Making progress, child by child

Aurora schools put emphasis on targeted teaching

Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 29, 2007 at midnight

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AURORA - Kindergarten teacher Margeauxx Sandt is down on the floor with four students. They are looking at a big color picture of a chimpanzee wearing a pensive expression.

What does the chimp think of us, Sandt wants to know.

"He might think we're bananas," says Alvaro Torres, 6.

"If he thinks we're bananas, what do you think will happen?" Sandt presses him.

"He'll eat your nose," Alvaro says, laughing.

Sandt, who teaches at Aurora's Sixth Avenue Elementary School, works hard for this kind of interchange.

She has to. The kids on the floor with her were targeted for extra help in speaking English because that's the skill they need most to succeed in the rest of their educational careers.

"What I wanted was for them to talk," Sandt, a 29-year teaching veteran, said after the lesson.

As Aurora tries to lift the lowest test scores in the metro area, a key strategy is focus - adopting clear goals for each class, each lesson, even each child.

"Planning has to be child by child," Sixth Avenue Principal Karla Groth said.

Changing demographics

Behind Aurora's academic woes are demographic changes that engulfed the district in the past decade.

In 1994, about 60 percent of Aurora students were Anglo, and 10 percent were Hispanic. Today, just under 50 percent of the students are Hispanic, and 25 percent are Anglo.

English is a second language for 39 percent of Aurora students, and 54 percent are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunch, the main measure of poverty.

Three out of four Aurora schools are rated low or unsatisfactory on annual school report cards issued by the Colorado Department of Education, a figure that has not budged since 2005.

Last summer, the Aurora Board of Education brought in John Barry, a retired Air Force general, to head the district.

Barry has spent the year talking to teachers, students, parents and community members and devising specific goals to overhaul instruction. The plan is contained in a 140-page, spiral-bound book that he and top administrators tweak weekly.

"What we come up with is not a hodgepodge of ideas - well, try this, then we'll try this, then we'll try this," Barry said. "It's an integrated enterprise plan that's meant to be focused on student achievement."

Key features include:

• Aligning the curriculum with state standards, which are the basis for annual achievement tests.

• Using "pacing guides" that break the material into parts with clear objectives that are the basis for lessons. Teachers districtwide will get the same pacing guides, so students who transfer schools will receive similar instruction.

• Using frequent tests to determine which students need help, instead of waiting for the state tests, which are given in the spring and don't yield results until August, long after the school year is over.

• Posting test results on "data walls" at each school and at district headquarters so officials - and visitors - can track progress. The data show each student, with names removed.

• Training teachers to work with students who speak a foreign language. The goal is for 50 percent of teachers to have such training.

• Training principals to work with teachers to improve lessons, and increasing teacher-to-teacher coaching.

• Adding a mini-semester in June 2008 to offer additional instruction. Participants will include kids who are falling behind but also students who are ready for more advanced instruction.

Except for the pacing guides and the June semester, these techniques have been available to Aurora teachers for years. They are standard practices in neighboring districts.

But Aurora and other struggling districts don't always use the strategies effectively, said George Anderson of the Washington, D.C.-based National Institute for School Leadership, which is conducting the principal training.

"It's many pieces to tie together, and the goals we set for ourselves are higher than in the past," Anderson said.

Better organization

Barry's plan has brought organization across the district, Groth said.

"We've got people sort of moving all in the same direction, whereas before, each school was kind of doing their own thing," Groth said.

This year, Sixth Avenue has been trying some of the curriculum materials that will be used districtwide next year.

In the kindergarten class, while some students are down on the floor learning English with Sandt, others are learning to recognize words in story books.

Down the corridor and around the corner, Dawn Erickson works on writing with a mixed group of fourth- and fifth-graders.

Erickson uses a curriculum that guides students through a process of developing their ideas, then fleshing them out with details.The curriculum spans grade levels, so the lessons will be coordinated with instruction that students received the previous year.

"It's very guided," Erickson said. "It provides a nice structure."

The principal training involves dissecting videos of actual instruction.

The principals recently saw a Japanese math teacher spend most of the period working through a single problem to drive home the concept. An American teacher in the next video threw a variety of problems at the class, seemingly with little organization.

"There is a problem to solve, and he moved to the conceptual understanding," West Middle School Principal Dale Krueger said of the Japanese teacher.

Every lesson has to have a "big idea," Krueger said. "What is the conceptual understanding you want kids to get?"

But just as important is making sure the lesson is getting through to all the students - even the ones who drift to the back of the room, several principals said.

"You have to monitor and see where they're at, so you can figure out what new learning is taking place and what the next steps are after that," Groth said.

By the numbers

Aurora Public Schools enrolls 32,595 students and employs more than 2,000 teachers.

• Ethnicity of students

Anglo 25.1%

Asian 3.9%

Black 20.5%

Hispanic 49.6%

American Indian 0.9%

• 54 percent: Eligible for free or reduced-price lunch

• 39 percent: First language other than English

morsonb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303 954-5209

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