(Vol. 1, No. 1 - Fall 1996)
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LBUSD's Ambitous Middle School Goal:
Reaching Kids Who've Been Left Behind
by John Norton and Barnett Berry
Hector
Nice, smart, clever, creative
son of my parents
friend of Victor
would like to change my face
plan to finish school
Angela
Tall, hazy eyes, crazy, hyper
Daughter of Lety and Joe
Lover of Tommy, children and babies
Who feels hyper and sad
Who fears getting killed
Who is a resident of Long Beach, California
When one of our reporters found these poems on a DeMille Middle School wall
a few years ago, she knew the 7th graders who wrote them were giving adults
at Spring Open House a rare look into the adolescent mind and heart.
There were other "bio" poems. Benjamin enjoyed running and planned
to be a doctor. Shannon needed laughter. Quan feared rejection. Eva worried
about growing old. Danny loved to give happiness.
"The short verses do more than identify the budding writers in the
school," Anne Lewis wrote. "They reveal, in words, the dual forces
of confidence and uncertainty, mixed with growing self-awareness, that mark
young teens."
A sixth grade teacher at DeMille summed up the paradoxes of adolescence
perfectly when she told us: "They want the right to be babies because,
in some ways, they still are. And they want to be treated like adults, because
that's what they feel themselves becoming."
Our team of education writers and researchers had been hired by the Edna
McConnell Clark Foundation to take an independent look at the middle schools
in the Long Beach Unified School District and report on their efforts to
reform themselves and raise student achievement.
In our first report, where these poems appeared, we described the particular
challenges of teaching 12- and 13-year olds in an urban school system with
more than 82,000 students -- the third largest in California. While many
children in the Long Beach schools come from homes where parents support
them and their need for an education, many others are growing up surrounded
by danger and trauma.
To succeed in their educational mission, the Long Beach middle schools must
not only help students and their families grapple with the ordinary problems
of adolescence, but the often extraordinary circumstances of urban life.
To their credit, Long Beach's educators and school board members agreed
several years ago to do even more. They set out to increase the academic
success of every student, even those low-achievers who were most at risk
of failing.
That's where we -- the Focused Reporting Project -- came in. When LBUSD
accepted a series of grants from the Clark Foundation to support its middle
school reforms, we were asked to write about the district's progress. We
published two newsletter-sized reports that were circulated mostly to educators
and some community leaders.
When the school district agreed to accept yet another Clark grant and use
the money to help make "standards" an important part of the middle
school curriculum, the foundation asked us to try and reach a wider audience
of concerned citizens. If you've read this far, you're one of those people.
So what can we tell you?
We can tell you, first of all, that Long Beach district has 21 middle schools
or schools with the middle grades in them. Middle schools are a recent development
in Long Beach and are part of a national trend.
The middle school grows out of a belief that the emotional roller coaster
of adolescence and puberty requires teachers who can provide lots of support
as well as instruction. The theory is sound, but some critics of middle
school worry that academics often take a backseat to counseling and self-esteem
building.
The Clark Foundation believes that a good middle school must find just the
right balance of academic challenge and support. Kids in urban schools,
where 14-year old dropouts are all too common, can't wait for high school
to get the skills they need to succeed. They need teachers who know their
subjects and know how to teach in ways that get them interested in learning.
We can also tell you that the Long Beach schools have many teachers who
meet this level of skill and knowledge, and many more who are committed
to reaching it. But in a school district with many low-achievers, with significant
poverty and one of the nation's most culturally and ethnically diverse student
bodies, the challenges are great and the schools, at present, aren't fully
prepared to meet them.
The biggest problem the Long Beach schools face is one they share with just
about every school in America with lots of poor and low-achieving kids.
Most schools were never designed or supported to teach every child well.
Traditionally, schools were expected to focus on the top half -- and there's
ample evidence our schools are teaching the top half better than ever. As
for the rest, many have dropped by the wayside, either finding jobs that
don't require much education or drifting into the welfare system.
The Long Beach schools are saying that isn't good enough any more. And what
that means, really, is that they have to figure out for the first time how
to teach all kids a rigorous curriculum and make sure they succeed. In a
very large bureaucratic system, staffed by many people who grew up in the
old ways, that is one heck of a challenge.
We can tell you that the school district's leaders are very much aware of
these facts and have made a very visible commitment to change them.
We can also tell you that the district has a high-quality central staff
with the knowledge, skills, and savvy to help the schools reach higher.
It's one of the best staffs we have seen in an urban school system.
Finally, we can tell you that the district has thought a lot about what
it will take to get from here to there. In the case of middle schools, getting
"there" means having 75 percent of all 8th graders meet high performance
standards by the turn of the century. We believe LBUSD has a sound plan
-- one that gives high priority to discipline and order, one that builds
on academic standards, one that recognizes the need for much more professional
development of teachers and principals and the necessity of winning community
support for change. The task is to turn the plan into action.
Engaging parents in school reform
The stories in this issue of Changing Schools in Long Beach will
introduce you to some of the steps LBUSD is taking to reach this admittedly
ambitious goal, and some of the issues educators must wrestle with. Future
issues will keep you up to date on their progress.
We'll pay special attention to the district's promise to create new opportunities
for adolescents through academic standards. Anne Lewis' story on page 8
describes what's at stake.
As we go to press, we've learned that Ruth Mitchell, one of the nation's
top experts on curriculum and standards, is spending a week (Aug. 26-29)
working with 180 LBUSD middle school teachers. "Our teachers will learn
how to look at student work and know whether kids are working towards standards,"
says Kristi Kahl, who oversees middle school reform.
Kahl said the district pulled the conference together after a team visited
Colorado schools where Mitchell has been working. Children as young as second
grade were able to explain how their work connected to standards. "We
knew this was something we had to do for our teachers," Kahl said.
Several stories in this issue of Changing Schools examine the district's
efforts to strengthen its connections with the community. We've also learned
that LBUSD is seeking a new Clark grant to mount a major communications
program aimed at "engaging teachers, parents, and the community in
standards-based middle school reform."
The proposal is full of good ideas -- including a special focus on principals
and their critical role "as a key individual who reaches both teachers
and parents," a common theme in this issue. The proposal also recognizes
that messages sometimes get lost or garbled in a large bureaucracy and promises
better communication up and down the lines of authority -- and out in the
community, where a parent institute and and a parent/teacher forum will
provide settings to discuss standards and the sticky issue of teacher-parent
cooperation.
These kinds of well-focused responses to critical needs bode well for the
future. Watch for our continuing reports.
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