GILROY
– The first phase of state intervention at Brownell Middle
School is over.
GILROY – The first phase of state intervention at Brownell Middle School is over.
A team of education consultants spent April 7 to 11 at the junior high reviewing curriculum and materials, observing classes, and interviewing teachers, parents and students. The group gave school and district officials a cursory review of its findings before leaving Gilroy. By the end of May, the group will formulate corrective actions the school district must adopt.
“The findings at this point are so preliminary that (the consultant) and the district have agreed not to release them,” Superintendent Edwin Diaz said. “But what I can say is that Brownell has made some changes that are really significant and that research shows will help student improvement. Having said that, there are always things that can be done better.”
Gilroy Unified School District was given $75,000 last month to hire San Francisco-based WestEd to carry out the intervention. WestEd is a leading educational research firm approved by the state for such interventions.
At the June 5 school board meeting, consultants will present the corrective actions to trustees who must adopt the measures. The corrective actions will be based on information gathered over the week-long visit which analyzed four main aspects of Brownell:
• site and district leadership
• curriculum, instruction and professional development
• use of assessment data
• culture and climate of the school
“The vast majority of parents had no complaints. Some people said communication could be better, but there was no complaint about academic rigor or teachers,” said Denise Baer-Apuzzo, one of the parents interviewed by the consultants. “There was some talk about the state’s accountability system being flawed.”
Sanctions were placed on Brownell since the school did not improve its state test scores two years in a row. But Brownell supporters complain that the more recent scores reflect performance from a vastly different student population three years ago.
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.
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 triggered the intervention. Being a participant in IIUSP means a school can receive around $200 more per student. There are roughly 930 students attending Brownell.
Roughly 22 other schools in the state share Brownell’s predicament. When compared to schools with similar demographics, Brownell ranks in, essentially, the 70th percentile and has incorporated new instructional materials and methods into its curriculum.
WestEd’s team leader Sofia Aburto acknowledged that her group may not have as much to correct at Brownell as it might at other schools.
“The context of a school will definitely play a role in our final evaluation,” Aburto said. “I’m not saying this is the case with Brownell, but a lot of times (corrective actions) might be about implementation and not curriculum or policies themselves.”
