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Earning for learning in Redondo
How Washington School staff won $825,000
by Mark McDermott
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Washington School teachers at the entrance to their school, where skyrocketing academic performance has earned the 33 certified staff $825,000 in rewards as part of the governor’s incentive program. From left to right: Kathie Frazier, Jennifer Ennis, Kimi Watanabe, and Agnes Kiazolu. Photo by Mark McDermott. |
The checks aren’t quite in the mail, but they soon will be.
Within a few months, 33 checks, each worth $25,000, will be sent out by the California Department of Education, and the lives of 33 very surprised educators at Washington Elementary School will be changed. Some will catch up with years of accumulated bills, many will be able to afford a new car, and a few will finally be able to make a downpayment towards the purchase of a home.
It was a little more than two weeks ago when Principal Jeff Bordofsky was able to announce to his staff that the school had qualified for the rewards promised the most improved schools in the Certified Staff Performance Incentive program, the governor’s unorthodox $100 million plan to boost at-risk schools throughout the state. Not only had the school qualified, but they had posted the eighth most dramatic improvement of any school in the state, meaning they had earned the maximum award amount.
Fifth grade teacher Jennifer Ennis simply didn’t believe him. "He is kidding, right?" she said. "I mean, I seriously thought it was joke."
Fifth grade teacher Agnes Kiazolu still finds it hard to comprehend. "I won’t believe it until the check is in my hands," she said.
Second grade teacher Kimi Watanabe also finds it difficult to grasp, but she is willing to make the leap of faith. "I’ve already ordered my car," she said.
"I knew there was some pressure about some numbers, but I’m not into statistics," said third grade teacher Kathie Frazier. "This has been glorious to find this out. I’ve been teaching 33 years, and this is the first time, ever, there’s been any kind of bonus."
The anatomy of improvement
The certified staff of Washington School is being awarded a total of $825,000 because between the academic years of 1999 and 2000, their students scored a dramatic improvement in the Academic Performance Index. The API, a formula of measurement that relies heavily on the Stanford 9 standardized test, was designed by the state to help gauge the progress of each student and school statewide. It is a measure that will, in time, incorporate even more standardized tests, although the fate of the incentive program is uncertain.
Almost all the schools in the Redondo Unified School District have registered gains since the API began tracking their growth in 1999, but none so dramatically as Washington School. Principal Jeff Bordofsky said that it is impossible to point at any single factor as to why the school registered such strong gains, but he cited the strong community involvement at his school as vital to its success. "I really feel that everybody has contributed," he said. "It’s a combination of things: the amount of parent and community involvement, the focus from our staff, and a lot of support from the district."
The school has started several programs in recent years designed to give parents greater involvement with their child’s education. For example, the school conducts reading nights in which parents come to the school with their kids and go over strategies to help strengthen reading skills; the most recent reading night drew 230 parents and children, and this in a school of only 565 students. The school also requires parents to come in at the beginning of each school year and sign a contract, along with their child and the teachers, that says that each element of the "triangle" will live up to its end of the educational bargain. The idea is that everyone is accountable for the child’s education.
"Parental involvement and interest have gone up astronomically," said Bordofsky. "That has been a big part of our success."
"That’s really been a focus of our school: to get parents more involved, to buy into their child’s education a bit more," said Agnes Kiazolu. "And it’s hard. I mean, if you are a single parent and you are working, we realize the last thing you want to do is fight with your kids about homework. But there are things that you can do with your children at home that are like homework–like the recipe–reading, following directions, that’s a hands on activity that you can have the child do with you, but not have it take any more time. The reality is the time they have with their children is very limited."
Another element to the success at Washington is its proactive approach to helping students who are struggling. The school has a "Homework Club" which in a less positive environment might be called after-school detention, but here it is an opportunity for help that students often volunteer for. The Homework Club is for fourth and fifth graders, who are reaching a time in their lives where they face more responsibilities outside of school, and at the same time must be prepared for the upcoming transition to middle school. Each classroom is allowed five students in each day’s club, and it usually isn’t hard to fill the slots; Kiazolu said that day three of her five spots were filled by students who asked to go.
Even the younger students, who aren’t yet eligible for the club, sometimes ask to stay after school. "Our kids want to be in detention," marvelled Kimi Watanabe. "Not all of them, of course, but many of them."
As Kathie Frazier noted, there is a spirit of willingness that is pervasive throughout the school. "We try to encourage them that it’s fun to learn," she said. "We really try to make it a positive thing to learn, and I think it shows."
