Get Those Scores Up

Three Tales of Working to Prevent NCLB Sanctions

By Mark Anderson

The stated goal of No Child Left Behind is that literally, no child should fail due to the absence of good, educational attention from school and family.

As part of achieving that goal, NCLB legislation funded and required that local districts create tutoring and other remedial programs for children scoring below their grade level.

We visited with principals and teachers at three public Montessori programs recently to learn about how that effort is working, and about how well those remedial curriculums can conform or cohabit with a Montessori approach.

Here are some excerpts from their stories.

Portage Collaborative Montessori
200 students, age 3-8th grade
North Canton, Ohio

When staff at Portage Montessori recognize a student has fallen behind in any curriculum area-through performance on IEPs or on district tests-they convene a meeting of the school's intervention team.

The classroom teacher, school psychologist, parents and the school's intervention specialist all take part, but the intervention specialist will play the lead role in implementing a four-to-six-week remedial plan.

She'll rely on conventional curricula and instructional methods, though. The specialist at Portage isn't a trained Montessori teacher.

But Pincipal Jane Reifsnyder is comfortable with that hybrid approach to remedial efforts. One reason is that their intervention specialist has been working with Portage Montessori staff for nine years. "She understands and respects Montessori, and she certainly respects students," Reifsnyder said.

The intervention takes place in the classrooms, too, with the specialist working side by side with certified Montessori teachers, who help implement the plans. AMS or AMI-trained teachers lead each Portage classroom.

"Montessori teachers are so good at recognizing a child's needs, they've usually already started interventions before the team meets," Reifsnyder said.

The remedial program-and NCLB-haven't caused many major changes at Portage, and several factors contribute to that.

The school enjoys a little extra autonomy, in part because it's a Montessori magnet shared by six area districts. Reifsnyder said that arrangement seems to buffer the school from some district scrutiny. And in the district that officially administers Portage-Canton City Schools-Portage is the only school that isn't identified as a school improvement site.

The comfort and confidence the Portage staff feels under the NCLB mandates also owe something to the environment in their building. "We're site-based managed, and we're used to doing everything in a collaborative way," Reifsnyder said. Parents and staff share a commitment to Montessori, too. "They've said, 'This is a challenge, but it's important to continue Montessori in a public setting, and we're going to do it.'"

There have been changes, though. The staff spent considerable time aligning state content standards with Montessori lessons, and they carefully comb the state test results, now. "We're more aware than ever about which children are behind" as a result, Reifsnyder said.

"Those changes aren't all negatives, they aren't all positives. But we don't feel that we've departed from Montessori."

The impact of NCLB on Montessori has been more stark in other schools, Reifsnyder said. "Montessori programs in public schools have gotten few and far between in Ohio because of NCLB. People have thrown in the towel and said, 'This is just too hard.'"

Poe Montessori Magnet
450 students, age 4-5th grade
Raleigh, North Carolina

The Wake County Public Schools assign remediation staff positions based on enrollment in each district school, and Poe Montessori gained a half-time remedial specialist teacher as a result, assigned to improve reading proficiency for 3rd-5th graders who scored poorly on standard tests.

Poe tried a number of ways to implement the program-in after-school and Saturday classes-before settling on pull-out sessions during the school day.

"The after-school and Saturday meetings were good because they didn't interrupt regular class time," said Poe Principal Sally Reynolds. "But the problem was getting kids there, or getting them at a time when they weren't exhausted. We'd like to do the remedial work in the classroom, but with as many rooms as we have and only a half teacher, that wasn't practical."

The students selected for the remedial groups have failed the state's standardized tests, and they're generally one or two grade levels behind their age group. Some remedial students have limited English skills, some are neighborhood students who have just arrived in the Montessori program, and some are just having difficulty with a curriculum area, Reynolds said. Like all Wake County magnet programs, Poe serves more students on free-and-reduced lunch programs than the district norm, and it's also a Title I school.

During the remedial period the focus is on test preparation "and I definitely see the students making progress there," Reynolds said.

"It isn't very Montessori, though," and given the limited time during the day, "those children are missing out on things in their classroom, too," she said.

