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Bromwell Elementary School | |
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BROMWELL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (214) Telephone: Mr. Jonathan Wolfer, Principal |
Making the Grade
This is a tale of two schools. They could not be more different. They could not be more alike. Every weekday morning, 1,000 kids in kindergarten through fifth grade walk, run, skip and burst through the doors at Cheltenham and Bromwell elementaries into the mostly clean, usually calm, generally orderly world of Denver public schools. Both schools have principals with vision, teachers with dedication and children who want to learn. The mission is the same: Do what's best for the kids. Nurture, challenge, stimulate, empower, help them realize their potential for creativity and thought and responsibility and compassion. At both schools, they pack it all into 32 very short hours a week - so little time to shape so many lives. And at both schools, they measure success every day in all kinds of ways, big and small. The schools share some victories; others are peculiar to their own special worlds - Cheltenham in the urban grit of West Colfax, Bromwell in the leafy affluence of Cherry Creek. This year, for the first time, success at Bromwell, Cheltenham and every other Colorado public school will be measured by a single test: the Colorado Student Assessment Program, or CSAP. Based on the students' scores, the state will assign each school a letter grade. A failing grade three years running might mean takeover of the school's management by the state. Grade these two schools today, and Bromwell probably would score an A. Cheltenham probably would get a D. Last year, only 29 percent of Cheltenham's third-graders scored "proficient" or better in reading on the CSAP, ranking it 61st among DPS' 83 elementaries. Bromwell, where 89 percent scored at those levels, ranked second. Both schools aspire to excellence. Neither wants a grade for it. "I think there's a danger when people see letter grades for a school with which they have no contact and are unfamiliar with, that judgments will be cast that don't necessarily reflect reality," Bromwell principal Frank Bingham says. "Other schools are out there doing more than we would even take on here, but it doesn't always necessarily reflect in test scores, so they don't get the recognition for it." He cites a recent PDK / Gallup poll in which only 20 percent of the respondents gave the U.S. public school system a grade of A or B. But when parents were asked to grade the public school their oldest child attends, 70 percent gave it an A or B, 91 percent a C or better. Gov. Bill Owens and legislative leaders who enacted the school grading program last spring see it as a way to provide parents with information about a school's performance and need for improvement. And they consider it a way to address years of mediocre test scores and parental concerns about teaching quality. "Everyone agrees that this is an excellent assessment, even those who criticize it," says State Education Commissioner William Moloney. "There's a certain reality to the CSAP that people are having to come to grips with." Educators at Cheltenham and Bromwell applaud the goal of improved student achievement - that's their life's work. They believe in accountability, and they consider standardized tests a useful tool. "I think low-income schools cannot make excuses," Cheltenham Principal Kay Frunzi says. "I think there are some things in this school we have to change. We must change. We can't say, `We're low- income, therefore we're not going to have student achievement.' " But they view school grading as simplistic and unnecessary at best, a state-sanctioned form of teacher-bashing at worst. "I don't understand the need to grade schools. It's comparing apples to oranges," Frunzi says. "I personally think it's a system put together by people who truly don't understand what occurs in the day-to-day operations of a school." Many educators argue that the standards test is just one assessment of how well teachers teach and students learn. And a bad grade is just another demoralizing label slapped on neighborhoods, schools and children already struggling to overcome the stigma of poverty and violence. "There are some things no school can do, and kids who come to school with risk factors are at a disadvantage," says Terri Pinney, a program associate with the Piton Foundation, a Denver philanthropic organization that focuses on poverty and education and helped finance Cheltenham's plan to improve learning. "You've got to deal with hungry kids, you've got to deal with neglect and abuse, you've got to deal with kids who are scared in their own neighborhood." So a Cheltenham teacher walks a child home after school to protect him from the older kids who beat him up every day. On the way, he matter-of-factly points out the place where the police handcuffed a man who was screaming and the corner where somebody was stabbed to death. There's the child who stays up at night to make sure