Newsroom: Best Practices

Eliminating the Achievement Gap In Wiseburn School District

September 26, 2007

by Don Brann, Ed.D. Alumnus and Superintendent

There are numerous components or ingredients that go into the recipe for equity in opportunity and elimination of the achievement gap between groups of students. The following narrative will identify many of the most significant factors that led to both the African American and White clusters at Juan de Anza Elementary School in 2006 achieving identical API scores of 867!

Small Learning Communities
     An environment that provides an opportunity for each person to be meaningfully involved allows for relationships to be developed. This enables a sense of connectedness to flourish. When that occurs, people care and try their best to contribute to the cause.
     At Wiseburn, one of Los Angeles County’s last small school districts, there are both smalls schools and small classes. While no two scholls have the same grade organization (K-2, 3-5, K-5, and 6-8) they are all small in school size with under 400 pupils. Class sizes seem, on paper, to be regular, but in practibe they can be half the number through use of a staggered daily schedule.
     Wiseburn prides itself in proclaiming the availability of a private school education at a public school price. The creation of small learning communities is a big strategy in Wiseburn to promote involvement, enable connections, and build relationships. From that base, nearly everything flows.

Employees Who Care
When employees care about outcomes, the fruits of their labor, it makes a huge difference. It causes them to focus their efforts on goals, such as improvement of student achievement or equity in opportunity, and to put energy into the cause. When they look forward to each weekday, the results are predictable and everyone wins. Can employees who are passionate about their roles in the workplace make a difference? They can! And in Wiseburn, they do!

Leadership
It’s all about leadership! The school principal, supported by everyone, makes it happen, working with and through people. The ensure that communication flows positively. The principal charts the course, guides the effort and celebrates the success with all. Instruction is “fine tuned” based on feedback or data analysis and is fully implemented.

Quality Teachers
Wiseburn has exclusively employed fully credentialed teachers for years. Teachers have always made a difference in student outcomes. Wiseburn goes to great lengths to select teachers who best match local needs and to create a learning environment in which they can grow. At the end of the day, this is a “people business” and the staff is critical to the success and progress of the school.

Parent Involvement
Forming a partnership between the school and the home is powerful. It will pay huge dividends when teachers and parents unite and cooperate to support pupil performance. High expectations for student achievement serve all well. Wiseburn has a relatively high percentage of families who value education and demonstrate their interest through various means of participation.

“Whole Child” Focus
Development of productive citizens necessitates focus on all the needs of the child. The emotional and physical needs are just as important as the academic needs. The curriculum needs to be well balanced and time must be allocated across all areas. The arts, music and physical education are all important and should be woven into the day. Interestingly, the allocation of instructional time across all subject areas will yield better student achievement results that the exclusion of non-tested areas to capture time for those assessed. And in the long run, better well rounded citizens will be the result. Wiseburn had more than two dozen students complete the Los Angeles Marathon, the Drama Club won numerous dramatic competition awards, the Robotics Team competed successfully in the national contests and student artists produced pieces shown in local museums. At the same time, Wiseburn’s elementary schools shined in academic results scoring 800 plus Academic Performance Indexes, 8, 9, and 10 ranks, California Distinguished School Awards and even a national Middle School To Watch recognition. The key is to focus on the “whole child.”

Use of Time
The emphasis on quality over quantity use of time, is key to providing opportunities for each individual student to learn. The use of a staggered or split schedule allows a class of twenty students to be divided into two groups (early and late birds) of ten, each with an hour to study reading/language arts under the teacher’s direction. This creative time management technique allows the teacher to focus on individual needs. The teacher spends two hours a day, the first and the last, working with half their class in this key basic skill area. Twenty to one is good, but ten to one is great. Wiseburn employs this strategy for kindergarten and grades one through three. After school the early birds can go to a tutor or lab and receive a second or double dose of reading for the day. Students don’t “fall though the cracks.” No student is ignored.

Continuous Improvement
Following the attitude that there is always the obligation to take it to the next level, Wiseburn refuses to “rest on its laurels.” There is always room for improvement. To remain successful in today’s accountability atmosphere means progress must be ongoing. Being on the right path is critical, but so is constant forward movement. A culture of continuous improvement means that you can always do better with perfection just beyond the horizon. It’s all about the journey.

Summary
Is there a way to narrow or obliterate the achievement gap among different demographic groups? There is, but it is not a “silver bullet” or easy quick solution. It takes clarity of mission or purpose; resources focus on goals and prioritized spending targeted closest to the learning transaction in the classroom. It requires teamwork and commitment. Now that is has been done in Wiseburn, hopefully other schools will also find a way to accomplish this worthy outcome.

Note: Juan de Anza Elementary School is approximately 80% minority with a 35% free and reduced lunch count. Its API is 848.

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The Wiseburn School District has been opening children’s minds to knowledge and hearts to learning for more than eleven decades. This small but mighty public school district remains largely unknown today, although its remarkable success promises to change that fact. After 111 years of excellence, the Wiseburn School District community believes that its best years lie ahead.