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Bassick
High
School
First
CommPACT
High
School
in the State
(article
and pictures courtesy of the Connecticut
Post)
 Widline
Guerrier, 17, a Bassick High
School senior,
wants more challenge. She is tired of friends
picking on where she attends high school and
insinuating her courses are less rigorous
than theirs.
Judy
Whittingham, a parent with three children at
Bassick, wants books that go home with students,
even if they have to be rented. She wants kids to
respect their teachers a little
bit more.
Jerond
Rogers, another parent who has a pair of juniors
at the high school, wants to see his kids excited
to learn.
Ever
so slowly, the three see things starting
to happen.
Upstairs,
on a recent afternoon, the entire faculty gathered
after school in the library to continue a task
that has been going on for several weeks --
figuring out how to remove Bassick from a list of
the worst performing schools in
the state.
Overseeing
the effort is Michele Femc-Bagwell, director
of UConn's CommPACT, which was put in charge of
"transforming" Bassick when the district received
federal School Improvement Grants funds last
summer. Bassick marks the first time CommPACT is
working with a high school. CommPACT has worked
with six elementary schools in the state,
including Barnum and Longfellow in Bridgeport.
Under
the program, UConn will get $2.1 million over a
three-year period. In exchange, they are expected
to raise abysmal standardized test scores, student
attendance records and drastically reduce student
discipline problems. CommPACT is an acronym that
stands for "Community, Parents, Administration,
Children and Teachers."
A
three-year-old educational reform model developed
at the University of
Connecticut's NAEG
School of Education, CommPACT is designed to give
staff control over how they run the school and
spend the money. At the same time, schools can
feed off the latest research on effective teaching
and learning strategies. Across town
at Harding High School,
another $2.1 million in SIG money is being spent.
There the Global Partnership, a private
educational management organization, has been
brought in to "restart" the school and make
things right.
At
Bassick, teachers are calling the shots. They work
in so-called "cadres" on such topics as
attendance, atmosphere and tackling the tricky
topic of teacher incentives. There are 15 groups
in all. In addition to faculty, each group has
parental input as well.
In
recent years, officials have worked with the state
to use test data to make decisions about what and
how to teach. The school has been critiqued by
Cambridge Education consultants and
the National Urban Alliance. There has been
movement in the right direction but not nearly
fast enough to
suit anyone.
Over
the last three years, only one in 50 Bassick
students met the reading or math "goal" on the
Connecticut Academic Performance Test. The goal is
a like scoring a high "B." One in five reached the
lower "proficiency" -- or passing -- standard in
math and one in four met "proficiency" in reading.
Half of Bassick students take the SAT's. Of those
that do, the average score for reading and math is
746 out of a possible 1600. That puts Bassick in
the bottom 5 percent of those taking the college
readiness test. In the 2009-10 there were 31
arrests at Bassick. This year, there's an
improvement in that figure. In the first 10 weeks
of school there have been just
six arrests.
In
its SIG application, the district's stated goal is
to increase reading and math proficiency for all
students by at least 15 percentage points by the
end of the 2010-11 school year. It wants to reduce
student suspensions by 15 percent this year and it
wants to improve student attendance by 15 percent.
In 2005-06 the average student attendance rate was
83.4 percent.
By
the time UConn came on board over the summer, the
district had pulled the first trigger
on
change by transferring its principal, Ronald Remy,
to Blackham, a K-8 school. Alejandro Ortiz,
principal at Central, was moved to Bassick. The
algebra 1 curriculum was revamped and Ortiz
instituted a resource center to give students a
place to get extra help during the school day.
GEAR UP, a college readiness program, run
by Yale University,
started working in
the school.
At
other CommPACT schools, teachers vote to accept
the idea before the process starts. At Bassick,
the vote of support was reversed, with teachers
voting overwhelmingly in favor to the idea during
a fall staff meetings after UConn was already on
board. Still, there is a willingness to give it a
try and a sense that things
are happening.
During
the recent cadre meeting, teacher discussions were
wide ranging and veered off in several directions.
The attendance group, besides discussing what
makes students want to come to school, talked
about advisory classes -- where students are
assigned to an adult in the building for one
period a day.
"In
my advisory, I've gotten to know the kids really
well. If there are problems at home, I hear it,
but I'm one teacher with a handful of kids,"
said Ed Greene. Other advisories don't
function as well.
A
group focused on culture and security touched on
how the building looks. If there were fewer leaks
and nicer displays on the walls, more students
would want to come to school, members said.
Another group wrestled with the topic of what
motivates them to teach.
Lisa
Jaszcz, a part-time CommPACT facilitator who flies
in two days a week from Michigan,
listened in and encouraged the group to trust
the process.
In
addition to Femc-Bagwell and Jaszcz, Kathy
Young, a Bassick English teacher has been assigned
the task of spending half her day as a
teacher-coach. The school is also hiring a
full-time
site facilitator.
The
school is crafting a school "vision" looking at
where they see themselves in five years. When the
vision is complete, there will be a celebration.
Eventually each work group -- culture, technology,
curriculum, student data, discipline, remediation,
instruction, staff evaluations, scheduling,
professional development, attendance, parent
involvement, career planning and facilities --
will develop action plans. That's where the bulk
of the federal money will get spent, said
Femc-Bagwell.
"It
would be easy to come in and say do these five
things. Unless there is buy in . . . nothing is
going to change," said
Femc-Bagwell.
Student
Juliemar Ortiz, 17, says she's hopeful things will
get better in the future.
"I
see a process. I haven't see the change yet in
front of my eyes," said Ortiz, 17, a senior, who
is no relation to her
new principal.
Juliemar
says teachers and parents seem to have different
attitudes. In her sophomore year, Juliemar
remembers singing in a holiday concert where she
counted 10 parents in the audience. This year,
more than 80 watched from the auditorium and it
was on a night when there was also a boys
basketball game in another part of the building
that could have siphoned off attendance at
the concert.
Widline
said teachers seem less quick to kick students out
of class when they get out of line. Instead, there
seems to be an effort to reason with
the student.
Rogers,
the parent with two juniors in the school, has
been working with parents and students to create a
pep squad that will cheer from the bleachers at
sports games.
Parent Paula
Rodriguez said the school seems to be
less chaotic.
"There
seem to be less fights and not as many kids
loitering in the hallways. There's a new principal
and there seems more focus on education," said
Rodriguez, who spoke in Spanish, Her daughter,
Paula, 16, translated.
Asked
what needs to change most at Bassick, Rodriguez
did not hesitate.
"The
attitude of the kids,"
she said.
Juliemar
and Widline agree, but say teaching also has to
change. A good teacher can ease troubled minds and
mend hearts.
Widline
said she'd like to see tougher academic standards.
She was floored when a friend of hers, who goes to
Fairfield Warde High School,
spotted her reading the Scarlet Letter last year.
The Warde student read the book in freshman
English. Widline was in
AP English.
"If
you set the bar too low, students won't even try,"
she said. "I want to be able to say I go to
Bassick and hear people say, `Oh, that's a good
thing, not `oooh.'"
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