City Schools Receive Grant for New Teaching Methods

Innovative changes for teaching middle-school and junior-high students in San Diego city schools will be funded for up to five years as a result of a major grant awarded Wednesday by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation of New York.

The grant gives the school district $400,000 for the next two years, with $600,000 possible over a subsequent three-year period. It is one of five made nationwide by the foundation’s Disadvantaged Youth Program, which also has awarded grants to schools in Oakland, Calif.; Louisville, Ky.; Baltimore and Milwaukee.

The money is intended to boost academic performance among disadvantaged students, whose dropout rate is disproportionately high, and who, in general, achieve at low levels.

In San Diego, Muirlands Junior High in La Jolla and Mann Middle School in East San Diego will be made professional development schools using the funds, Deputy Supt. Bertha Pendleton said Wednesday. The schools will develop and carry out new methods for teaching, for attracting parent participation and for boosting student expectations which, if successful, can be replicated at other schools districtwide.

Numerous middle and junior high schools in San Diego already are trying various ideas generated by individual teachers and principals, and by a state report on Middle School Reform issued two years ago that called for strong measures to improve instruction at a critical time in the lives of many students.

Pendleton said the grant will allow the district to accelerate the pace of its experiments and to spread them more widely.