Can an alternative middle school support high standards?

(Vol. 2, No. 2 - Summer/Fall 1998)

Consider the Alternative

Teachers at Kennedy Metropolitan School work to make a difference in the lives of many kids who didn't succeed in other district middle schools. Principal Butch Martin says the alternative school is more than a holding tank for misbehaving adolescents -- it's a place where academic standards still matter.

by Holly Holland

In December 1991, four Jefferson County middle school principals met at the Steak N Shake restaurant on Bardstown Road and scribbled plans for a new alternative school on the back of a paper placemat. The group wanted to respond to the increasing number of delinquent students in the middle grades, keep them from interfering with other students' learning, and help them turn their lives around before high school.

Butch Martin, one of the educators present that day, not only shepherded the plan through the administration of two different superintendents, but now serves as principal of Kennedy Metro Middle School, which is beginning its third year as the district's only full-fledged alternative school for the middle grades. With a hand-picked staff and a renovated building that includes made-to-order safety features such as locker-free hallways, Martin has created a school that draws praise from people inside and outside the district.

Daily attendance soared from 62 percent the first year to 78 percent last school year, which Superintendent Stephen Daeschner calls a strong sign of progress. And Daeschner said it confirms his belief that placing students with the right kind of instructors might be one of the most important jobs education leaders perform.

"Butch has taken a school like Kennedy and tried to find teachers who are good with these kids," Daeschner said. "I don't think that all teachers can deal with all children on an equal basis. The problem is, we've not been bright enough in the past to figure out how to make those matches better."

"We want to teach them something"

Keeping chronically truant students in school is a critical first step. But now Martin and the faculty face another challenge. While serving a highly transient population of students with severe emotional problems and academic deficiencies, Kennedy's staff also must find a way to help them meet higher standards of learning.

"Our kids may be playing catch-up the rest of their lives, but I want them to leave here knowing that these teachers taught them something," said Martin, a big bear of a man whose peripatetic energy keeps him from ever warming the seat behind his desk.

"We had a group of Fayette County teachers in here observing. And they said they couldn't believe we had kids on task and learning. They didn't see a bunch of ex-coaches sitting around eating donuts while kids slept in the back of the classroom, and all of them weren't doing dot-to-dot worksheets. Now, we do have our days around here, but we do call this a school."

At the same time that middle level educators throughout Jefferson County are struggling to understand how to set higher expectations for themselves and their students, the staff at Kennedy might have the toughest job of all. Some students have rap sheets that are longer than their transcripts. Many enter Kennedy not knowing how to read or write. A few can handle college-level work, yet can't stay out of trouble long enough to complete their assignments. Some students are so poor that their teachers routinely buy them clothes and food. The school's population is about 65 percent black and about 35 percent white. The male/female ratio is roughly equivalent.

A reflection of a larger problem

Kennedy not only accepts troubled students from nearly every middle school in the county, but the staff also must respond to the inconsistent instruction the adolescents receive at those schools. Sadly, it is the perfect place to observe the impact of Jefferson County's longstanding practice of segregating children by their perceived abilities and holding them to different standards of learning. And perhaps, as well, a place to measure the effects of a larger community that often fails to engage youngsters in meaningful activities.

Consider Pam, who went to Kennedy last year as an eighth-grader, after she was suspended because she brought marijuana to her previous school. She had been in the school district's Advance Program since second grade, but claims her assignments were so easy and unimaginative that she became bored, disruptive, and truant.

"I don't like doing worksheets and copying definitions," she said. "I don't think you learn enough to last you more than a day that way. I like to listen to somebody talk or read. I learn a lot that way."

Although she praised some of the instruction at Kennedy, Pam said most assignments are too simple. She said she read novels in class while waiting for other students to catch up.

At the other end of the spectrum was J.P., an eighth-grader who ended up at Kennedy because of excessive fighting. A special-needs student who had trouble staying in his seat and on task, J.P. thrived at Kennedy because of the small class sizes, consistent discipline, and personal attention from teachers. He advanced two grade levels in less than a year.

"There are nicer teachers here," he told a visitor late last spring. "I guess because they're not as frustrated with me because they're not as many kids here (to deal with). They let me stand up every once in a while, then make me sit down and do my work."

J.P. said teachers at the public and private schools he attended before Kennedy conveyed the message that he "was dumb...I probably could have done higher work if they (had) asked me."

To Butch Martin, the challenge is making sure his staff raises the bar for both the bright and bored student like Pam and the struggling student like J.P. "My concern as principal is, what do you do about those huge gaps? What do you do with sixth-graders -- one at the second grade level and one at the 12th? Some people think that the best thing to do is tracking. The real issue is teaching to the standards."

Martin wants the staff at Kennedy to use district and state content and performance standards to create units of study that will cover basic literacy in all subject areas in all grades. If his teachers can learn to do this effectively, he says, teaching plans based on the standards can be designed for individual students -- no matter what level the students have reached when they enter the school -- and it will be clear how much material they have mastered by the time they leave.

"We get kids here who don't know we have 50 states in this country," Martin said. "So I want all the social studies teachers to get together and take a look at the standards (for social studies) and figure out, whether a kid is here for six weeks or 12 weeks or a year, how they can leave knowing certain things. What can they show me on a standards level that they've accomplished?"

Teachers at other local middle schools believe Kennedy's staff also must do a better job of keeping students up to speed with the state's academic requirements. Kathy Ronay, a distinguished educator from Oldham County who is assisting several Jefferson County schools, complained that Kennedy sent 10 students back to Southern Middle School the week before the state assessment period last spring without any entries for their writing portfolios. Neverthless, the students' test scores will be credited to Southern, not Kennedy.

