Samuell High looks toward final year
to improve before it faces closing
12:57 AM CDT on Sunday, August 24, 2008
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News kfischer@dallasnews.com
Three different people, three different perspectives, one common theory for Samuell High School's chronic underachievement: Too few are committed to seeing the Dallas school succeed. Too few students, says 2008 graduate Clyde Pikes III: "A lot of the time, my peers ... didn't want to receive the education that was given."
Too few parents, says mother Tarhonda Woodfin: "Parents put too much responsibility on the teachers, and they don't do their part."
Too few in the school district or in Samuell's Pleasant Grove neighborhood, says former principal Daniel Johnson: "Until the community gets involved and the district goes out and recruits real good, experienced teachers," nothing will change.
But something will change at Samuell in the school year that begins tomorrow, for better or worse. The latest round of state ratings tabbed Samuell "academically unacceptable" for the fourth straight year – a streak that will result in the school's closure if its scores don't jump this year.
The Dallas Independent School District just restructured nearby Spruce High School to avoid closure and has indicated that Samuell will meet a similar fate if it doesn't improve this year.
The Dallas Morning News visited Samuell several times last school year to better understand the obstacles impeding improvement and to learn more about its efforts at reform.
In the evolving drive to improve American public education, revamping inner-city high schools is the effort du jour. Dallas, too, is focusing on high schools.
A recent national report put DISD's graduation rate at 44 percent. The state recently rated 10 of Dallas' 22 non-magnet high schools "academically unacceptable" and would have included eight more if not for a temporary state reprieve on a new dropout standard.
Samuell's struggles, and those of most inner-city high schools, are rooted in persistent problems: too few effective teachers, students arriving with inadequate skills, absentee parents, too few community resources, and hard-to-break cycles of poverty.
Samuell teachers have been pushing ahead with improvement efforts for more than a year: Saturday tutoring, teacher training, programs on teamwork and camaraderie, and small, career-themed learning communities that are set to launch this fall.
But the efforts only go so far if students and parents don't participate, said Ms. Woodfin, a mother of three current and former Samuell students. Teachers last year held a math and science "lock in" – a sort of educational slumber party. "It wasn't a party – they had tutoring and all kinds of activities," she said. "But the main thing was they had a hard time getting kids to come."
DISD leaders are hopeful that Samuell will improve. Achievement trends in most subjects are heading in the right direction, albeit slowly. Yet the school enters this important academic year with many questions and few solid answers.
Samuell lost three of seven administrators over the summer, including the principal and the academic dean who were orchestrating improvement efforts. Although energetic and optimistic, the new principal has never led a high school.
In addition, the school has filled 57 vacancies in the last two years among its 118 teachers, many to comply with state orders to replace underperformers. Most were filled with teachers having little or no classroom experience. This summer alone, the school replaced 10 of its 18 math teachers. Good math teachers are crucial. Only slightly more than one-third of Samuell's students across all grades passed the state math TAKS exams last spring, well short of the 50 percent needed to escape closure this year.
But even if all the improvement efforts come together, and scores improve, the school could still stumble on other factors that determine a school's rating. Test scores, for example, must hit state targets for student "subgroups" – black, Hispanic, white and low-income. Next year, schools with graduation rates below 75 percent will be tagged "academically unacceptable." Samuell's rate in 2007 was 55 percent.
As with any organization, churn at the top can disrupt a school and impede improvement efforts. When Daniel Johnson became principal at Samuell in 2005, he was the third principal in three years. The first thing he noticed was that Samuell "didn't feel" like school, he said in an interview last school year. There was no student-produced work on the walls. Groups of kids roamed the halls instead of attending class.
"When I walked in, I was like, holy cow, I'd never seen anything like it," said teacher Jade Esquivel. "There was a real sense of fear before. It's not natural for mobs of kids to be in the halls or just to wander into your room when you're in the middle of a lesson." Brittany Douglass spent nearly three years at Samuell before transferring to a magnet program at Lincoln High School. It wasn't uncommon, she said, for students to show up to class and then leave right after attendance was taken. "You always had kids walking in and out, a lot of distractions going on," she said. "You had teachers who cared, but it seemed if they lost control, they just gave up."
