No Child Left Behind is actually working

Against the odds, success

In Norristown, fourth graders use video game-like calculators to help them whip through one-minute math problems.

In Collingswood, fourth graders pore over haiku to push their knowledge of words.

And at Philadelphia's Nebinger Elementary, a teacher made home visits to enlist parent support for weekend homework and extra assignments.

Over the last five years, schools throughout the Philadelphia region have experimented with an array of techniques aimed at getting students to score higher on state math and reading tests.

The lowest-performing schools, often serving poor children, face the most pressure to improve. Some of them have embraced new strategies that are showing success.

Prodded by the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law, public districts throughout the region have transformed their programs to prepare students for the state tests. Next year, they face even higher benchmarks. The ultimate goal is for all children to perform at grade level by 2014.

In 2005 and 2006, 490 schools in Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania suburbs gave fifth-grade tests in the spring. Over that span, 49 showed improvement in reading of at least 10 percentage points; 57 showed improvement in math.

In New Jersey, 202 schools gave the tests; 23 showed improvements of 10 percentage points or higher in reading and 31 in math.

The Inquirer visited six of those schools to observe some of the techniques that educators say are showing results.


Using every minute

The fourth graders at Hancock Elementary School were ending the day after an intense math drill this month when Andrew Michener spontaneously broke into a chant of "I do believe."

Classmate Nadeera Hinton, a row in front of him, finished with, "I will succeed."

Spirits are high at Hancock, a neighborhood school in the economically depressed Montgomery County community, where 64 percent of students get free or reduced-price lunches. The children and staff are determined to prove that poverty cannot keep them from learning.

Two years ago, Hancock failed to meet federal standards, but it met them last year.

Reading scores for the fifth grade increased by 28 percentage points, to 55 percent proficient or above; in math, the gain was 27 percentage points, to 87 percent passing.

Schools with high poverty levels are more likely to be labeled as failing, state data show.

This year at the school, which now has kindergarten through fourth grade, many students believe they did well on the test, though scores won't come out for months. The math exams were simple, said Darius Hinton, a classmate and cousin of Nadeera's. When asked why, the 9-year-old said: "I've learned all the math strategies - I understand them, so I understood what is on the test."

There is reason to be confident, teachers and administrators say. Fourth graders now use statistical calculators several times a day to race through one-minute drills that teacher Sharon Kukulski turns into contests - half of the class against the other half, or the children trying to beat their previous scores. The calculators are individually programmed for the problems students need extra help on. "It's our answer to video games," Kukulski said. "It's a whole new way of teaching. We're high tech now."

Hancock also uses frequent testing and computerized data crunching to identify what students need help with. Several times a week, children with similar learning gaps are grouped together for short, special-instruction periods that the school calls focus groups. When they have mastered a skill, they go to another focus group to get help in another area.

"Urgency is a good way to describe us," said Betty Ann Young, a reading specialist at Hancock. "We use every minute we have." At lunch time, she said, aides carry math and vocabulary flash cards so that even there, students are learning.

School is much more academics-centered now than it was a few years ago, said Lisa Andrejko, Norristown Area School District superintendent. "You don't see, around Valentine's Day, two weeks to make a valentine," she said. "We might have a lesson around Valentine's Day, but it's going to be reading and writing, and the standards that are embedded in it."

Much the same transformation has taken place at Evans Elementary School in Yeadon, Delaware County. At the school, in the William Penn School District, 61 percent of students get free or reduced-price lunches. It, too, failed to meet the state test standard two years ago, then made it last year.

Fifth-grade scores improved to 53 percent proficient or above in reading, a 19-percentage-point jump; in math, 54 percent made the grade, a 20-percentage-point increase.

Superintendent Dana Bedden said the staff decided to do more for the students. "If you go to that school now, you'll find a sense from staff and students of 'We are going to show them how good we are.' "

To help instill self esteem, Evans principal Angela Ladson leads the children in a chant when she drops into a class: "The best students in the world are learning here at Evans."

They concentrate on how to make the hard work fun. Sixth graders, for example, recently created math board games, with questions and goals that they selected. Tiara Cannon's was named Fashion Math. Players advanced by answering math problems correctly. The goal is "to see who can get to the mall first," she said.

School "is both fun and work," said classmate Rumere Taylor, who said he enjoyed taking the state tests. Doing well "shows that you know things and shows other people what you know and that you've been working real hard for it," he said. "That's important."

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