Peralta Elementary School's Patience & Dedication to Beat the Odds Curriculum Paying Off for Faculty and Students

PHOENIX - September 9, 2009 - Sometimes it requires some patience if you truly want to beat the odds. Just ask the faculty, staff and students at Phoenix's Peralta Elementary School.

Many schools try program after program in hopes of increasing academic performance. Peralta Elementary School instead took a different approach, and that approach is finally paying off. In the most recent academic year (2008-2009), Peralta improved its AZ LEARNS designation by two levels-from "underperforming" to "performing plus."

It took dogged effort over two years, a dedicated team and a strong and steady principal. When Mary Kay Radavich became principal of Peralta Elementary School in fall 2007, she faced the following:

• An "underperforming" AZ LEARNS designation for two consecutive years
• Teachers overwhelmed by their workload and the pressure of turning things around
• A predominantly low-income, minority student population.

Despite the challenges, one of the things working in Principal Radavich's favor was the school was already participating in the Beat the Odds School Partners Program. The program, based on research by the Center for the Future of Arizona, helps K-12 principals with predominantly low-income and minority student populations implement research findings and practices leading to better than expected individual student achievement.

The school began its turnaround effort by creating a clear bottom line-goals everyone could understand and support. The staff developed a school mission, vision and values. Other important actions included creating interventions to help struggling students, tracking every student's individual data and taking steps toward using data in collaborative teams.

Despite those efforts, Radavich said it was a major blow when the school received an "underperforming" label for the third consecutive year.

"We knew we were beginning to do the right work, around the right things, with the right tools," she said. "We knew we had to stick to it, so we allowed ourselves to be disappointed but then returned to celebrate the small gains that we had in all areas in grades 3 - 5 as measured by AIMS."

According to Radavich, the school's continued efforts to track individual student data, use common assessments and develop its data analysis skills led to an important discovery - Peralta students had significant gaps in their learning which kept them from being successful in reading. In response, the school designed "build to suit" programs providing intensive intervention for students in grades K-5.

Peralta staff also developed SMART goals for reading, writing, and math; involved students in their data; and began posting data and monitoring progress. They continued to group and regroup students to provide every opportunity for learning.

The school's culture also changed, with staff shifting its focus from teaching to learning-from intention to results. Also, rather than focusing on improving instruction one teacher at a time, the school focused on building and sustaining a collaborative culture.

A team of 11 Peralta teachers visited a school with high-performing collaborative teams to see successful instruction modeled in the classroom.

"Teachers were using the same strategies in the same way," Principal Radavich said. "They were teaching the same thing at the same time and using similar instructional methods. Students were responding similarly in different classrooms."

Applying the new practices proved difficult, however.

"It is hard to shift teacher accountability from the individual classroom to all students in the grade level," Principal Radavich said. "I worked hard to find a balance between pressure and support to ensure teachers felt safe in taking risks in their own learning.

"I celebrated frequently with my staff and recognized their attempts and hard work. I model what I value and consistently reinforce our clear bottom line. We understand that change is not easy on teachers but at Peralta, communication, collaboration and learning take precedence over comfort."