(Vol. 2, No. 2 - Spring 1998)

A tentative beginning for Long Beach Prep

LBUSD's 8th-grade initiative has raised the profile of at-risk kids but its alternative school for failing middle schoolers has had a rough first year.

"This will be a failure if kids end up dropping out in the same numbers they would have if they'd just gone on to high school." -- Supt. Carl Cohn

"We're working very hard to deliver. We're regrouping, reevaluating, revising, redesigning, reconstructing all the time." -- Area Supt. Dorothy Harper

by John Norton

If the Long Beach Preparatory Academy's main mission is to put students, parents and teachers on notice that failure has consequences, then you'd have to judge the new program a rousing success.

Helping eighth graders avoid "multiple F's"- and a one-year detour through the Signal Hill alternative school-has become an important topic of conversation at middle school faculty meetings, teacher-parent conferences, and "skull sessions" among the district's policymakers.

In the year and a half since the district announced its intentions to deny "social promotion" to eighth graders with two or more F's, counseling and support programs for low-performing students have sprung up in every middle school-and not just in 8th grade. Many schools are targeting potential "multi-F" students for special attention as soon as they arrive from elementary.

"A school's reputation suffers when it sends a large number of students to Prep Academy," says one middle school principal. "Everyone knows that."

Educators have always cared about these kids, the principal says, but like most human enterprises, schools are full of competing interests. The school board's 8th-grade initiative has made low performers "a higher priority."

For example, while Long Beach Unified's campaign to improve reading skills-long neglected in many American middle schools-is not a direct result of the multiple-F policy, principals have seized on the reading initiative as perhaps the single best way to address student failure, and many middle schools now offer double-periods of literacy instruction for their most at-risk students.

LBUSD Superintendent Carl Cohn has described the 8th grade initiative as a short-term strategy, intended to trigger reforms in the district's regular middle schools. Once schools strengthen their programs for at-risk kids, Cohn says, there won't be a need for Long Beach Prep. He estimates a five-year lifespan for the school. In the interim, he told the Long Beach Press Telegram recently, the school will provide "genuine intervention" by quickly toning the academic muscles of failing eighth graders.

By that standard Long Beach Prep has been less successful-a fact that Cohn readily admits.

A rocky start for Long Beach Prep

When the final grades were tallied on last year's middle school report cards, about 450 eighth graders-roughly 7 percent-were told they would have to delay their high school careers for at least one year and report to Long Beach Prep in the fall. District officials, who weren't quite sure what to expect, were generally pleased with the low number. About 400 students actually enrolled; the rest either moved away, dropped out, or found another alternative.

Both Cohn and Area A Superintendent Dorothy Harper say school got off to a rocky start. Although the district kept its promise to the Signal Hill community that students would not cause trouble in the surrounding neighborhood, inside Long Beach Prep discipline quickly became a major concern.

"We underestimated the social challenges (the faculty) would have," Harper says. "When you're not around a group of predominantly socially challenged kids, or kids who feel disenfranchised by the system, you forget what that is like."

The problem was aggravated by Prep's unusually high number of inexperienced teachers. According to district data, 13 of the school's 18 teachers were in their first year of teaching. Harper says many were unprepared to manage the behavior of inner-city kids or to provide the highly skilled teaching necessary to get them ready for the ninth grade in a single year.

After several months, the district added a "dean" to oversee discipline and made the decision to move about 50 of the most disruptive students to other alternative programs in the district. The student-teacher ratio dropped to 20-1. A strong, instructionally oriented assistant principal, supported by mentor teachers, helped bolster the new teachers' classroom management and instruction.

When the school's principal became ill, Harper found herself serving as part-time principal-a development, she says, that helped her gain an insider's view of issues facing the school.
Both Cohn and Harper believe the school is improving, and they expect a much different scenario next year. Here are some of their own observations about Long Beach Prep and the eighth grade initiative, excerpted from interviews in January. Although they were interviewed separately, their comments are presented together here.

