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Sunday, August 27, 2000

How two districts keep ratings high
Calallen, G-P cite individual attention, early intervention
By Chris Neely
Caller-Times

George Gongora/Caller-Times

Students in Imelda Guerra's fourth grade class at Annaville Elementary School raise hands to answer a question. Guerra is one of several teachers who stays late to help students at risk of not passing the TAAS.

Cassidi Euvino, a junior at Gregory-Portland High School, wasn't exactly thrilled when her counselor suggested last year that she get extra help understanding algebra.
   "It was kind of a pain, because it meant I had three math classes in a row," Cassidi said. "I was like, 'It's too many math classes.' But after doing it, it helped me a lot."
   Cassidi was asked to join the school's study session because her test scores showed that she was having trouble in math, said Sandy Coan, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills coordinator at Gregory-Portland High School.
   "We focus on every single student. We monitor and we not only focus on the students who are superior - and we have plenty of those - but we hunt down the ones who are likely to have problems and we tend to them on a student-to-student basis," Coan said.
   "I talk to people from other districts who say things like, 'Some kids can learn, some kids can't.' Well, we don't believe that. We believe they can all learn. So we come after school, we come before school, we have tutorials on Saturdays when it gets close to TAAS, whatever it takes."

Paul Iverson/Caller-Times

Fourth-grade teacher Irma Marshall helps students Robert Culp (left) and Eric Newton at Annaville Elementary.

   There is a big payoff for that whatever-it-takes attitude, especially when it comes to school ratings issued by the Texas Education Agency.
   Among larger school districts in the Coastal Bend, few score better with the TEA than Corpus Christi's suburban bookends - Calallen to the west and Gregory-Portland to the north.
   From top to bottom, the TEA ratings are: exemplary, recognized, acceptable and low-performing.
   This year, the Corpus Christi Independent School District had an overall acceptable rating, with 20 percent of its 61 campuses deemed exemplary.

George Gongora/Caller-Times

Imelda Guerra works with her fourth-grade math class at Annaville Elementary.

   By comparison, Calallen and Gregory-Portland - fundamentally different from CCISD in important ways - made better showings.
   In Calallen, for example, four of the six schools are rated exemplary. One is recognized and the other is acceptable. And in Gregory-Portland, three of its seven schools are rated exemplary, while three more are recognized.
   The TEA has been issuing its accountability ratings for schools and school districts since 1993. Those ratings amount to a report card for schools based on attendance, dropout rates and TAAS passing rates.
   While the ratings have almost no impact on funding the schools receive, TEA officials said, they are used by school districts to set priorities about spending.

Kimiko Fieg/Caller-Times

Click image for larger version

   Perhaps more importantly, though, those considering moving here look to the ratings more and more to decide where they will live.
   "People with kids, especially younger kids, (schools are) probably their No. 1 criteria," said Tim Teas, broker/owner at Remax Metro Properties.
   "Sometimes they say, 'We've heard Gregory-Portland schools are very good,' or, 'Calallen is very good.' "
   For that reason, Teas said the TEA ratings are vital to a community's continued growth and development.
   "They've always been important," Teas said, "but now there's more information available. People have more access to that information now."
   Apples and oranges

Kimiko Fieg/Caller-Times

Click image for larger version

   While CCISD's scores don't measure up to its smaller neighbors, Sandra Lanier-Lerma, the district's interim superintendent, said comparisons with Gregory-Portland and Calallen is comparing apples to oranges. CCISD is about 10 times larger than the others, for one thing.
   "The smaller districts don't deal with the multitude of issues that we have to deal with," Lanier-Lerma said. "The base is not as diverse."
   That may be most evident at the high school level. Calallen High School is rated exemplary. Gregory-Portland, Flour Bluff and Tuloso-Midway high schools are all rated recognized. By comparison, the five high schools in CCISD - all larger high schools - were all rated acceptable.
   Comparisons
   The biggest obstacle CCISD faces, Lanier-Lerma said, is that more than half its students are classified by the TEA as economically disadvantaged. In the Calallen and Gregory-Portland ISDs, only about a third of the students are so classified.
   "When you have youngsters that come to you with more experiences, they've traveled more, they've visited more places, had more socialization experiences, that makes a difference," Lanier-Lerma said. "Any research you read will tell you that."

