Education Week - May 22, 2013 - 14

EDUCATION WEEK

MAY 22, 2013

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COMMON CORE: A STEEP CLIMB

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13

shoulder more leadership duties, including nearly all the teacher observations. That frees her up to manage
a major building modernization and
myriad other obligations that crowd
her days.
Among the weightiest is managing
her budget; already this year, she’s
had to notify three Spanish teachers and the technology and mathintervention-lab teachers that she
can’t afford them next year because
30 students who had signed up for
Stuart-Hobson decided to enroll
in charter schools instead, taking
$274,000 in funding with them. In
triage mode, she persuaded the pta to
pay for Spanish after school. She still
managed to secure a schoolwide enrichment program for Stuart-Hobson
next year.
The day-to-day work of overseeing
English/language arts instruction
falls to Assistant Principal Katie
Franklin. She observes half the teachers at the school for their evaluations,
and says there is much to celebrate in
their teaching.
But there is also much to be done
to move her corps of teachers up
to where the district’s pedagogical
framework—and the common core—
would like them to be. And while she
gets training from the district, she
still struggles to foster better practice.
“I don’t know how to help them
sometimes,” she says of her teachers.
“It’s hard. I don’t think it’s the district
[failing to provide sufficient training].
You have to just experience teaching
this. My teachers are trying so hard,
but some are just not there yet.”
As the administrator in charge
of academic supports, Ms. Franklin
is acutely aware of how lucky her
school is. Here and at 10 other middle

schools, a district initiative aimed at
better supporting young adolescents
provides a mental-health clinician, a
social worker, and a “wrap care” coordinator, who connects students to
social services.
The initiative also created the job
Ms. Franklin now holds: assistant
principal of interventions. Her position gives her a bird’s-eye view of the
shortfalls, as well as the strengths, in
her school’s services.
Only 10 students at a time can participate in wrap care. It’s reserved
for the neediest students with ongoing problems. “More kids could benefit from it, but we are more fortunate
than many schools,” Ms. Franklin says.
Similarly, Read 180, an intervention Stuart-Hobson uses for children
reading two to five years below grade
level, can accommodate only 20 students from each grade at a time.
“Agonizing” choices must be made
continually, Ms. Franklin says, about
when students are ready to move out
of the double-period program and
attend only their regular English
classes. Such moves allow more students to benefit from Read 180, but
she worries that too many move out
before they’re strong enough readers.
Mikel Robinson was one of those
students. He spent double periods in
Read 180 last year. As an 8th grader
this year, he’s in regular English class,
even though a reading test given last
fall showed him at the 7th grade level.
He’s bright and outgoing, according
to his teachers, but weak skills in key
areas, combined with a lack of academic focus sometimes, are getting in
his way. By Christmas break, he’s carrying a D in Ms. McNair-Lee’s class.
She’s got her eye on him, but she’s
also got her eye on the 127 other students who fill and empty the desks
in her room five times a day. During

Photos by Jared Soares

Teachers Under Pressure to Help Students Master Standards

fourth period, Mikel’s class, she posts
herself next to his desk when his focus
wanders, tapping his paper or lightly
admonishing him to get to work.
After a year and a half, she knows
these students’ quirks, hopes, life
challenges. She peppers her oversight
with motherly tending, often answering students with “yes, baby,” and
sprinkling hip cultural references into
her explanations to make sure they
know she “gets” their world.
But Ms. McNair-Lee also nurtures
high hopes for them and isn’t above
bursts of frustration when her students squander opportunities to
learn. “You all’d better get with this,”
she erupts at Mikel’s class one day
when they’re particularly disruptive. “Do you have any idea what’s