Teachers at Poe are all either certified Montessori instructors or in the process of completing training. Reynolds wasn't trained as a Montessori classroom teacher, but she does have AMS administrative credentials.

North Carolina has long used standardized annual testing as a way to measure outcomes in classrooms and schools, and Reynolds is comfortable working in that model.

"But the accountability in North Carolina was based on whether a student was growing in the classroom," she said. "If the child made significant progress, that was success."

The NCLB's goal is different and will be difficult to achieve without much more spending, she thinks. "NCLB expects all children to be able to perform the same regardless of where they start. But with kids coming from dramatically different backgrounds, expecting the same outcomes isn't realistic."

Poe is feeling the pressure of those expectations a little more acutely this year. After meeting AYP guidelines its first two years, the school failed one of its 17 measures last year and is out of compliance for the first time.

Taft Montessori Learning Academy
487 students/130 in Montessori, age 3-6th grade, Stockton, Calif.

Taft MLA is feeling strains familiar to many urban schools that are struggling not just to meet the needs of diverse student bodies but to keep up with an educational mini-revolution that's following in the wake of NCLB.

The Stockton Unified School District is now in its third year as a program improvement district after failing in successive years to meet California AYP requirements. That status contributed to a shakeup at the top of the district: it's now led by a new interim superintendent, deputy superintendent and business manager, and by a school board with 5 of 7 members who are newly elected. That team is administering a wave of curriculum and school organization reforms, driven by both NCLB performance goals and by a promise to control spending, said Taft Principal Dee Johnson.

Six separate remedial programs have been instituted at Taft as part of that reform, focusing on students with low test scores or English language deficiencies. Stockton United added two teaching positions to conduct those remedial classes, scheduling both as school-day pullouts during the day and after-school classes.

Those classes use scripted, traditional curriculum methods, but Judith Balcao, one of Taft's veteran Montessori-certified elementary teachers, said the outcome can benefit students and doesn't undercut the Montessori environment at Taft.

"The extra programs provide a complementary component to the Montessori curriculum," she said, delivering extra instruction for students who need it. Balcao and other Taft teachers reviewed the programs with the remedial specialists to coordinate their classroom lessons with the pullouts. They had already aligned their Montessori lessons with district content.

Although those remedials can be a useful strategy for helping students catch up, Balcao noted that an effective "alternative to pull-out programs is basically embedded into the Montessori curriculum." The two-to-three year classroom enables children to learn their grade-level lessons, and Montessori curriculum provides materials to reinforce and re-teach those lessons, under the guidance of the teacher, she said. "Students can develop and work with a concept until mastery, without the frustration of 'moving on' before they are ready."

Johnson shares that confidence in Montessori with Balcao and others on her staff, but she said Taft Montessori does face a number of challenges now.

The Taft magnet opened 12 years ago, with Montessori training and certification provided for all its teachers through a federal grant. The grant ended in 2001, and since then the ranks of experienced, Montessori-trained teachers have thinned, due to turnover and the cost and time it takes to obtain training. The district provides no training compensation, Johnson said.

So with many uncredentialed, relatively inexperienced teachers facing the challenge of engineering rapid academic gains-Taft's test scores are flat and close to Stockton's failing district average-Johnson said she's instituted single-grade classrooms in part of the school. The teachers in those rooms incorporate a hybrid approach that focuses on the district's core curriculum with some Montessori lessons integrated.

Teachers who have certification and experience continue to teach in multi-age rooms, utilizing Montessori curriculum aligned to the district.

Johnson said she's continuing to highlight the exceptional outcomes Taft's full-Montessori classrooms are providing.

She points out that scores in classrooms led by experienced Montessorians-she calls them her master teachers-are well above school and district averages.

Students who remain in the Montessori program from preschool through grade 6 also score well above their peers, which points to a factor that has lowered Taft's overall scores. Taft offers Stockton's only free preschool, and many children who are enrolled move on to other public or private program before testing begins in second grade, taking the benefits of that early childhood program with them.

Johnson said that Taft's immediate supervisor, elementary education director Dan Wright, recognizes all those factors and is one of the Montessori program's strong supporters.

But all in all it's a precarious time, she admitted. "We're hanging on by a shoestring."