1999-2000 TAAS passing percentages by sub-groups
Spring 2000, Grades 3-8 & 10
CCISD

Student Groups Number Taking Student Group Number Passing Percent Passing

READING

All students 16,801 (100%) 14,505 86.3%

African Americans 898 (5.3%) 748 83.3%

Hispanic 11,500 (68.4%) 9,655 84.0%

White 4,136 (24.6%) 3,858 93.3%

Eco. disadvantaged 9,029 (53.7%) 7,357 81.5%

MATH

All students 17,073 (100%) 14,484 84.8%

African Americans 920 (5.4%) 720 78.3%

Hispanic 11,737 (68.7%) 9,680 82.5%

White 4,140 (24.2%) 3,833 92.6%

Eco. disadvantaged 9,264 (54.3%) 7,441 80.3%

WRITING

All students 6,953 (100%) 6,184 88.9%

African Americans 363 (5.2%) 305 84.0%

Hispanic 4,658 (67.0%) 4,046 86.9%

White 1,826 (26.3%) 1,735 95.0%

Eco. disadvantaged 3,362 (48.4%) 2,852 84.8%

Calallen ISD

Student Groups Number Taking Student Group Number Passing Percent Passing

READING

All students 2,001 (100%) 2,080 96.2%

African Americans 27 (1.3%) 24 88.9%

Hispanic 712 (34.2%) 665 93.4%

White 1,320 (63.5%) 1,293 98.0%

Eco. disadvantaged 518 (24.9%) 483 93.2%

MATH

All students 2,087 (100%) 1,977 94.7%

African Americans 30 (1.4%) 28 93.3%

Hispanic 715 (34.3%) 644 90.1%

White 1,321 (63.3%) 1,287 97.4%

Eco. disadvantaged 525 (25.2%) 471 89.7%

WRITING

All students 891 (100%) 864 97.0%

African Americans 8 (0.9%) 8 100%

Hispanic 283 (31.8%) 271 95.8%

White 589 (66.1%) 574 97.5%

Eco. disadvantaged 201 (22.6%) 195 97.0%

Gregory-Portland ISD

Student Groups Number Taking Student Group Number Passing Percent Passing

READING

All students 2,124 (100%) 2,023 95.2%

African Americans 85 (4.0%) 79 92.9%

Hispanic 735 (34.6%) 674 91.7%

White 1,268 (59.7%) 1,235 97.4%

Eco. disadvantaged 628 (29.6%) 568 90.4%

MATH

All students 2,125 (100%) 2,029 95.5%

African Americans 82 (3.9%) 77 93.9%

Hispanic 740 (34.8%) 688 93.0%

White 1,266 (59.6%) 1,228 97.0%

Eco. disadvantaged 630 (29.6%) 590 93.7%

WRITING

All students 885 (100%) 828 93.6%

African Americans 28 (3.2%) 27 96.4%

Hispanic 317 (35.8%) 284 89.6%

White 525 (59.3%) 503 95.8%

Eco. disadvantaged 229 (25.9%) 203 88.6%

   John Katzman, president of the Princeton Review, a company that specializes in test-preparation courses, said affluent children undoubtedly perform better in school.
   But, Katzman said, the real question is what a community does about that.
   "We can deal with that in one of two ways," Katzman said. "Road one is, we can look only at schools versus their comparables. And, in a sense, if you walk that road you're going to get much better data about which schools work and which schools don't. But you're also accepting tacitly that we are going to give much better schooling to wealthy kids.
   "Road two is to say, 'No, we're going to put everybody's feet to the fire, compare the wealthy school districts to the poor districts and expect them both to hit high performance.' "
   What has worked
   For their part, officials at Calallen and Gregory-Portland downplay the importance of economic factors on their TEA ratings.
   "Two of my campuses that were exemplary have a large number of economically disadvantaged students," said Calallen Superintendent James Warlick.
   For Coan, the Gregory-Portland TAAS coordinator, the focus is not on where her students come from but where they are going.
   'To be successful'
   "We do have a nice grouping of upper-level kids, that is true," Coan said. "But we're also paired with Gregory. It's a wonderful little town and lots of fine people, but it's a very poor town. These people are not affluent. And yet some of our most successful kids come from there, because we work with them.
   "We want them all to succeed. Every kid who leaves here has a life, and we want that life to be successful. That's the goal."
   Gregory-Portland Superintendent Dottie Chiles said what parents are willing to put out to help their children is more important than what they bring in.
   "We have a lot of community and family support," Chiles said. "That is a key issue, rather than economics."
   Officials at all three districts were careful to note that programs that work for one district may not for another. Still, there are some things the more successful districts in the area are doing that others are not, at least not to the same degree.
