The SEED School – An amazing place (10-28-08)

Sitting in a coffee shop in Washington DC I’m not only trying to digest my espresso, but the information I just spent the last few hours taking in at the SEED School. Located in a poor community in the South East section of DC, SEED is a unique place. How many inner-city boarding schools do you know of? Its student population is 99 % African American and almost entirely of the lowest socioeconomic bracket. Despite the fact that students come in well below grade level when they start at the school in 7^th grade, on average, 95 % of students enroll in 4 year colleges upon graduation. The school completely disqualifies the argument that until impoverished communities turn around schools will be unable to successfully educate their children. The SEED School is truly an impressive place.

How do they do it?

Below I will do my best to break down the practices, policies and systems in place that all work to accomplish SEED’s goal of sending each and every one of their students to 4 year universities. Some of the information will leave you with more questions so feel free to respond through “comments” on the Blog and I will do my best to either answer your question or direct the question to the right person.

College Enrollment and Perseverance – Getting them in and keeping them there

There is 2 full time staff at the SEED Foundation (organization that oversees the school and the replication schools that are being developed) and 1 full time staff member at the SEED school all responsible for getting students enrolled and through college. The foundation staff members work with students once they’re enrolled in college to make sure that they have several adult advocates on campus who they can go to for support and who will check in with them. The Foundation staff also ensures that students who need it continue to receive mental health support once on the college campus. Moreover, the foundation and school send care packages and provide students with a stipend program where they receive $ 500.00 during the first month of each semester followed by $ 300.00 for each following month. The Foundation also provides scholarship money to students and the two staff members in charge of alumni support actually visit students at university to check in with them and see how they are doing. The bottom line…SUPPORT, SUPPORT, SUPPORT!

Why do students typically drop out of college? Money and failure. If a student is struggling to pay for books, live a similar lifestyle with their collegiate peers (i.e. going out for pizza on a Thursday night), or struggling with classes and mental health issues it is likely that they may not make it through the four years. This is true about students from all socioeconomic levels. However, students coming from SEED are used to a certain level of support from adults in their lives as the school provides endless amounts of effort to make sure students are successful. At lunch today I asked a student what his favorite part of attending SEED was and he was quick to respond “The support…everyone has your back.” What SEED does is exceptional in continuing to support students once they’ve entered college. Their focus on alumni needs is by far the most comprehensive that I’ve ever witnessed. This ties directly with how the students get accepted to post-secondary schools at such a high rate (average around 95 %). When students complete their applications, which everyone must do for at least 2 schools in order to graduate (they have to apply for at least 2 scholarships as well), they include the types of support they’ll be receiving upon entrance into the college. When you put yourself in an admissions officers shoes you can see why a SEED student is more likely to be accepted. They write compelling essays that tell their life stories (1^st in the family to go to college, coming from a tough background, etc.), have experienced an intensive college prep high school curriculum and succeeded, and aren’t coming to college as a single student but as a student with a support network that has their back. Who would you accept…the inner-city graduate who scraped through high school and now wants to make it in college or the inner-city graduate who made it through a four year college prep curriculum, didn’t score too high on college entrance exams, but comes with a support network who will do anything and everything to make sure the student succeeds? You can see the difference pops out at you. Any college is taking much less of a risk on a SEED student.

Although the school is clearly outperforming schools with similar demographics on state tests and closing the achievement gap between minority and white students the school has not performed all that well on the SATs. Nonetheless, this hasn’t stopped them from sending their students to 4 year colleges as they work with each student individually starting in 9^th grade to get them on a plan to attend college. Everything in the school is college. Students wear t-shirts that say “How will you get to college?” The notion that college isn’t for everybody is out the window as soon as you walk through the front door. You’re going to college and here is how we’re going to get you there.

As a final effort to help students prepare for college entrance the school makes sure that students have a variety of experiences before graduating. Students travel the world on leadership programs, attend outdoor wilderness courses, participate in space camp, and do anything and everything that helps grow the whole student. Combined with decent high school grades, a compelling essay, and a backbone that basically comes to college with you, SEED students not only enroll in university, but make it to graduation.

