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Email ArticleBTO SUCCESS STORY: FOCUS ON CLEAR BOTTOM LINE, INDIVIDUAL STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT, PROPELS TEST SCORES SKYWARD
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When George Smith Junior High School received its students’ standardized test scores at the end of its first year of operation, the passing scores were disappointing. Rather than make excuses, it responded by taking responsibility for each student’s performance, no matter what. Eight years later, the percentage of students passing its annual standardized tests has risen from the 20s and 30s to the high 70s and low 80s.
School Overview
George Smith Junior High School, part of the Mesa Public Schools district in metropolitan Phoenix, opened in fall 2000. Today, the school serves nearly 1,500 students in grades 7 through 9. Of these, 40 percent participate in the federal free and reduced lunch program, an indicator of poverty. Approximately 35 percent of the students are minorities.
Smith Junior High became a Beat the Odds School Partner at the beginning of the 2007-2008 academic year and is in its second year of participation. Beat the Odds is an action-oriented, school-based initiative of the Center for the Future of Arizona. It is designed to increase Arizona K-12 student achievement, especially in schools with low-income student populations.
Steps to Success
After receiving the students’ first-year test scores, Smith Junior High’s teachers and staff engaged in a dialogue to understand what it would take on a day-to-day basis to improve each student’s performance.
“We knew we needed a very focused look at how we were going to improve,” said Bruce Cox, who has been principal since the school’s opening. “After much dialogue and discussion, we agreed on four areas to achieve the school’s clear bottom line.”
They were:
1) Identification of mastery objectives for the students
2) Common assessments for each core subject, at each grade level
3) Using data throughout the year to assess whether students were improving
4) Creating individual plans to help students who were not showing improvement
Beginning the Process
The work began with a district-sponsored series of in-service trainings focusing on the “Good to Great” model made popular by Jim Collins’ bestselling book of the same name. “The school leadership team, which includes teachers and staff, looked at the hedgehog concept,” said Principal Cox. “We discussed what we thought we did best that we needed to focus on, to the exclusion of other things.”
Next, the school worked with an outside consultant to implement curriculum mapping, which aligns classroom instruction with the state academic standards. “For us, that was really the key starting point of the turnaround,” Principal Cox said.
Previously, each teacher was responsible for understanding and interpreting the academic standards for their subject area and grade level, individually developing materials and assessments, and using data to test the areas where students needed improvement.
As a result of the curriculum mapping process, today every subject at every grade level — including elective programs — is curriculum mapped and available online to all of the school’s department members. All of the students receive the same information because the teachers have prepared their PowerPoint presentations, lesson plans and units together.
Measuring Student Learning
Once the teachers were comfortable with planning and working together with curriculum maps, it was easy for them to work on the common assessments, which was the next step. Because all of their students received the same information, they could be tested on the same material, in the same way, using the same questions.
Teachers met weekly to review the classroom data and discuss what test questions and activities worked well and which ones didn’t. Leveraging each other’s strengths, they were able to continuously improve their instruction and identify interventions for struggling students. As a result, the student scores have improved dramatically.
In 2004, the percentage of eighth graders meeting or exceeding the Arizona standards were:
| Math | 56% |
| Reading | 54% |
| Writing | 54% |
In 2008 (the most recent academic year), the percentage of eighth graders meeting or exceeding the Arizona standards were:
| Math | 80% |
| Reading | 78% |
| Writing | 83% |
In addition, in 2008 Smith Junior High School had the highest AIMS science scores among the district’s 13 junior high schools:
| 8th Grade Science | 79% meeting or exceeding |
| Biology | 100% meeting or exceeding |
Reflecting on how far the school has come in the last eight years, Principal Cox said, “Teachers have told me they feel very empowered by this process. They sit down as a group, identify issues, make decisions, and work out problems. It’s an ongoing process.
“If I could change anything, it would be to have started much earlier,” Principal Cox concluded. “If we would have had Beat the Odds seven years ago, we would have gotten to this point much sooner.”