The pros and cons of standardized testing
The teachers at Washington, like most teachers, have a somewhat curious relationship with standardized tests. Their students spend two weeks of the year taking these tests, which is somewhat stressful and also takes away from the time they are actually taught. "The state needs a tool, a quantitative tool, to measure student achievement, and this is it," said Kiazolu. "I think that we constantly remind ourselves that yes, we’ll use this information we get from it. But it’s a two-week period, these kids are 6 and 7 to 10 and 11 years old. Let’s remember our clientele, and who we are dealing with. Developmentally, it’s not appropriate to make them set for 60 minutes and do an activity."
All the teachers recognize the value of the tests, but at the same time shy away from overvaluing such standardized measurements. "It’s one way to measure how the kids are doing," said Jennifer Ennis. "It’s not the only way, but it’s what colleges look at, it’s what the public looks at, it’s even what real estate agents look at. But we don’t teach to the test, in the sense that we are going to throw everything else out and just practice so these kids do well on the test. We do go over test-taking skills because test taking is a way of life. I mean, getting into four-year university, getting into graduate schools, it’s a skill that they need. Good bad or otherwise, it’s a fact of life."
The teachers are somewhat ambivalent about the testing, but they have very actively used the information the tests have given them to find areas to improve on. Before the 1999 school year began, the teachers analyzed previous SAT tests, and determined that they needed to focus on overall reading comprehension. . Functional reading, in particular, was an area that needed improvement–the everyday reading of bus schedules, menus, and directions. "We took a lot of planning days and used them to formulate an attack plan, basically, to target those kids maybe reading at grade level but not actually comprehending," said Kiazolu "We picked ourselves apart and tried to figure what is that we are doing and not doing. Our staff is really good at doing that–wanting to make changes if we need to."
Washington School faces some unique challenges posed by its ethnic diversity; many years, at least a fourth of the student population is bilingual and this year more than 100 of the students are English language learners. This is part of why the staff must retain such flexibility, and also part of why so many of the teachers love teaching there. Kathie Frazier said that in the year that the school is now being rewarded for, her classroom had students from nine different countries.
"It’s like the real world, in a mini-version," said Kiazolu.
The rewards
The staff at Washington is overjoyed that they are about to be financially rewarded for their hard and abundantly successful work, but these feelings are also accompanied by some ambivalence. For one thing, there are staff members–new teachers, instructional aides, and support staff–who work side by side with certified staff yet won’t be receiving bonus checks. "It is difficult, because so many non-teaching positions are integral to the success of the school," said Kiazolu. "And we have the best the best office staff."
The teachers all pointed to how vital instructional aides have been in the school’s quest to improve reading comprehension. When the "attack plan" was formulated in 1999, Brodofsky made certain that the school would have instructional aides trained and ready to help implement the plan. This also points to something all the teachers emphasized–their principal has set the tone that has allowed positive change to occur. "He not only talks the talk but walks the walk," said Kiazolu. In additional to helping provide the resources the staff needs, Brodofsky has fostered a work environment that is open to change, and where open communication is stressed. "I think he just respects us tremendously," said Jennifer Ennis.
On the day that the news of the awards reached the school, Brodofsky was quick to temper the spirit of celebration with a reminder that many other deserving teachers and staff would not be receiving such compensation. He also emphasized that although the school has made strides recently, the success they have achieved is built on the work of others–the teachers who have come before them at Washington as well as teachers throughout the district and the country who have helped reinvigorate and innovate education. "I really feel that everybody has contributed," said Brodofsky. "If there have been advances over the years, it is because people are able to build on what others have done. Everybody that comes into a school, if there is a culture of working together, then we can all learn. I believe in the team effort, very, very much. It’s something I see as a powerful thing."
Brodofsky said that while he is happy for his staff, the financial incentives had nothing to do with the academic progress the school has made. "I don’t think teachers need an incentive based on money," he said. "I have worked in this district since 1983, and the vast majority of teachers I have worked with are totally committed because they get great satisfaction making a difference for kids. Money is important, because we all need money to live, but we don’t need a monetary incentive to have good teachers."
That said, Brodofsky is appreciative of the intentions of the program, and the awards will indeed help his teachers continue to help others. Agnes Kiazolu, for example, after 20 years of teaching will finally be able to make a downpayment to own her own house in Redondo Beach. Jennifer Ennis, who has been teaching nine years, will finally trade in the car she has been driving for eight years, and she also has home-buying hopes. "I rent right now, and Redondo Beach is a great place to live, but on a teacher’s salary–on one income–you can’t buy here," she said. "So I’ll probably put most of it away and hopefully one day use it as a downpayment towards a house."
Kathie Frazier, who made $4,000 in her first year of teaching in 1967, said that she could retire now, but she loves teaching at Washington so much so has no plans to do so. She said the rewards are too great. "I don’t think there is anything a teacher likes to hear more than, ‘Oh! I get it!’" she said. "That’s the reward. That’s the fun part." ER