Youngsters do math and write every day, and they spend a lot of time reading.
How can we raise the achievement of poor, minority students in urban schools? That's a question that parents and teachers all over the country are asking. It looks as though Barclay, an elementary school in one of Baltimore's poorest neighborhoods, has found an answer.
Four years ago, the Barclay School started using a program that Calvert, a Baltimore private school, had developed for its students. Barclay is 94 percent minority, and its students come mainly from poor, African-American families. Before the Calvert program, their achievement was in the cellar. For example, average reading scores for students in grades 2 to 4 were in the low 20th percentile. Now, they are consistently at or above the 50th percentile. And the program has been expanded to Carter G. Woodson, another Baltimore elementary school in a similar kind of neighborhood. What is so special about the Calvert program?
For one thing, teachers and students know exactly what is expected of them. The curriculum, which emphasizes reading, writing, and mathematics, is outlined grade by grade. First-grade teachers know that, in math, for example, they will be expected to teach "reading and writing I - and 2 - digit numbers to I00; money: work with all coins; ... place value; shapes (circle, square, rectangle, triangle, sphere, cone, cylinder, cube)," etc. In fact, teachers even know what material to cover on a given day because a lesson plan tells them and lays out a proven method for presenting it. Here's an introduction to bar graphs from day 19:
Tell the child that a bar graph is a drawing that shows the comparison between numbers of things. Point to the pictures of the items on the top of p. 42. Explain that one way to keep track of how many things we have is to put them in the form of a graph. Have the child count the number of boots in the picture. Then in the graph show the child how there is I block colored for each boot. Next he is to count the hats and color I block for each hat. Do the same for all items.
When the graph is complete, the pupil should be able to tell easily by looking instead of counting that there are the most horseshoes, the least guitars, that there are more hats than boots, etc. This is a far cry from the curriculums made up of vague lists of "skills," which leave a teacher wondering where to begin and where to end. Or from the encyclopedic curriculums, so packed that it would be impossible to cover all the topics. Teachers can teach the Calvert curriculum's material in the time allotted -- and they are expected to. As a result, second-grade teachers, for example, don't wonder whether their students are familiar with "place value." They know that students have been presented with this material, and they know the scope of the presentation. So they can start building immediately on what children learned the year before.
The expectations for students are not a set of psychological traits to be evaluated by the teacher; they are embodied in the curriculum. Youngsters do math and write every day, and they spend a lot of time reading. No work is considered done until it is error free, so students spend time each morning getting yesterday's work letter perfect. When they finish a piece of work, it goes into a folder, so students have a record of what they have accomplished, and every month they take this home to show their parents.
This sounds like an excellent and traditional liberal arts curriculum -- and it is. The Calvert program has been in existence since 1905. That means that a lot of collective wisdom has gone into perfecting it. But it's not enough to have a good program; you have to make sure it is carried out.
Many reforms are adopted without the time of resources to make them work. Teachers get a couple of workshops at the beginning and a brief follow-up later in the year. Basically, they are on their own. In contrast, Calvert's plan for carrying out its program is as well thought-out as the program itself.
When the Calvert program came to Barclay, it was implemented first in grades K -1 and then in one grade per year. So most teachers had a chance to see the program in action before deciding whether they wanted to participate. As a result, the teachers who have chosen to stay are nearly all committed to making the program a success. The training itself for each grade began with a two-week seminar during the summer, and it continued during the school year. A full-time coordinator talked with individual teachers about how to teach specific lessons. She helped them to analyze their successes and failures and, often, to rethink the techniques they were using.
It's no mystery why Barclay students are succeeding. The Calvert program combines a curriculum that has been refined over the years, with the training and support that teachers need to use it. This is a winning combination, and it's one that more schools need to try.