her severely ill mother doesn't die in her sleep. The child who cares for younger brothers and sisters for days when their mother disappears. The child absent for a week because social services took him away from a parent who hit him once too often. Cheltenham fourth-grade teacher Meaghan O'Brien sums it up with an old saying: "You can't learn when your shoes are too tight." Every day, Cheltenham teachers work with kids whose shoes are very, very tight. "There are days when I say I don't know if we can do it, if we can reach our goal for these kids," Frunzi says. "There's that question in the back of my mind - `Are you sure? Can it be done?' But I can't listen to that voice. Because if I don't believe it can be done, it's not going to happen." A short walk from Cheltenham there's a bar, an adult bookstore and places to buy hubcaps and pagers. A sun-baked desert of gravel and weed clumps separates the school from the noise and dirt of Colfax Avenue. The average price of a home is about $120,000, out of reach for many neighborhood families. Within a few blocks of Bromwell, it's possible to buy an antique Oriental rug, a $2,000 pair of gator-skin cowboy boots or a $4 triple- shot latte. The school sits on a serene side street flanked by a shady park. Nearby streets are lined by specialty boutiques and million-dollar townhomes whose landscaping alone costs as much as an entire house in West Colfax. Inside and out, the schools look very much alike: homely brick buildings with flat roofs and linoleum floors, kid-sized plastic chairs and childrens' artwork on the walls. But there is a sense of urgency in the air at Cheltenham, where the school's future - and the future of its kids - is on the line. "We cannot turn out these children, like we have been at this school, who are not reading," Frunzi says."These children are destined to a lifetime of poverty if we do. Every child we turn out of this school who is not reading at grade level, we are failing that child." The staff had already decided to overhaul the school's teaching approach before Frunzi arrived a year ago. "But I think what I am bringing is the true belief that we can make a difference, the true belief that if we get it structured tight enough and are able to meet their needs well enough, that these children will learn," she says. Frunzi's goal: 80 percent of Cheltenham's children reading, writing and doing math at grade level. "That doesn't mean they'll be performing that on the CSAP," she adds. Cheltenham is a school with a plan. It's called "Rethinking Excellence," and it was created by a task force that included Frunzi, teachers and parents. They spent a year on research, discussion and compromise and finally came up with a strategy they think could serve as a model for other schools. "I frankly came to DPS a bit on the naive side, but I think sometimes naivete is to the advantage - because I do have high hopes, and I do have high expectations, and I do have high dreams for this school," Frunzi says. "I still believe it can be done. I think you have to have that vision and that hope to make change." The plan is being funded in part by Piton and other charitable foundations, but Frunzi spends much of her time trying to scrape together the $135,000 a year they still need to implement it. Money matters for every school in DPS. Colorado's economy is one of the nation's most vibrant, but its per-pupil spending ranks in the bottom third of the 50 states. So all public schools have to raise money to enrich their programs with subjects the district can't afford, "specials" including art, vocal and instrumental music, field trips, daily physical education, computers, tutors, librarians. That's why wrapping paper was one of the first orders of business on the first day of school for Bromwell fourth-graders. Their three- day, year-end trip to the Keystone Science School will cost $130 per child, and the Sally Foster company gives back half the money that students raise selling its wrapping paper. Last year, the fourth-graders sold $9,000 worth in three weeks - about the amount the Cheltenham PTA collects in a whole year. At Bromwell's back-to-school night earlier this month, parents filled folding chairs in the auditorium and signed their names to volunteer lists laid out on tables: traffic safety, library / computer lab, landscape committee, excellence recognition, student directory, enrichment. The biggest fund-raising events of the year are the house tour and "Walk, Run, Hop & Shop," a combination art auction, gallery walk, sock hop and run. The organizer of this year's house tour stood up and asked for help; within a few minutes, there were 32 names on his volunteer list. Last year, the house tour, which includes a patron party and a boutique set up in the school, raised $40,000 in one weekend. At back-to-school night at Cheltenham, six of the 28 parents showed up to hear O'Brien talk about her fourth-grade curriculum. The four kids in O'Brien's class who participated in Cheltenham's candy sale brought in about $160. The one parent who volunteered to help out in class