Bucks
Cathy Lewis
Dear Friends,
Good morning. Last week, I asked the Quakertown School Superintendent, Dr. Lisa Andrejko, to respond to Bill Gates’ recommendations to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which met in Philadelphia three weeks ago. The founder of Microsoft is very critical of America’s public education, an institution which he claims is broken.
Gates urged the legislators to create more schools modeled on the best charter schools; hold teachers accountable for student performance; enforce nationwide standards; spread knowledge thorough online learning made available for free; and develop better assessment tools to evaluate individual pupils, teachers, and schools.
“I agree with most of what Bill Gates was saying,” Andrejko began, “but he’s not an educator. In America, all kids get a compulsory public school education. Not all countries do.”
Andrejko was not ready to endorse Gates’ belief that American public schools need national standards either. That may be because state’s rights people populate America.
You often hear the term “Local Control” whenever school boards consider national standards. Quite frankly, I’ve never understood it. When you boil it all down, the only decisions which every Pennsylvania school board makes are two: hire the superintendent and set the tax rate.
The annual budget is determined by the teachers’ unions, which strike or threaten to strike unless their demands are met. And the curriculum is set by the State Department of Education.
In the meantime, foreign countries are outperforming our students. Although the U.S. spends more per student than all other nations, America ranks near the bottom of 20 industrialized countries in language, math and science performance.
Unfortunately, most American public schools are funded by property taxes so the quality of public schools is determined by zip code. That’s one of the reasons why the New Hope/ Solebury School students test much better than Bristol. New Hope/ Solebury has a richer real estate tax base and can invest more public money in their students than Bristol can.
The state Board of Education passed a proposal for new testing last week. The Keystone Exams would replace the 11th grade Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test (PSSA) by the 2016-17 school year. To receive a high school diploma, students would have to pass six of these 10 exams: English composition, English literature, Algebra I and II, geometry, U.S. History, biology, chemistry, civics and world history.
To implement this proposal, the state legislature must first approve. But it’s not clear how the Keystone Exams will fare. Representative Paul Clymer (R-145th District) opposes it. I’ll ask him why? Possibly, the school superintendents in his district don’t believe that it’s a change for the better.
There’s a growing perception among communities everywhere that accountability is the key. Teachers and administrators must have their feet held against the fire. Judging by the money taxpayers have invested in public education, America should have the best schools in the world. Why aren’t they?
I was fascinated with a conversation I had with Cathy Lewis, a principal of a small elementary school in Steuben, Maine. Mighty Betsy and I met her while vacationing last summer.
Cathy Lewis was hired to turn the Steuben K-8 elementary school around. It was one of the 24 schools that had not met Maine’s annual yearly progress standards for three years in a row. “In Steuben, 73 percent of the students qualified for free and reduced lunch. There was a 19.5 percent poverty rate and a per capita income of $12,162,” Lewis wrote in Synergy Learning (November/December issue).
I asked Dr. Andrejko for a comparison at the Quakertown School. Here, the per capita income is $25,420 and the poverty rate is 16 ½ percent.
When Cathy Lewis was interviewed for the job, the school board chairman said, “We are looking for someone who can raise staff morale, involve the community, and help our kids to learn.”
“For the next four years, our staff would have the support, encouragement, and thoughtful questions of those wonderful people,” Lewis began. “Change was needed in climate, curriculum and community involvement.”
She explained what she meant by “climate.”
“Climate is the way students feel about learning, demonstrate their learning, and the importance both to them and their families of being successful,” Lewis continued. “I worked with staff and students to establish an atmosphere of high expectations for both teaching and learning and work to promote a feeling that our school is a place where people care, help each other to succeed and recognize individual strengths and qualities.”
Lewis changed the approach to curriculum. “We agreed that to increase performance capacity, we would focus on direct instruction, availability of tutoring, classroom support, homework support, providing helpfulness opportunities (students as teachers), and self-confidence enhancements (awards, trips to other schools, public recognition),” she wrote.
“Success breeds success; the sense of pride in accomplishment as skills, and capacities were more visible allowed staff and students to believe in their own capacities,” Lewis concluded. “With support from home, student performance demonstrated capacity and capability. Student confidence, with teacher modeling and support, increased student risk-taking and a willingness to step out of the failure niche, and into a new place of growth.”
Her final paragraphs about community involvement were so important. “I asked parents to do their part to make sure that students were at school every day, rested, and ready to learn,” Lewis said.
Cathy Lewis took a failing school and made it a winner. She convinced teachers, parents and the people of Steuben, Maine that everyone had a stake in their children’s academic success.
Can every public school in America do as well? Why not?
Fortunately, the public schools in the Herald’s circulation area are not failing. Are they doing as well as they can is a better question?
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith