Houston A+ Blog

The first round of grants awarded by The Houston A+ Challenge was to Beacon Schools. These 11 "beacon" schools have proven records of reform to serve better their diverse students. Specifically, they display:

Whole-school reform A personalized learning community A community of adult learners Powerful community connections Impressive student achievement Careful planning Mentoring

Though the grant funds vary according to school level, they are to be used for the same goals, including the following:

• To deepen and expand their own school-wide reforms and evaluate the effectiveness of those reforms;
• To serve as learning laboratories in which to refine the Challenge reform planning process, define and develop appropriate technical assistance strategies, and pilot leadership and outreach activities;
• To work with other schools and partners to create and sustain reform networks;
• To serve as models and resources for other schools and networks as appropriate within the context of their own missions.
  

The total amount awarded to the Beacon Schools has been: $1.4 million for 1997-98, $2.33 million for 1998-99 and $2.16 million for 1999-2000.

BEACON SCHOOL PROFILES

Mary M. Bethune Academy (Aldine ISD)

Focused Effort: School and community as partners in educating students; Teacher learning to facilitate learning to the whole child through all disciplines and modalities; Meeting the needs of all students by creative scheduling and exposure to outside cultural and professional influences.

Located in the Acres Home community, Bethune Academy began its reform process when it reopened in 1996 as a magnet school for mathematics, science, and the fine arts. Its reform process was a collaboration between community members, parents, and district teachers whose reform goals reflect the goals of The Houston A+ Challenge for Public School Reform: increased student learning, increased teacher learning, and increased communication among community groups.

Bethune is strengthening its reform efforts by focusing The Houston A+ Challenge funds on extending community outreach. The school's leadership believes Bethune must reduce isolation between the school and the community to move forward as a leader in the reform effort. Some ideas under consideration include having students provide service to the local community; providing professional development on cultural diversity for staff and teachers and establishing a parent cooperative learning program, and parent literacy.

Texas Commission on the Arts, and Educational Energy Industries.

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Robert Browning Elementary School (Houston ISD)

Focused Effort: To foster understanding, develop ideas, use authentic experience in social interactions through project-based learning and technology; To align school reform with the Reagan Vertical Team

Browning, a predominantly Hispanic inner city school, began whole-school reform in 1992 as an answer to unacceptably low test scores. One of the reasons for the low performance was that education was no longer a major goal among families—survival was the focus. The school first needed to meet the needs of its students and families in a more expanded role. Funding from The Houston A+ Challenge allows for additional certified teachers, including those who are bilingual, to help lower the student/teacher ratio and provide additional teaching materials.

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Charles R. Drew Academy (Aldine ISD)

Focused Effort: Developing a community of learners through parent education, community outreach, and professional development that enhances curriculum so that it will meet the needs of the whole child.

The Acres Home community and educational leaders set four main goals when they established Drew Academy: 1) eliminate minority group isolation in elementary and secondary schools; 2) increase educational opportunities for all students; 3) develop innovative educational methods and practices to achieve higher student performance; and 4) provide academic courses to offer students tangible and marketable vocational skills. To achieve these goals, the community and educational leaders embarked on an aggressive reform plan.

The Houston A+ grant is accelerating the Academy's progress. School leaders are focusing on enhancing professional development, particularly related to the understanding of adolescents and their emotional and educational needs. Additionally, the school wishes to create a stronger understanding of cultural diversity.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower High School (Aldine ISD)

Focused Effort: Teacher Learning through Theory of Action

Eisenhower High School, located in northwest Houston, is one of five high schools in the Aldine Independent School District. Eisenhower serves a community that is suburban by geography and urban by demography. Built in 1972, the school began as a small suburban high school. The bust in the Houston economy in the mid 1980's hit the community around Eisenhower particularly hard.

Many families, who had bought the new executive homes which flourished during the boom in the 1970's and early 1980's, lost their jobs. Unable to make house payments, they simply walked away, abandoning homes to foreclosure sales. This change, coupled with a tremendous increase in the building of area apartments, including those subsidized by the government, caused a shift in the demographics of both the community and the school.

During the last decade, the community around Eisenhower has undergone rapid economic changes which have resulted in Eisenhower's transformation to a large school with a culturally, ethnically and economically diverse population.

Teacher Demographics

The 1997 - 1998 faculty of 171 teachers was reduced to 140 with the opening of the Eisenhower ninth grade campus. In trying to meet the changing needs of the faculty, twelve teachers received Critical Friends Group training during the summers of 1998 and 1999. There are currently four CFGs or peer coaching groups, which use protocols to examine both teacher and student work. Approximately 30% of the faculty actively participates in these groups.

Eisenhower is moving toward a more supportive community that discusses new teaching materials and strategies, as well as supports risk-taking and the struggle entailed in transforming practice. However, there are still impediments to change including outside forces such as district policy and and an entrenched culture requiring teachers to prove rather than improve their practices.

The campus faces the dilemma of how to raise standards but also change the school culture to develop an intrinsic value of "the work" beyond the extrinsic reward of a good or passing grade. The goal of the gateway/capstone projects, facilitated through the professional development academies, will help in this transition.

Teacher Perspective

Beginning in the late 1980's, we recognized that the traditional school culture was not meeting the needs of our students. Teachers realized they must have support to develop both a personal and shared vision of improving student learning. Eisenhower teachers take pride in "taking students from where they are" to attaining high standards.

Partnerships and Collaborative Agreements

Dr. Cheryl Craig, of the University of Houston, acts as planning and evaluation consultant for the Eisenhower Houston A+ grant. Dr. Craig has been instrumental in assisting teachers to examine their own practice and then present their finding at conferences throughout Houston and the United States, as well as in Canada.

Community Organizations

A partnership with St. Luke's Hospital, The University of Texas Houston Health Science Center, Episcopal Health Charities and Incarnation Church has led to the creation of a school-linked health clinic housed at Incarnation Church, one half mile north of the Eisenhower main campus. Students form Eisenhower and its feeder middle schools receive free medical care at the clinic staffed by the director of the UT Division of Adolescent Medicine, a full-time registered nurse and a full-tie social worker. In addition, a pregnancy prevention specialist form Depelchin Children's Center is available for students twenty hours per week.

Assessment and Evaluation

The community rates Eisenhower highly for academic, social and athletic achievement. Eisenhower acquired Blue Ribbon Nationally Recognized School of Excellence status by the United States Department of Education for the 1989-1990 school year. In 1992, Redbook magazine named Eisenhower one of the top 42 high schools in the nation. Eisenhower received the Governor's Award for Significant Gain through the Texas Successful Schools award system in the fall of 1995. In addition to school recognition, individual Eisenhower students continue to win state and national honors in art, writing, history, drafting and other programs.

In 1997 Eisenhower was designated as an Houston A+ Beacon School based on its efforts to meet the changing needs of its students. This accolade has allowed Eisenhower to continue and expand on the reforms of its first decade.

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James F. Helms Community Learning Center (Houston ISD)

Focused Effort: To increase bi-literacy and student learning through sustained school-wide reform efforts, application of best teaching practices, vertical and horizontal curriculum alignment, and purposeful community partnerships.

Located in the Heights area, Helms's student population is predominantly Hispanic. In addition to language-related issues, many students are economically disadvantaged. Changes will be explored through teachers' professional development, a dual-language instruction program, family education and outreach programs, and a quality after-school program for students.

While the school's parents, teachers, and administrators have made great progress, additional funding from The Houston A+ Challenge has allowed Helms to add reading, math, and science specialists to its staff. These specialists will help reduce the student-teacher ratio and bring added expertise into the classroom. Additionally, the school is seeking training for teachers to help them develop a consistent curriculum across each grade level.

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Michael Kennedy Elementary School (Alief ISD)

Focused Effort: Professional development to increase learning: Strengthen and expand leadership opportunities and capacity to communicate reform to others; acquire materials needed to individualize program and continue reform; Personalize the learning environment and develop communities; decrease isolation through parent and community connections.

Funding and assistance from The Houston A+ Challenge strengthened and expanded Kennedy Elementary School's reform efforts. Specifically, school leaders envision enhancing professional development by expanding the Summer Transformational Leadership Symposium; providing tuition for national, regional, and district in-services; expanding the Rice Storytelling Project; and providing release time and resources for new staff training.

Personalizing the learning environment is another goal of the school's leadership. Ideas include expansion of flexible grouping practices, such as the Mixed Age Program, and producing videos in the various languages spoken by the students and their families as an orientation tool.

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Sidney Lanier Middle School (Houston ISD)

Focused Effort: School-wide professional development; Teacher as learner, Teacher as expert; Teacher as researcher

The addition of a Model Science Lab in 1989 was the impetus for reform at Lanier Middle School. The Lab offered the school a prototypical example of how it might be restructured to meet the learning needs of a student population that was not performing to its highest potential.

With the help of The Houston A+ Challenge funding, Lanier Middle School continues the reform efforts begun in 1989, striving to be a model for other schools. Focusing on professional development, the school's leaders would like to offer release time to teachers so they could devote more time to developing curriculum and networks among other teachers and administrators. Additionally, the funds go toward increasing public awareness of educational reform.

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Quest High School (Humble ISD)

Focused Effort: Reviewing, evaluating, deepening, and sustaining its efforts to create a school culture of effective leadership, a professional community of life-long learners, and an authentic pedagogy that will enhance the authentic achievement of its students

Opened in spring 1995, Quest High School is Humble Independent School District's only school of choice. Quest is one of the numerous educational programs housed in the Community Learning Center in Atascocita and is a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools.

A small school of 200 students, Quest is able to maximize a personalized learning experience for its students. In addition, all students at Quest engage in a service learning program and provide thirty volunteer hours each semester to the Humble/Kingwood/ Atascocita community as part of graduation requirements. Furthermore, students engage in a reality-based integrated curriculum and ultimately graduate by exhibition, a research-based multimedia presentation. The staff at Quest engages in vigorous professional development and attends and presents at local and national educational conventions.

Quest's focus for The Houston A+ Challenge funds is on documenting its work and measuring its success so that other schools can learn from the development of its curriculum and learning environment. This documentation will create a formal structure from which other schools can expand.

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Edgar Allan Poe Elementary School (Houston ISD)

Focused Effort: Professional development; Teacher leadership; Public engagement in school reform

Located in the heart of Houston's Museum District, Poe Elementary has an arts and academics magnet program that attracts students from throughout Houston ISD. One of the school's greatest assets is its formal and informal mentorship program. Parents and all staff members—cafeteria workers, teacher assistants, custodial staff—are personal mentors to one or more students. Even students in upper grades serve as math or reading "buddies" to kindergartners and first graders.

As a Beacon School, Poe Elementary will create a center for professional development to move student and teacher learning to higher levels. Specifically, A+ funding will enable Poe to extend the work year for every teacher and staff member, thus providing more time for professional development, classroom preparation, as well as student and parent interaction.

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E.J. Scott Elementary School (Houston ISD)

Focused Effort: School-wide literacy

Scott Elementary School stands out among the Beacon Schools because statistically it has the highest number of economically disadvantaged students, yet can boast some of the highest test scores—two often contradictory situations. The reform that achieved these test scores began in 1990 when the faculty became committed to changing the school's culture and climate to better serve the needs of the students.

The school's leadership hopes to enhance staff development, create a more personalized learning environment for all students, and improve student achievement by: 1) making learning more meaningful for the under-achieving student with technology-integrated curricula and community experts; 2) hiring specially trained campus-based lead teachers in each academic area; 3) creating intensive learning communities and networks so students and staff can communicate with no boundaries; and 4) creating multi-grade-level classrooms.

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Spring Shadows Elementary School (Spring Branch ISD)

Focused Effort: School-wide literacy and oral language

Teachers and administrators at Spring Shadows Elementary School have faced numerous challenges in educating their students. A large percentage of the school's student population is Hispanic and categorized as economically disadvantaged and at-risk. While the student population has dropped dramatically over the last five years, the number of students with special needs has not dropped proportionately. School leadership realized the school must serve families as well as students.

Funding from The Houston A+ Challenge supports continued reform through professional development, assessment, and evaluation. Specific goals include: professional development for all staff, not just a select few; expanding the number of teachers trained for English as a Second Language; developing an after-school program for students in their native languages; and creating an inclusion model that would allow special education students to remain in regular classrooms.

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