Scenes reveal Louisville's struggle
to better educate its young teens

• JCPS educators strain to absorb the impact of a devastating KIRIS report declaring nearly half the district's middle schools in decline, as teams of Kentucky Distinguished Educators and central office experts look for ways to quickly prepare middle schoolers to do better on the next round of testing in April.
  
  
• While JCPS math specialist Allan Podbelsek and a team of district math teachers work on a long-range plan to teach algebra in the middle grades, faculty members at Western Middle School push ahead with a combined algebra/geometry class and lab that includes not just the top students but any 8th graders "willing to work hard."
  
  
• "The hardest thing about being a teenager in Louisville today is finding a reason to go to school-to stay in school," 10th grader Kristin Beckham tells visitors during a gathering of teens in a strife-torn, low-income neighborhood off Newburg Road. "It's hard for some teenagers because they feel like they don't need school. It's not doing anything for them, and they can make all the money they need on the streets."
  
  
• Teachers at Highland and Johnson Traditional middle schools breathe a sigh of relief as the "angel of KIRIS" passes them by, declaring them to be the only two succeeding middle schools in Jefferson County.
  
  
• In an internal newsletter, Superintendent Stephen Daeschner calls on JCPS's middle school educators to base reform on standards "which are benchmarks for meeting the academic needs of all students" and on the "belief that every child -- that's every single child, regardless of race or gender or socioeconomic background -- can learn at high levels."
  
  
• As Kammerer Middle School educators search for explanations for their "declining school" status, sixth grade teachers Peg Darcy and Marcia Lile continue to experiment with the best ways to use academic standards in their everyday teaching.
  
  
• Innovative social studies teacher Zambia N'Krumah leads her Westport Middle School students along the same trails slaves followed as they traveled the Underground Railroad -- experiencing a little of what the road to freedom must have been like by eating and sleeping in the fields and fleeing pursuers.
  
  
• JCPS reformers puzzle over how schools can take control of their own destinies when the district's labor contract allows a senior teacher to move to any school and take any available opening, no matter what the subject or the teacher's expertise.
  
  
• Victoria, Darrell, and Karyl Barnes and other teenagers in inner-city neighborhoods across Louisville work to improve their communities and further their educations through membership in the Neighborhood Youth Boards supported by the mayor's Louisville Youth Alliance.
  
  
• Four expert teachers, known as the "Clark Fellows," leave their classrooms and begin to share their expertise and commitment to success for all students as they work with schools and teachers on standards-based reform.
  
  
• "We don't own the schools; the public does," says principal Fred Harbison, as Lassiter Middle School becomes the first "Neighborly and Inviting Center of Education" (NICE) under a new program sponsored by the Middle School Coalition and designed to make schools more "user-friendly" for parents and other visitors from the community.