Now, before they ever get to college applications they start as 7^th graders. How does the school educate its students?

The Education – An overview

Before entering 7^th grade SEED students attend a 3 week summer academy. The academy includes preparing them for life in the dormitories, getting them up to speed on the school’s behavioral expectations, which are intense, and assessing their levels in all core subject areas. Before students ever take a step into the classrooms their teachers know their reading and writing levels as well as their mathematical skills and knowledge. The school then uses 7^th and 8^th grade as intensive catch up years. The intention is to have the college prep curriculum start in 9^th grade so 7^th and 8^th are all about preparation. At the end of 8^th grade students must show proficiency in each “strand” (essential learning areas) as they must pass the “gate” in order to move onto 9^th grade. Quite often students don’t’ accomplish this rigorous task of proving understanding of the essential content in which case they are often asked to repeat 8^th grade.

Interim Assessments – Analyzing student learning

Each class is broken into 6 week courses or units that students then take an interim assessment on the essential content. The assessments are written and graded collaboratively within departments and match the style of the state assessments, a combination of multiple choice, short answer and constructed response questions. Through data analysis of the assessments two things are learned...1.) Areas of mastery and 2.) Student deficits. The tests are completely standards driven and through an item analysis give a great deal of information to the teachers. Once data is broken down a variety of interventions are put in place.

• Teachers differentiate instruction in the classroom based on the diverse needs of their students.
• Targeted after school instruction is provided at a one on one level and in small groups.
• A period is available each day during school hours where all teachers are available for office hours. (“college like” emphasis on office hours)
• Study hall is available for all students who need more work time.

Upon implementation of interventions students may be re-assessed or they may demonstrate their new understandings on the following interim assessment as all assessments are comprised of both essential learning from the 6 week unit that’s just finished as well as cumulative materials that’s been learned.

The Classroom - Instruction

Like many “paternalistic” schools, the SEED school relies predominantly on direct instruction. The classes are broken down as follows.

1.) Starter question or problem

2.) Direct Instruction – modeling the essential learning outcome. Teachers show/instruct students on how to do a process or task.

3.) Short break

4.) Students practice the learning outcome with teacher support.

5.) Exit Ticket – evidence of student learning during the period.

There is certainly no magic in the instructional practices used by the school. The teachers are highly dedicated and explicit with students in what’s expected from each class period. They run a block schedule not uncommon in many schools and don’t tolerate off task behavior during class. There is a big emphasis on students monitoring other students behavior and teachers always prefer to have the “we don’t act like that” talk come from a peer rather than the teacher. This type of “learning and college is everything” mentality is part of the intentional culture that the school has developed and continues to push regularly.

Creating a Sense of Urgency - Data

The staff uses data to create a sense of urgency for their classrooms. Every other Friday they have the entire day to work with one another and use this time to subjectively analyze their student’s performance. Breaking up discipline data, content area data, attendance data, college entrance data and any other data they can get their hands on the school uses numbers to get “pumped up.” Moving from always talking about student deficits and where they’re coming from, the staff uses data to track and monitor growth and applaud student progress.

Social Workers – Supporting mental health

The school, which currently has a student population of roughly 325 kids, employees 4 social workers during the school day and another 4 during after school hours when students are on campus Monday through Friday living in the dormitories (they go home each weekend). The school isn’t shy about how much effort they put into helping with their students mental health. This is evident in their continuation of working with students once they’ve entered college to continue to seek support in this area should they need it. Mentally and socially healthy students are certainly more likely to be successful and the school clearly puts a lot of its time, effort and money into this component of student lives.

The Boarding Part of it All – Living at school

Each student lives at the SEED School on Monday through Friday and is split into boys and girls dorms. Each dorm is broken into houses (units) of 12 – 15 students that are named after Universities. Today I saw the University of Pennsylvania house. This is once again a push that college is everything. The houses are run by Life Skills Coaches, LSC’s, and work with students on everything from their academic needs to teaching etiquette and professionalism. The school works hard to develop not only academic skills, but cultural capital as well. These houses develop leadership, teamwork and a variety of other “soft skills” that may determine a students level of success or failure upon leaving the school as much as their knowledge of content. The LSC’s act as yet another adult advocate in the students life and work tirelessly with the academic teachers to make sure that students are being supported. Everyone in the school is in constant communication with one another about student needs thus providing endless amounts of support, the cornerstone of the school’s success (from what I can see).