   Aiming beyond TAAS
   Cassidi, the Gregory-Portland student struggling with math, attended study sessions for 30 minutes every morning. The sessions, she said, helped her in all of her studies.
   "It made me enjoy my other classes, because I understood math more, and math is in everything you do," Cassidi said.
   Coan said the district has been offering the sessions for seven years.
   "We design them for specific groups," Coan said. "This year, we pulled off the top 100 kids to work on PSAT skills because they really don't need the TAAS skills. They're already there. We also pull off the bottom kids, about 48, for critical care. We target kids with language problems and at-risk situations for special care."
   The sessions, Coan said, use the TAAS as a starting point to better prepare students for the rest of their education.
   "You have to aim beyond the TAAS," Coan said. "But you can't ignore it. It's there. And I don't want to ignore it. I know some people want the TAAS to go away, but I think what the TAAS has done is stop school districts from throwing kids away."
   Keeping these sessions separate from the regular classes keeps everyone's sights set higher, Coan said.
   "I'm concerned that we not turn our regular English classes and regular math classes into just TAAS preparation classes. They can't be that," Coan said. "We have to be preparing them for college. We run right at 85 percent of our students going on to some kind of post-secondary education, and they have to be prepared for that."
   Cassidi, for one, said she is ready for college. She's preparing to take the SAT and, although she doesn't know exactly what she wants to study yet, she said it likely will involve computers.
   Calallen ISD
   Heading off education problems early is the focus in Calallen ISD.
   "What it boils down to is narrowing your focus and helping children early in their careers," Warlick said. "You start in kindergarten and first grade and you make sure you help them with their language and their math and get them off to a good start."
   That effort includes teaching writing skills as early as kindergarten, benchmark testing every six weeks and, for the last four years, extended days for those who need them.
   "Any of the students at risk of not passing the TAAS, we offer them an extended day," said Sally Timmons, the district's director of curriculum. "Our teachers will stay and work with those students three days a week at the middle schools and two days a week at the elementary. It's a big commitment from our teachers. They're already working hard, and then we ask them to work another hour and a half on their day."
   'Paying big bucks'
   Finding teachers who wanted to work the extra hours and putting together the sessions' curriculum took a while, Timmons said.
   "We had to iron out some kinks the first year," she said. "The second year was much smoother, and now it's just part of what we do."
   One of the teachers who stays late for the sessions, Imelda Guerra, said the sessions are expensive for the district - there also has to be a second bus run to take home participating students - but underscore the district's priority of early intervention.
   "The district's paying big bucks," said Guerra, who teaches math at Annaville Elementary School. "I think what we did in the upper grades was say, 'Take that summer school money and use it during the school year for extended days.' That way, we'll tutor those kids when they really need it instead of waiting until summer school, when they've failed.
   "We're trying to prevent them from failing instead of getting them in summer school after they've failed."
   The sessions last about an hour, Guerra said, and start with a snack, such as juice and a Rice Krispie treat. They tend to be a little more loose and freewheeling than the day's classes.
   "They'll review the concepts, but differently from the same old rote type of stuff," said Guerra. "The first year we did it, all the kids were asking to stay, because they thought it was kind of fun."


Staff writer Chris Neely can be reached at 886-3794 or by e-mail at neelyc@caller.com

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