NCLB Outrages
Ohanian Comment: There's a lot here to break your heart. One problem is all the ploys. Motivating reading through gimmicky rewards, no matter how well intentioned, doesn't work--and does damage. I'd say the good news is that the school now has fewer thann 1,100 students.
Jones High School Principal Lorenzo Phillips didn't just pass out books to students. He stuck $10 bills in some of them to make them more enticing.
He handed out $90 varsity-letter jackets and threw a dinner in honor of the 26 students who read 10 books from September to January.
School athletes with sagging grades had to show up for tutoring after school and on Saturday mornings if they wanted to play.
Despite using almost any ploy he could to get students to read and drive up the F-rated school's reading scores, Jones' new principal got mixed results when Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores were released Monday.
The percentage of 10th-graders who could read at grade level grew from 5 percent to 11 percent, but the percentage of ninth-graders reading at grade level dropped from 8 percent to 5 percent. Even the county's reform schools did as good or better than Jones' freshmen on reading.
"We had high expectations," said Phillips, with his boss, associate superintendent Jan Pratt at his side. Both wore gold "NO EXCUSES" pins on their jacket lapels.
Central Florida's lowest-performing school has so many illiterate students that it runs the risk of becoming an F school for a third consecutive year.
After Jones got a second F last year, hundreds of students transferred to Boone, Edgewater and Winter Park highs. The exodus has left Jones with less than 1,100 students.
If it gets another F when the grades are released in June, the school would face additional scrutiny. The Florida Department of Education could force Jones administrators to reorganize the school's faculty or penalize Jones or Orange County financially, state officials said.
So much is at stake for Jones that Orange County Superintendent Ron Blocker said when his testing experts started to brief him Monday, "I kept asking them, 'What about Jones? What about Jones?"
At the mere thought of getting a third F, Phillips rolled his head back and laughed in disbelief.
"I don't even think about that," said Phillips, 60, who became principal at Jones last summer after improving scores at Westridge Middle School.
Located next to the Citrus Bowl in southwest Orlando, Jones draws students from neighborhoods where high-end jobs are as scarce as college degrees. The median income for families in the school's attendance zone is $28,000, census data show. Less than 10 percent of those residents graduated from college.
Working tireless hours to turn around a school that has long suffered academically, Phillips refused to wear a watch at the beginning of the year because he said he didn't want the distraction. The gray-haired administrator joked that his wife became a substitute teacher so that she could catch a glimpse of him occasionally.
Using billboards and the Jones community network, he pleaded for mentors and got 240 adults, many of whom were trained in mentoring skills at Lockheed Martin.
To make sure enough people showed up for tests, Phillips enlisted his staffers to use their breaks to call the homes of absentee students.
School Resource Officer D. Barnes said he made a few of the calls.
"A few of them came," he said. "Some of them just didn't care."
Despite Monday's mixed FCAT results, Phillips' bosses said Jones has shown signs of improvement in everything from discipline to dropouts. Writing and math scores showed improvement. The number of advanced-placement students increased from 44 last year to 82 this year.
And the school, which doesn't even have a gymnasium of its own, just won the state girls' basketball championship.
Associate superintendent Pratt on Monday outlined steps to help improve scores, such as reviewing students' class assignments and better diagnosing reading problems.
She said this summer many incoming freshmen will find themselves in programs to better prepare them for high school.
But she said she has hope for the school to get off the F list. And she's not alone.
Florida Education Chancellor Jim Warford said that of the nine schools with double F's from the state, he really wants Jones to succeed.
"I have worked with every one of those schools, and I can tell you that I am pulling for that school, and I am pulling for that principal," said Warford, who oversees public education in kindergarten through the 12th grade. "I believe strongly in that school, and I believe strongly in that principal. I believe in his leadership. I believe in his commitment."
Mary Shanklin can be reached at mshanklin@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5539.
— Mary Shanklin
Orlando Sentinel
2004-05-11
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-asecjones11051104may11,1,4850901.story?coll=orl-home-headlines
INDEX OF NCLB OUTRAGES
