GILROY
– A team of six to 10 education specialists will descend upon
Brownell Middle School in future weeks to make
”
corrective actions
”
local school officials must adopt, whether they agree with them
or not.
GILROY – A team of six to 10 education specialists will descend upon Brownell Middle School in future weeks to make “corrective actions” local school officials must adopt, whether they agree with them or not.
The state board of education Wednesday approved sending intervention teams to Brownell and 23 other California schools underperforming on recent standardized tests. Yesterday’s decision to go ahead with firsthand and independent evaluations of the un-improving schools comes roughly three months later than initially planned.
Corrective actions could include instructional and policy changes. The most severe action is to replace or reassign school management.
“I think we’re doing what’s being asked of us. I think we’re going to be in good shape. If the evaluation team thinks we’re not doing enough, then I welcome their plan,” Brownell Principal Suzanne Damm said.
Superintendent Edwin Diaz has already begun talks with WestEd, a leading education research firm that has state-approved consultants who would make up an intervention team.
“Given that three-fourths of the year is over, we’re going to get this started immediately,” Diaz said. “I believe there’s little work for them to do, but if an objective group tells us our school improvement plan can still improve, we’ll be listening.”
The state has pledged $75,000 per school to fund the evaluations and interventions. Diaz said that amount would cover the consulting costs incurred by the district.
Damm said the school has already begun implementing its own set of changes, which includes putting all students in classes geared for their particular ability levels for reading and math.
Brownell was supposed to improve its Academic Performance Index (API) score by eight points on last year’s exam. However, students scored three points lower in 2002 than they did the year before.
Because it was a participant in the state’s Immediate Intervention/
Underperforming Schools Program, the failure to improve triggers intervention. Being a participant in IIUSP means a school can receive around $200 more per student. There are about 930 students attending Brownell.
In Gilroy and across the state, the program has been called flawed, since three years ago, 17 of the 24 underperforming schools posted test scores high enough to earn financial rewards from the state. Brownell’s API score for 2002 is six points higher than Gilroy’s other middle school, South Valley. And when compared against similar schools across the state, Brownell ranks in the 70th percentile, as good or better than all other Gilroy public schools.
“I was a little surprised the state is continuing with the intervention program given the budget (crisis) and with it being so late in the year,” Damm said. “But I have no problem with it.”
Damm said she doesn’t want to be perceived as making excuses, but noted that since Brownell students took the standardized exams three years ago, the school has had a significant population change.
Only 600 seventh- and eighth-graders attended Brownell three years ago. Today, more than 930 sixth- through eighth-graders are enrolled at the Carmel Street school, increasing the percentage of disadvantaged kids, which correlates strongly with lower test scores.
Staff morale at Brownell is not the best it has ever been given the state’s budget problems and the pending intervention, but Damm said her staff is “hanging together.”
The school recently celebrated student performance on local standardized tests that indicate 800 of 900 Brownell students will likely improve their API scores this spring.
As far as Damm’s future is concerned, neither Damm nor Diaz are anticipating the state would remove her as principal. Diaz also said the district has no plans to release the 10-year principal.
“For this year, the school has taken proactive measures, but a big part of accountability is student improvement, and we need to see results,” Diaz said. “Every administrator in this district is responsible for school improvement.”
