Platform : Something So Right at One Public School

One of the few bright spots in the latest California Learning Assesment System test results was the Open Charter School in Los Angeles. The magnet school’s fourth-graders’ scores (see box, right) are more than twice the average in the Los Angeles Unified School District and nearly twice the statewide scores.

JAMES BLAIR asked the school’s educators and parents to talk about what’s responsible for its success. BETTY JO ALLEN-CONN

Open School teacher since campus opened in 1977

The thing is to aim high: The kids will always reach the goal that you set for them if you trust them to do it.

We’re kind of the secret of the district. We’re the school that does really well that no one really knows about. We try to get the word out. We have a lot of visitors; but I think most of the time people can’t understand how you get started. I think you start by trusting the kids.

I teach fourth- and fifth-graders all subjects. The thing that works most for me about Open School is that I have moved away from standing in front of the classroom. I have become a learner along with my children. I work side by side with them in their learning rather than assuming that everything that comes from my mouth is the most important thing that is going to be imparted to them.

If you came into my classroom, you’d have a hard time finding a computer and there are 30 of them in this room. We have them built inside the desks. We do not use “educational” software. The programming is taught in relation to where it fits in our (classes.) The computer is just one more step in the thinking and problem-solving process and that’s how it’s used. It’s just another tool.

We do not have an elitist group of children here. We have children from every socioeconomic background, from all ethnicities. We don’t have behavior problems at this school. We trust the kids. They are happy. They are learning.

Parents have been at this school since its inception. Because our goal is to help the children become life-long learners, the parents have as much at stake in this as we do. And because we work in a partnership, I truly believe that is why we are successful. I do not feel that parents are in my classroom looking over my shoulder. They are here to help me in every way they can, because we need the help to do the job that we do here.

We have done a survey. Our children are extremely successful after they leave us. We get letters from the kids thanking us for the things we have done here, because they felt they were ahead of the kids in their peer group. Our children are questioners. In most cases, they are the ones that lead discussions in their junior high and high school classrooms.

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YAYOI CHU

Teacher’s aide and parent volunteer

I have two children in school: one in kindergarten and one in fourth grade. I started to volunteer as a parent when my older daughter was in first grade. From there, I started helping more and more and they asked me to be an aide.

As a room volunteer, I work with a group of children in my younger daughter’s cluster, maybe 10 to 12 kids, making art projects for example. Teachers ensure that every parent volunteer knows exactly what is expected. We grade homework. Sometimes I tutor some particular child. The nature of volunteering changes slightly as the ages of the kids progress. This is not a “gifted” school. Some kids excel in academic areas and there are kids who need extra help. The notion of multi-grade, multi-age clusters with two teachers works especially well for those reasons.

We have a collaborative effort between parents, administrators and teachers. This is exactly why I send my children to the Open School. I have to be part of my children’s education. My kids love my being there. It makes them happy to see their parents being involved, especially helping the teachers.

Everything we do in school promotes the children being very open-minded about differences between people. I think it’s necessary, especially in Los Angeles, to know and be tolerant of every kind of difference: socioeconomic, racial, cultural, ethnic.

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ROBERTA BLATT

Retired former principal of Open School, now training other educators as part of the Advanced Management Program at UCLA

The school’s success is not a trick. We’ve been doing this a lot longer than most schools; and finally, we had a test (the CLAS) that we felt was starting to assess children in the way that we teach.

We had a very strong program from the very beginning--a partnership--when nobody was talking about school-based management by parents, teachers and the administration. Many of the new reform policies and strategies that are now being talked about, we were incorporating back in 1982, ’83 and ’84. We became a laboratory school for many things. The principal mission was to develop in children a sense that school was a place that was exciting to come to and that learning is an intrinsic process, not (something propelled by) outside rewards.

I’m at UCLA because I know that we can do this in other schools that want to take charge of their own school and make it into that kind of educational institution.

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TOBY ANN CRONIN

Parent and president of the Open School Governing Board

At Open School, there’s always an exchange. Twice a year, the teachers, the student and the parents have conferences. The teachers are really quite supportive. It’s an entirely different situation than my experience has been with my older boys, who are in junior high.

In the last three or four years, the children actually have taken to doing their own self-evaluations. The conference will begin with the child reading his self-evaluation. They are harder on themselves than anybody. It’s amazing and terribly honest.

There are consequences at Open School, too. If you don’t do certain things, you don’t go out at recess because you need to spend your time doing your work. But there seems to be more give and take between the student and the teacher--and parents and teachers.

The CLAS test was really the right kind of test for how this school teaches. It was a beyond-the-basic- skills kind of test. We teach for higher skills, critical thinking, independent thinking and collaboration among children. Now that the CLAS test has been canceled, something that could have had a huge effect in educational reform has been taken away.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Open Charter School: Firsts and Bests The Open Charter School, whose scores in the California Learning Assessment tests were arguably the best in the Los Angeles Unified School District, is an unassuming campus. Its six trailer- like bungalows and one administrative structure sit on the asphalt grounds of Crescent Heights Elementary School in a modest Mid- City neighborhood. Below is a look at the school and its success. *

How They Ranked: Here are the fourth- grade CLAS test scores for Open Charter School, the LAUSD and the state. The scores denote the percentage of test- takers who achieved a scorein the top three of six possible levels in each skill area. *

Reading Writing Math Open Charter School 53% 57% 48% LAUSD 17% 26% 14% State 23% 32% 28%

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Important Dates: 1977- Open School becomes first magnet campus in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Its mission was to promote racial integration, the “open” classroom and educational restructuring.

1993- Becomes the district’s first charter school. That gives the school’s governing board, he majority of whom are parents, greater say over the curriculum taught in the classroom and how decisions are made. *

How Its Organized: The school has 384 students (40% are Anglo, the rest are almost evenly divided among African American, Latino and Asian). They are divided into six “clusters,” roughly corresponding to kindergarten through fifth grade. Each cluster has 64 pupils of different ages, team taught by two teachers. Grade levels overlap to let each student experience what it’s like to be among both the youngest and oldest in a given cluster.