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D.C. School a Test Of Teachers' Grit -- And Rhee's Tactics

How would YOU feel if six
employees from your child's school showed up at
your door--unannounced--even if they had steak
dinners in hand? Early in my career I was
involved in a school program that required home
visits--and because phones were often changed
or disconnected, we were just supposed to show
up. I visited--or tried to visit--two families.
Then I refused to do it any more. I couldn't
get over the knowledge that it was an invasion
of privacy.

And I'll admit it: It was also scary to walk
down those long, narrow, dark hallways in a
tenement. Maybe that's why this program calls
for six people to go together.

" It's so hard to teach this
population." I hope that's a misquote. It's
sickening. This population?????
As quoted below, Mr. Connor isn't short on
hubris. Let's see what he's doing five years
from now.

It is certainly good news that they have
restored art, music and PE.

By Marc Fisher

There's a knock on the door, and a parent whose
child is causing trouble at Truesdell
Educational Center warily opens up. Six
Truesdell employees, loaded with pizza for
dinner and plans to change the child's
direction, trundle into the apartment -- the
boy's teacher, two social workers, a
psychologist, a behavior specialist, and the
principal, Brearn Wright.

Unannounced home visits are part of the recipe
for change at Truesdell, a D.C. public school
where test scores were so miserable for so long
the school was declared "failing" under No
Child Left Behind rules and the faculty was
replaced almost entirely last summer.

Truesdell, an overheated, underenrolled
behemoth of a building just off Georgia Avenue
NW in Petworth, is a crucible in Chancellor
Michelle Rhee's hurried campaign to transform
the city's schools. Its population -- blacks
and Hispanics, nearly all from families poor
enough to qualify for subsidized meals -- is
demographically similar to that at Montgomery
County's Broad Acres Elementary, which has
moved from failure to remarkable achievement,
as I reported in my last column.

Could a similar turnaround happen in a D.C.
school -- and does Rhee's more confrontational
approach make that kind of change more or less
likely?

Five of Truesdell's 35 teachers have been
placed on 90-day improvement plans, Rhee's
tactic for ridding the system of lousy
teachers. Despite teachers' fears and the
chancellor's face-off with the teachers union,
Wright says he tells his staff that the moves
are "not designed to fire you, but to give you
the support you need to succeed. They're still
going to be upset -- they saw Chancellor Rhee
on the cover of Time with the broom and that
was scary -- but I told them it means cleaning
up, not necessarily throwing out."

Truesdell opened this fall remade. An
elementary school where half of the black
children and two-thirds of the Hispanics scored
below proficient on reading and math tests had
been converted into a pre-kindergarten-through-
seventh-grade school. Some parents loathed
putting tough middle-schoolers in the same
building as little kids, but by September,
Wright was defusing doubts. "What I want No. 1
is a school I can send my own child to," says
the principal, 36, who doesn't yet have kids of
his own.

His new faculty -- including veterans from
across the city, kids straight out of college
via Teach for America, and imports from the
suburbs such as himself (he worked in
Montgomery County) -- survived rigorous
interviews designed to weed out those who
weren't up for lots of extra work and an
unprecedented series of summer training
sessions.

Wright is sending teachers to successful
charter schools to see what they do better.
(Teachers came back from E.L. Haynes impressed
by a program that assigns a team of adults to
work intensively for six weeks with three
flailing kids at a time; Truesdell immediately
copied the tactic.)

Wright is determined to assert control over the
dozen or so students who manage to disrupt a
school of almost 400. The home visits help:
"It's been mind-blowing for most parents to
have five or six people come to your house and
they all want to talk about your child," he
says.

Suspending troublemakers wasn't accomplishing
anything except making the misbehaving kids'
day (suspensions are a school's dumbest weapon,
a gift to kids who realize that, wow, if I act
out, I don't have to go!) So Wright instituted
Saturday school, combining community service
and academic remediation.

"Any Saturday, we're here," says Jackie Hines,
a kindergarten teacher and the union
representative. "We signed up for longer hours.
We own these children. Our attitude is not what
can't they do, but instead, they come here with
so much stuff from home, so what can we do for
them?"

Wright has adapted portions of Broad Acres'
model. Children work in small groups with
several teachers in the room. Art, music and PE
have been restored. Teachers meet regularly to
share tips and discuss individual students.

As at Broad Acres, Wright believes half the
battle is persuading teachers that kids from
dysfunctional backgrounds must be held to high
standards. He screened inspirational scenes
from the movie "Miracle," about the 1980 U.S.
Olympic ice hockey team. But when Wright asked
teachers to mark down what percentage of
Truesdell kids should be making the proficient
grade in reading, only a few dared to write
100. Most wrote numbers such as 55, 65, 68 or
69.

In the classrooms, in stark contrast to many
D.C. schools, students seem engaged and eager
to progress. The atmosphere is still colder and
more militaristic than in more successful
schools; a teacher wins quiet by announcing,
"Work harder," to which the children respond,
in Pavlovian fashion, "Get smarter."

But there are creative projects in nearly every
room. In the third-floor hallway, two fifth-
grade boys take notes on a clipboard; they are
finding fractions -- a door half-open, a coffee
cup four-fifths empty, and so on.

Patrick Connor, 23, in his second year in Teach
for America, moved to Truesdell from a school
in Southeast because Wright was committed to
higher expectations. "It's so hard to teach
this population," he says, "but some kids have
made huge turnarounds." In a system where many
schools have no parent organization, Connor has
spoken to every parent in his classes and he's
now getting calls at home, "even at 11 p.m.,
and that doesn't bother me at all. That is
exactly what has to happen."

Connor, like many younger teachers, is a huge
Rhee fan. "If I were 55, I might feel I worked
all these years for tenure, but as a kid, I'm
like, 'If they can't do the job, get 'em out.'
"

Hines, who has taught in city schools for 16
years, doesn't share the enthusiasm. "A lot of
us older folks started out excited, but as time
went on and we heard daily about how we don't
know what we're doing, now I'm a little wary."
But she says teachers are nonetheless united in
seeking new ways to reach kids.

Whether it's from fear of being sacked or
desire to boost achievement, teachers are
turning to math and reading coaches as never
before.

Test scores aren't in yet, and no one expects
miracles. "We're not there," Wright says, "but
we're getting there. Kids are learning." At
Truesdell, in part because of the chancellor's
confrontational ways and in part in spite of
them, it feels like a revolution is brewing.

E-mail: marcfisher@washpost.com


Washington Post
2009-01-11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/10/AR2009011001772_pf.html

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