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A Class That Loops Outshines Others on WASL
Ohanian Comment. There are a lot of sub-threads to this account of an energetic, if single-minded, young teacher who is devoted to get her students doing well on the WASL.
In the elusive quest to raise poor students' achievement, Anitra Pinchback is bearing out the notion that face time counts.
Yesterday, after lunch, after her class of 20 third-grade "scholars" walked single file into Room 114, and after they took their "learning positions," Pinchback showed a visitor to Seattle's African American Academy how much the students, most of them boys, already had absorbed on their first day of school.
"Education!" she boomed.
"Is the key to my future!" her students chimed back.
"Your mind ... "
"Is a terrible thing to waste!"
"The more you study ... "
"The smarter I get!"
These kids likely won't have to waste time next year learning their teacher's rules and expectations. The plan is for them to have Pinchback again as their fourth-grade teacher — a practice called "looping," in which a teacher is assigned to the same group of students for two or more years.
And looping may give them an edge over their peers in the state's standards test.
On this year's Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), 18 of Pinchback's 20 looped fourth-grade students — all of them African American and most of them from low-income households — passed all four sections: reading, writing, math and listening. Few teachers in the state matched that achievement with poor and minority students.
Seattle's African American Academy was created more than a decade ago to help reduce the racial gap in academic achievement, but has struggled with low test scores, particularly on the WASL.
This year, however, the school had the biggest jump in pass rates among all Seattle fourth-graders on the math and writing sections of the test. And 63 percent of the academy's fourth-graders passed the reading section, the highest achievement level among Seattle elementary schools with similarly poor student populations.
People in high places sat up and took notice, not just of Pinchback, but of her assignment to a looped class.
"We don't track that, but now I think we will," June Rimmer, Seattle schools' chief academic officer, said of looped classes and their measure of achievement. "We want to identify the successful strategies and share them with others so they can be replicated."
Experts like Rimmer say looping works best when students have strong teachers like Pinchback. But despite looping's popularity among many educators as an inexpensive, effective reform, there's no reliable data on how common it is. And only now are some districts taking notice.
Looping spreads
The WASL success of her previous class turned attention to African American Academy teacher Anitra Pinchback and a system in which she teaches the same students for two years.
"If you don't change anything in your class but this, you'll still get better results," said Karen Dickinson, assistant director of curriculum and instruction at Federal Way schools.
With the same class for two years, teachers gain almost two months of extra teaching time because they know the students well and have established routines with them and their parents, she said.
For the first time, all school levels in Federal Way this fall will have looped two-year classes ending at grades four, seven and 10 — the same grades that take the WASL.
"It wasn't even something we had to persuade people to do," Dickinson said.
Fourth-grade teacher Katherine Berg, who has a looped class at Bailey Gatzert Elementary in Seattle, said she normally would have less than four months to prepare her students for the WASL. Yesterday, she was entering her second year with 21 students — half of whom don't speak English at home.
"It didn't really feel like the first day of school," Berg said. "It felt like we picked up from last June."
Counting on parents
Last year Pinchback also was picking up where she left off with many of her most challenging students during summer school. The Rainier Beach High School graduate grew up down the street.
While she attended the University of Washington, Pinchback said, she found herself "spiritually led" to teach inner-city children. She completed her master's degree at City University of New York and returned to Seattle, where she has taught for three years.
She worked hard to learn the state's content standards for the WASL. She read whatever she could find on effective teaching, and served on a state education panel that evaluated reading-improvement plans.
During her two years with the same students, Pinchback said, she focused on ensuring that every child had a solid foundation in phonics and vocabulary. With this, she figured, they would be free to think critically while reading, and the words in their math and science problems would be understandable.
After spending much of the first year building bridges with the students' parents, she enlisted their help to conquer the WASL. She invited parents of each struggling student to help shape the child's education plan, taught them how to review material with flash cards and won their enthusiasm for ensuring homework got done.
"I wouldn't have been able to make the gains I had without the parental support I had," Pinchback said.
Then she got laid off.
The district needed to reduce its staff because of a tight budget.
But in late July, after a frenzied housecleaning and the breaking open of its cash reserves, Seattle Public Schools asked her and many others to come back.
Like everyone else, Pinchback got the good news about her former fourth-graders' WASL scores last week.
Still, some, like Rimmer, caution that in addition to looping, factors such as curriculum and teaching techniques could have influenced the success of Pinchback's fourth-graders.
Compounding the mystery is the lack of reliable data on the prevalence of looping in U.S. public schools, according to Staff Development for Educators, a New Hampshire firm that sponsors a conference on looping.
Medgar Wells, principal of African American Academy, said it can be difficult to start looped classes when schools with the highest percentage of low-income students also have the highest percentage of inexperienced teachers. Turnover can disrupt even the best plans. In any case, Wells said, he intends to expand looping to all grades starting with this year's students.
"Ms. Pinchback is an example that works," he said. "It allows you to build a relationship with kids, and most importantly, the parents."
— Sanjay Bhatt
African American Academy sees payoff in WASL scores
Seattle Times
2003-09-04
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2001713131_teacher04m.html
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