Despite High Student Turnover, Tempe’s Holdeman Elementary School Successfully Beats the Odds

TEMPE - January 11, 2010 - Customizing instruction to each student’s needs is a challenge for teachers under the best of circumstances. Wendy Reeck, principal at Holdeman Elementary School in Tempe, says it is essential, but especially challenging, for schools like hers.

Working with the Beat the Odds Institute and the Tempe School District’s teaching and learning curriculum department, Holdeman has been able to rise to the challenge and ‘Beat the Odds’ despite drawing its student population from ethnically diverse, predominantly low-income communities with highly mobile residents.

“It’s not unusual for a class or grade level to have only half of the kids that began with us enrolled at the end of the school year,” Principal Reek said. “We can lose five students, and enroll five students, in a day.”

In order to work with the turnover, the Holdeman Elementary School plan incorporates customized instruction and interventions to fit the needs of each child; ongoing assessment of students and teachers; professional development that is timely and relevant to the plan; and the use of data to build the instruction plan and drive academic improvement.

“Beat the Odds is a wonderful format,” Principal Reeck continued, “because you have to have a focus, a vision and a clear bottom line of what you are and stand for, and a plan with all the pieces to get you there. And when it’s not working, it requires that you have the courage to say it’s not working, and determine what’s next.”

Classroom walkthroughs, which are part of Principal Reeck’s daily routine, provide valuable information. She observes the level of student engagement, quality of instruction, whether students are engaged in meaningful learning activities, whether the objectives being taught are connected to state academic standards and if the classroom environment is conducive to learning.

Reeck also checks whether formative and summative assessments are being used in the classroom. Formative assessment is part of the instructional process and provides the information needed to adjust teaching and learning while both are happening. Summative assessments are given periodically to determine at a particular point in time what students know and do not know.

What the principal learns from the classroom walkthroughs is leveraged in several ways. For example, she provides immediate feedback to her teachers in the form of “whisper coaching.”

“I give the teacher a ‘keeper’ and a ‘polisher’—something to keep doing and something that needs to be refined,” she said. “My teachers like having the feedback. It’s constructive and it helps them become better deliverers of instruction.”

Her observations also inform staff development decisions at an individual, grade-level and school-wide level.

Data also play a critical role in advancing students’ academic achievement. “Data is what drives the ship,” Principal Reeck said. “To build good instruction, we have to know what children need, and what they have succeeded in learning. There is no sense in spending time on what students have achieved.”

The school gathers and strategically analyzes students’ reading, writing and math data at weekly meetings throughout the year. According to Principal Reeck, “The discussion is very diagnostic: Where are the gaps? What do we need to do to fill in with quality instruction so students can learn in any given academic area? Can we use our paraprofessionals and administrators to help teachers fill the gaps?”

The principal also meets weekly with the reading and math coaches and the reading interventionists. At these grade-level meetings, they discuss classroom instruction, students’ success and what needs to be refined.

Twice a month, all Tempe School District principals meet as a group to work through common issues and have celebrations. Thirteen of Reeck’s fellow principals also are members of the 2009-2010 Beat the Odds School Partners Program.

“We’re constantly checking, reviewing and assessing how we’re doing with our school plan,” she said. “It’s a lot of work but it pays off when you see the data go in the right direction.”