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The things young people are doing, both in and out of school, are meeting standards far higher than most people realize.
Students Solving Community Problems: Serious Learning Takes On a New Look
VOLUME 4, NUMBER 1
SUMMER 2000
Students Solving Community Problems: Serious Learning Takes On a New Look
VOLUME 4, NUMBER 1
SUMMER 2000
A few years ago no one would have called Nancy Soto an achiever, as she struggled through the ninth grade at her California high school in a language still new to her. But when she received her diploma this June, she could point to another triumph, too. As one of the students who started a groundbreaking program here, she had provided crucial bilingual assistance to other Latino students and their families.
In rural Alabama, news about civic affairs traveled mainly by word of mouth a decade ago, and the schools that bound families together faced consolidation into large regional facilities. But now, students in 23 communities are serving as local newspaper editors, keeping their small schools the hub of community life as they practice the craft of reporting, revising, and meeting deadlines that matter.
Six years after Walter Annenberg made his unprecedented $500 million challenge grant to the nation's public schools, test scores and other conventional measures of student success are showing real progress. But evidence of the Challenge's effects on students nationwide is also showing up in ways that are less easily quantified, and often unnoticed by the public.
Poor and minority students rarely make headlines-and most students in the 2,450 Challenge schools do come from households below the poverty line. When they grab headlines, their test scores typically lead the story, not their strength, initiative, or creativity. But this limits how we assess their learning, asserts Barbara Cervone, who directed the Challenge from its start in late 1993 to July 2000.
"If we gauge student success by test scores alone, we shortchange academic achievements that aren't so easily reduced and standardized," Cervone says. "If we focus only on what our kids achieve in the classroom, we overlook work that extends into the community, which can be just as rigorous."
This issue of Challenge Journal presents examples of students' experiences inside the classroom and out-accomplishments that blend traditional and unconventional notions of academic success. The stories reveal strengths not always associated with scholastic aptitude: initiative, persistence, flexibility, patience, curiosity, risk taking, and service. They also raise important questions about what we ask our students to do, and how we define and measure achievement.
In rural Alabama, news about civic affairs traveled mainly by word of mouth a decade ago, and the schools that bound families together faced consolidation into large regional facilities. But now, students in 23 communities are serving as local newspaper editors, keeping their small schools the hub of community life as they practice the craft of reporting, revising, and meeting deadlines that matter.
Six years after Walter Annenberg made his unprecedented $500 million challenge grant to the nation's public schools, test scores and other conventional measures of student success are showing real progress. But evidence of the Challenge's effects on students nationwide is also showing up in ways that are less easily quantified, and often unnoticed by the public.
Poor and minority students rarely make headlines-and most students in the 2,450 Challenge schools do come from households below the poverty line. When they grab headlines, their test scores typically lead the story, not their strength, initiative, or creativity. But this limits how we assess their learning, asserts Barbara Cervone, who directed the Challenge from its start in late 1993 to July 2000.
"If we gauge student success by test scores alone, we shortchange academic achievements that aren't so easily reduced and standardized," Cervone says. "If we focus only on what our kids achieve in the classroom, we overlook work that extends into the community, which can be just as rigorous."
This issue of Challenge Journal presents examples of students' experiences inside the classroom and out-accomplishments that blend traditional and unconventional notions of academic success. The stories reveal strengths not always associated with scholastic aptitude: initiative, persistence, flexibility, patience, curiosity, risk taking, and service. They also raise important questions about what we ask our students to do, and how we define and measure achievement.
When people get laid off in Clay County, Alabama, 16-year-old Jennifer Harkins gets right onto the news. As an editor of the Community Connection, the only newspaper for miles around, she feels a keen responsibility for informing the residents of the tiny towns scattered across this rural region.
Jennifer knows it doesn't matter to her readers that she and the rest of the Connection staff are high school students at Bibb Graves School. This April, locals were lining up to get her lead story on a local textile plant closing that left many jobless.
Farther down the front page, Carmen Greer, 16, reported that eight teachers had been let go from the school, whose declining enrollment-250 students in grades seven through twelve - could no longer support their positions.
