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Grading the school year

July 21, 2006
By March, there's a new problem in Natalie Brady's third-grade classroom at the University of Chicago Charter School ? which has set a daunting goal of trying to teach a mix of poor and middle-class kids.

Even students once reliably good have started misbehaving.

Week by week, Chicago Sun-Times reporter Kate N. Grossman watched the bold experiment unfold from inside Brady's Room 206 at the U. of C.'s new Donoghue campus.

Her reports about the first six months at the school on the gentrifying Mid-South Side appeared in Friday and Sunday papers.

Since September, temper tantrums and fighting have interrupted instruction. The school hopes to produce results for everyone, but the constant misbehaving gets in the way.

Still, there are signs of progress: Every child's reading has improved.

The individual help and extra care by Brady and the Donoghue staff are starting to placate some disgruntled middle-class parents.

But there is a price. Brady will leave teaching when school ends in June.

As spring approaches, behavior improves slightly but not enough to quell one mother's fears that other students' bad attitudes are rubbing off on her daughter. Meanwhile, another mother is told her daughter must shed her tough exterior to excel at Donoghue.

•   •   •   

In late March, the week after report cards, a new calm takes over Room 206.

The kids are on better behavior with the prospect of summer school looming.

And, at the urging of Donoghue's director, the third grade installs a more clear-cut behavior system. Now, kids who act out get checks next to their names. Four checks equal a call home.

The director also pulls the plug on the literacy centers, which she mandated at the start of the year. For the next few weeks, Natalie Brady will instead teach reading strategies to the whole class at once.

Eventually, the kids will read and write silently while Brady works with guided reading groups.

But it isn't enough.

The school's director, Nicole Woodard Iliev, opts for drastic action.

On April 17, Brady's class size will drop from 25 to 16.

Woodard Iliev hired a new teacher to open another third-grade room. Instead of 25 kids each in two third-grade rooms, there will three rooms with 16 or 17 each.

The most disruptive kids will be separated, and the rooms will get a more manageable mix of high- and low-achieving kids.

Brady also will get a co-teacher to help with her 16 kids. Sarah Cooper will work with Brady until June and stay on next year as her replacement.

The U. of C. prides itself on diagnosing kids' academic needs and targeting help where it's needed most.

But Brady mostly just sees an endless stream of changes from above.

""They want to say they have all this stuff -- tutoring, reading specialists, smaller class sizes. But it takes more thoughtful planning to do it right,"" says Brady, who also thinks the school is overly focused on test results and using them to prove it can meet the needs of every child.

A few middle-class moms also are worried. Leigha Groves, a police officer, says Brady knows how to challenge her daughter. She's not confident her new teacher can match that.

But Brady has no energy to fight.

Her mother was just diagnosed with cancer. She was in remission, but now the prognosis is dark.

""I'm not sure shaking things up at the end of the year is the best idea, but I've never done it before,"" she says wearily. ""Maybe it'll be just what we need.""

A new Room 206

It's 10:15 a.m. on April 18, and Room 206 is eerily silent.

Nine students are hunkered down at their desks, reading quietly.

In the back, the remaining five listen attentively as their new teacher, Cooper, introduces a guided reading book.

Endangered Animals is one of the first nonfiction books this group has tackled intensely this year. With limited time in groups, the focus had been on basic reading skills -- speed, comprehension, intonation -- not mastering content.

For the next 20 minutes, the group dissects the book. Cooper, a 28-year-old blond who grew up in a working-class Indiana family, interrupts herself just once, to briefly chastise a boy who was daydreaming instead of reading.

When her timer goes off, the kids have one minute to return to their seats.

The transition is seamless.

It's Day Two in the new Room 206.

The change is nothing short of miraculous.

Cooper has instituted strict new rules -- she goes after kids for the tiniest infractions and refuses to answer any questions without a raised hand.

The third-grade rooms also have another new behavior system. The first misstep moves a kid's name from a green to a yellow circle on the white board. Another infraction moves the kid to a red circle, and a teacher calls home.

And with two adults and only 14 kids -- today two are absent -- there is no room to do anything but work.

At first, Empress and Amare, who remained in 206, bristled under Cooper's strict hand.

But a desire to please Brady and their parents takes over.

Amare now walks in each morning with a spring in her step, cracking her signature cockeyed smile.

""Amare is actually excited about school now,"" her mom gushes. ""She actually tells me what she learns instead of about the new dances she's learned.""

Empress asks Brady for a note home, ""telling my mom I'm being nice.""

Brady willingly obliges. Empress now scrunches her long, skinny face, holding back insults desperate to get out.

But she's not there yet. To make student of the month, no slip-ups are allowed. In April, she landed on the yellow circle on the white board three times.

On this day, a sunny Tuesday, both sides of Empress are in plain view.

