Half-grade classes put kids on track

Half-grade plan puts kids on track

Tuesday, November 07, 2000

By TOMOEH MURAKAMI

PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

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Cordero Bush failed four classes last year. This year, he’s receiving mostly A’s and B’s.

Tawanda Landers no longer forgets her homework or gets detentions. Classmates have stopped blaming their teachers and schools for poor academic performance or misbehavior.

The difference is their "multigrade" classrooms at Wiley Middle School in the Cleveland Heights-University Heights School District - a kind of "6.5" grade in which students review material from the sixth grade, which they flunked, and are introduced to seventh-grade work they might not be ready for.

A similar class exists for students who failed seventh grade at Monticello Middle School.

In small classrooms with plenty of one-on-one interaction with teachers, the students not only learn multiplication and grammar but also self-confidence, responsibility and other skills needed to succeed in school.

"I get a second chance here," Cordero says. "That makes me feel really happy."

Schools throughout the nation are implementing programs for struggling students, such as tutoring, summer school and after-school programs. But national experts say the CH-UH district’s efforts to stop allowing failing students to advance while reducing the number of children who repeat grades is unique and intriguing.

The district's between-grades program is the only one of its kind at the middle school level in Ohio, and perhaps the nation, according to state schools Superintendent Susan Tave Zelman. District officials say the transitional classrooms along with other supplementary programs have improved proficiency test scores and reduced the number of students who have to repeat grades.

The effort began four years ago, when the district set stricter standards for moving on to the next grade. Students are now required to pass every core subject. Before then, they could get up to eight failing semester grades a year in core subjects and still be promoted.

The old policy, says Superintendent Paul Masem, resulted in high school classes with students who had consistently failed core subjects, particularly math, as early as elementary school. In addition, about a quarter of ninth-graders were "crashing" and being held back, a sign that Masem said indicated, in part, that there were low expectations at the middle school level.

To turn that around, the district created a Saturday Academy during the 1996-97 school year and a summer school for students with failing grades to make up work. Still, many could not pass. Some had failed too many classes and needed more time to get back on track.

So the district formed two alternative "6.5" classrooms a year later, and followed up with two "7.5" classes at Monticello last school year. There are about 60 students in the classes. About half the students in the "multi-grades" return to regular classrooms by the end of the year, Masem said.

"We didn't give up," Masem said. "We kept putting more programs in to give them more opportunities to succeed."

Since the 1996-97 school year, the number of students passing all five parts of the ninth-grade proficiency test, given during the eighth grade, has risen from 40 percent to 45 percent. Last spring, 57 percent passed the math portion of the test, compared with 47 percent four years ago.

National educators and experts said the district's extended efforts were rare.

"It's a unique way; I have not heard of it," said Mike Griffith, a policy analyst with the Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Denver. "Most stick with the standard, which is Saturday and summer school, and offering tutors and volunteers."

On a recent morning, all 15 "6.5 graders" in Frank Musarra's homeroom at Wiley spoke up and received constant reinforcement from their teacher and classmates. The students, alert and interested, responded quickly to Musarra's many questions, volunteered answers and listened respectfully.

"When they first got here, they were angry," Musarra said, adding that students were blaming their teachers and schools for failing them. "They were mad that they weren't at their school. ... But now they don't want to point fingers."

Parents are raving about their children's improvement.

Cordero Bush's father, Anton P. Bush Sr., said his 12-year-old son's grades lagged last year when he went from Canterbury Elementary School to Wiley Middle School. He was having a difficult time adjusting to having teachers for each subject and having to change classes. But this year, Cordero's grades have soared and at home, he talks about school and how he wants to improve.

"He's in the class because he stumbled last year," Bush said. "Now, he's handling everything. It's been a solid, steady improvement of core subjects."

Tawanda Landers, 13, misses her friends at Roxboro Middle School, where she was a sixth-grader last year. But she's also proud because she has missed only one homework assignment this year and has received no detentions.

"I'm happier now because I'm getting better grades," she said.

One afternoon last week, Don Juan Davis and Rod James Jones, sophomores at Cleveland Heights High School, reminisced about the special year they spent together in the "6.5" classroom. The two friends say that year was the turning point in their academic careers.

"For the first time, I could see that I could do well," said Jones, who is in an advanced math class this year.

"They got me back on track," Don Juan said, reminiscing about the weekly "lunch bunch" discussions with his teacher and the times he had stayed after school until 6 p.m. to get extra help. "It was a smaller classroom and you got individual attention - I wanted a lot of attention."

"I miss it," he said. When challenged academically, "I just say, if I don't do it, I know the consequences. You got to do what you got to do."

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©2000 THE PLAIN DEALER. Used with permission.