D school is now a B — that’s not all good news
Transformation can’t end up as roadblock
Whittier Elementary School’s new letter grade confirmed what many people already knew:
The west Mesa school may struggle with poverty and other challenges. But it is not a D-rated school. Whittier rocketed from a solid D to a low B this year — which is great news. The school vastly boosted its performance on standardized tests, which largely drive state letter grades.
But that could prove to be a mixed blessing, because the test was administered before the school upended how it teaches the fundamental skills of reading and writing. And Whittier scored just 2 points above the cutoff for a B, so it has almost no wiggle room to maintain that grade.
That means it must do as well if not better on the state test this year, or it could easily end up with a C next year. And if that happens, some will undoubtedly question whether Whittier’s big changes are heading down the right path.
So, how did Whittier go from a D to a B in one year?
By focusing on the basics. Whittier has experienced heavy staff turnover in the last few years. Most teachers are either new or new to the school.
Principal Andrea Lang Sims focused heavily toward the end of last year on foundational teaching principles like breaking concepts into small pieces and checking for understanding before moving to the next piece of a lesson.
The strategy paid off. Whittier’s growth and readiness scores improved markedly, and that in turn vastly improved its letter grade.
Makes sense. We know that effective teachers are the best way to move the needle on education. And because of the state’s vast teacher shortage, there are a lot of inexperienced teachers in classrooms.
The more schools can provide meaningful professional development, the better. Whittier’s rapid improvement is case in point.
A lot of schools would be content to stop there. Two letter grades in one year — you can’t argue with those results, right?
But for Lang Sims, setting a firm instructional foundation was just the prelude. The point was always to layer on the literacy curriculum that has won accolades for Zaharis Elementary, a high-achieving school on the other side of town.
Then, once Whittier’s teachers have become more proficient in this inquirybased model, which gives students more power to investigate their own questions, the plan is to expand it to other subjects, like math and science.
Challenges remain, like finding the cash to keep the school stocked with books. Students are becoming voracious readers. Some visit the school library every day for new books. Yet procurement laws make it notoriously difficult to use school funds for these kinds of purchases.
The PTO has sold suckers to raise money, and one teacher used a crowdfunding website to buy books. But it’s clear this is going to be a perennial issue for Whittier.
Teachers also have struggled to design daily lessons in the absence of textbooks and worksheets. Some are plowing through concepts, when they probably should be breaking up lessons over several days to ensure students can apply them during their individual reading and writing time.
But Lang Sims and instructional coach Kris-Ann Florence, who came to Whittier this year from Zaharis, identified this quickly, and they’re working with teachers to better pace lessons. Positive things are happening, too. When the school year started, many classes struggled to read on their own for even 5 minutes. Now, students are staying on task for as long as 35 minutes, sucked deep into stories of their own choosing.
Class discussions are lively but respectful. Kids are eager to share what they’ve learned and don’t shy away from asking questions about the material.
Teachers feel like they’re teaching again, not just following a premade script. They’re tired from the hard work and long hours but heartened by the progress they see students making.
School discipline incidents also have fallen by a third in the first three months, compared with the same time last year — something Lang Sims attributes to students being more engaged.
But how will that translate to performance on AzM2, the state’s standardized test?
It’s hard to tell. The district rolled out a new diagnostic test this year, in hopes of better predicting how students will perform. Whittier did not fare well on the baseline exam at the beginning of the year (though neither did most other district schools).
Students recently completed another two-week diagnostic, so Lang Sims is in wait-and-see mode until the results come back.
She says she doesn’t want to teach to a test. Lang Sims would rather spend her time ensuring students are gaining the skills the district expects all graduates to possess — things like resiliency and creativity, which AzM2 was never intended to measure.
She is confident that Whittier will instill a more robust and meaningful set of skills in students than they would have gotten from the status quo.
But Lang Sims also knows how tough it is for schools like hers to experiment, especially in an environment that puts so much weight on a standardized test.
And while she is celebrating the school’s new B rating — a win is a win, after all — Lang Sims also knows that a C would have given everyone a little more breathing room and time to adjust.
Because even the best changes for students and teachers often come with growing pains. Scores can temporarily fall while everyone works out the kinks.
So, in a way, a few early wins just raised the stakes for Whittier’s big experiment to succeed.
And that’s an added challenge for a school on the rise.
This piece is part of the Moving the Needle series, which focuses on ideas to improve Arizona education. Reach Allhands at joanna.allhands@arizonarepublic.com. Also find her on Twitter: @joannaallhands.