Exactly one year ago today, people read in the Commonwealth that Amanda Elzy Junior High was downgraded by the Mississippi Department of Education to an F-rated school, the lowest possible grade from the state.
Today, Elzy Junior High has a grade of A.
According to 2018 Education Department scores released last week, Elzy Junior High is the top-rated school in both the Leflore County and Greenwood systems.
So how did the school achieve this result in only a year?
“There’s no magic,” smiled Tonjya Powell, a seventh-grade math teacher.
“The story is about the hard work on the part of the students and staff,” Barren Cleark, the school’s principal, said.
“The basic motivation was that students wanted to be successful and the staff wanted to improve student achievement.”
Conversations with various staff members and emailed student responses to questions reveal a uniquely woven series of people, events and practices indicating the school achieved its top score through a year of small, effective steps taken each day.
This time last year, the F rating critically lowered morale among staff and students, according to teachers and Cleark. The Elzy Junior High “family” felt despondent.
“The culture had to change from the negative news. It was a dark, dreaded cloud,” Powell said.
Dr. James Johnson-Waldington, interim superintendent for the Leflore County School District, arrived in November 2017, about a month after the scores were released. His arrival was the turning point, according to Elzy faculty members and Cleark.
“He addressed the culture of fear of failure,” said Cleark. “He told us to focus on the students and make decisions about what was best for them.”
Johnson-Waldington gave a wide degree of autonomy to the principals throughout the system in order to decide what was best for their students. Because of this approach, “things started feeling better over the whole district,” Powell said.
Cleark, like Johnson-Waldington, gave teachers the autonomy to decide what was best for their classrooms based on knowing the needs of the students at the closest level in each subject.
Cleark said this rapidly created a sense of ownership about the fate of the school among the teachers. Eventually this sense of ownership was passed on to the students.
Raising morale was vital. New positive slogans and affirmations began to appear around the school. Carolyn Banks, an eighth-grade science teacher, posted a poem about self-empowerment. Students stood and formally recited it together at the beginning of each of her classes.
“I make sure each one of the student is saying it,” she said. “If they don’t recite it with the group, then they recite it in front of the group.”
Cleark said the school’s unofficial motto became “Failure is not an option.” He would repeat to students, “No matter the challenge, education is the equalizer.”
Shout-outs over the intercom became a daily feature as individual students accomplished their goals.
“The message to students was, ‘You are not a failure. We can do it together,’” said Powell.
Teachers were encouraged to express what they needed in the classroom to help meet the goal for each student. “It empowered us,” explained Banks.
Teachers would meet with Cleark and review state standards and goals. He would ensure they received on-site training or continuing education when needed. And Cleark took teachers’ requests for supplies seriously.
“He said, ‘Make it happen.’ We got what we needed,” said Banks. “It was clear that when teachers felt empowered, it trickled down to the students.”
•••
With morale rapidly rising, the actual mechanics of the Elzy program kicked in.
The assessments from the Department of Education do not follow a traditional model like an national standardized test for college admission. There is no single grading toward a perfect score.
The Department of Education measures the “progress” of each student. Each student is at a different learning level. There is a complex numbering and lettering assessment of performance, but essentially the goal is to get the student up to the next higher level.
The ability of a school to achieve at least a one-step advancement is the core of the state department’s assessment.
“It takes a lot of effort to move a student up a level,” said Cleark.
Elzy began giving students new “benchmark tests” every four weeks. These tests approximated the content of the state tests.
Because of these, teachers learned more about which students need more instruction in certain areas. Sometimes an additional teacher would join a class. Often students would catch up using online teaching programs in addition to their class loads.
Teachers were able to use an overall lesson plan while simultaneously tailoring it for each student in the class because of data feedback from the benchmark exams and the online learning.
Johnson-Waldington emphasized incentives for students when they made progress. These helped improve performance and decrease anti-social behavior.
“Each student had a goal. Both the student and teacher would know the goal. And the incentive was there to achieve that goal,” explained Cleark. “We started with smaller stuff first and built up to the bigger stuff closer to the state exams.”
Incentives were widely varied. Among the most popular with students were “dress down” days, Cleark and the teachers said. On those days, students who were having some success could wear their own clothes rather school uniforms.
Trips were taken to a roller skating rink in Clarksdale; High Heaven, a trampoline park in Jackson; and an indoor amusement park in Memphis.
And once they felt and knew they could succeed, they wanted more, said Banks.
“We as students feel that we are very intelligent, we are not failures, we can compete with other schools, and we can go on to live successful lives (beyond school),” said Zoreya Beckworth, an eighth-grader.
School officials said anti-social behavior was decreased to minimal over the last months and was related only to repeat offenders.
•••
Thursday, Oct. 11, began like any other day for the staff and students at Amanda Elzy Junior High, but shortly after noon every classroom was transformed by celebration after they learned the official results of the assessment. The school had risen from an F to an A.
“I was shocked,” said Banks. “I felt pretty good that we would improve our rating a lot. We all had worked so hard, but going all the way to an A – it felt amazing.”
And personal. “I am really proud of myself for the hard work I did for the school, and I am so glad we got an A,” said Tren’Derryious Byest, an eighth-grader.
A huge celebration took place a few days later. Then the school resumed preparing for 2019.
“The students want to succeed,” said Cleark.
“In my opinion, getting an A is a big deal because it shows (that) me and my fellow classmates work hard,” Tren’Derryious said. “The most helpful thing in getting the A was the teachers who taught and fussed at us about always doing our best.”
•Contact Mitch Robinson at 581-7235 or mrobinson@gwcommonwealth.com.
