“Tutoring Central Falls: Chelseas turnaround of its schools offers lessons” plus 1 more

Tutoring Central Falls: Chelseas turnaround of its schools offers lessons

Posted: 19 Feb 2011 06:31 PM PST

01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 20, 2011

By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer

Failing schools in the poorest city in the state.

Half the students dropping out before graduating from high school.

Many students speaking a language other than English at home.

After years of failure, powerful outside forces intervening.

An alienated teachers' union.

This describes the Central Falls schools today, but it also describes the schools in Chelsea, Mass., two decades ago.

While Chelsea's quest –– a rollercoaster of struggles and successes –– is unique, it offers some lessons for school-improvement efforts in Rhode Island.

Just like Central Falls, Chelsea's schools suffered then and still suffer today from high student absenteeism as well as a large number of students who move frequently with their families, causing disruptions and instability in their education.

The city also claimed the state's highest teen pregnancy rate, while its students had among the lowest proficiency rates in reading and math.

Recognizing the gravity of the problems facing the schools, Chelsea and Boston University embarked on a first-of-its-kind partnership in 1989, with the support of Massachusetts lawmakers.

The city's School Committee agreed to cede control of the day-to-day operations of Chelsea's five schools to the university. The private university pledged to train Chelsea's teachers, provide steady leadership and leverage federal grants to pay for improvements. Massachusetts legislators also promised to help, giving the city millions to upgrade its decaying facilities.

Both sides could terminate the agreement at any time.

The collaboration was only supposed to last a decade.

Instead, it was renewed twice, despite tensions along the way, including an early lawsuit by the teachers' union which was concerned that teacher authority in the classroom would be undercut by the arrangement.

The partnership concluded amicably 19 years later, in 2008. It survived major changes in educational philosophy and was strengthened by the national movement to assess students and hold schools accountable for serving all students, codified in the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Improvements also took much longer than anyone expected, and involved many painstaking steps along the way.

The alliance fell short of some of its ambitious goals. But those involved in the effort could also point to substantial improvements in Chelsea's schools.

On balance, the partnership was a success, says Mort Orlov, a former Army officer and former chairman of Boston University's military science department, who was the principal of Chelsea High School from 2004 to 2007.

Orlov now works for Mass Insight, an organization of school-turnaround consultants that is advising the leaders at Central Falls High School. Orlov heads Mass Insight's math and science initiative.

"The Chelsea school system is much stronger today than before the partnership," Orlov said. "Did we accomplish everything we wanted to? The answer is no. We had very high expectations, which were appropriate.

"The fact is, the vast majority of our kids are capable of doing better work. And the kids in Central Falls are no less capable than the other kids in Rhode Island. Period."

By 2008, Chelsea was hailed by the Massachusetts Department of Education as "one of the state's leaders in improving student learning."

Test scores — on both state assessments and national measures such as the SAT –– had steadily improved.

The graduation rate increased from about 50 percent in the late 1980s to nearly 87 percent in 2007.

During the partnership, Chelsea developed its first-ever K-12 curriculum, along with an early childhood center, all-day kindergarten and family literacy initiatives.

Enrichment programs blossomed.

In later years, the high school began offering a wide array of Advanced Placement courses.

Despite all these advances, however, proficiency in key areas, such as reading, continued to lag.

Studies show that students who are not reading on grade level by the end of third grade are at high risk of never catching up to their peers.

In 2007, just 37 percent of fourth graders scored proficient or better in reading on MCAS, Massachusetts' standardized testing system.

And just 37 percent of 10th graders were proficient or better in math.

Chelsea School Supt. Thomas S. Kingston acknowledged the mixed record in his concluding message at the end of a 2008 report submitted by the BU-Chelsea management team to the Massachusetts legislature.

Kingston noted that Chelsea had focused on "mounting major efforts to close the educational achievement gaps for immigrants, the urban poor and children of color," and said the BU-city partnership had "laid the foundation for reform and initiated the city's journey on the pathway of continuous improvement of its educational system."

At the same time, Kingston wrote, the district continues to face enormous challenges shared by schools across the country, including "ever limited resources" and the challenges of preparing all students for the competitive 21st century economy.

One of the biggest impediments to student achievement persists in Chelsea and many other urban districts — a high student mobility rate.

"In Chelsea, we can promise our kindergartners that if they remain in the school system, by the end of their senior high school year, they will perform academically at levels that meet or exceed the average performance for all students in Massachusetts," Kingston wrote. "And yet, only 15 percent of our kindergartners will stay with us and graduate from our high school 13 years later."

