D.J. Montague Staff Outlines Improvement Efforts

By Amber Lester Kennedy Saturday, May 07, 2011

A D.J. Montague first-grader answers math questions using Success Maker. (Photo by Greg Davy/WJCC)

It isn’t rare to hear a Montague fifth-grader say, “The test was hard, but I used my strategies, so it was OK.” For them, “strategies” has been redefined as the tools in one’s toolbox – ways to look at a question, take it apart, examine its pieces and put it back together in a way each child can understand.

Standards of Learning testing will begin May 16, and many people, from parents to division administrators to state officials, will be anxious to see how the school performs. D.J. Montague Elementary failed to meet federal-mandated Adequate Yearly Progress benchmarks for a third time last year and if the school does not meet AYP this year, the Virginia Department of Education will require the division to enter its third year of “improvement status.” If that happened, the school would have to make dramatic changes, such as implementing a new curriculum or decreasing the principal’s authority.

But if the school’s leaders are nervous, they’re not showing it. Principal Lynn Turner, who came to D.J. Montague from James River Elementary at the beginning of the year, is confident her team has done what they could to prepare the students for the tests. Next week, she’ll lead two very different events designed to remind kids and parents that it’s game time.

On Monday, Turner will host an informational meeting for parents to share what actions the school has taken as part of its school improvement work. The meeting will be from 7 to 8 p.m. in the school’s cafeteria. On Friday, Turner will then lead a pep rally for the third, fourth and fifth grades to remind them to do their best.

When the school year began, students met their new principal, new Vice Principal Kim Pickles and school improvement coach Anne Vinson. Turner started preparing for her new role in the summer, meeting with different stakeholders in July 2010 to get a sense of what was working and what wasn’t. Teachers said they needed solid procedural guidelines in the building. Parents wanted clearly defined processes and behavioral expectations. And the division and state wanted the school to craft a strategy to make sure each child would be assessed, helped and encouraged.

In August, the division found out D.J. Montague would have to offer parents a transfer option as part of its school improvement status. Parents will have that choice again next year; students can transfer to either Norge or James River Elementary (read more here).

In addition, the school had a new student body following the redistricting of elementary and middle schools. During the redistricting process, parents and school board members pushed to lower the school’s percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunch. Enrollment shrunk in the process, however, from 614 in 2009-10 to 458 this year.

The percentage of students eligible for free or reduced lunch decreased from 36.36 percent to 33.62 percent (according to the numbers filed with the state here), but is still high enough to qualify the school for federal Title I funding. The free and reduced lunch percentage is often considered an indication of how many “at-risk” students attend the school, but Turner was quick to say any child can be “at-risk,” whether his or her family is struggling with economic stressors or going through divorce or illness.

With the various needs and wants identified, the new leadership team worked to come up with a plan to identify who needed help. Turner said the foundation had already been laid for teachers to work collaboratively, but teachers also had to receive additional training in assessment. Throughout the year, they’ve analyzed performance data until they can pinpoint exactly what concept is challenging a student. Once it’s discovered, the students have received varying degrees of intervention, from after-school tutoring to one-on-one work with a reading or math specialist.

“We’re not just finding out what the weakness is,” Vinson said. “We’re finding out, ‘Is what you’re doing working?’ and continually trying different things. We find the need, fix the need and then assess.”

Math Resource Teacher Tammy Krejcarek said math teachers are doing pre-term and post-term testing to evaluate each student’s progress through the year. “If we see they’re struggling with something, we grab them and start working with them individually,” she said. Because of this, her schedule changes from week to week based on which students need help.

She is in her second year of using a software program called “Success Maker” to evaluate students’ progress. Success Maker identifies what grade level the child is at for math, then gives them problems to solve, cleverly disguised as computer games. If they easily answer all the problems in a set, it pushes them up to the next level. If they miss several questions, it automatically goes into a tutorial mode. Best of all, Krejcarek can analyze the answers to figure out what concepts demand more explanation. In some cases, the program has shown her some students didn’t grasp a concept as well as she had thought.

For reading, students take benchmark tests and practice SOLs, also on computers. They are taught strategies for reading passages (the reading SOL contains five passages), such as highlighting key words or using the process of elimination to cross out incorrect multiple choice answers. They’re also taught about endurance and focus. To make it fun, students have been rewarded for using their strategies with prizes, such as pencil grips.

“A child might not have control over whether they pass or not, but we give rewards for things they have control of, like using their strategies,” Vinson said.

Each Thursday and Friday, Turner and Vinson meet with the grade level teams for reading and math to talk about lesson plans, student progress, problems on the horizon or successful solutions. Turner believes the collaborative atmosphere is the key to success. She likes to repeat a quote from Michael Fullan, an advocate for educational change: “Collaboration is the oxygen of student achievement.”

“That’s at the heart of what we’re doing here,” she said.

As test time approaches, Vinson said she’s confident the students will be well-prepared. “I sleep well knowing we have done everything we need to do,” she said.