Winter 2005

What We've Learned:
Improving Academic Achievement and
Family Involvement in Schools

by Toni Green and Joe Nathan

Dramatic gains in academic achievement and family involvement were two of the major products of an unusual collaboration between the Cargill Foundation and the University of Minnesota’s Center for School Change (CSC). For the last three years, these partners cooperated in Schools First, a project with 11 Minneapolis-area public schools serving 60-95 percent low-income students and 52-98 percent students of color.

Schools often are criticized and sometimes penalized for low achievement, but they are rarely rewarded for progress. Last month, at the conclusion of the three-year, $1.2 million Schools First program, Cargill chairman and CEO Warren Staley presented award checks totaling more than $100,000 to participating schools in the program to recognize the significant progress they have made. This column describes some of the gains made by the schools, lists key aspects of the program, and cites a few lessons learned.

Schools First helped participating schools develop clear, measurable goals in two areas: academic improvement in reading or math and increased family involvement. Seven of the 11 schools achieved 20–30 percent increases in the number of students passing or making a year’s worth of progress in reading or math, as measured by standardized tests. And all 11 schools achieved the targeted levels of family involvement, ranging from greater participation in parent/ teacher conferences to family training. Family involvement increased by more than 30 percent, on average.

Key Features of Schools First

The Schools First program began with Cargill and CSC issuing a Request for Proposals, which generated responses from more than 60 Minneapolis-area elementary and middle schools serving high percentages of low-income students. Cargill and CSC staff reviewed applications and selected 12 schools to participate in the program. Part of the idea was to encourage district and charter educators to learn from each other. Each participating school received a $5,000 planning grant, and 11 of the 12 schools received $35,000 implementation grants after successfully completing their plans. (One school dropped out of the program due to internal problems.)

CSC staff helped each school develop explicit, measurable goals in academic achievement and family involvement. Sheila Biernat, a parent and family involvement liaison at Bottineau Early Education Center, one of the participating schools, believes this focus on goals was a critical part of the process. “It helped us assess and refine what we were doing,” she said.

Barb Roach, a veteran teacher at North Star, another participating school, is convinced that “the ability to work over a three-year period on goals we helped develop made a huge difference.” CSC staff helped each school develop a yearly plan describing training of faculty and families, along with family outreach activities. CSC brought in nationally recognized experts in academic skills improvement and family involvement to work with school staff and parents.

Cargill made its headquarters available for educator/parent-training workshops, provided staff volunteers to tutor students at participating schools and sponsored conferences at a northern Minnesota retreat center. Veteran North Star volunteer Cynthia DeSonpere believes the conferences “made you feel special and important.” Sanford principal Meredith Davis praises these cooperative meetings for “giving us the time to create, reflect, share and improve.”

Sample Gains

Here’s a sampling of specific gains made by several schools over their three years of participation in the Schools First initiative:

• Bottineau: At this Pre-K-2 school, 78 percent of the 140 students come from low-income families and approximately one-third do not speak English as their first language. During the program, the percentage of continuously enrolled Bottineau students reading at grade level or making a year’s worth of progress increased from 71 percent to 94 percent. Every family attended at least one conference with a teacher, and 97 percent attended one or more additional school events.

• North Star: This K-5 school serves 741 students, of whom 95 percent are students of color and 95 percent are from low-income families. The percentage of continuously enrolled North Star students making a year’s worth of growth in reading increased from 14 percent to 48 percent during the program, and the percentage of families attending meetings rose from 86 percent to 98 percent.

• Sanford: This middle school serves 575 students in grades 6–8, of whom 79 percent are Somali, African American, Southeast Asian or Native American, and 79 percent come from low-income families. Sanford increased the percentage of continuously enrolled students passing the Minnesota Basic Skills reading test from 28 percent to 50 percent, and increased fourfold—from 20 percent to 80 percent—the percentage of families attending open house and parent teacher conferences. The school also began holding conferences in homes, something parent Michelle Mersereau calls “incredibly positive.”

• Sojourner Truth: This charter public school increased the percentage of families participating in a minimum of two workshops, trainings or school visits from 37 percent to 99 percent. “Our decision to start each year off, before school, with an individual family/student/teacher conference set up the whole program on a positive note,” says Julie Guy, the school’s director.

Outside evaluators cited several features as key contributors to the Schools First program’s success:

• Focusing on measurable goals in academic and family involvement;

• Offering monthly assistance and encouragement to schools via development and monitoring of their work plans;

• Convening schools twice yearly to learn from nationally recognized authorities and each other;

• Using a team approach, in part because of significant principal mobility (10 of the 11 schools had a change of principal in three years);

• Rewarding success.

“Since launching this initiative, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves and the impact that companies like Cargill can have when we collaborate with community resources like the Center for School Change,” said Staley. “Schools First clearly demonstrates the power of public-private partnerships, and it has shown how a relatively modest investment can have a high impact in improving academic achievement.”

Schools First was structured so that a number of activities started during the project would continue after Cargill’s funding ended. Cargill and CSC agreed that funds should not be spent on hiring additional staff for participating schools. Instead, the focus was on providing services for existing staff. Many of the new ways to teach reading and math that teachers learned during the project are continuing. Another part of the project tried to help schools develop new, helpful practices that could continue after the project ended. For example, a number of the schools are holding family/ student/teacher conferences before school starts, as a way to help make the first contact between home and school a positive one.

For more information on the Schools First program, including results for all the schools, visit the Center for School Change’s Web site.
 

© Copyright 2005 Minnesota Council on Foundations
Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited.

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