The front-liners gathered with top staff in the West Wing. They reviewed the data. They floated scenarios. They weighed options. Then they set a short and a long-term strategy.
“We always want more,” an adviser urged the group.
“I’m a little anal,” the sharp young staffer with the charts and the clipboard remarked at another point. “I’m sorry.”
“We’re in this together,” the commander-in-chief told the advisers gathered around the table before leaving them to tie up details. “You have a lot of support.”
The topic at hand wasn’t a war or an economic stimulus plan or a political campaign.
And this wasn’t the West Wing in Washington, D.C.
This session took place in a sunlit alcove nicknamed the “West Wing” inside New Haven’s Davis Street 21st Century Magnet School.
In New Haven these days, the topic at hand has become public campaign number one: how to close the achievement gap and make the city’s schools the best in the nation.
Can you do that by focusing intensely on test scores? On data? Or do you need less numerically and standardized approaches to teaching?
Government leaders, reformers, parents and teachers around the country are debating that question as they seek to revolutionize public education.
That “either-or” question, unspoken, landed on the circular table around which three teachers, two advisers and Principal Lola Nathan sat the strategy session the other day at Davis.
Davis has been more successful than many other New Haven schools in raising test scores in recent years, offering some lessons for a system about to embark on an ambitious reform drive. Davis also has pushed such non-metric approaches as the “Comer method.” The Independent is checking in on the school throughout this year for a closer look at how Davis achieves some of the results sought elsewhere in town, and how the school hopes to build on them.
When it came to how the West Wing team used test scores to zero in on boosting students’ reading, the answer to the “either-or” question above turned out to be … both. You can focus intensely on testing and non-numeric approaches at the same time.
Even, if you can believe it, for first-graders.
An Early Start
Principal Nathan has her teachers look at how every student is doing on tests throughout the year. Then the teachers draw up individual improvement plans to put into place with the help of parents. Nathan also has the teachers within each grade meet to compare and compile data and classroom experiences to work together on a grade-wide strategy to boost scores.
The West Wing meeting was the first for two of the three first-grade teachers at Davis: Tamara Raiford, who’s new this year, and Kristen Kazakewich, a long-term sub.
They were joined by one of Nathan’s top hands-on lieutenants, Mary Derwin; Christine Elmore, a veteran first-grade teacher; and instructional coach Julie Browning, who’s also pitching in on reading. (Elmore and Browning are pictured at the top of the story.) Principal Nathan sat in for the first part of the meeting, too.
Though new, Raiford came the most prepared. She brought a sheet with her students’ scores on the state-mandated Development Reading Assessment test. She also brought computer-generated charts. The charts detailed how each student has been progressing in her class so far this year on each of the reading skills first-graders are supposed to develop, such as reading for meaning and “self-correcting” — noticing if a word they’ve read aloud makes no sense, then going back and trying to get right.
The three teachers compiled their students’ scores so far this year. Altogether, 70 percent of the grade was scored reading at either “proficiency” or “goal.”
What number should we shoot for in the middle of the year? Nathan asked.
Someone suggested 80 percent. Nathan wasn’t satisfied. A few sighs could be heard. Taking deep breaths, the teachers agreed they’d achieve 90 percent by the end of January, then 100 percent by year’s end.
That was the simplest part. How would they get there?
Teamwork
In part, they plan to do it in small groups — identifying which students need which kind of help.
Raiford (pictured) had started on that path. She told her colleagues about how she carries her charts and clipboard around with her quite a bit. “I love checklists!” she said. (That’s why she called herself “anal” during the meeting.) In the course of a week she makes sure to see how each of her students has progressed on different reading skills. She marks that progress on her charts. By last week’s meeting, she had grouped them on her charts — which students were having more trouble sounding out words, for instance; which had trouble self-correcting.
At 36, Raiford is older than some other rookie teachers; she has the sunny disposition and energy of a young 20-something just entering the workforce. She started out her career as a paraprofessional in the schools. She then took advantage of a program at Gateway and Southern Connecticut State University to train paraprofessionals as classroom teachers. Last year she student-taught at Davis; principal Nathan, a talent-spotter, asked her to take over a class this year.
