A rural Florida school district has one year to turn around a school that's struggled academically for much of the past two decades.
If it doesn't improve during the upcoming school year, Hamilton County High School could be one of the first schools affected by a new state law that ratchets up the pressure on low-performing schools.
But district Superintendent Rex Mitchell may have another idea. According to the Suwanee Democrat, he wants to consider merging the long-struggling high school with a newly constituted elementary school.
Last month, Mitchell told the state Board of Education the district has combined its three elementary schools onto a single campus.
Merging the high school with the just-merged elementary schools could reset its turnaround timeline. Or so officials hope. (more…)
Teaching assistant Heather Polous works with a small group of fourth graders. Photo courtesy ABC School.
She saw children spread out across classrooms, working with manipulatives. They were playing, but they also seemed to be learning. There wasn't a worksheet in sight.
"When I saw that, I told my husband, 'Whether I get that job or not, our kids are going here,'" she said.
She got the job, and her three children left a nearby private school to join her.
While she may not have known it at the time, she was about to join one of the most successful teams of rural educators in Florida.
Looking through state accountability reports, it's hard to find a school that enrolls as many economically disadvantaged students and matches the academic results of this charter school, which sits a few blocks off the main drag in a small fishing village on Florida's Forgotten Coast.
State records show 99 percent of the students in the school are economically disadvantaged, and it serves more minority students than the lone public school run by the local Franklin County district. When the most recent round of school grades came out last month, the ABC School received its fourth-straight A. Fewer than a dozen schools in the state achieved a similar feat.
Teachers and administrators say having an assistant in every two classrooms (one per grade level) goes a long way toward explaining the ABC School's results. The aides allow teachers to do things they couldn't on their own, working with students one-on-one or in small groups. They help prepare weekly reports on student learning, and can present material in different ways, doubling the chances lessons will click with students.
The aides help overcome another challenge rural and small-town schools face: Recruiting qualified teachers. After four years as an aide and two years substituting, Cassidy began teaching middle school math this year. Chimene Johnson, the principal, said it's fairly common for assistants to make that jump. (more…)
While charter schools have proliferated in Florida, nearly a third of of the state's school districts, most of them rural, don't have one — a fact that got attention from members of a state House panel discussing charter school legislation.
State Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, wanted to know whether home education and virtual schools were more popular with parents who had fewer charter schools available (maps of state data support this idea in some places; in others it's less clear).
Since districts without charters tend to be rural, parents looking for other options could face a long drive to a neighboring county, said state Rep. Janet Adkins, R-Fernandina Beach. She wanted to know if the state could use one of its grant programs to lure charter schools to communities where none exist.
“We’ve got 22 counties that don’t have their first charter school," she said, and then asked "if there's a way that we tailor something for those counties... so that we can incentivize and grow choice in counties where there is none." (more…)
Rural school districts are more likely to be disadvantaged by one-size-fits-all mandates from state legislatures and the Federal government. Yet rural districts, where resources are already spread thin and school are often important employers, are also more likely to be skeptical of school choice programs.
A new policy brief by Dan Fishman in Education Next, argues new schooling options and other education reforms could not only work in rural America but could also help revitalize its communities.
Fishman, a former high school teacher from rural New Mexico, says top-down mandates can stretch the resources of rural schools. While urban districts have the manpower to interpret rules or complete reports, rural districts must rely on a smaller central staff. Although qualified candidates may live in the community, state teaching certification and licensing requirements may leave classrooms unfilled as rural districts struggle to find certified teachers.
According to Fishman, the federal i3 (Investing in Innovation Fund) grant application takes 120 hours at a minimum to complete. Often districts have to pay outside consultants to handle paperwork that may reward the district with about $30 to $90 extra per pupil. Again, rural districts find themselves on the short end of the stick.
So why add more educational options like charter schools, if districts can barely stretch the resources for the existing schools? (more…)
The origins of the approach that's driving one of Florida's newest and most highly rated rural charter schools can be found 55 miles to the West, in Tallahassee.
Demetrius Rice
At Godby High School in Leon County, Demetrius Rice helped transform a dusty wood shop into cutting edge classroom-slash-robotics lab, where he led a career academy that helped students build math and science skills while preparing them for careers in engineering - which at times involved building robots, piloting drones and operating 3-d printers.
"I was kind of in my own world in that room," he said. "I was kind of like Bill Nye the Science Guy. (Other educators) would walk in and see things flying around and say, ‘thats cool.’"
It was cool, but he felt the program that thrived in one corner of Godby could be a model for an entire school. Couldn't all students benefit from lessons that presented them with real-world problems to solve, and that allowed them to leave high school with skills that would be relevant later in life?
