Arlington, Fort Worth school leaders work on campus turnaround plans

As Tarrant County students settled in for hours of standardized tests recently, administrators at a handful of struggling campuses were working to come up with answers of their own.

For public schools that have been rated as improvement required for two or more straight years by the Texas Education Agency, preliminary campus turnaround plans are due May 2. Required under House Bill 1842, which took effect Sept. 1, the preliminary plans will be open for public comment before being approved by school trustees at the end of May. Then everything will be submitted to the state education commissioner, who will accept or reject the plans in June. The changes will be implemented this fall.

The TEA has been providing guidance since January to districts as they compile the detailed documents. In pages of worksheets, the schools must identify the root causes of their difficulties and delve deeply into ways to address them. The TEA has established seven “critical success factors,” including curriculum and instruction, leadership effectiveness, school climate and family/community engagement.

Schools have not previously been required to gather community input so early in the reform process, TEA spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson told The Texas Tribune.

In the Fort Worth district, the process is underway at 11 schools. “It’s a lot of eyes. It’s like a big think tank,” Fort Worth Assistant Superintendent Karen Molinar said of the effort.

“We’re asking how can we do things that are innovative, something that’s outside the box for these campuses because they need something different. … It’s going to be very collaborative and supportive,” she said.

Since 2013, the TEA has used results from the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness and other information to evaluate public schools on student achievement, student progress, closing performance gaps and postsecondary readiness. In August, each campus and district is rated as either met standard, met alternative standard or improvement required.

Eight Fort Worth and one Arlington elementary school must create turnaround plans. Fort Worth also has a middle school, a high school and an alternative school for recent immigrants that must submit a plan.

Arlington and Fort Worth administrators and principals say building a turnaround plan is a process that empowers campus staff but also requires strong support from the district’s central office. A key part of the plan is getting input from the community and from students’ families. Officials with both districts say they welcome the dialogue.

Both districts plan to post their plans online this month and take public comments.

‘Reconstitution plan’

Previously, schools that failed to meet state standards for two or more years were required to complete a “reconstitution plan,” which required a campus intervention team to determine if replacing faculty or administrators would facilitate change. Those familiar with the turnaround plans say the new system allows for more flexibility to tailor solutions to the school.

At Arlington’s Wimbish Elementary, the process involves “looking at the history of campus and trying to identify what your big leverages and areas to address are and narrowing it down to see what is going to have the biggest impact for improvement,” said Principal Kari Pride.

Wimbish — made up of 90 percent low-income students and with a higher-than-average rate of student turnover — received its second improvement required rating in August, falling short in academic achievement and closing performance gaps, the latter an index that monitors the success of minority and low-income students.

But Pride says those results don’t tell the whole story. From 2014 to 2015, the index that demonstrates student progress jumped 10 percentage points — evidence, she said, that students are meeting the TEA’s targets. The challenge is that the students start out behind some of their peers.

Wimbish teachers and administrators have been focusing hard on strategies to reach students at all levels, including teacher coaching and in-classroom modeling of teaching methods.

“It’s a whole different way of teaching you’re having to do to meet the needs of the students without compromising the curriculum,” Pride said. “And that is something we want to continue on.”

The school is also trying to bolster their efforts by partnering with parents.

2018 consequences

After a school’s third year of missing the standards, the education commissioner can approve the turnaround plan, install new leadership at the school or district or close the school altogether. After five years of failing ratings, the commissioner must either install new management at the district level or close the school. In the past, the appointment of a board of managers was optional.

State Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen, chairman of the House Committee on Public Education, said that portion of the bill was intended to spur districts to invest adequate resources and the attention required for success. That hasn’t always been the case, he said.

“The thinking on that is there are districts where they seem to send their most experienced teachers to their easiest-to-teach schools and they make decisions about resources and other things like that that seem to say, ‘We’re going to take care of most of our schools but we’re going to let some of them go,’ ” Aycock said. “This will say you have to take care of them all.”

Schools in their second year of improved required don’t have to implement the turnaround plan if they meet standards when new ratings come out in August. Though Pride is hopeful her campus will succeed, she says that whatever happens, the planning Wimbish is doing now will benefit students.

“We don’t want to just get over the finish line. We want to continue to improve. ... Whether we make it or not, we want a plan that will help us continue to more forward,” Pride said. “It’s like I tell our teachers, it’s not really about the STAAR test. It’s about preparing our students for a successful future.”

This story was originally published April 10, 2016 at 8:17 AM with the headline "Arlington, Fort Worth school leaders work on campus turnaround plans."