School Overcomes Odds

The odds are against them: 90 percent are poor, 90 percent are minority children, and at first, many cannot speak English.

Fifth-grader Karina Garcia says: “My teacher, she would be telling us something, and I would be like, ‘What is she saying? What if I fail and stuff?’”

But she didn’t fail. In fact, 90 percent of the children at Gainesville Elementary in Georgia have passed the standardized reading test required by the No Child Left Behind legislation.

What’s different about Gainesville Elementary? The staff says high expectations.

Mother Marie Pinela says: “Poverty has nothing to do with it, nothing to do with it. … It just takes extra effort, and that’s what people are afraid of. Those kids, they can do it. But you have to give more of yourself to make it possible.”

Fourth-grader Fatima Rodriguez knows if you can’t read, you will come to class until you can. That means after school and on Saturday.

At first Fatima was not happy. “I’m like, ‘Me? Why me?’ But my mom, she said that it was good for me to learn, but I’m like, ‘No, I don’t want to stay up at Saturday school,’ because I wanted to play, get home, watch TV.”

And if she missed a Saturday the staff would track down her parents. Assistant principal Priscilla Collins says: “I think what we do here that other schools probably don’t do is we are good at the harassing. We do the phone calls. We do the home visits. We track you down at the laundromat.”

Ten-year-old Karina Garcia also believes in hard work. “There’s no excuses for not doing your work or goofing off or anything.”

Gainesville (Ga.) Elementary opened its doors last year, and student performance on state exams already is exceeding many of its long-established counterparts. Much of the student population comprises children of new immigrants from Mexico, whose parents often relocate to Gainesville for the jobs in the area’s chicken-processing plants.

Deemed a 90-90-90 school for its statistics – 90 percent nonwhite, 90 percent poor, 90 percent meeting standardized testing guidelines – the grade school has drawn national attention. Principal Shawn Arevalo McCollough received a visit from an undersecretary with the U.S. Department of Education, who had learned about the school’s academic successes. According to Arevalo McCollough, the official was impressed by what she saw and informed her colleagues in our nation’s capital.

Soon after the visit, White House staff told Arevalo McCollough that the president might mention the school in an upcoming speech. The reference came during President Bush’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. After hearing the President talk about her school, Itze Garcia’s fifth-grade daughter Karina gushed to her mother, “Oh, Mom, it’s great! I’m in a wonderful school – in the best school!”

Just after his tenure as principal began, Arevalo McCollough identified 125 pupils who were lagging a grade or two behind in reading and math. He decided these students would stay for an extra three hours of class each weekday and seven hours on Saturday. The additional time meant Arevalo McCollough, in essence, was implementing an eight-day school week spanning six days. The determined principal went to each family, one by one, to explain his new procedure. When one third-grader failed to appear for the initial session, he even persuaded the local Roman Catholic priest into switching first communion lessons to Friday nights. That way Fatima Rodrigues could participate in her academic and spiritual classes. Now in fourth grade, Fatima laments waking up early on Saturday mornings but continues the ritual, saying, “I gotta learn.” Consider the following:

• Shawn Arevalo McCollough says, “I knew when I opened this school … that we were going to be a model for other schools.”
• Gainesville Elementary School exceeds performance when compared to Gainesville’s other schools and those across Georgia, as well.
• When state test scores were tabulated, 89 percent of students at Gainesville Elementary passed the English-language arts test, and 94 percent passed the math test.
• Arevalo McCollough received a 2004 Special Recognition Award from the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
• On the SAT, Georgia’s Latino students averaged 949 out of a possible 1600, outperforming their Latino peers nationwide by more than 30 points.

Every nine weeks, pupils in all five Gainesville elementary schools take tests that measure their knowledge of various components of Georgia’s statewide curriculum. By analyzing the results, principals and teachers select the next round of lessons.

The bulletin board hanging in the entrance of Gainesville Elementary is covered with bar charts. The same charts can be found on the school’s website. In the hallways and in cyberspace, standardized test results are detailed not just by school or by grade level but by the individual teacher’s name.

Helming a school that is two-thirds Hispanic, Arevalo McCollough insists that every front-office worker be bilingual; nearly half of the faculty is bilingual as well. He also created an adult-literacy program with the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a civil-rights organization.

• The No Child Left Behind Act, a sweeping education reform law passed during Bush’s first year in office, uses test results to evaluate schools’ success in teaching all learners, including minority, disabled and ESL (English as a Second Language) students.
• Much of Gainesville Elementary’s success comes from a no-nonsense approach in which educators focus on teaching the basics to the most at-risk students.
• “I’m a social reconstructionist by nature,” says Arevalo McCollough. “I believe schools are here to change the landscape, to shift the power.”
• Gainesville Elementary received a $20,000 grant for the Saturday school from Mar-Jac, one of the area’s major poultry companies. Arevalo McCollough culled an additional $20,000 for the lengthened weekday classes by deferring purchases of textbooks and other materials.

Atlanta Journal Constitution
Gainesville Elementary School
Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
The New York Times
Ware County School System