The school climate has improved since then, Mr. Esquivel and others said. A dress code pushed out some troublemaking students who didn't want to conform. The number of "hall walkers" has been greatly reduced. Student artwork and classroom projects plaster the hallways, where they remain for weeks untouched.
Now, with Dr. Johnson taking a new job in Cedar Hill and Academic Dean Kathryn Carter leaving to become a principal elsewhere in DISD, Samuell faces yet another round of turnover.
Its new leader is Israel Cordero, an elementary school principal who taught and coached at Samuell 10 years ago. Joining Mr. Cordero will be a former academic dean from W.T. White High School and Joy Barnhart, a former W.T. White principal with a no-nonsense reputation, hired to advise Mr. Cordero.
"I am new as a principal, but I'm not new as a person in Samuell's community," said Mr. Cordero, who's been on the job about two weeks. "I've been able to hit the ground running and not have to learn how to navigate" the school and staff. Trustee Nancy Bingham, whose district encompasses Samuell, considers Mr. Cordero a good pick for the school but acknowledged he'll have to play a "perfect game" to avoid a fifth academically unacceptable state rating. "I've just got to be optimistic that they can do it if we get them what they need," Mrs. Bingham said.
And what, exactly, does Samuell need? Quality teachers, for starters, said its former principal and others, including Mrs. Bingham. Samuell was restructured in the summer of 2007 under state provisions for low-performing schools. Twenty-eight teachers were released from the school, selected primarily because of their students' scores on standardized tests.
Ultimately, the overhaul, called a "reconstitution," meant Samuell had about three months over the summer of 2007 to find 28 new teachers, in addition to the 12 vacancies created through normal turnover.
The issue of teacher quality confronts school systems across the country. Nationally, there is a shortage of qualified math and science teachers. Study after study has found that the least-prepared, most inexperienced teachers invariably end up in the nation's neediest schools.
In the end, 23 of Samuell's 28 "reconstituted" teachers were replaced by newcomers to the profession. Seventeen came in under the district's "alternative certification" program, which places people who are switching from other careers in classrooms while the district trains them to be teachers.
Last year, DISD began offering experienced teachers a $6,000 bonus to teach in 16 low-performing schools, including Samuell. Although thousands were eligible, only 65 teachers made the switch. Five went to Samuell. Mrs. Bingham said maybe it's time for the district to try a new approach. "Maybe we should explore a Peace Corps kind of program where we send [veteran] teachers into some of these schools," she said.
Teachers now at the school say they need parents to be more involved. In 2005, the PTA had three members, but had grown to about 185 last year. Recent graduate Clyde Pikes III noticed too many young and inexperienced teachers during his three years at Samuell. "Most of the teachers are younger teachers, and it's hard for them to control the students," said Mr. Pikes, who was active in student council and the school's debate team. "One of my teachers was in his first year out of college, and it was hard for him because he was just as young" as his students.
But he didn't blame adults for the school's struggles. "You have a lot of teachers that really, really care, but a lot of the time my peers didn't recognize how much they could benefit from that," he said.
Mrs. Carter, the academic dean, was responsible for evaluating teachers. One day last fall, she visited a few classes. The first was loud but orderly. Students remained in their seats, calling out names and ages of athletes as the teacher plotted the information on an electronic whiteboard. After the names and ages were logged onto the graph, the students entered the data into their graphing calculators.
Two doors down, the classroom of a new alternative certification teacher was in chaos.
