Maureen Downey: Schools defying odds
One of the stars of the recent Education Trust conference in Washington, D.C., was Mary Haynes-Smith, the vibrant and charismatic principal of Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School in New Orleans.
Although the school is in one of New Orleans’ poorest and roughest neighborhoods, 62 percent of the school’s sixth-graders read at an advanced level, compared with 4 percent statewide.
The school won a 2010 Dispelling the Myth Award from the Education Trust, an award that recognizes outstanding efforts in narrowing achievement gaps between student groups, exceeding state standards or rapidly improving student learning.
The school became a haven for its students after Hurricane Katrina. Haynes-Smith describes the arrival of 361 shell-shocked kids, a few wearing ankle bracelets because of juvenile crime. Most had missed six months of classes because of the devastation.
“We just did trial and error and a whole lot of praying,” she says of that first year. “Our kids are poor. We have to buy underwear, socks, shoes. We buy the uniforms for them. We make sure they eat; we make sure they don’t worry about supplies. You can do all the assessments you want, but if Johnny is hungry, he is not going to do well.”
The school concentrates on basic skills, dedicating 120 minutes each morning to reading and 90 minutes to math. They welcome help from wherever it comes. “We had Nancy Pelosi visit,” says Haynes-Smith. “She called me Mary; I called her Nancy.”
The New Orleans Saints also came once. (“Reggie Bush, I didn’t let him go,” says Haynes-Smith.)
A Louisiana Supreme Court judge invited the children to her courtroom where the kids donned robes and conducted a mock trial, a moment captured in a school slide show. “That is the most powerful picture to me because most times our kids are on the other side,” says Haynes-Smith.
Haynes-Smith pays close attention to her students, even calling back to New Orleans during the conference to ask a school social worker to check up on Robert, a second-grader who’s been cooking for his little brothers since his mother had a new baby. He told the principal he was making his siblings instant grits for dinner.
She sometimes wonders whether she and her staff can save all the fragile children in their care, but with each national award that her school earns, she tells herself, “I got that award, and then I have to tell myself ‘Gosh darn it, now we have to save some more kids.’”
Like all the principals and teachers from schools honored at the Education Trust conference this year, Haynes-Smith insists that she and her staff aren’t doing anything that other schools aren’t trying.
All the winning schools said they had no secret sauce, no special recipe to offer others, crediting hard work with the strides in student performance. But after listening to hours of presentations and discussion about their successes, there were vital ingredients:
● Principals have to be able to pick their own staffs. These turnarounds are equivalent to steering a ship around deadly rocks. If principals don’t trust their teachers to take the wheel or believe they lack the stamina for the dangerous journey, the relationship is doomed. “We had some stubborn teachers,” said Haynes-Smith. “We have one left. We are going to change her or she’s going to move. You can’t sit while children fail. I am a very nice person, but you have to show results.”
● They do not let children flounder. They use data constantly and effectively to identify struggling children. They move quickly to remediate if a child is faltering. As a poster at Bethune declares: “Our job is to teach the kids we have. Not those we would like to have. Not those we used to have. Those we have right now — all of them.”
● The settings matter. The schools and the grounds are well kept and clean. These principals paint halls themselves if they must because they want children to feel valued and safe in their buildings.
● They perform as a team. The principals are strong and dynamic, but they are not geniuses with all the answers. They have strong staffs. They call on their teachers for direction, advice and guidance.
● They can’t always pay teachers more, but they try to accommodate them where they can. For example, a North Carolina principal aligns free periods with their personal needs, such as the young teacher who has to get her own children off to school in the morning and could benefit by a morning planning time. Some principals provide snacks for teachers. Others give them staff shirts. (I didn’t think small gestures would matter much, but they do.)
● The principals themselves are not coming into the classroom to guide teachers — that appears too much of a threat to the teachers. Instead, these school rely on teacher mentors, including hiring retired teachers to work with novices. (I wrote earlier this year about a UNC study that concluded that mentors work best when they’re not the principals because teachers are too nervous when their bosses are watching them.)
● These odds-defying schools know their students. A surprising number of these successful turnaround teams are home grown. They taught at the school. They grew up in the county. They know the community and they like it.
● They want you to come to their schools: Any time. And they want you to see every inch of their operation because they are secure and proud of what their staffs are accomplishing. Visitors to their schools say there is something in the air when you walk in that tells you good things are happening. There’s order. There’s no wasted time. Teachers teach as students line up in the hall. They teach on the field trip buses. They ask each other how their students know so many sight words.
They want to know what the other teacher is doing and how they can also do it. They share best practices. They trust each other enough to accept suggestions and to admit weakness.
About the Author
Maureen Downey has written editorials and opinion pieces about local, state and federal education policy since the 1990s.