This year, he has a chance to try that approach. He's now in his first year as principal and STEM director at James Madison Preparatory High School. Located in the heart of downtown Madison, a town of less than 3,000, the second-year school has created a new option in one of Florida's smallest districts.
The school opened a little over a year ago. It was started by a group of parents who wanted a college-preparatory option for students in a district with only one public high school. Justin Davis, the chairman of JMPHS' foundation, said the "stars aligned" when the board heard about Rice. He had experience leading new STEM programs and understood how to infuse a curriculum with skills students' could apply in their professional lives.
The robots Rice's students build are guided by algebraic equations. Their movements must be programmed based on the number of wheel rotations needed to travel a certain distance - which students must calculate using the circumference of a circle.
He said his time leading Godby's career academies have shown him students can benefit when “they can see themselves solving a real problem” that reinforces a core academic subject.
He is not alone in that realization. Last year, lawmakers approved a major expansion of career education programs. The measure received support from educators and business groups alike, and created financial incentives for school districts and charters to provide more chances for students to earn industry certifications before they graduate. (more…)
The parents love the school, even though the state says it’s failing. So against all odds, they’re looking for options to stave off its closure.
Shining Star Academy of the Arts
Shining Star Academy of the Arts, a charter school in Columbia County, Fla., received F grades from the state in its first two years of operation. Under state law, it must lose its charter. But supporters say its music, drama and arts programs provide unique options to rural students in North Florida.
So they've come up with a plan. Over the next three months, while the current school winds down, they want to fast-track an application for a new, academically revitalized institution that could take over in the middle of the school year, serving the same children in the same location under new leadership.
That scenario would likely be unprecedented for a Florida charter school that faces closure under the state's "double-F" law. Getting the local school board to approve the plan may be a long shot. But there's nothing in state law that prevents supporters from trying. They say they plan to raise the idea at the board's meeting Tuesday, when it's scheduled to formally terminate the school's charter.
Shining Star's attributes, including its heavy focus on the arts, drew parents from surrounding rural counties, undeterred by its academic struggles. Sometimes, there's a big disconnect between what regulators and parents think is a good school.
"My kids had never been able to learn music," said Takeya Cray, who said she planned to keep her fifth grader and eighth grader enrolled as long as the school stayed open. "Now, one of them plays the guitar, one of them plays the cello. I like that."
Tony Buzzella, the founder and current principal, opened the Shining Star more than two years ago, not long after the death of his friend and mentor, the prominent Lake City musician and educator Alfonso Levy. The two men envisioned a K-8 school where children could learn to play instruments and cultivate a love for the arts. Buzzella said the school had realized key parts of that vision – as he put it, "More arts, no bullies."
What was lacking, especially in the early going, was academics. Particularly math.
In the 2012-13 school year, one out of four fourth graders scored a 3 or higher on the FCAT math tests. In other grades, the numbers were worse. Buzzella made changes. He replaced a math teacher and extended the school day. Test scores rose in some areas in the second year, but remained among the lowest in the county, and the school still got an F.
Buzzella said the school had shown improvement, and one more year would be enough to right its course.
Many parents – some of whom had previously eschewed the public school system – were in his corner.
The proliferation of charter schools around the country has come more slowly to rural areas.
Yet nationwide, nearly 800 rural charter schools are grappling with limited funding, diffuse populations, and, in some cases, resistance from local school districts. Away from the spotlight of major media markets, they haven't gotten as much attention as their urban counterparts.
But perhaps they should.
Terry Ryan is president of the Idaho Charter School Network. At an annual gathering of charter school advocates and educators in Las Vegas, he opened a discussion of high-performing rural charters by pointing out that only 27 percent of rural high school graduates make it to college - a sign, he said, that students in those areas could benefit from more options.
Michael Hayes, director of Crestone Charter School in southern Colorado, said it took time for a new "laboratory for learning" to take root in the Rockies and ease tensions with the local district. He recalled supporters in the early years leaving school board meetings and finding the tires on their cars had been slashed.
Over time, he said, the school learned to collaborate with the district and began to serve as a community gathering place, offering yoga lessons in a multi-purpose room known as Rainbow Hall.
"It took us 16 or 17 years to feel permanent, like we might not go away the next year," he said. Now, "they know that we're here to stay, that we're not going anywhere."
Asked what policies could help newer schools achieve a similar sense of permanence, Kylie Holley, principal of the Pataula Charter Academy in southwestern Georgia said: "Hands down, equitable funding." (more…)