In the back of the room a student, Roberto, leaned with his head against the wall. Sunglasses on and mouth running, he emitted constant chatter aimed at anyone and everyone. The teacher, 62 years old and brand-new to teaching, told the teen to be quiet. "What are you going to do about it?" Roberto shot back. A girl walked into the classroom and began passing out cookies, creating a minor flurry as kids scrambled to snag one. Roberto was talking again, pulling up a hooded sweatshirt: "How old do I look? How old do I look?" One student nodded toward the dean and asked a classmate, "Who's she?" "She's a nobody," the classmate replied. As the teacher began yelling – "Sit down!" "Be quiet!" "Stop that!" – two students walked out, followed by the girl with the cookies. Turns out, she wasn't in the class anyway.
In the hallway a few minutes later, Mrs. Carter was asked why the school didn't replace that teacher with somebody better. "It's November," three months into the school year, she replied. "Who would we replace him with?"
By early spring, though, two alternative certification math teachers, including the one above, were informed that their contracts would not be renewed for the 2008-09 school year. In an unusual move, their students were dispersed into the classes of more experienced teachers. The two non-renewed teachers served out the remainder of the year as teacher assistants and tutors.
The move bumped the veteran teachers' class rolls above the district class-size limit, but Samuell administrators saw the switch as necessary. Better to have too many kids assigned to good teachers than hundreds learning little from inexperienced ones.
This summer, Samuell faced its usual hunt for teachers. As of Friday, it had filled 15 of 17 vacancies. Mr. Cordero, Samuell's new principal, is optimistic about his staff and the opportunity to turn things around. "The energy levels here are very good right now, and the staff is excited," he said. "All of the conversations I've been involved in are about how this is going to be a wonderful school year."
FD: My prayers are with the teachers, staff and students at Samuell this year.
12:57 AM CDT on Sunday, August 24, 2008
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News kfischer@dallasnews.com
Three different people, three different perspectives, one common theory for Samuell High School's chronic underachievement: Too few are committed to seeing the Dallas school succeed. Too few students, says 2008 graduate Clyde Pikes III: "A lot of the time, my peers ... didn't want to receive the education that was given."
Too few parents, says mother Tarhonda Woodfin: "Parents put too much responsibility on the teachers, and they don't do their part."
Too few in the school district or in Samuell's Pleasant Grove neighborhood, says former principal Daniel Johnson: "Until the community gets involved and the district goes out and recruits real good, experienced teachers," nothing will change.
But something will change at Samuell in the school year that begins tomorrow, for better or worse. The latest round of state ratings tabbed Samuell "academically unacceptable" for the fourth straight year – a streak that will result in the school's closure if its scores don't jump this year.
The Dallas Independent School District just restructured nearby Spruce High School to avoid closure and has indicated that Samuell will meet a similar fate if it doesn't improve this year.
The Dallas Morning News visited Samuell several times last school year to better understand the obstacles impeding improvement and to learn more about its efforts at reform.
In the evolving drive to improve American public education, revamping inner-city high schools is the effort du jour. Dallas, too, is focusing on high schools.
A recent national report put DISD's graduation rate at 44 percent. The state recently rated 10 of Dallas' 22 non-magnet high schools "academically unacceptable" and would have included eight more if not for a temporary state reprieve on a new dropout standard.
Samuell's struggles, and those of most inner-city high schools, are rooted in persistent problems: too few effective teachers, students arriving with inadequate skills, absentee parents, too few community resources, and hard-to-break cycles of poverty.
Samuell teachers have been pushing ahead with improvement efforts for more than a year: Saturday tutoring, teacher training, programs on teamwork and camaraderie, and small, career-themed learning communities that are set to launch this fall.
But the efforts only go so far if students and parents don't participate, said Ms. Woodfin, a mother of three current and former Samuell students. Teachers last year held a math and science "lock in" – a sort of educational slumber party. "It wasn't a party – they had tutoring and all kinds of activities," she said. "But the main thing was they had a hard time getting kids to come."
DISD leaders are hopeful that Samuell will improve. Achievement trends in most subjects are heading in the right direction, albeit slowly. Yet the school enters this important academic year with many questions and few solid answers.