Another page-one story told of new sirens to warn of approaching tornados. On inside pages, students wrote up the science of tornados and described safety procedures for residents and schoolchildren. The article questioned the conventional "take-cover" position as potentially dangerous to youngsters with backs braced against a crumbling wall.
Pam Horn, faculty adviser to the Community Connection, notes that her students don't shy from controversy. "If we're not making somebody mad, we're not completely doing our job,"' she says. Last year the paper editorialized against school prayer.
Jennifer knows it doesn't matter to her readers that she and the rest of the Connection staff are high school students at Bibb Graves School. This April, locals were lining up to get her lead story on a local textile plant closing that left many jobless.
Farther down the front page, Carmen Greer, 16, reported that eight teachers had been let go from the school, whose declining enrollment-250 students in grades seven through twelve - could no longer support their positions.
Another page-one story told of new sirens to warn of approaching tornados. On inside pages, students wrote up the science of tornados and described safety procedures for residents and schoolchildren. The article questioned the conventional "take-cover" position as potentially dangerous to youngsters with backs braced against a crumbling wall.
Pam Horn, faculty adviser to the Community Connection, notes that her students don't shy from controversy. "If we're not making somebody mad, we're not completely doing our job,"' she says. Last year the paper editorialized against school prayer.
School-Sponsored Start-Ups
The young journalists at Bibb Graves are not alone in transforming the way rural Alabama gets its news. In fact, 22 other small newspapers like these are published monthly by students around the state. From Calhoun to Camp Hill, Notasulga to Comperville, students cover town council meetings, document local history, and influence issues from environmental problems to drunk driving. No one will ever forget the 1994 issue of the student-run Notasulga Times that scooped the confession of a double-murder suspect.
Advertising revenues pay for printing and distribution, but the newspaper staffs gain crucial support from a grassroots cooperative called PACERS, a network that links 29 rural schools and communities in these and other efforts. Started to resist school consolidation, it has turned the tide in numbers of towns by involving students in important community work.
The benefits to young people are just as clear. "I really had a leg up when I arrived at the University of Alabama as a freshman journalism student," says Fred Fluker, one of the first students to participate in the PACERS program in the early 1990s. Fluker now returns the favor, traveling hundreds of miles each week as a PACERS intern to coach rural students on reporting, page make-up, ad sales, and other basic newspaper functions.
On graduation, Fluker will head for a reporting job on the Detroit Free Press. His high school experiences on a start-up local paper, he says, changed his life. "In ninth grade I was acting like a complete and- total fool," he says. "If you weren't the top in the class, you weren't anyone that adults recognized."
Now, students in these schools are not only gaining public recognition but raising the expectations that adults have for them in their schools and communities. Kids are setting their own sights higher, too, flocking to PACERS summer sessions at which they critique each other's work long after adults would have quit.
The prowess of these student journalists is especially important in an area of the country where small schools are under constant pressure to consolidate into large regional facilities. In 1991, for example, the county sued to consolidate Notasulga High, whose 500 students are 55 percent African-American. But Notasulga proved in federal court that black students had a better chance to succeed at a small school close to home.
Evidence is growing that community-based projects have a lot to do with both achieving and demonstrating that success. Test scores on the Stanford-9 verbal section improved markedly for the Frisco City seventh- and eighth-grade students who sharpened their reading and writing skills on the newspaper project.
But the benefits don't always show up in improved standardized test results. The state of Alabama, for instance, recently labeled Notasulga High School as "failing" on the basis of its test scores. Still, the newspaper produced here-displaying students' writing competence, technological abilities, attention to detail, and ability to meet meaningful deadlines passes regular public scrutiny with flying colors.
Work on the community newspapers also surfaces student qualities even more difficult to measure but no less important, such as motivation, pride, and purpose. "I didn't care about writing before I started working on the newspaper," said January Edwards, an editor of the Gaylesville Enterprise at Gaylesville High School. "Now that I write for the newspaper I better get my grammar right, I'd better get my spelling right, and get my facts straight-because if I don't, I'll hear about it."