has yet to show up, six weeks into the school year. "I'm not judging these parents," O'Brien says. "They have a lot to worry about. But some of these children's basic needs aren't being met." Demographics work against Cheltenham, one of the largest elementaries in DPS with more than 700 students. Virtually all of them qualify for free lunch, considered a reliable indicator of poverty. "I think that our families love their children just as much and want just as much for their children as other families," Frunzi says. "Our children are as smart as any other children. It's just that they come with fewer experiences, with a less-developed language base, with less knowledge. "Some of our children have never been to a museum. Some of our children have never been to a concert, to a play. They haven't been read to." About half of the mostly Hispanic student body speaks English as a second language; 32 percent of the kids are considered "not proficient" in English. Starting this year, if they have been at the school for two years, they will have to take the English-language CSAP, and their scores will be counted toward Cheltenham's total. Bromwell, which has less than half as many students as Cheltenham, has the district's highest number of "choice" students. About half come to Bromwell from outside its attendance zone, mainly because there just aren't enough kids from Bromwell's neighborhood to fill the seats. Every year, the district chooses at random from the families that want to "choice" into Bromwell. Of a pool of 80 kindergarten applicants, about 20 will get in, which leaves Bingham the difficult task of breaking the bad news to the rest. Bingham has been principal for three years; before he came, Bromwell had had seven principals in 12 years. That's not unusual, the district says. It's rare for a principal to spend more than five or six years in the same school. But Bingham believes that continuity in leadership is the key to maintaining excellence, and he bristles at the idea that the economic status of many of Bromwell's families means it's an easy place to work. "The biggest challenge in this school?" He pauses, thinks, chooses his words carefully. "It's maintaining the delicate balance between the sometimes competing needs of parents, staff and what's best for the students. "An analogy would be a board of directors whose membership is the CEO, the customers and the employees - all trying to come to consensus on issues that are often times very emotional and in a business that's constantly changing. "It doesn't make it easy." The business of education takes hard work, no matter what, no matter where. Ask anyone who does it. But there are teachers with the gift to make it look easy, and Sue Loftus is one of them. She has been teaching for 33 years, 20 of them at Bromwell, sometimes fifth grade but mostly fourth. "It's a great job. Every day is different," says Loftus, 55. "Even after 33 years, I never know what to expect." She makes it clear from Day One what she expects of her students. "Ms. Loftus' Only Rule," the sign reads. "Be respectful." Then it spells out exactly what that means: "Don't hurt other people." "Listen when someone else speaks." "Don't mess with people's property." "Come in quietly." When they sit in a group at the front, the kids stay behind the teacher's designated "magic line" - the place where the aging greenish-yellow carpet is splitting apart, despite the best efforts of the school custodian. It's a reminder that neighborhood wealth can stop at the public school door. Most of the time, Loftus' kids follow the rules: They cooperate well in clusters of four or five, participate enthusiastically, sit quietly when necessary. Disruptions are rare, which leaves plenty of time to teach. At Cheltenham, O'Brien spends a good chunk of one class playing nurse to her fourth-graders, all of whom seem to need her attention at once. One girl complains of a canker sore. Three others have itchy eyes. Another child's neck hurts. The teacher listens to each complaint, writes passes to the school nurse for some, gets a cold compress for another, gives comfort to all. Some of them just want to know she cares. "I'll be happy to help you when you're in your seat with your hand raised," O'Brien says patiently for the 20th time in 10 minutes. As she talks to one little boy, another wraps his arms around her waist and lays his cheek against her back. "They just want to learn," she says. "And they just want to love you." O'Brien, 25, spent four years teaching at a Catholic school in Wheat Ridge. She interviewed at seven DPS schools before choosing Cheltenham. She considered only inner-city schools because she wanted a challenge. She got it. "Some days, there are so many other needs to be met besides academic, it's overwhelming," O'Brien says. So many kids whose shoes are too tight. So many kids who are funny, energetic and filled with hope, because that's the way 9-year-olds are at Cheltenham and Bromwell. They could not be more different. They could not be more alike.
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