Focus on success: Gaining ground
Continued from page 28
next door to ensure that Los Amigos stu- dents enter ninth grade well prepared. The high school principal walks the Los Amigos campus with some teachers and gives them feedback. And the seventh and eighth grade teachers take a trip to the high school cam- pus to see what is expected there.
Talking with students about their goals At View Park Preparatory Accelerated
Charter Middle School in Los Angeles, Principal Nikolas Howard and the teach- ers talk about college all the time with their students. This small charter school serves about 350 primarily African American stu- dents. Howard makes an effort to talk with students one-on-one about setting goals. He asks students what colleges they are consid- ering. Then he asks them to go on that col- lege’s website to find out the average GPA for acceptance. Then he has another conversa- tion. “I’ll say, ‘Let’s start shooting for that kind of GPA right now. This is what that would mean.’” View Park uses a school information sys-
tem that is web-based, so Howard carries his laptop into study halls, picks kids at random, pulls up their grades, and discusses their progress with them. “I’ll say, ‘Remember we talked about such and such a college. What was their minimum GPA? Are you there? What’s holding you back?’” What adds to this strategy’s effectiveness,
Howard says, is that he is not the only one doing that. Their study hall teachers also have access to that information.
Responding to the school community Although the nine principals all follow
many of the same practices, as described above, they also have some unique ap- proaches that make sense in their particular school environment. For example: • View Park relies on study halls to keep
students on track. Students are expected to complete two assignments in 60 minutes. Study hall teachers track student produc- tivity with a spreadsheet. As students finish
38 Leadership
an assignment, they check it off. One of the primary goals of middle school is to develop good academic habits that will allow students to be successful in high school and college, Howard says. Through study hall, “we teach them organization and how to plan time.” • At East Palo Alto Charter School, every
Friday a lead teacher facilitates middle school team meetings that include teachers, special education support, aides and teach- ing residents. The lead teacher is intimately involved with each teacher’s work because she regularly observes and helps teach in other classrooms. At the end of each quarter, the middle school team goes out to dinner off-campus to discuss any difficulties and where they need help. Administrators do not attend to allow for more open discussions. “The lead teacher facilitates the conversation and is the liaison for the administration, re- ally communicating what the teachers need,” Ramirez says. • At Vina Danks, the adults are open with
students about test results and the impact of those tests on their futures. Teachers meet individually with their students and set goals based on the prior year’s California Standards Test scores. They discuss where the students want to go this year and what they have to do to get there. Then they ask the students to fill out a pledge sheet, often in the presence of the principal and/or assis- tant principal. The students take the pledge sheet to their parents or an important adult in their lives and say: “I’m dedicating this to you. This is the score I want to get.”
Some common strategies There’s no doubt that successful princi-
pals respond to the particular needs of their staff, students and community. But what Ed- Source’s study has found – and what these nine middle grades principals have shared – are some common strategies for success: • Creating a collaborative culture; • Focusing on student improvement by
setting clear goals for student learning and measuring progress toward those goals; and • Helping students link their academic work to their futures. n
Susan Frey is a program associate for EdSource.
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