The kids are gathered in a circle on the rug. Each names an animal they'd like to be.

A heavy-set girl, one of Empress' targets all year, says fish. Several kids giggle, but Empress thrusts her hands before her mouth and squelches a laugh.

When it's Empress' turn, she makes a bold pronouncement: ""I want to be a tiger because it's rough and tough.""

May 9

On May 9, the academic spread in Room 206 is as wide as when school started in September.

But now Brady can attack it without distraction.

Every guided reading group meets daily with Cooper or Brady, with several two-a-day sessions for the lowest group. After seven months of school, there is enough time to focus on content, not just basic skills.

The full morning -- 9:15 to 12:15 -- is now devoted to literacy, with independent work tightly controlled. Whole group reading and writing lessons, dictated by a U. of C. curriculum, are alternately led by Brady or Cooper while the other wanders the room, keeping order and working individually with kids.

Makela, who also stayed in Room 206, has improved, too. Her name still lands on the yellow and red circles more than most. But with two teachers watching, she has little room to misbehave.

It has been a humbling experience for Brady, who is increasingly absent to care for her mother.

But watching her students grow also feels a lot like victory.

May 31

It's nearly 8 a.m., and every chair except one is filled at the May student-of-the-month breakfast.

Four round tables decorate the school's small library, each set with a plastic white tablecloth and four place settings of blue and white napkins and plates. Many kids and their parents are here for a second time.

The breakfast was called for 7:30, and Woodard Iliev must start.

Just as she turns to third grade, Empress rushes in, her face tense. Her hair is done up special,a bun of cornrows on top of her head. She wears the same maroon zip-up cable knit sweater she has worn all year.

When her name is called, Empress heads to the front of the library, her lips pressed together hard, holding back a smile.

Empress says the ""girl power"" group she attended, led by the social worker, made the difference.

""We talked about how if you be mean, people be mean back to you, but if you're nice, they'll be nice back,"" Empress says. ""And when I tried it, it was true.""

Brady skipped the ceremony, but it was her decision to honor Empress.

""She's completely cooking, all the time,"" Brady said. And most important, she added, ""She's taking other kids with her.""

Empress was late this hazy, 70-degree morning because her mom's 1991 Buick Regal broke down. Equator Howard has been driving it even though the bumper is crushed on the driver's side and half of the grill is missing.

For several days, she has walked an older daughter to Doolittle School, where Empress used to go. To get there, they pass through the park adjacent to where the projects are still standing. Howard sees addicts nodding on park benches.

""That sets the tone, and those kids live in it. In their hallways, in their park,"" she says. ""A child can't afford to be a child in a world like that.""

At Donoghue, Empress could let down her guard.

""She changed her attitude,"" her mom says proudly. ""She's a better person.""

But Empress isn't ""too nice,"" and her mother likes it that way.

""I want her to know how to turn it on and off,"" she says.

The neighborhood is changing, but not fast enough, Howard says.

As if to prove her point, Empress gets hit in the eye with a stone later that day, by a boy near her grandmother's public housing row house, sending her to the emergency room.

Howard, who is also trying to control her temper, notes that she didn't go after the boy's mother, who was recovering from gunshot wounds.

Coming back for more

Empress could skip summer school, but she's going anyway. She didn't have plans, and school is where she wants to be.

Makela is also supposed to go, though she exceeded everyone's expectations.

U. of C. expects kids to grow by at least three reading steps a year, but Makela doubled that. She began at level three, high kindergarten. She's now level nine, high second grade. Brady thinks that's a bit generous -- someone else tested her -- but there is no doubt Makela excelled.

Empress and Makela plan to return to Donoghue in September, as will Aleigha, one of Brady's top students.

Her mother, Leigha Groves, says Aleigha is bored in her new classroom, but it doesn't shake her confidence in Donoghue. This is now her school -- most nights she's there, at a parent committee meeting, volunteering or taking a class.

""Next year, I'll be more prepared to tell them exactly what my expectations are,"" Groves says in late May. ""I definitely still feel good about sending Aleigha there. They are trying to change.""

Justyn Stanford plans to return, though his mother, Nicole Miller, isn't happy about it.

Her son moved to a new classroom. He still shouts out answers, but the tantrums and the fighting that disrupted learning in Room 206 disappeared, his new teacher says.

Miller ultimately blames Justyn somewhat for his behavior. And it's valuable to learn to deal with kids from different backgrounds, she decides in the end.

But it's not her top priority.

She wants Justyn at the U. of C.'s other campus, a high-scoring school in North Kenwood that picks kids by lottery, as most charter schools do. His name is on a long wait list.

Unlike Donoghue, that school doesn't have an attendance boundary. Donoghue isn't strict enough to handle its population, she says.

""The neighborhood is changing economically, but the projects are still there,"" she says. ""Those kids need an opportunity, but when you look at the schools they came from, where the behavior was out of control, you can understand why they act the way they do.""