Samuell lost three of seven administrators over the summer, including the principal and the academic dean who were orchestrating improvement efforts. Although energetic and optimistic, the new principal has never led a high school.
In addition, the school has filled 57 vacancies in the last two years among its 118 teachers, many to comply with state orders to replace underperformers. Most were filled with teachers having little or no classroom experience. This summer alone, the school replaced 10 of its 18 math teachers. Good math teachers are crucial. Only slightly more than one-third of Samuell's students across all grades passed the state math TAKS exams last spring, well short of the 50 percent needed to escape closure this year.
But even if all the improvement efforts come together, and scores improve, the school could still stumble on other factors that determine a school's rating. Test scores, for example, must hit state targets for student "subgroups" – black, Hispanic, white and low-income. Next year, schools with graduation rates below 75 percent will be tagged "academically unacceptable." Samuell's rate in 2007 was 55 percent.
As with any organization, churn at the top can disrupt a school and impede improvement efforts. When Daniel Johnson became principal at Samuell in 2005, he was the third principal in three years. The first thing he noticed was that Samuell "didn't feel" like school, he said in an interview last school year. There was no student-produced work on the walls. Groups of kids roamed the halls instead of attending class.
"When I walked in, I was like, holy cow, I'd never seen anything like it," said teacher Jade Esquivel. "There was a real sense of fear before. It's not natural for mobs of kids to be in the halls or just to wander into your room when you're in the middle of a lesson." Brittany Douglass spent nearly three years at Samuell before transferring to a magnet program at Lincoln High School. It wasn't uncommon, she said, for students to show up to class and then leave right after attendance was taken. "You always had kids walking in and out, a lot of distractions going on," she said. "You had teachers who cared, but it seemed if they lost control, they just gave up."
The school climate has improved since then, Mr. Esquivel and others said. A dress code pushed out some troublemaking students who didn't want to conform. The number of "hall walkers" has been greatly reduced. Student artwork and classroom projects plaster the hallways, where they remain for weeks untouched.
Now, with Dr. Johnson taking a new job in Cedar Hill and Academic Dean Kathryn Carter leaving to become a principal elsewhere in DISD, Samuell faces yet another round of turnover.
Its new leader is Israel Cordero, an elementary school principal who taught and coached at Samuell 10 years ago. Joining Mr. Cordero will be a former academic dean from W.T. White High School and Joy Barnhart, a former W.T. White principal with a no-nonsense reputation, hired to advise Mr. Cordero.
"I am new as a principal, but I'm not new as a person in Samuell's community," said Mr. Cordero, who's been on the job about two weeks. "I've been able to hit the ground running and not have to learn how to navigate" the school and staff. Trustee Nancy Bingham, whose district encompasses Samuell, considers Mr. Cordero a good pick for the school but acknowledged he'll have to play a "perfect game" to avoid a fifth academically unacceptable state rating. "I've just got to be optimistic that they can do it if we get them what they need," Mrs. Bingham said.
And what, exactly, does Samuell need? Quality teachers, for starters, said its former principal and others, including Mrs. Bingham. Samuell was restructured in the summer of 2007 under state provisions for low-performing schools. Twenty-eight teachers were released from the school, selected primarily because of their students' scores on standardized tests.
Ultimately, the overhaul, called a "reconstitution," meant Samuell had about three months over the summer of 2007 to find 28 new teachers, in addition to the 12 vacancies created through normal turnover.
The issue of teacher quality confronts school systems across the country. Nationally, there is a shortage of qualified math and science teachers. Study after study has found that the least-prepared, most inexperienced teachers invariably end up in the nation's neediest schools.
In the end, 23 of Samuell's 28 "reconstituted" teachers were replaced by newcomers to the profession. Seventeen came in under the district's "alternative certification" program, which places people who are switching from other careers in classrooms while the district trains them to be teachers.
Last year, DISD began offering experienced teachers a $6,000 bonus to teach in 16 low-performing schools, including Samuell. Although thousands were eligible, only 65 teachers made the switch. Five went to Samuell. Mrs. Bingham said maybe it's time for the district to try a new approach. "Maybe we should explore a Peace Corps kind of program where we send [veteran] teachers into some of these schools," she said.
