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Five Pajaro Schools May Have to Make Radical Changes
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Five Pajaro Schools May Have to Make Radical Changes
California Not a Race to the Top Finalist, but Impact of Failed Bid Felt in Low-Achieving School Penalties
By Linda Fridy
California schools will not be receiving any Race to the Top funding for the first phase of the federal grant. Education leaders learned of the failed bid on Mar. 4. However, in making the bid for federal funds, California lawmakers made some promises that school districts now have to keep.
Among these is Santa Cruz County's largest school district — Pajaro Valley Unified School District.
In applying for the grant, the state passed a bill that requires the lowest achieving 5 percent of schools in the state to make radical adjustments to their programs. Many of the proposed changes, district leaders argue, are
untested.
In Santa Cruz County, Calabasas, Hall District and MacQuiddy elementary schools were initially named to the list of 188 schools. Two more Pajaro Valley schools were added on Mar. 11 after the state Board of Education granted waivers changing the list: E.A. Hall Middle School and Watsonville High School were added as "tier two" schools.
According to the new law, those schools may be forced to choose from one of four options for the 2010-11 school year:
— Replacing the principal and at least half of the staff
— Converting it to a charter school
— Closing the school and redistributing the students
— Replacing the principal, extending the instructional time and adopting other "improvement strategies."
Whether the reform mandates apply to E.A. Hall and Watsonville High School remains uncertain.
After the unexpected decision to add more schools to the roster was made, Pajaro Valley Superintendent Dorma Baker spent the next day calling state education officials looking for clarification.
Educators Are Frustrated
Prior to release of the list of schools, Baker and other leaders from other affected districts spent two hours on the phone with state officials from the department of education.
"You could almost see the smoke coming out of the phone," said Baker.
School leaders are frustrated because the changes they will be forced to make have no research behind them to indicate that they will do anything to improve student achievement.
That frustration extended into the Board of Education meeting, with members confused by the variety of lists and the lack of answers to many questions.
Implementing the required changes poses many challenges. Some of the measures such as replacing principals and staff cannot be done without negotiation, and the law did not address that concern.
And while one of the options is to convert to a charter school, some charters made the lowest-achieving list, indicating that charter status alone is not a panacea.
During the phone call, one superintendent asked, "So what if we don't do it?"
The answer, said Baker: "The legislation is silent [in the case a school district disobeys]."
For Pajaro Valley, closing the five schools, which serve more than 4,500 of the district's 19,000 students, is not an option because other schools cannot accommodate more pupils, said Baker.
The least offensive of the alternatives may also be difficult to achieve.
Option four allows a school to implement improvement strategies, but it also requires additional instructional time.
Pajaro Valley just negotiated a five-day reduction in the school year as part of its attempts to deal with multi-million-dollar cuts for the coming fiscal year that starts in July.
Where will the district come up with the cash to pay for longer school days? State Department of Education officials said grant money will be available from federal stimulus funds, but Baker said districts don't yet have an application or due date.
Meanwhile, the district has lost money for programs that were making a difference in student achievement over the past year, as measured by annual exams.
"The state continues to slash and burn and take away all the supports you know make kids successful," Baker fumed.
At-Risk Population
A look at the demographics of the three lowest-achieving elementary schools provides insight into the challenges students and teachers face.
All three schools are in their fifth year of program improvement, which means they have continued to struggle to make state and federal goals on standardized tests.
They have very similar demographics: the vast majority of students, from 88 percent to 92 percent at each school, come from low-income households, and a third to three-quarters are considered English learners.
They have enough students with disabilities enrolled for them to constitute a subgroup, but not enough of any other ethnic group to count, including non-Hispanic white students.
Calabasas serves students in neighborhoods just north of Watsonville Airport, outside city limits. MacQuiddy, the largest of the three with 662 students last year, lies within the city.
Hall District Elementary is located in Aromas in northern Monterey County.
The number of English learners is less than half at E.A. Hall and Watsonville High, but the schools have 82 percent and 75 percent of their students from low-income families.
Trying to Raise Achievement
Pajaro Valley schools are no strangers to state mandates based on low test scores. The district itself is in year three of program improvement, and many of its schools with low-income families are at varying stages of improvement status.
At the beginning of the year, however, the district celebrated three schools that showed sufficient growth to exit the program.
The schools on the lowest-achieving lists have had their successes as well.
For example, MacQuiddy saw a steady rise in test scores — until funding cuts hit successful programs.
At Watsonville High School, principal Murry Schekman said he is starting to see the results of reforms he began to put in place when he came on board four years ago. He didn't need the state to tell him that Watsonville is not performing as well as comparable high schools – he presented that data to staff when he started.
"I believe our students can do better," he said.
His staff has held several workshops with a specialist on actively engaging students, a grant helped develop smaller learning communities and the school now offers seven different academies that link to career pathways.
Recent graduates attend some of the best universities in the nation, including MIT, Stanford and UC Berkeley.
New technology has made it easier for teachers across the district to track their students' achievements, Schekman added.
As a part of its program improvement status, the Pajaro district has spent the last several years implementing new programs, buying new materials and training teachers in new approaches in an effort to raise the standardized test scores of struggling students.
Yet only five of the district's 33 schools met all the components for federal adequate yearly progress, which sets targets for the percent of students reaching the proficiency level in math and English language arts.
State Puts Bar High Despite Poor Funding Record
California is widely considered to have some of the most rigorous standards for proficiency.
Students scoring at that level are on track to qualify for enrollment in a four-year university.
Pajaro Valley joined Santa Cruz City, Live Oak and the County Office of Education in applying to participate in the Race to the Top application.
The idea was to get more funding to replace money cut by state lawmakers trying to balance California's multi-billion-dollar deficit.
At the time, Baker said she did not anticipate that any of her schools would fall in the bottom 5 percent.
Pajaro Valley and every other district in the state with a low-achieving school must enact one of the four options regardless of whether or not they joined the Race to the Top grant application.
Knowing that certain mandates would apply everywhere is one reason Pajaro Valley and other local educators cited for their decision to participate.
State officials have indicated that California will reapply for the second phase of the Race to the Top grant, due in June. First round awards from the pool of finalists will be announced in April.
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