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Moore, Carolina.
After two new principals took over the city’s largest high schools this year, one started lifting his institution out of the basement, while another earned low grades across the board, according to a round of new surveys of parents, teachers and students.
The “school climate” surveys, released to the public Wednesday, show the impact one year can make at a struggling high school that’s trying to lift expectations and get kids on track.
Both Wilbur Cross and James Hillhouse — New Haven’s two largest high schools — got new principals last fall who revamped the way the schools are run.
Hillhouse High was one of 37 schools that improved their school environments this year, according to the surveys, and it did so dramatically in some cases. Cross was one of the two schools that did not, with teachers in particular unhappy with the direction. Both schools have far to go, the surveys suggest.
Click here to access the school-by-school results.
A total of 15,808 teachers, parents, students and staff took the survey this year. Compared to last year, the response rate from parents rose from 23 percent to 31 percent. Eighty-eight percent of students in grades 5 to 12 responded; 76 percent of teachers; and 46 percent of staff, according to the district. This is the first year non-teaching staff have been included in the surveys.
Officials have trumpeted the climate surveys as a step toward public “transparency” and data-gathering amid an ambitious citywide school reform drive. In the cases of Cross and Hillhouse, the results put numbers to an evolving narrative of two schools on different paths.
In the surveys, parents, teachers, staff and students rated their schools in five categories: academic expectations, safety and respect, communication, collaboration and engagement. The surveys were administered from January to April of this year. When results were aggregated, high schools got a score for each of those categories, either “exemplary,” “satisfactory,” or “needs improvement.”
Overall, all but two New Haven schools showed progress over last year. One school undergoing an experiment in principal autonomy, Brennan/Rogers, showed dramatic progress.
Cross, the city’s largest comprehensive school and one of two that failed to progress, remained in the “needs improvement” across all five areas, according to the surveys. That’s the lowest category. Meanwhile, Hillhouse lifted into the “satisfactory” category in four of five categories.
The results show Hillhouse Principal Kermit Carolina, a former basketball coach who took over the school in the fall, has begun to boost feelings of safety, academic expectations and general satisfaction at the long-struggling school.
Carolina and his staff placed a big emphasis on school culture this year, bringing in a team of new deans to keep order in the halls, mentor kids and keep small problems from escalating into bigger ones. He created a Freshman Academy to create a positive environment for the incoming class, while splitting the upperclassmen into three small learning communities.
The year produced anecdotal evidence of kids being held to higher expectations at Hillhouse, though students still have a long way to go to close a significant achievement gap and dropout rate.
Over at Cross, Principal Peggy Moore has been at the helm of her own turnaround: Like Hillhouse, the school restructured according to the terms of a federal grant for the state’s lowest-performing schools. Like Hillhouse, Moore split the school up into four school learning communities and brought in deans with “refocus rooms” to address poor behavior. Click here for a story this week on both schools’ progress this year, and their plans moving forward.
At Cross, some kids leaped at a new chance to catch up on lost credits, while other students as well as parents and teachers have complained of a lack of a trusting relationship with the school’s new administration. Outrage within the school emerged this year when a student political action club was disbanded after a protest against excessive administrative spending, and when the principal nullified student election results after an outspoken junior won.
The new surveys give some numbers to hold up against those anecdotes, and show input from a broad range of voices at both schools.
At Hillhouse, a total of 62 teachers (61 percent) took the surveys, as well as 805 students (86 percent), 116 parents (14 percent) and 12 staff members (20 percent). At Cross, 76 teachers (56 percent), 147 parents (13 percent), 855 students (72 percent) and 4 staff members (7 percent) took the surveys.
Hillhouse showed some dramatic gains in school culture compared to last year. For example, the number of teachers who agreed that “order and discipline are consistently maintained at my school” more than doubled, from 19 to 48 percent.
Hillhouse students reported a safer environment: The number of kids who said they “feel safe in school” rose from 44 to 59 percent.
Cross showed modest improvement in those areas: The number of teachers reported that “order and discipline are consistently maintained at my school” rose from 8 to 12 percent.
The number of students who “feel safe” at Cross rose from 51 to 56 percent.
Hillhouse’s gains catapulted the school ahead of Wilbur Cross by many measures, especially when it comes to feedback from teachers in the school:
• 28 percent of teachers at Cross would recommend the school to colleagues, compared to 36 percent at Hillhouse.
