Ma'ili school hasn't lost hope
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer
MA'ILI — The young boy arrived at Ma'ili Elementary School only this month, but he has already left an impression.
He is supposed to be in fifth grade, but he is reading and doing math at second-grade level. He is disruptive, but Ma'ili's staff has yet to see records from his former school, so they are not sure whether he has behavioral problems and needs special education.
For now, he is mixed in with fourth-graders, but because he is so far behind, the teacher has to sneak time away from her other students so she can give him individual attention.
Ideally, he would have some time to make friends and get to know his new surroundings, but this is testing time. He is expected to take the state's battery of standardized tests, and his participation could help determine whether the school, already below the state's proficiency standards, makes progress.
"It's going to be reflective of our school and our program. It's not right," said Stacey Hunt, a curriculum coordinator at Ma'ili. "It's sad, because we always seem behind."
Ma'ili, on a dusty patch of the Leeward coast, is one of 25 schools being targeted by the state Department of Education for intervention after independent audits found that they are in the most urgent need of improvement.
The audits, by PricewaterhouseCoopers, showed that while all schools may have the same expectations, many, like Ma'ili, are starting from dramatically different places.
An outside consultant, working with Ma'ili staff, is preparing a response plan so the school might avoid further sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind law. The school already has to provide free tutoring for students and give students the option of transferring to other schools, although most schools on the Leeward coast are in similar difficulty.
The law requires that public schools make annual progress toward the goal of having all students proficient in core subjects by 2014. States have the discretion to design the tests to measure that progress, but all schools have to meet the same minimum participation and academic benchmarks, so Ma'ili is judged the same as Kahala Elementary School, in higher-income east Honolulu, or Kanu 'O Ka 'Aina, a Hawaiian-themed charter school on the Big Island.
In the first four months of this school year, about 480 students moved in or out of Ma'ili — which has more than 850 students — a turnover that makes it hard for teachers to build continuity. Some students are from homeless families, shift between foster homes, or move from relative to relative, bouncing between schools on the west side. Some are in families that often move to find cheaper rent or better living conditions.
Students who transfer during the school year can count toward a school's test participation rate under No Child Left Behind, but not on the academic portion, a rule that may change when the state begins testing students in more grades.
More than 80 percent of Ma'ili students receive free or reduced-price lunch, a gauge of poverty, and the audit linked student turnover to the reality that the school is in a low-income community. Parent involvement in the school has declined so much that Ma'ili's principal, Linda Victor, has ended the PTA, although parents do serve on the School Community Based Management council.
Victor, who has been principal for 11 years, is hopeful, if cautious, about the new expectations.
"I think we could do something different, to step outside the box," she said. "Maybe we do need to do something else."
Another measure
While the DOE is fully committed to No Child Left Behind, schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto, sensitive to the differences between schools, is looking at another way to measure progress.
A few years ago, Mark Hunter, a Tampa, Fla., banking consultant, began working as a volunteer with several Hawai'i schools, bringing to public education some of the same tools used to evaluate performance at bank branches.
Hunter has developed what he calls an "opportunity index," based on factors that may influence student achievement such as the number of students in poverty or special education and the rate of attendance or suspensions. The index — a scale from 0 to 100 — can be used to compare where schools are before a school year begins and as a baseline to track a school's performance to its potential.
"I'm not saying that some children can't learn," Hunter said, "I'm saying they have different opportunities."
The objective, Hunter explains, is to find out whether schools are living up to their potential, much like a bank might judge a branch's financial performance by the characteristics of the local market, not branches in other parts of a state.
Each week, several Hawai'i schools give Hunter performance-related data and he crunches the numbers into weekly service reviews, sent back to the schools by e-mail on Monday mornings along with advice and praise. School principals know immediately whether they are up or down on the index.
Principals, he said, should not have to wait a year for student scores on standardized tests to understand exactly how their schools are doing.
Hunter, who has also worked with schools in Florida, Indiana and Michigan, has an infectious optimism but a bottom-line attitude. He has no patience for schools that don't follow through. "I'll tell you," he said during a recent visit to the Islands, "I fired a lot of them out here."
Intrigued, Hamamoto, who has a well-worn copy of Hunter's model in her office, is thinking about experimenting with Hunter's theory at schools statewide, possibly after this school year's test results.
Hamamoto said she could use the data as an alternative to assess growth at schools beyond No Child Left Behind, and perhaps even to reward schools that are making gains but are still falling short under the law.
But the superintendent does not want to send schools conflicting messages, or provide excuses for not meeting the law's standards. She does not want Hunter's index to be used by educators to blame poor performance solely on a school's demographics.
"Over time," Hamamoto said, "you want to see growth. What I don't want is for schools to think they can't do it and then stop."
Mixed results
At Ma'ili, Victor, the school's principal, is willing to experiment.
Several years ago, the school adopted Direct Instruction, a teaching model that involves concise, carefully planned lessons for students grouped by ability. The school shares weekly data with Direct Instruction consultants who provide feedback.
More than half of Ma'ili's graduating sixth-graders now read at or closer to their grade level, according to the audit and school staff, compared to previous years, when over half were at fourth-grade levels or lower.
"We've found that our kids are learning to read much faster, with more consistency, and they can retain what they've read much better," Victor said.
But the school's staff was deflated last fall when the results of the state proficiency tests were released. The number of Ma'ili students tested who were proficient in reading dropped to 13 percent, down from 21 percent the year before. Math proficiency was 2 percent, down from 3 percent.
A consultant from WestEd, brought in after the audit, is helping the school align Direct Instruction to the state's tests, which now often require students to do more writing and to explain how they arrived at their answers. Direct Instruction promotes highly scripted lessons over teacher creativity, and Ma'ili teachers are trying to add more open-ended questions to their lessons, so students may be better able to think critically.
Since it took several months after the test scores were released for the DOE to assign the audits, analyze the findings, and send intervention teams into the schools at the most risk, most of the targeted schools are only now starting to make changes, too late for tests this school year.
The schools do have to file monthly progress reports, but it may not be until fall 2005, when student test scores for next school year are released, before the true picture is known.
"It's going to take some time," Victor said. "Let's just say I'm hopeful we'll do better."
Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.
