings are hardly a surprise.
"It is really disappointing, but I'm confident that Dr. Glascoe and the board can work together in getting these things improved," said Irene Sterling, director of the Paterson Education Fund. "Paterson deserves to have high-quality education.
The numbers still don't add up
In spite of major changes, three Newark schools fall short of federal requirements
Sunday, July 29, 2007
BY JOHN MOONEY
Star-Ledger Staff
When the cardboard boxes containing test scores for more than 900 students arrived at Marquis de Lafayette School in Elizabeth in late June, no one rushed to open them.
The scores were a kind of judgment on the school. After failing to meet the test scores under the federal No Child Left Behind Act six years running, the staff at Lafayette had been forced to spend the year trying to work an academic miracle.
But there were 100 little emer gencies to deal with, from looming graduation and summer school to disciplinary flare-ups. In nearby Newark and Orange, where other stacks of high-stakes scores awaited perusal, officials were similarly swamped.
"We're all excited, trust me," Lafayette Principal Joseph Krouse said of the scores. "We can't wait to open them, but there are 50,000 things going on today."
Once the contents of those boxes were analyzed, the test numbers would bring a sobering finale to the year. All three schools again would fall short of the law's re quirements, although one came ex cruciatingly close.
The schools tried to make radical changes in a desperate attempt to get right with a law that requires schools with perennially low test scores in reading and math to "restructure" themselves.
One installed new leadership, another embraced a "small schools" model breaking itself up into more manageable divisions, yet a third forged a unique partnership with academics and the local teacher's union.
There were glimmers of hope, with some grades showing appreci able progress. But other scores actually worsened -- and all re mained well below the minimum bar set by federal lawmakers.
The Star-Ledger followed the three schools all year. That time in the corridors -- interviews with teachers, students, parents and administrators and a review of test re sults -- shows the standards set by the federal law remain agonizingly distant for schools dealing with grinding poverty and large populations of special needs or foreign- language students.
A year at the three schools also suggests the monumental difficul ties of applying a law that sets uniform standards for every student in the nation. The schools were among 50 under federal edict in New Jersey this past year. Almost all were inner city schools.
Standing in the main office of Newton Street School in Newark amid a whirlwind of teachers and parents on the last day of school, math teacher Jerome Hancock looked weary as he talked about the latest results -- like a man fighting a very long battle with no end in sight.
"Every year, it's either the middle school making it but not the lower grades, or the next year the other way around," Hancock said. "It's hard to get out from under it."
THE RESULTS OF REINVENTION
The No Child Left Behind Act, passed in 2000, established a complex array of national standards. A minimum percentage of students -- and subgroups of students, such as African-American, Hispanic and special needs children -- must pass reading and math tests.
Schools that fail six years run ning are ordered to restructure, but the law is vague on what restructuring actually means, leaving most of the details to the individual schools and local administrators.
Perhaps the most ambitious reform tried in New Jersey was at tempted at Newton Street, a long- struggling place with a large special education population. Here, the district entered into a novel partnership with Seton Hall University and the Newark Teachers Union.
Seton Hall would bring its expertise on school reform; the teachers union would bring the political muscle to get certain teachers transferred out and new blood in. They would share decision-making on how the school was run.
When the plan was announced, district officials in Newark hailed it as a potential model for reform in a district with a total of seven schools on the list of 50 under- achievers.
Yet big plans left officials at the "New Newton" tangled in their own dreams and promises. And when test scores arrived this summer, the school found it had gone backward in some ways.
While scores were relatively stable in older grades, scores in younger ones dropped dramatically. The percent of third-graders passing math fell 13 points; fourth-grade language arts scores went down 33 points to just 29 percent passing overall.
Principal Willie Thomas, the school's longtime leader, blamed staff turnover in third and fourth grades that required using substitutes for much of the year.
But the tumult of the reform likely didn't help. Rumors flew freely about which teachers and administrators would be pushed out. Six teachers eventually did agree to leave, as did a vice principal.
As the year closed last month, leaders from Seton Hall and the NTU hosted a retreat at the South Orange university to help rebuild trust and forge a common mission. Included in the retreat's handout to each Newton staff member was a blue umbrella.
"We know there will be rainy days ahead," said Charles Mitchel, the Seton Hall director leading the team and a former Newark principal. "But what are we willing to do, how much are we willing to change?"
Everyone was invited -- teachers were sitting beside custodi ans, security guards and secretaries. There were team-building exercises and brainstorming ses sions on what teachers and staff could do to improve.
"The staff has been really divided, a lot of cliques, and the idea is to bring them together, break that down," said Barbara Strobert, a Seton Hall professor and veteran educator from Mont clair and Essex Fells. "If we don't bring them together to a common vision, nothing is going to happen."
Another retreat is planned for next month, before school opens, with a focus on classroom training.
Mitchel and Seton Hall's leaders hoped for bigger changes, and resentments remain.
"We were promised 12 new teachers, and we got six," Mitchel said . "But none of that will deter us."
But Superintendent Marion Bolden questioned where 12 teachers would have come from in a district of 70-plus schools, each with its own needs, some as great as Newton's.
"If I could take all my best teachers and put them in a given school, I guarantee its scores would go up," she said. "But do I just unplug the other schools? ... There has been some compro mise, and I think this will work."
