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9486 in the collection
A kindergarten's revolving door at Indianapolis Public School 61
Continuous arrivals and departures are tough on those leaving, those staying and those teaching. Here are the first two "culture imperatives" listed on the Indianapolis Public Schools website:
Culture Imperatives
1. Children come first!
2. All employees are accountable for student achievement that meets or exceeds state standards.
Question: Has Indianapolis signed up for value added [sic], teacher ratings based on student test scores?
Reader Comment: This phenomenon is happening in many schools around the nation. It's a revolving door. I actually had a student say to me today, "Why don't we ever get to say goodbye to our friends?"
I'm just not quite sure how they (the gov't) are planning to implement a merit pay system with this insanity going on in classrooms daily. I truly hope that many gov't officials and politicians are reading this and seeing what a real world classroom is like.
by Robert King
There's the little boy whose house burned down in August, setting his family on a journey that has put him in three schools in three months.
There's the little girl whose family sought a new neighborhood because, in their old one, they were afraid of the drug dealers and the nightly gunfire.
Those are just a couple of the stories of kindergarten children who have moved into School 61 in the three months since school began. There are 29 more.
And there are 14 other stories -- tales of children who have moved out of School 61.
Like the girl whose family had been homeless but who found shelter in a place outside the Indianapolis Public Schools boundary. Like the boy whose family moved in with a relative in Wisconsin because the boy's father's recent drug conviction made it tough to find a place to stay when their lease ended.
Coming or going, the only constant in the lives of many children at School 61 -- and at schools throughout the city -- is movement.
While some move in or out because Dad got a better job, the family found a home they could afford to buy or the child advanced on the waiting list at a magnet school, all too often the new addresses and the new schools don't come with a happy story. They follow evictions, Mom's fight with a boyfriend, immigration issues and military deployments.
For all those reasons and more, the kindergarten class at School 61 -- like so many classes and schools in Indianapolis -- is in a constant state of flux that disrupts learning not only for those who move, but for those who stay. It also presents myriad challenges for teachers who must deal with not only academic issues, but also the emotional fallout.
Those challenges include assessing new students and bringing them up to speed academically -- and trying to do so without taking away instructional time from others.
On opening day at School 61, there were 62 students in kindergarten.
Just shy of three months into the school year, nearly a quarter of those children -- 14 -- are gone.
In their place, 31 new students have appeared -- half the opening-day total.
Officially, the kindergarten class has grown from 62 to 79 students. The reality is that 93 different kindergartners have already occupied seats at one time or another at School 61.
If things keep going as they have, the kindergarten class at year's end will be unrecognizable from the one that showed up on opening day.
That's not an exaggeration.
Kindergarten teacher Shirley Chappell took a medical leave that kept her out of school for three months in the middle of last year. By the time she returned, she didn't recognize almost half the faces in her class.
Such movement is not confined to School 61 or its kindergarten. A second-grader who showed up at the school last week was on his fifth school of the young academic year.
The situation is acute across IPS, where children are six times more likely to switch schools than students elsewhere in the state. They're four times more likely to move to a new school district.
The churning began with the opening bell.
Some of the students present on Day 1 didn't show up until halfway through the day. They were followed by late arrivals the next day, the next week and as recently as Wednesday. One was a holdout simply because kindergarten isn't required in Indiana and the parents held their kids home for the first six weeks. Another showed up two months into the school year because that's how long it took his parents to convince immigration officials at the Mexican border that the child really was an American citizen.
The departing children include kids who landed spots in charter or magnet schools after the school year started. They include a boy who had to move to Arizona to live with his grandparents after his mother was deployed to Iraq. They include two children who came to School 61 for the first time several days into the school year and have already moved on.
The result of all that movement? School 61 kindergarten teacher Diane Bromley sums it up in one word: "chaos."
Young children, who bond quickly with their teacher and who make friends with other children trying to adapt to the new world of school, get ripped from familiar surroundings with little understanding of why. In a new school, they must learn anew the routines of a different classroom, find new friends in a place where pecking orders have been well established and adjust to the tolerances and guidance of a new teacher when their original teacher -- their "real" teacher -- is back at their last school, or the one before that.