The young journalists at Bibb Graves are not alone in transforming the way rural Alabama gets its news. In fact, 22 other small newspapers like these are published monthly by students around the state. From Calhoun to Camp Hill, Notasulga to Comperville, students cover town council meetings, document local history, and influence issues from environmental problems to drunk driving. No one will ever forget the 1994 issue of the student-run Notasulga Times that scooped the confession of a double-murder suspect.
Advertising revenues pay for printing and distribution, but the newspaper staffs gain crucial support from a grassroots cooperative called PACERS, a network that links 29 rural schools and communities in these and other efforts. Started to resist school consolidation, it has turned the tide in numbers of towns by involving students in important community work.
The benefits to young people are just as clear. "I really had a leg up when I arrived at the University of Alabama as a freshman journalism student," says Fred Fluker, one of the first students to participate in the PACERS program in the early 1990s. Fluker now returns the favor, traveling hundreds of miles each week as a PACERS intern to coach rural students on reporting, page make-up, ad sales, and other basic newspaper functions.
On graduation, Fluker will head for a reporting job on the Detroit Free Press. His high school experiences on a start-up local paper, he says, changed his life. "In ninth grade I was acting like a complete and- total fool," he says. "If you weren't the top in the class, you weren't anyone that adults recognized."
Now, students in these schools are not only gaining public recognition but raising the expectations that adults have for them in their schools and communities. Kids are setting their own sights higher, too, flocking to PACERS summer sessions at which they critique each other's work long after adults would have quit.
The prowess of these student journalists is especially important in an area of the country where small schools are under constant pressure to consolidate into large regional facilities. In 1991, for example, the county sued to consolidate Notasulga High, whose 500 students are 55 percent African-American. But Notasulga proved in federal court that black students had a better chance to succeed at a small school close to home.
Evidence is growing that community-based projects have a lot to do with both achieving and demonstrating that success. Test scores on the Stanford-9 verbal section improved markedly for the Frisco City seventh- and eighth-grade students who sharpened their reading and writing skills on the newspaper project.
But the benefits don't always show up in improved standardized test results. The state of Alabama, for instance, recently labeled Notasulga High School as "failing" on the basis of its test scores. Still, the newspaper produced here-displaying students' writing competence, technological abilities, attention to detail, and ability to meet meaningful deadlines passes regular public scrutiny with flying colors.
Work on the community newspapers also surfaces student qualities even more difficult to measure but no less important, such as motivation, pride, and purpose. "I didn't care about writing before I started working on the newspaper," said January Edwards, an editor of the Gaylesville Enterprise at Gaylesville High School. "Now that I write for the newspaper I better get my grammar right, I'd better get my spelling right, and get my facts straight-because if I don't, I'll hear about it."
|
Well, I suppose nothing goes perfectly. Just when things were looking up for Bibb Graves [School] something happens to set us back. The addition is complete except for its dedication. It's a really nice facility with several new classrooms and offices. |
 Above: Ebony Hunt, 16, of Calhoun High School, at a State House press conference in Montgomery, Alabama. "How does the administration plan to address the problems of the poor school systems in the state, such as Lowndes County, which are not funded at the same level as the rich ones?" she asked Pam Baker, who heads the state's Council on Children. |
| When the school year started for Bibb Graves this year, students were met with new faces. With these new faces came new methods of teaching and discipline. And some pupils that have been here for awhile were proud to see that one of our own, Kelly Jackson Varner, had returned to teach. Perhaps she wanted to return the education she had received from her dear old alma mater. Some would say that that's the way the cookie crumbles, 'but I think it's downright sad [to see her laid off for budget reasons]. Clay County Superintendent Don Fulbright said that the school system's budget is like a family budget. I think it's more of a large machine. The teachers are the bolts that hold it together and the schools themselves are the larger components. What happens when you remove the bolts that fit and replace them with a smaller size? |
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| -Charles Horn, editor-in-chief The Community Connection Bibb Graves School, Clay County, Alabama |