"They send them with nothing but the label"

Martin acknowledged that some students leave Kennedy with few additions for their portfolios because they don't stay at the school long enough to complete them. But in about 80 percent of the cases, he said, students arrive at Kennedy empty-handed.

"They send them with nothing but the label -- 'He's a bad one,'" Martin said. "When the kids come with stuff they've started on, they get quite a bit more done here. But when they come with nothing...That's something that we as a (school) district need to work on."

Although Kennedy's teachers agree that they need to keep refining the school's curriculum, they also believe it's unrealistic to expect illiterate teenagers to meet eighth-grade performance standards. Shouldn't it be considered progress that those same students might have learned to read and write as well as the average third- or fourth-grader during their time at Kennedy, they ask?

"How can you not say they've succeeded?" wondered social studies teacher Wendy Dotson, who moved from Kennedy this fall to become a counselor at King Elementary School. "They've learned that they can learn. They've got a better work ethic."

But the bottom line is that they're not going to pass a test proving they know as much as other middle school students, she said, when they are many grades behind to begin with.

Martin believes he can improve the odds by enabling Kennedy to keep students longer. Currently, there is so much demand for placement at Kennedy that the staff usually sends students back to their home schools at the end of their suspensions to make room for new students. Teachers and administrators -- and in most cases, the students and their families -- would prefer to build on the relationships they've established at Kennedy. For that to happen, however, other middle schools have to be more consistent about recommending students for placement.

Three offenses -- possessing a weapon, distributing drugs or alcohol, and assaulting a staff member -- result in automatic placement at Kennedy. Other charges are more subjective. Before this year, some middle schools sent an excessive number of students to Kennedy, while other schools recommended very few students because they have developed more effective strategies for teaching adolescents self-control. To prevent schools from trying to dump too many troubled students at Kennedy, the school district recently approved Martin's plan to assign a certain number of slots to each school based on the size and characteristics of its enrollment.

Martin believes the new limits will encourage schools to be more thoughtful about which students they send to Kennedy Metro. Under the new guidelines, once they reach their assigned limit, schools will have to take a student back in order to place another student at Kennedy.

Kennedy counselor Larry Crain believes other middle schools can do more to manage their most challenging students within their own buildings. "Some schools say, 'This is the worst kid we've seen in 25 years,' and they keep saying that time and time again," Crain said. "If they open more Kennedys, they'll fill them. I hope the solution will be that they'll work with the kids more before sending them here."

Superintendent Daeschner said the demand for Kennedy's slots might mean that it's time to consider opening another alternative school for the middle grades.

"Now the downside of that is that I don't want it to become a dumping ground," he said. "There's a fine line between a kid who needs some more nurturing and one who needs to be at Kennedy."

Smaller class ratios and flexible teaching

Teachers at Kennedy said they sympathize with their colleagues at other schools who might not have the time or training to deal with disruptive students and simultaneously address the academic needs of all the children in their care. Jim Knoer, a science teacher who previously worked at Kammerer Middle School, said the 15 to 1 student/teacher ratio at Kennedy enables him to provide immediate feedback to students.

"Here's a girl's paper with a (grade of ) 50 on it," he said. "I can ask her to make corrections and she'll get a 100. I couldn't do that with 150 students. At regular schools, you don't have time to make a kid successful."

Kennedy's teachers also are more accustomed to adapting lessons to fit the needs of their students.

Reginald Caldwell, who taught language arts at Kennedy before accepting a position teaching students with behavior problems at Meyzeek Middle School, said he regularly searched for reading assignments that would make quick connections for his mostly disadvantaged students, some of whom had extensive experience in the criminal justice system. Last spring, Caldwell and his students read and discussed Just Give Me the Damn Ball, the autobiography of pro football player Keyshawn Johnson who escaped a life of poverty and crime only after he agreed to stay in school and develop a dependable work ethic. Caldwell said every student completed the writing assignment he based on the book.

Caldwell said he strived to make similar connections to more traditional literature, such as focusing on modern-day relationships when teaching the play, Romeo and Juliet. "Whether you're teaching Shakespeare or rocket science, it has to mean something to them."

Smaller class sizes also give Kennedy's staff a better chance of finding the reasons for failure. Kennedy puts each student through a battery of academic and emotional assessments when they enter and exit the school. Teachers have discovered that some students misbehaved or skipped class to deflect attention from their illiteracy. Staying in school now depends on their ability to make steady progress, even if advancement means moving from picture books to first-grade readers.

Yet staff members acknowledge that the progress students make can be fragile -- many are just one bad day away from disaster. That's why it's critical that students continue receiving support after they leave Kennedy. Of the 170 students whom Kennedy sent back to their previous schools last school year, only 32 were returned because of new infractions, a recidivism rate of about 20 percent that Martin considers promising.

Doing whatever it takes

Kennedy's willingness to do whatever it takes to get students on the right track can be seen in the case of a hugely obese fifth-grader who landed at Kennedy aftet he routinely walked out of his elementary school and extorted money from shoppers at a nearby grocery store. Although the boy still has many problems to overcome, he began to learn to curb his excesses through a plan the Kennedy staff devised to help him stop using his weight as a weapon. He exercised at school at least 20 minutes a day on a treadmill or stationary bike, lifted weights, and ate nutritious meals, sometimes with the principal at his side. Martin also bought the boy new shoes and cut his painful ingrown toenails because the child couldn't bend over far enough to do it himself.

Paying attention to a student's emotional and physical needs can lead to large gains in their academic performance, teachers say. But all of that takes time and patience.

"Raising the standard here may be working on your hygiene so you can learn among other people," said math teacher Trish Hayes. "Sometimes it's about fitting in and becoming a member of society. Raising the bar is not only about academics."

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