District, Board Give Attention to Males of Color
A recent report presented to the School Board on Males of Color examined the experience and outcomes of African American and Hispanic male students
A key element of the school board’s oversight of Des Moines Public Schools is a series of recurring “monitoring reports” the board receives throughout each school year that summarize the ways and means of operating the largest, most diverse school district in the state.
At a recent board meeting a report entitled Males of Color was presented by district administrators, the first monitoring report solely dedicated to examining the experience and outcomes of DMPS African American and Hispanic male students. The unprecedented emphasis reflects a pledge the district made in 2014 along with the rest of the diverse, urban school districts that comprise the Council of Great City Schools to focus like never before on these subgroups.
“This is a milestone report,” said DMPS Chief of Schools Matt Smith. “And it is a recognition of a moral imperative to better serve these students. Also, this is a dialogue – not just data – about how we can better unite, as a school district and as a community, to provide equity of opportunity for our male students of color.”
The report detailed a mixed bag of results. In part it was a measurement of the gaps between males of color and the rest of the district’s student subgroups in areas like academic achievement, behavior referrals, graduation rates and attendance. It also revealed highlights like the fact that African-American males registered the highest one-year gains on the FAST Test given to kindergarteners and 1st graders, an early literacy assessment that’s used to identify students at-risk for not meeting grade-level reading benchmarks by 3rd grade. That is an especially hopeful sign for the future since state law is set to require that students not proficient by then successfully complete a remedial summer reading program or be held back.
But in general the report outlined the district’s commitment to what was labeled second-order change:
“Second-order change (SFR) is deciding – or being forced – to do something significantly or fundamentally different from what we have done before. It exceeds existing paradigms and requires new knowledge and skills. It challenges existing belief systems and culture. The process is irreversible: once you begin, it is impossible to return to the way you were doing before.”
Presented by Smith and Chief Academic Officer Brenda Colby, the report outlined an intensive three-year plan to systematically eliminate gaps that still exist between student subgroups while sustaining the momentum established in recent years by rising graduation rates and declining dropout rates.
Projections call for the achievement gap to be closed over the course of the three-year transition to Schools For Rigor that is being piloted this year at six schools and will be in place districtwide by the 2018-19 school year.
Fundamental to the Schools For Rigor approach are key elements of the “Responses to Data” contained in the report to the board.
“Create student-centered learning environments through investment in Schools For Rigor.”
Once this transition has occurred teachers are freed up from delivering instruction to gather evidence, daily and student-by-student, of learning and utilize tracking tools to adjust in real-time.
“What you’ll see is students teaching and learning from one another because they’ve been empowered to do that,” said Colby.
Another key point of emphasis in the district’s retooled professional development strategy is “cultural proficiency.” An increased commitment to learn where and what students come to school from enables teachers and all school staff to meet them closer to halfway instead of unrealistically expecting students to surmount all of the obstacles on their path between home and school.
The district is focused on maximizing variables that are under its control. If it can’t change the climate at home it can impact the climate at school. The report includes plans to capitalize on a federal culture and climate grant in that area.
Twelve additional counselors have been hired at the secondary level to enable more personalized attention and assistance in college and career planning and more customized interventions when called for.
Behaviorally, the focus is on alternatives to suspension and lost instructional time. Those traditional strategies primarily served the purpose of making bad situations worse.
For more information, download a copy of the report as well as a copy of the presentation made at the Board meeting. In addition, you can watch a video of the meeting on the DMPS-TV YouTube channel.
UPDATE: Two nights after the report was presented a documentary film premiered at the Fleur Cinema. RunDSM: The Doc is a full-length production of local filmmaker Nick Strickland. A year and a half in the making, it chronicles the RunDSM/Movement 515 program founded and developed by DMPS teachers Kristopher Rollins and Emily Lang. Two of the student-poets featured in the film are Russhaun Johnson and Julio Delgadillo. Russhaun is an African-American who graduated from North last year and is now attending Drake University. When he was in middle school and his mother was in prison Russhaun was homeless at times and walked to school from parks where he slept on benches. Julio is Hispanic and a senior at North this year who was invited to perform last weekend at the National Book Festival in Washington D.C, where he finished 2nd to another DMPS student in a poetry slam. The film includes an excerpt from one of Julio’s poems that’s a hymn to the healing of his nearly broken family. Russhaun’s and Julio’s stories did not fit into any of the charts and graphs in the report to the board but they certainly do speak promisingly to the topic.