==================

Changing Schools: How would you describe the start-up of Long Beach Preparatory Academy?

Cohn: It's the hardest work we've ever done. Absolutely the hardest. I think putting together more than 400 kids with multiple F's in one place, we just thought that that was going to be easier than it was. And I also just think that when you set up this type of a school, it's really difficult to get the right kind of people to come in. I think what they got was some teachers who really accepted this as the challenge of a career. But they also got teachers who thought this was going to be a typical "continuation" type school that nobody cared about. And I think they were shocked when they saw area superintendents, district curriculum leaders, and all kinds of people going in and out of classrooms talking about their expectations for a very high level of engaged teaching.

Harper: Unfortunately, I think too many of the teachers thought the kids were going to come and they were going to be nice, docile little people who just didn't quite get it in class. But what do kids do when they don't understand what's going on? They entertain themselves, they bug you, they bug their neighbor. There's enough blame, we can put some anywhere we want-but I really believe 90 percent of the staff did not anticipate what it would really be like to work with a group of youngsters who had not had success.

Also, I don't think they factored in that there would be a continuum-some kids who were in this particular category in terms of the social piece but over here academically, and vice versa. I don't think people thought about that. So then you wake up and you walk into this classroom, you said 'oh my god,' and we had a lot of 'oh my gods.'"

Cohn: In fairness to the teachers in our system, more of them understood this as an important challenge than the people we hired from the outside.

Harper: We have a lot of teachers who came from outside the district and don't know about our approach to standards, and our kids. And they're the ones who are struggling the most.

CS: Do you feel that you've kept your commitments concerning the school?

Cohn: The two things that we said to the Signal Hill community was that these kids would not be a threat to the neighborhood or to the local elementary school, and we've delivered on both those issues. But on the issue of the quality of instructional program, and the rescue operation with regard to these kids, that's unproven. And the biggest disappointment for me would be if these kids end up dropping out in the same numbers that they would have if we'd just sent them on to our large high schools.

Harper: We're working very hard to deliver. We're regrouping, reevaluating, revising, redesigning, reconstructing all the time.

CS: What are the positives you've seen so far?

Harper: We have several excellent teachers and a superior assistant principal who knows a lot about curriculum and instruction . . . . I would say that the most refreshing thing about the academy is that it is a place where the kids feel that people are sincerely interested in them, that people really want them to succeed. It's not: "I hate this place,I wish they hadn't sent me here." That's not what we're hearing.

Cohn: I think the fact that these kids and their parents believe that the school district is finally doing something to rescue these kids. When I was out their the first day, a grandmother was there to shake my hand and say "the district has needed this for a long time, and (my grandson) is not excited by this, but we really appreciate you doing the right thing getting these kids squared away before they go on to high school."

The other positive is the knowledge kids have about taking middle grades work seriously in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. I have a middle schooler, and there's an awareness now that you really have to perform and that you can't risk getting an "F". That's really taking hold.

And there's an accountability piece for our schools, about what things you are doing to intervene and communicate with kids and their parents -- and not just in the 8th grade but in the 6th and 7th. And let me tell you, I will be very upset if the numbers of eligible kids don't go down each year.

CS: What could you have done to make Prep Academy more successful its first year?

Cohn: In hindsight, I think we should have established some incentives to attract more experienced teachers. And we could have done it by tacking on an additional $4,000 a year to the positions and designating either all of them or a substantial majority of them as mentor teacher positions.

CS: How will you measure the school's ultimate success or failure?

Cohn: This will be a failure if kids end up dropping out in the same numbers they would have if they'd just gone on to high school. And if that happens, then I think we should have the courage to acknowledge it and look at something else, rather than doing the typical thing and saying this is a shrine that we are going to worship at forever. . . . This is real risky. Like I said, this is the hardest work we've probably done in a couple of decades. In hindsight, we probably should have known it wasn't going to be easy.

##