Different wavelengths

Amare is already gone.

On May 15, Amare started at McCarty School in Aurora/Naperville District 204, one of the region's top districts.

By May 24, it's as if Amare has always been there.

She wears a relaxed smile and a pink terrycloth skirt and sweat shirt. It's silent reading time in the small, packed classroom, and Amare settles in comfortably with a folk tale.

The schools are similar in many ways. McCarty uses guided reading, U. of C. Everyday Math, and there is a range of skills among the 30 kids in Amare's room, though more are clustered near grade level than at Donoghue.

But the schools are different in ways that matter to her mother.

About 79 percent of third-graders meet state reading standards, just 10 percent of the kids qualify for free or reduced lunch, and the school is racially diverse -- 53 percent of the kids are white and 18 percent are black.

And when you look out the window of the low-slung brick school, you see manicured lawns and backyards filled with slides and swings.

""Everyone is well-fed, in a decent house; parents really care,"" says her mother, Joslyn Jones. ""You don't have the issue of not being able to go outside and play, of 'this kid is hurt and acting older than they really are.' I know the Chicago parents care, but it's a different culture and a different way of coming up out here.""

The McCarty kids act out, Amare's new teacher readily admits, but Amare says it doesn't compare with Donoghue.

Jones moved when her lease expired May 15 for many reasons.

She thinks suburban kids, no matter their economic background, grow up more slowly. She likes the kid-friendly, easy pace of life in Aurora, and it's easier with Amare's grandparents nearby. Now, Amare is picked up by her grandpa and doesn't have to stay at Donoghue until 6 p.m. ""like a grownup with a job.""

""It's more homogenous; people are cut from the same cloth,"" says Jones, a college grad. ""The expectations are pretty much the same. Parents have high expectations at Donoghue, but the behavior and attitudes have already been formed. And from what I've seen, no thank you.""

The Donoghue staff gave their all, and it was improving. But she couldn't wait.

""I think they're on their way to doing great things,"" Jones says in early June while sitting at her desk at the Oak Park Library, where she is the circulation manager. ""But it's hard to do that on the back of your child. You only get one chance.""

This isn't all about class, Jones cautions, noting that plenty of Donoghue poor kids are well-behaved. But fundamentally, she felt on a different wavelength from most Donoghue parents.

""I know I can leave,"" she says. ""For some people, Donoghue is like their District 204.""

June 23

On Friday, June 23, the U.ofC.'s Donoghue school wrapped up its first year.

It was a demanding year for the entire staff, but everyone agreed the third grade had it the hardest. The kids were the furthest behind, misbehaved the most, and its teachers were the most heavily scrutinized.

But they finally did it.

By June, there was virtually no acting out in Room 206. And nearly every one of Brady's original students -- about 80 percent -- grew by a year or more in reading. Kids on both ends of the class and academic spectrum made gains.

Outside Room 206, other teachers ended their first year at Donoghue far more satisfied than Brady -- seven of nine classroom teachers are returning. Their students also posted significant gains.

Schoolwide, the percent of kids on target in reading jumped from 13 percent to 52 percent between August 2005 and June 2006.

And just seven of the school's original 200 kids aren't returning in the fall. Demand was also high for its new kindergarten class.

But can it be sustained?

To corral the third grade, class size dropped, but that won't continuein the fall. Donoghue knows which students need extra help, and they'll get it this summer and next year, the director says.

But they have a long way to go. At year's end, just 29 percent of the third-graders read at grade level, up from 14 percent last August.

And the demands of meeting such diverse needs, in a setting that ate up her time and her inspiration, helped push Brady out of teaching. With a 50- to 60-hour workweek, holding on to staff won't be easy.

There also is no guarantee the middle class will stick around or enroll in greater numbers as the neighborhood changes.

Their demands helped build the school; they proved to be among the most involved. But they are also the most likely to leave.

Joslyn Jones called it quits, and Nicole Miller may be right behind her.

In contrast, Equator Howard is there for the long haul. She is thrilled Empress landed in a caring place with higher standards.

For Jones, and possibly others to come, that's not enough.

Before she left, the director called to say Amare would be missed. The personal touch tugged at Jones, but she didn't flinch.

""I can't worry about the school. I can only worry about Amare Jones,"" Jones said. ""Maybe it's a loss for us to leave, but maybe it isn't. I can only worry about Amare Jones. Will she have a future; will she get the best? If the answer is no, I've got to go.""

DONOGHUE SCHOOL READING TEST SCORES
Percent of students reading at grade level*

Grade August 2005 June 2006
Kindergarten 18 84
First 16 48
Second 4 48
Third 14 29

* Based on a reading skills test developed by the University of Chicago Center for Urban School Improvement

kgrossman@suntimes.com