Grants can help raise test scores

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Shortly after the bad news hit, Crawford Public Schools Superintendent Dick Lesher made a promise.

Poor test scores had landed Crawford Elementary School, with 125 students in prekindergarten through sixth grade, on Nebraska's list of "persistently lowest achieving schools" last year.

Lesher promised to get the school off the list. He guaranteed it.

A year later, after removing the principal and taking other steps in return for a fat federal grant, the school is on the right track to get off the list.

Lesher's district in the Nebraska Panhandle appears to be one success story from the controversial Obama administration program aimed at turning around the nation's lowest-performing, high-poverty schools.

Crawford test scores jumped dramatically in every grade last school year, but the cost in dollars is high.

The grant of nearly $400,000 a year for three years amounts to spending an extra $3,200 a year per student in the small district. That's nearly a third of what most Nebraska districts spend per student each year.

A similar investment in the average high school in the Omaha Public Schools would cost more than $6 million a year.

Last week, state officials unveiled this year's list of grant-eligible, persistently lowest-achieving schools — 96 in all — based on poor test scores or graduation rates over time. Officials said they expect to receive only enough federal money for grants to two of those schools, about $2.4 million.

Forty-four schools in the Omaha Public Schools made the list. OPS officials have said they oppose the listing policy and will not seek funding. In the past, the district obtained private funding to aid its listed schools.

Since Nebraska's first listing last year, the state has awarded 11 schools a total of $18.2 million in improvement grants. Schools taking money have to adopt one of four federal improvement models. So far, the listed Nebraska schools have elected to replace the principal and take other steps, including training teachers and using student growth as one measure of teacher effectiveness.

The listing came as a "shock" to the Crawford district, Lesher said.

District officials used the money to contract with a California consultant, at a cost of $180,000 for the first year, to assist with analyzing data and implementing good teaching practices, Lesher said.

The new principal, who came to Crawford from Scottsbluff, Neb., had some experience in turning around struggling schools, he said. The former principal moved to a new position helping oversee the improvement program.

There also was some soul-searching, he said.

"All of us in the education system had to take ownership that we were responsible for part of it, if not a big part of it," he said.

Crawford students scored better on the state reading test in every grade, third through sixth, last year. The jumps were big: 39 percentage points in third grade reading, 45 points in fourth grade. Nearly 40 percent of the school's students qualified for federal lunch subsidies, an indicator of poverty.

Lesher said the success came from "truly not just one thing."

Marilyn Moore, associate superintendent of the Lincoln Public Schools, is no fan of the listing policy, calling it "unfair and misleading and pretty demoralizing" for teachers and staff at the listed schools.

Scores for reading and writing are up, however, at Elliott Elementary, which received a grant last year.

The percentage of students proficient in reading jumped from 54 percent to 74 percent in third grade and from 36 percent to 50 percent in fifth grade.

Ninety-three percent of the school's students qualified for lunch subsidies last year. District officials replaced the principal and launched reforms. The former principal went to another LPS elementary school.

The school, awarded nearly $3.3 million over three years, paid teacher coaches to improve teaching techniques and spent money for after-school and summer extended learning.

Moore said she doesn't believe removing the principal was responsible for the improvement. Elliott's former principal was moved to Lincoln's Sheridan Elementary School, one of the district's high-performing schools. Sheridan's scores under the new principal jumped to 100 percent proficiency in some grades.

At Madison Elementary School in Madison, Neb., results have been mixed after the school wound up on last year's list, but the superintendent is optimistic things will get getter.

Fifty-nine percent of students qualified for lunch subsidies last year.

Madison received a three-year, $1.4 million grant and spent $465,000 the first year. Much of it went for professional development for teachers, said Madison Superintendent David Melick.

"We have made some gains in both reading and math, and yet we have some room to continue to work," Melick said.

District officials used part of the grant to start a preschool they hope will raise achievement in the long run.

"We have a lot of students in our community that don't have those early learning opportunities," he said.

Melick said he believes the progress they've made came from a concerted effort by the staff involved. Removing a principal won't do it by itself, he said.

Teachers have to believe they can consistently move kids to higher achievement day after day, he said.

"The money can enable some things," Melick said. "But without the mindset, without the attitude, without the belief that our staff can help students improve, nothing's going to happen. That is not something that any one person controls."

Contact the writer: 402-444-1077, joe.dejka@owh.com

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