MIKEL ROBINSON | Age: 14
8TH GRADE STUDENT
Stuart-Hobson Middle School

ikel Robinson has a dream for
the future, and he’s also got a
backup plan.
He’d love to follow in the
footsteps of his idol, Oklahoma City
Thunder star Kevin Durant, and become
a pro basketball player, but Mikel knows
that only a few manage that. So he’s set
his sights on a high school that has both
a good engineering program and a good
basketball team.
“I want to be something in life,” he
says, “a basketball player. Or I’ve got a
backup plan as a engineer.”
Coaches from several high schools came
to watch him play and pressed Mikel to
join their teams. But he applied to only
one of those schools: Roosevelt High, a
traditional comprehensive high school
in the District of Columbia, and got in.
District 8th graders who opt not to attend
their feeder high schools—Eastern High,
in Mikel’s case—can choose from a range

of high schools with lottery- or applicationbased enrollments.
His mother, a hospital aide who
graduated from Eastern, wanted
something better for her son; he says
she insisted he try for one of the lottery
or application schools. Mikel was
accepted, also, to the school district’s
Phelps Architecture, Construction, and
Engineering High, which offers strong
career-technical education alongside its
academics.
In Dowan McNair-Lee’s class at StuartHobson Middle School, Mikel tends to
be quiet. He takes notes and fills in his
worksheets, sometimes doodling if his
concentration wanes. Only rarely does
he raise his hand to chime in to class
discussions.
Mikel has his share of academic
struggles; last year, as a 7th grader, his
reading level was low enough that he
participated in the Read 180 program,

ahead for you next year?”
And every day, no matter what
kind of day it is, she begins class
with the same greeting, as if by
sheer repetition it might shape these
young lives.
“Good morning, scholars,” says the
teacher.
And every day—more energetically
on some days than on others—comes
the same response: “Good morning,
Ms. McNair-Lee.” n
Coverage of the implementation of the
Common Core State Standards and the
common assessments is supported in part
by a grant from the GE Foundation, at
www.ge.com/foundation. Education Week
retains sole editorial control over the
content of this coverage.

which his school uses for students who
are two to five grade levels behind.
He spent double periods daily in that
program and was also pulled out of his
electives periodically for reading support.

y the end of 7th grade, Mikel’s
reading had improved enough that
he left Read 180. But as an 8th
grader, though he says English
is “easy,” Mikel has earned D’s every
quarter so far in that class. His scores
on interim assessments have improved
dramatically during the year, but he
is still answering only about half the
questions correctly. He fails to turn in
more than a few classroom assignments.
Mikel doesn’t mind annotating text
passages; he kind of likes underlining key
details and ideas, and he says it helps
him remember the important things he
reads. But he hates writing assignments,
especially the portions of tests that ask
him to write paragraphs instead of choose
from several supplied answers.
“Yeah, those are the hardest,” he says.
Ms. McNair-Lee is all too aware of
what his aversion to writing has done to
his grades; she notices that many of the
assignments he doesn’t turn in are writing
assignments. And she senses that his

Instructional coach
Sarah Hawley posts
notes on the common
standards in her
classroom. The
district provides
coaches to nearly
all its schools to help
teachers with their
instruction. Ms.
Hawley and the
teachers are keenly
aware of the clock
ticking down to
year-end tests.

academics don’t get much support at home.
Even as he walks a delicate line
academically, Mikel shines in the
hallways and outside Stuart-Hobson’s
doors. He jostles and jokes with friends at
passing periods and has good records for
attendance and behavior at school.
In the spring sunshine, he comes alive
on the baseball field, where as the team’s
catcher, he isn’t afraid to show off his
athletic gifts. His quick mind, winning
personality, and athleticism also show
during football season, when he’s a
running back, and during his favorite
time of year—basketball season—when
he leads his team as point guard.
Mikel is happy to own the connotations
those positions carry: “It means I’m smart,
and I make good decisions,” he says.
As he hovers on the brink of high
school, Mikel often draws inspiration
from Kevin Durant. “He grew up in D.C.,
too, and he came up through a rough
neighborhood,” Mikel says. “His mom
pushed him the way my mom pushes me,
to do what’s right on and off the court.”
The second-best moment of his life so
far, Mikel says, is when he got to meet
the player at a recent basketball camp.
What was the best moment? “That was
—CATHERINE GEWERTZ
being born,” he says.

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Education Week - May 22, 2013

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