• 33 percent of Cross teachers “feel supported by my principal,” compared to 60 percent at Hillhouse.
• 44 percent of Cross teachers agreed “there is a clear vision for this school,” compared to 76 percent at Hillhouse.
• 17 percent of teachers at Cross agreed the school environment “is conducive to learning,” compared to 48 percent at Hillhouse.
• 53 percent of teachers say they “feel safe” at Cross, compared to 73 percent at Hillhouse.
Overall, Hillhouse rated “exemplary” in four subcategories: students’ view of academic expectations, communication and collaboration with parents, and communication with staff.
Cross rated “exemplary” in one subcategory, the students’ view of academic expectations; it rated “satisfactory” in communication with parents, and “needs improvement” in all other areas.
Read full results from Cross and Hillhouse here and here.
Garth Harries, the city’s school reform czar, noted that Cross, along with the Engineering & Science University Magnet School, was one of two schools in the district that did not improve its overall school culture compared to last year, according to the survey metrics.
After the results are aggregated, each school got a school climate score on a scale of 0 to 10: While Hillhouse’s score rose from 6.0 to 6.7, Cross’s stayed at 5.9.
“Even within that, there are some early signs” of improvement at Cross, Harries said.
In a press release, schools spokesman Chris Hoffman made a point to highlight some of those signs.
“Compared to last year, more students at Cross say they care about their school, are treated fairly, feel safe, have teachers that inspire them to learn and overall feel good about the school,” Hoffman wrote.
Cross showed improvements of a few percentage points in those categories: The number of students who said they’re “treated fairly” rose from 52 to 58 percent; those who said their “teacher(s) inspire me to want to learn” rose from 55 to 59 percent; those who said they “feel good about the school” rose from 47 to 53 percent.
Hoffman also noted that number of Cross teachers who agreed that “administrators invite teachers to play a meaningful role in setting goals and making decisions” “nearly doubled,” from 24 to 42 percent.
Hoffman noted that “compared to last year, significantly more Wilbur Cross teachers say the school has high academic expectations for all students and administrators encourage them to collaborate to increase student learning.”
On the surveys, the number of Cross teachers who agreed the school “has high academic expectations for all students” rose from 34 to 40 percent; those who agreed that “administrators encourage them to collaborate to increase student learning” rose from 35 to 46 percent.
Harries said Cross and Hillhouse face special challenges.
“I think turning around the climate in a large, comprehensive school at both Cross and Hillhouse is one of the most difficult tasks facing educators,” Harries said.
As for Cross, Harries said, “everyone wants the climate to improve at Cross — the school administrators, the teachers in the building, and us, Central Office.” The purpose of the surveys is “how everyone comes together in order to accomplish that goal.”
This is the second year that school district has contracted with the Children’s Institute of Rochester to collect feedback through the surveys. The institute writes, distributes, collects and tallies the surveys. Click here and here for stories on last year’s results.
Brennan/Rogers Stands Out
Here are some highlights from the rest of the district:
Melissa Bailey Photo
Brennan Principal Karen Lott.
• Brennan/Rogers, where Principal Karen Lott is leading a turnaround of a struggling school, showed the most improvement citywide, according to schools spokesman Chris Hoffman. Brennan/Rogers gained the highest parent participation in the district, with 81 percent giving feedback. Read more about that school’s survey results here.
• At Wexler/Grant, which is about to follow suit with a turnaround of its own, showed some early signs of improvement under a new principal, Sabrina Breland.
This year, 24 percent of teachers at Wexler/Grant said they’d recommend the school to their peers, compared to 4 percent last year. Half of students said they “feel good” about the school, compared to 26 percent last year. And 53 percent of parents said they would recommend the school to their peers, compared to 48 percent last year.
• At Domus Academy, the city’s first turnaround school run by an outside charter group, only one teacher took the survey, which is not enough to provide results. But 25 parents gave feedback, and gave the school high marks: 92 percent said the school “has high academic expectations for my child” and 80 percent said they’d recommend this school to other parents.
• The city’s fledgling Engineering & Science University Magnet School, which emerged last year as a fast-rising star in academic performance and school climate, stayed even with a relatively high, “satisfactory” rating, but saw some decline in positive feedback from parents and teachers. That school endured several changes in leadership this year, as their principal left mid-year due to an illness.