Tutors easing the transition
Educators here are scrambling to get displaced students from New Orleans better prepared for standardized tests

By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE
March 7, 2006

Helen Faye McCollum brought along a roll of toilet paper on her first day of work at Taylor High School in the Alief school district.

After 34 years in New Orleans Public Schools, the veteran teacher just figured she'd still need to buy her own basic supplies. Instead, she found fully stocked restrooms and classrooms with telephones at her new Houston-area school.

"Here, the toilets are clean. Here, you can see your face in the floor. Here, there's no graffiti," McCollum said. "I always said I wanted to come to a school like this."

Eight miles down the road, teacher Ed Domecq was thrilled to find a clock that actually keeps time in his new classroom at Paul Revere Middle School. In 20 years, Domecq said he never had a working timepiece in his inner-city New Orleans classes.

The clocks were just the tip of what was broken in the 55,000-student New Orleans Public Schools. Long before Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, the public school system was plagued by corruption, financial mismanagement, high dropout rates and low test scores.

Discipline was also a struggle in New Orleans schools. Students — many of whom were born to teenage parents in poverty — often refused to follow direction, attend class or complete schoolwork, educators said.

"Back home it seemed like there was always an excuse. No one ever told them 'No' and meant it. Nothing was ever enforced," Domecq said. "I always believed if we took them out of the situation they were in and put them somewhere where people said 'No' and meant it, they would be fine."

'Let's get going'

Texas now has that chance with nearly 40,000 displaced children from the New Orleans area, some of whom attended one of the worst public school systems in the nation.

By nearly every measure, Houston schools outperform their New Orleans counterparts.

More than 60 percent of HISD third-, fifth- and ninth-graders beat national averages on the Stanford Achievement Test last school year. Fewer than one-third of New Orleans Public Schools students in those grades beat national averages on the similar Iowa Test of Basic Skills in 2003-04.

Houston has been gearing up for the academic challenges since the 5,500 evacuees started enrolling in September, said Karen Soehnge, HISD's chief academic officer.

The district's attitude, she said, has been: "Don't wait for test results. Let's get going."

Still, educators are anxious to see how children perform on this first round of standardized tests in their new state.

The results — due as early as this week for the reading portion of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills — will help U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings decide when to include children in the federal accountability system.

"We can't really make any fact-based decisions until we see that data," said Spellings, adding that she expects to decide on the issue this summer.

Stakes are high

Houston-area educators are scrambling to create programs, such as remedial reading classes and after-school tutoring, to make sure students perform well on Texas' tests. They've enlisted the help of everyone, including grandparents and academic specialists, to help close achievement gaps that in some cases are years wide.

Both New Orleans students and Texas schools have much riding on the high-stakes tests. Third- and fifth-grade students who fail the TAKS this year could be held back. Campuses that don't successfully remediate New Orleans students could risk lower state ratings next school year, when evacuees' scores are expected to count in the accountability system.

"We're very worried about it," said Ann Malone, principal of Budewig Intermediate School in Alief, a campus that has more than 100 displaced children in the fifth and sixth grades.

Malone suspects many displaced children won't pass the TAKS and that she'll have to hold a large number of them back.

"I think they're weak across the board," she said. "The standard on the TAKS test is very high."

Though many teachers readily acknowledge the shortfalls of New Orleans' public school system, some are reluctant to say the displaced children are behind.

New Orleans had some strong students and schools — especially magnet and private campuses.

It just wasn't as many as anyone would have liked, they said.

Some educators credit children from New Orleans as being more creative, possibly because they take more elective classes in high schools. They certainly have the same potential, teachers said.

"These children have been told they're behind. Kids suck up like a sponge things people say. It's in their head," said McCollum, who used to teach at McDonogh No. 35 Senior High in New Orleans before becoming a tutor for Katrina students at Taylor. "They're just as good. They just have to put forth some effort."

Part of the problem is overcoming some of the discipline and attitude problems that many students from New Orleans seem to have brought with them, educators said.

"They have the ability to grasp the knowledge, but they're disassociating themselves. They don't want to go to class, and when they go to class, they don't want to do the work," said Alvin Lee Daniels Jr., 31, a teacher from New Orleans who is a tutor at Madison High School in HISD. "They're not adjusting to the rules."

Ken Estrella, principal of HISD's Paul Revere Middle School, said displaced children at his school still haven't fully adjusted. Because many still want to return home or are traumatized by the hurricane, the school is struggling with attendance and behavior issues, he said.

"The sad thing is, most people have forgotten about this," he said. "It's just kind of a dying issue."

Tutors staying busy

Some New Orleans students say they're holding their own in Houston schools. They say schools here are larger, cleaner and have more computers. Teachers here have higher expectations, and some of the state-mandated tests are tougher, they said.

New Orleans evacuee Tiffany Clark, now a senior at Taylor High, said she was floored by the difficulty of the math section of the TAKS test.

"I didn't know nothing on the math test. I think they're more advanced than us," said Clark, who already passed the Louisiana graduation exam.

Karren Joseph, another displaced senior at Taylor, said she's been struggling with Shakespeare this year.

"I was never taught poetry," she said. "William Shakespeare — his stuff is complicated."

Both Clark and Joseph are working with McCollum, one of more than 100 tutors hired with a $1.9 million federal grant to help displaced students make the transition into Texas schools. The Houston A+ Challenge, Communities in Schools and Texas WorkSource are organizing that program, which is called "Operation School Work."

At Foerster Elementary School in Houston, evacuee children attend tutoring sessions with grandparents from the neighborhood, part of the Interfaith Ministries' Foster Grandparent Project.

Including New Orleans students in existing programs keeps students from feeling singled out, educators said.

"To me, they're all the same," said 80-year-old Helen Ford, who tutors first-graders. "They're kids, and they all need help."

'They are behind'

Educators are focusing on increasing vocabulary and oral communication skills among the displaced children, said Wilma Wilson-Harmon, principal at Foerster, which has 151 evacuee pupils.

"They don't speak out. We have to keep working with them to give examples, explain," she said. "They are behind. It's kind of hard to say if it's months or years."

At the New Orleans West Preparatory Academy, about a dozen reading specialists have been called in to work with children. Almost all of the 390 students at the charter school campus were displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Patricia Allen, a certified academic language therapist with the Neuhaus Education Center, said some of the 8- and 9-year-olds there are still struggling to master their letters.

"They did not know the alphabet. They didn't know the sounds associated with letters. They didn't know the difference between vowels and consonants," Allen said.

If New Orleans students don't succeed this year, Texas shouldn't hesitate to hold them back, Domecq said. Taking a firm stand is the only way to make sure they catch up, the displaced teacher said.

"They need to hold the kids back and not waiver because that's what happened at home, and it's a slippery slope," he said.

Still, compassion remains important, McCollum said.

"We're not looking for a free ride, but we're looking for some understanding," she said. "Katrina was devastating for all of us."