Grand View Elementary School has 400 students, 17 teachers, a majority of the student body listed as poor, a third of the student body not fluent in English - and one of the highest Academic Performance Index scores in California:
Employees say its small-school country charm brings a community feel. Teachers say they come to the small country school, fall in love and never leave. At the school teachers, on average, have been at Grand View for 20 years...
The small school enables teachers to work as a team. It's not rare, [teacher Theresa] Enns said, for all teachers to sit down together at lunch and discuss their classes. One may have a hard time teaching the multiplication table and another teacher can say, "You know what worked for me," she said...
[Teacher Delores] Armo, who said veteran teachers at the school get together and help the younger teachers, added that one of the reasons the school does well on the standardized tests is because of the veteran teacher population.
"There is no substitute for experience," she said.
[Parent Kelly] Derderian said teachers push her children to perform well.
"Most of the time my kids would perform well just because they wanted to do well," she said. "Occasionally they would say, 'Oh, I'm being pushed too hard.' But they would rise to the occasion and do it."
But what happened to "Standardized tests are biased against poor kids and immigrants?" What happened to "Poor kids should be coddled and not pushed too hard?" What happened to "Teachers should spend more time enhancing self-esteem than teaching the basics?"
Looks like Grand View Elementary has decided to ignore these bits of "conventional wisdom." Good for them.
Posted by kswygert at May 11, 2004 02:17 PM