The notion that students are removed from their environments for even 5 out of 7 days each week is essential to providing students with an inviting, comfortable and healthy lifestyle and is clearly an advantage that the SEED School has. Its founders were purposeful in creating this opportunity as they recognized the benefits that could be received should students coming from the toughest backgrounds have opportunities that were equal to the experience of wealthy white students who attend prestigious boarding schools around the country.

THE BIG QUESTION - What can we take away?

1.) We do or are trying to do a lot of the same things as SEED

a. Interim Assessments based on 5 week learning units. We aren’t necessarily doing a great job of the “teach, assess, re-teach cycle”, but we’re on board with the philosophy and have started to develop this process in our own environment.

b. Student Support is a huge part of what we do with our teaming. We also have an advisor in charge of 12 – 15 students much like the LSC’s at SEED.

c. Instruction at Manual follows a similar process to that of SEED with our Do Nows and Proof of Purchases. Not all of our classes are based on direct instruction, but we are certainly explicit about what students need to know and be able to do by the end of class with our learning outcomes. In addition, direct instruction is not the make or break of learning and so long as essential learning outcomes are being taught/learned I believe the process we use to deliver content can be up to us (discovery, experiential type lessons shouldn’t be done exclusively, but certainly have a place in our school)

d. Overtime, frontloading and reading support are all interventions in place to help students who struggle to demonstrate learning of essential content. Although each of our intervention systems needs revision and are currently works in progress they are certainly heading in the right direction.

SEED has been working at their practices, policies and systems for over 10 years so it’s not surprising that they are ahead of us in their success of implementation.

2.) We must learn from their college effort

a. SEED has clearly cracked the code for college enrollment and completion of their graduates. Stealing a lot of their practices would benefit our students a great deal and we shouldn’t wait much longer to start implementing their practices.

b. Calling our advisories by Greek letters is a small step in this direction, but why not be more direct and call them by the teacher’s alma mater.

c. We haven’t laid out how college and scholarship applications might be intertwined with graduation requirements. We should discuss and publicize this to our students now.

d. We need to be developing relationships with colleges now so that we aren’t stuck in a tough spot in 2 years when are sophomores graduate.

e. A plan for how we are going to support our alumni once they’re enrolled in college needs to be developed now so that we not only get accepted, but stay and finish.

3.) We can learn from their work with student mental health.

a. Our social worker is a huge asset to the school community, but as we continue to grow he alone won’t be enough to tackle the issues that our students deal with. We should consider our budget and allocation of funds to ensure that we set aside sufficient funds to afford additional social workers who align with our needs. We may need to raise additional private funds to accomplish this task, but certainly need to do “whatever it takes” to support the mental health of our student body.

A BIGGER QUESTION…

Could (should) Manual become a 6^th – 12^th grade school or possibly a 7^th – 12^th grade school. Rather than trying to play catch up starting in 9^th grade it is clearly a benefit to the SEED School to have their students starting in 7^th grade. With an intense summer academy prior to starting 7^th grade and an aggressive attack on catching up skills that are missing so that all students are a grade level by 9^th grade we stand a much better chance of sending students to college and succeeding on state and national assessments. Rather than blame the system that sends unprepared students from our feeder schools why not become our own feeder?

What would it take to continue to run our high school while starting a 6^th grade class that grows each year until we have a full blown middle school that leads into our high school? Would it be worth the effort? How would the community react? What roadblocks would stop us from doing it? Who should be invited to the conversation?

This “bigger” question may not be a possibility, but it’s certainly worth exploring. Students entering our high school could be on board with our culture, have the foundation skills necessary to succeed in high school and truly be ready for a 4 year college upon graduation.