Teachers now at the school say they need parents to be more involved. In 2005, the PTA had three members, but had grown to about 185 last year. Recent graduate Clyde Pikes III noticed too many young and inexperienced teachers during his three years at Samuell. "Most of the teachers are younger teachers, and it's hard for them to control the students," said Mr. Pikes, who was active in student council and the school's debate team. "One of my teachers was in his first year out of college, and it was hard for him because he was just as young" as his students.
But he didn't blame adults for the school's struggles. "You have a lot of teachers that really, really care, but a lot of the time my peers didn't recognize how much they could benefit from that," he said.
Mrs. Carter, the academic dean, was responsible for evaluating teachers. One day last fall, she visited a few classes. The first was loud but orderly. Students remained in their seats, calling out names and ages of athletes as the teacher plotted the information on an electronic whiteboard. After the names and ages were logged onto the graph, the students entered the data into their graphing calculators.
Two doors down, the classroom of a new alternative certification teacher was in chaos.
In the back of the room a student, Roberto, leaned with his head against the wall. Sunglasses on and mouth running, he emitted constant chatter aimed at anyone and everyone. The teacher, 62 years old and brand-new to teaching, told the teen to be quiet. "What are you going to do about it?" Roberto shot back. A girl walked into the classroom and began passing out cookies, creating a minor flurry as kids scrambled to snag one. Roberto was talking again, pulling up a hooded sweatshirt: "How old do I look? How old do I look?" One student nodded toward the dean and asked a classmate, "Who's she?" "She's a nobody," the classmate replied. As the teacher began yelling – "Sit down!" "Be quiet!" "Stop that!" – two students walked out, followed by the girl with the cookies. Turns out, she wasn't in the class anyway.
In the hallway a few minutes later, Mrs. Carter was asked why the school didn't replace that teacher with somebody better. "It's November," three months into the school year, she replied. "Who would we replace him with?"
By early spring, though, two alternative certification math teachers, including the one above, were informed that their contracts would not be renewed for the 2008-09 school year. In an unusual move, their students were dispersed into the classes of more experienced teachers. The two non-renewed teachers served out the remainder of the year as teacher assistants and tutors.
The move bumped the veteran teachers' class rolls above the district class-size limit, but Samuell administrators saw the switch as necessary. Better to have too many kids assigned to good teachers than hundreds learning little from inexperienced ones.
This summer, Samuell faced its usual hunt for teachers. As of Friday, it had filled 15 of 17 vacancies. Mr. Cordero, Samuell's new principal, is optimistic about his staff and the opportunity to turn things around. "The energy levels here are very good right now, and the staff is excited," he said. "All of the conversations I've been involved in are about how this is going to be a wonderful school year."
FD: My prayers are with the teachers, staff and students at Samuell this year.
Allumni all over Dallas remember when W.W. Samuell High School was one of high standards and traditions. Once those are lost and forgotten, it is impossible to bring them back. The neighborhood changed from blue collar white to working class Latino with 1/3 always African American.
Hispanic Drug and Gun Gangs would shot out the windows and tag the walls of the buildings. Racial fights were daily occurances. For the last four years, administration never backed the teaching staff: teachers simply locked the doors of their classrooms as soon as possible and hoped that the undisciplined thungs would leave them alone.
There was simply was no meaningful consequences for disruptive classroom behavior. The blame was always on the teachers and never on the students. Around and around the blame went for too many years. DISD should rename the school and start over next year with Freshman only like Spruce and establish new traditions of Hispanic Culture and focus on trades and vocations. It would be the district's first all Latino High School with all the staff and students from the same culture. Spruce should be all African American staff and students. Bus all the others to BA.
As one of my emails said: "It was never the same after Coach Scott retired, and Danny Salinas was transferred. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuell_High_School
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuell_High_School
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