Kingston said the school must find ways to provide additional supports for these students. He also said that one day he wants to extend the school day and school year.

Many of these same obstacles exist in Central Falls –– although the improvement effort at the high school differs in key respects from the BU-Chelsea alliance.

For starters, the turnaround effort in Central Falls involves one school rather than a whole system, although Supt. Frances Gallo says she is rolling out changes at the elementary and middle school level as well.

A partnership with the University of Rhode Island began promisingly a few years ago, but lost steam after several leaders departed, including former state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters and former URI President Robert L. Carothers. It never took root as firmly as the BU collaboration.

Also, the education world is different today than it was 20 years ago.

Many welcomed BU's help in Chelsea, while in Rhode Island, some groups, including teacher unions, have viewed the Central Falls turnaround effort with skepticism and concern.

Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, emboldened last year by new federal rules pushing states to intervene in chronically troubled schools, named Central Falls High School to the list. She told the community it had to select one of four federally approved methods to improve the high school.

But Gallo and the Central Falls Teachers' Union couldn't agree on what it would take to fix the school, and talks broke down.

Gist's January 2010 order and the deteriorating relationship between Gallo and the teachers' union put in motion a dramatic series of events that culminated in the firing of every teacher at the high school on Feb. 23.

Scars from this painful event have still not entirely healed, even after a May compromise that saved the teachers' jobs.

The division between district and school leaders and teachers continues to threaten the transformation of the high school.

If the two sides can come together, as they eventually did in Chelsea, the high school could make significant strides, say close observers of both school systems.

"The bottom line is, the way you get results like they did in Chelsea is by having high expectations," said Todd Flaherty, a former Rhode Island deputy education commissioner who began his career coaching football and teaching history at Chelsea High School in the 1970s. He left to become an assistant principal in Narragansett and later earned his doctorate at BU, keeping an eye on Chelsea.

"And that's the way they'll get it done in Central Falls," he said. "But it's a fallacy to think it's going to happen quickly. The support will only come if people understand that it takes time and if true collaboration exists among educators, parents and the community, including the vested partners. All need to be in it for the long haul."

To read a copy of the 2008 report to the Massachusetts legislature that includes a history of the 19-year partnership, go to: http://www.chelseaschools.com/cps/ district/bu-chelsea-partnership.htm

jjordan@projo.com

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Tutoring challenges

Posted: 19 Feb 2011 02:26 PM PST

THERE has been stiff competition amongst tuition providers says John Wong*, who has been running a tuition centre for about five years.

What parents usually expect is for their children to gain more knowledge and get better grades than what they are learning in schools, he adds.

He says that as examinations approach, students too expect to be given intensive revision sessions, where they get tips for exams, and learn how to tackle certain questions.

However with the availability of tuition centres at every nook and corner, convenience and proximity to their homes may be the factor that determines where students go for extra coaching.

In order to keep up with the competition, some tuition centres provide transportation or daycare services, which may require them to have other types of licences, but not all the centres have permits.

Home Tuition Care director Andy Low, whose agency helps individuals set up tuition centres and connects private tutors to students, says that it takes about nine months before a proper tuition business can be set up.

Low says that tuition centres are registered like any other businesses, and after they propose a name to the Education Ministry, they would get a letter of approval.

However, despite having an approval letter and business registration, a long process awaits before a tuition centre can be properly licensed and is operational as there are many checks to be done and requirements to be met by various departments and the local council.

"Since it takes so long for one to get licensed, it is common for tuition providers to open their centres before getting their licence because they would already have to start paying rent for the venue and would be making a loss otherwise," adds Low.

However, with a database of 26,852 tutors in Malaysia and 5,697 tutors in Singapore registered with them, Low believes that online matching services is a fairly new concept which is slowly gaining popularity.

Like Low, founder of an on-line tuition agency, Tuition Mall.com, Lai Heng Choong says, "Home tuition is becoming more popular in Malaysia today. Although it started picking up in Singapore first, it is also becoming more popular in Malaysia now."

He added that many parents today prefer to get their children on one-to-one tutoring instead of sending them to classes because they get undivided attention and can focus on their weak areas.

The site, which gets an average of 20 new tutors daily, is largely based on trust.

"What we do is to list the names of the tutors and their background information on our site, and then parents who are looking for tutors would identify the teachers they want, and we provide the tutors with the parents' phone numbers."

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Sunday, February 20, 2011