(Vol. 2, No. 1 - Fall 1997)
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Reading is fundamental
at struggling Washington Middle School
by Anne C. Lewis
Washington Middle School is a diamond in the rough to many who know it.
For an inner-city school, it is suprisingly open, and the three 75-year-old
buildings that make up the campus are perhaps the most colorful in the district,
spruced up by an artist-in-residence who painted historical murals throughout.
A technology grant endowed Washington with a state-of-the-art computer lab
and staff development to use it well. As a "1274 state restructuring
school," its teachers have had opportunities to participate in a network
of teachers in reform-minded schools.
Teachers recognized as outstanding -- mentor teachers and Teachers of the
Year -- choose to teach at this incredibly diverse school. Washington has
the highest percentage of students of color in the district. More than half
are Hispanic, 20 percent are from Pacific areas, and 22 percent African
American. Intern teachers assigned to Washington often ask for permanent
positions at the school.
The site-based council works well together. Three houses divide up the 920-student
school into smaller, more personal units; a Head Start center and parents'
center bring adults into the building all the time; and after-school activities
are available at the school or at the community center across the street.
Despite all these positives, any one of which most middle schools would
consider lucky to have, Washington students score lower on district tests
than any other middle school. In 1996, the average scores for language arts
at all three grades were only 28 (with 50 being the norm group average).
Why?
Principal Sue Barker and the staff at Washington Middle School anguish over
finding answers to that question. They know the neighborhood is the poorest
in the city and that students who opt to attend schools outside the area
do well academically. But this is a "no excuses" kind of faculty,
so Barker kept looking for another reason when she became principal two
years ago, and she believes she has found it.
Lack of reading skills the answer?
A majority of the students at the school cannot read. At least, tests given
by the school indicate they cannot read well enough to master the middle
grades curriculum at an acceptable level.
"We ask ourselves everyday: `How can they get so far without being
able to read?'" says Kamal Hassan, eighth-grade language arts teacher.
Barker explains the problem by observing that the students whose family
language is not English "have good listening skills. They adapt and
figure out ways to sound like they understand."
Some students who have been in various stages of English Language Development
(ELD) classes since they started school seem ready to be mainstreamed, says
Barker, but the tests given by the school show they are struggling to read.
Their experience may have been disjointed-- a bilingual class one year,
a sheltered English class the next. By the time they reach the middle grades,
the students may be really good at hiding what they don't know.
As part of an action research grant from the district, Washington gave tests
and made observations of students to pinpoint the reading problem and the
strategies needed with individual students. "We felt that if they couldn't
read, they couldn't meet any standards," Barker explains.
In reality, all teachers at Washington have become reading teachers. Some
focus on learning how to teach reading skills directly with a phonics base.
Others studied a strategy known as reciprocal teaching intended to help
students understand the meaning of textual information. Many have become
reading tutors.
All students below the 20th percentile in reading are assigned to reading
classes of no more than 12 students. Teachers provide eighth-grade students
who are really struggling with reading with one-on-one instruction every
day. A few Hispanic immigrant students with no school experience had to
learn how to read in Spanish, then were moved into ELD classes. In sum,
says Barker, "we are trying lots of different things."
Rather than an add-on, the content standards developed by the Long Beach
district complement Washington's focus on reading. Barker believes the real
worth of standards will come when teachers have performance standards for
all subjects -- guides on what is good enough in judging student work. "We
know we want all our students to be at level four in reading and math,"
she says. With performance standards, teachers will be able to design their
units with that expectation in mind.
Kids feel safe when they know what's expected
When a teacher has a wide range of abilities among her students, says Linda
Faust, LBUSD's 1997 Teacher of the Year, "a good teacher accepts where
kids are at and adjusts lessons to individual students." The standards
are particularly useful for the many students at Washington who lack structure
in their lives, Faust observes: "They feel safe when they know what
is expected of them and it doesn't change."
Teachers at Washington stimulate discussion about standards around the writing
prompts used each week, which are the same for all classes. This might be,
for example, an assignment to write a letter to another class on how to
play a certain game -- writing that reports information. The student writing
is talked about at department meetings, according to Barker, as is teachers'
grading of other student work. These discussions led to the decision to
have the same expectations in reading and math, level four. And discussion
of portfolios also is helping teachers come to a consensus about what is
good student work.
Washington's efforts to make it possible for students to meet the standards
are paying off. The 1997 results from the Individual Tests of Academic Skills
shows that over three years the trends in reading were up at all three grade
levels. The percent of students in the lowest performing quartile (under
25 percent) dropped in all three grade levels and in all subjects except
sixth-grade math. Washington's overall scores are still very low, but there's
hope.
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