Raiford’s checklist idea interested Chris Elmore, the veteran teacher. Elmore might try some version of it and write out how she’ll divide up kids for small-group learning.
Meanwhile, the teachers agreed that newcomers Raiford and Kazakewich would spend time in Elmore’s class to watch how she teaches reading in order to pick up tips.
Browning, the tutor, emphasized that she would fill in for the teachers to help make that happen. “We work together,” she said. “As a team.”
With guidance from Mary Derwin, the teachers discussed how they’ve been teaching reading. They reported on how kids were doing with “decoding” — the different ways they process words they don’t know, from checking first and last consonants, to identifying “chunks” of letters, to identifying picture clues.
“Abolish ‘Sad’ & ‘Happy’”
They ended up speaking at length at the meeting about “retelling.”
That term refers to having kids describe a story they’ve just read together as a class. As they sit together on the classroom carpet, the teacher helps urges them to describe the setting of the story, the central problem, the characters.
Raiford’s class had read a book called Two Tied Shoes earlier that day. She asked the students to describe the characters at a certain point in the story. “They look sad,” one student replied.
“‘What do you mean they look sad?’” Raiford recounted telling the student. “‘Why do you think they are sad?’ We’re trying to abolish ‘sad’ and ‘happy.’”
“Teach them, ‘You have to use language that’s in the story,’” Derwin suggested.
Derwin spoke of avoiding “dummying down” when teaching reading. “We always want more,” she said.
(Click on the play arrow to the above video to watch a snippet of that portion of the meeting.)
In the end, the teachers agreed to short-term and longer-term goals that didn’t have test-score numbers attached to them. Short-term: Start with getting their entire classes breaking down the essential elements of stories, identifying characters and settings and central problems. Step Two: Then they’ll work on the descriptions of characters. The “happy” and “sad” abolition quest.
Along the way, the students will be re-tested before the mid-year point. The teachers will then revisit the numbers.
“You guys are awesome,” Derwin told the teachers. She added: “It’s your data. You own the data.”
Tamara Raiford, meanwhile, promised to draw up a new set of charts for monitoring individual students’ progress. She promised to email the form to the other two teachers. No one doubted that she would.
Previous stories about Davis Street 21st Century Magnet School:
• Principal Finds A Place For “Magic”
• Comer Is Back
• Principal Keeps School On The Move
• Pot Melts
• So Long, Old Davis
• Music History Steps Offstage
• Music Video Of The Week
Some previous stories about New Haven’s school reform drive:
• Teacher Pact Applauded; Will $$ Follow?
• Mayor “Not Scared” By $100M
• Useful Applause: Duncan, AFT Praise City
• Reformer Moves Inside
• After Teacher Vote, Mayo Seeks “Grand Slam”
• Will Teacher Contract Bring D.C. Reward?
• What About The Parents?
• Teachers, City Reach Tentative Pact
• Philanthropists Join School Reform Drive
• Wanted: Great Teachers
• “Class of 2026” Gets Started
• Principal Keeps School On The Move
• With National Push, Reform Talks Advance
• Nice New School! Now Do Your Homework
• Mayo Unveils Discipline Plan
• Mayor Launches “School Change” Campaign
• Reform Drive Snags “New Teacher” Team
• Can He Work School Reform Magic?
• Some Parental Non-Involvement Is OK, Too
• Mayor: Close Failing Schools
• Union Chief: Don’t Blame The Teachers
• 3‑Tiered School Reform Comes Into Focus
• At NAACP, Mayo Outlines School Reform
• Post Created To Bring In School Reform
• Board of Ed Assembles Legal Team
GREAT display of the kind of intensity and passion that our school leaders and teachers all need to close the gap!
Principal Nathan and her "lieutenants" are setting the bar high, AND with the use of data, also figuring out precisely how to get there.
Congratulations on your success thus far, and for your commitment to urgent, rapid continuous improvement!