"Sometimes," Chappell said, "it takes months to get past that."
Disruptions are not an experience confined to the newcomers -- stable kids who see new students shuffling in and out are affected, too.
Within the first few days of school, students who have been there have the routines of when to chatter and when to be quiet mostly down pat. They know where to go for toys and blocks and where to stash their take-home papers. But they have to watch the teacher reteach these lessons each time a newcomer arrives.
And they lose out, too, when the child who picks up and moves on is their best friend.
The memories of children who have moved on linger in the classroom like ghosts. And those left behind have to find new best friends. And, as Bromley says, "It's hard for them to start over with somebody else."
Ryan Noe knew that when he and his girlfriend, Nitasha Price, moved their two children into School 61 in late September. But after going through some financial struggles that forced the family to split up and live with relatives, the family was able to move -- together -- into a house with a fenced backyard, albeit in a new school zone. Getting everyone under one roof was a top priority, Noe said, but he understood that switching two kindergartners to a new school so early in the year might be tough.
"They really liked their teachers at the other school, and they didn't really want to move," he said. "But I think they've adjusted now, pretty much."
His daughter Tashelle, a buoyant 5-year-old with a quick smile, said there were a couple of things she didn't like about the idea of moving.
"I was like crying about my old teacher," she said. "At first I didn't want to go to a new school because I didn't want any new friends. I wanted my old friends."
Tashelle said she still misses her old teacher. And sometimes, she still tells Bromley, her new teacher, how things were done at her old school. But she is coming to appreciate her new surroundings. "Now," she said, "I like my new school."
With change such a constant, the kindergarten teachers at School 61 have learned to adapt.
They keep handy a supply of fresh crayons for new kids to use. They keep blank name tags for the newcomer's desk, blank labels for the cubbies, mailboxes and coat racks. Of course, the greatest disorientation falls on the new student.
"You can ask some of them what school did they come from, and you will have some who've been to three different schools. You ask them what school you are at now, and they don't know," said Natalie Hulett, School 61's parent liaison.
Mobility, as educators call this phenomenon of uprooting and relocating, has always been part of American life, and all mobility isn't bad, says Russell Rumberger, a professor of education at the University of California-Santa Barbara. When a family moves for a better-paying job or to a better home or to a better school, the mobility can be positive, he said.
The problem comes when moves are unexpected, unplanned and unwelcome -- such as from turmoil in the family, a foreclosure or a calamity. In those cases, Rumberger said, the disruptions at home can be as harmful to a child's education as changing to a new school.
Even then, a child -- particularly a young child -- can probably withstand a single move without trouble. But repeated moves -- and moves by older children, who place more value in friendships -- can have more serious consequences.
School changes pose several risks for students, Rumberger said.
The curriculum may not line up between schools, creating learning gaps. (Within IPS, this problem is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the schools share a common curriculum and a common pacing guide.) Students with special needs, such as a learning disability, may find it takes time in a new school to be placed in the correct program or to be given the proper assistance. It may take a while for records to show up.
That's the case with a girl who showed up in Chappell's classroom this week. Her mother said the girl was in the process of being evaluated for special education at her old school in another district. Now, School 61 must figure where that process left off.
It is also the case with a boy who just left teacher Carolyn Kendall's classroom for a school in another state. He had been so disruptive the first month of school that he had been recommended for a mental health evaluation. A retired educator who read about his troubles in The Indianapolis Star had also volunteered to work with the boy one on one.
Now, a school in another state will be faced with deciphering the boy's needs.
Not all transitions, however, are so rough.
A girl who showed up in Chappell's classroom last month is adjusting socially and thriving academically. But, Chappell said, "that's the exception rather than the rule."
The constant churning means that, at times, School 61's kindergarten begins to resemble a sizable game of musical chairs.
The music has been the loudest in Chappell's classroom. She has 19 students now, but, all told, has had 26 different little people stream through her classroom.
Just one-third of the way through the school year.
No doubt with more newcomers on the way.
It is enough movement that Chappell says one of her students last week welcomed a new classmate with a question her teacher can't answer.
"When is it going to stop?"
— Robert King
Indy Star
2010-11-07
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=201011070357
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