And Bolden said she wasn't demoralized by the dropping scores, saying they would add ur gency to the mission.
"Maybe it's reaffirming that they really do need to change," she said. "Were they off task again because of all that was happening? Maybe. But that can't be the excuse next year."
BUILDING A FAMILY
Going into the last week of the school year, Orange Middle School principal Judith Kronin had yet to tell her teachers how the school did on the state's tests.
She was nervous about it. "I want to give them time to themselves," she said before a closed- door staff meeting. She hoped they would focus on the upward trend and not just the daunting bottom line.
By the statistics, Orange Middle School still has a lot of work to do.
After an intense year of redesigning the school into five "small learning communities" and an unprecedented push to prepare for the state tests in the spring, only about 40 percent of Orange Middle's students passed the language arts section and 25 percent passed the math. Both were improvements over the year before.
"We expected some gains, and I expect more next year," Kronin said. "But first we had to get on the same page as a school family, and that's what we accomplished ... I just think it's a process."
In the world of urban school reform and test scores, optimism often comes in the half-full variety -- even a third-full in this case.
Orange Middle School saw improvements in almost all its scores. The percentage of seventh-graders passing language arts rose more than 5 points, just shy of 50 percent.
The gains were seen as validation of the restructuring. Teachers and students said the new model lent an air of intimacy and family to the middle school years, often rife with tumult.
Still, even the biggest gains weren't enough for a federal law that can be unsparing when it comes to benchmarks. This year, schools needed to have 66 percent of their students passing language arts and 49 percent passing math in every grade.
Schools get credit for improvement toward those goals, but Orange Middle School would need proficiency rates to rise as much as seven or eight percentage points a year on every test and in every category to get off the list of under- performing schools.
Still, none of this dampened the school year's final days, as Kronin hosted the graduation of her de parting eighth-graders.
In the standing-room-only auditorium, the focus was decidedly off test scores. There was a student dance performance and a rousing rendition of the unofficial class song, "Ain't No Stopping Us Now," the volume cranked.
Class valedictorian Joshua Su grim drew cheers when he recalled the eighth-grade social and spoke of the teachers who "gave us more than homework to take home and think about."
Of one language teacher in particular, Joshua said, "She was the first to hold me accountable and make me do better."
NEW FOCUS, SPIRIT
At the start of the school year, eighth-grader Emmanuel Ogutu walked into Elizabeth's Marquis de Lafayette School, turned around and went home. Emmanuel didn't want to be at the school, he said later, a place he remembered from the previous year as noisy and disruptive.
But an unusual visit that day changed his mind. His principal showed up at his house.
"Not many would have come to my house and talked to me," Em manuel said. "But he made a promise to me then that the year would be a success."
Joe Krouse kept that promise, and 10 months later, on the day Emmanuel graduated in the top 10 percent of his class, he walked into the principal's office and thanked him.
Hiring Krouse, 38, a former teacher and vice principal, was the centerpiece of the district's strategy to "restructure" Lafayette and break its pattern of years of sub- par test scores. In one year, he came awfully close.
Lafayette missed the law's re quired achievement levels by just four of its 900-plus students.
Only about half the students passed the language arts and math tests, but they showed enough gains -- in some cases sizable gains -- to meet the law's maze of re quirements on all but one category of students.
Krouse credited his administrators and teachers. But it was clear throughout the year that the former football coach had instilled a new focus and spirit in the school -- not to mention an explosive energy one vice principal likened to "the little engine that could."
"I'm pretty psyched," Krouse said. "We worked hard, and what's nice is we can move on now. We can go on from here, something to build on."
It was not a trouble-free year for the principal. His desire to reduce disciplinary suspensions rubbed some teachers the wrong way. And he often felt reams of administrative paperwork robbed him of time that would have been better spent in the classroom, evaluating teachers.
He contracted mononucleosis in the middle of the year -- forcing him, uncharacteristically, to take a day off to see a doctor -- and strained a hamstring attempting a split at the year-end student talent show.
"It's a great feeling to see things improve, but we are nowhere near out of the woods yet," he said. "We aren't 75 percent passing, we're not competing with the suburbs. We're nowhere near where I'm satisfied yet."
But he also has a hard time holding back his excitement that the people most responsible are seeing some rewards.
"I haven't even told my teachers, but I can't wait," he said. "We're going to have a party."
STAY THE COURSE
Perhaps the most immediate question raised by another year of sub-par scores is this: what next?
The federal legislation, tough as it is on schools that fail to make the grade six years running, contains no provision for a seventh failing year.
"This is unexplored territory for us," said Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education in Washington, D.C., which has tracked how states and districts nationwide have been affected by the law.
The answer of what comes next may get clearer, too, if Congress acts to reauthorize No Child Left Behind in the next year or two. Some predict more time will be built into the "restructuring" phase.
State officials said the require ments have forced meaningful change and already are starting to show results.
"We are seeing some really good work in these schools, some real paradigm shifts in how the buildings operate," said Suzanne Ochse, the state director who's office oversees the No Child Left Behind im plementation.
The districts plan to stick with what they started.
"The federal law hasn't decided what will happen next, but what can it do at this point?" said Bolden, who oversees seven schools in Newark forced to restructure this year and at least one more expected to join the list next year.
"They've already told us to restructure," she said. "We will keep working at what we have been doing."
John Mooney may be reached at jmooney@starledger.com
