When the state of Kentucky began ranking schools after the introduction of major reforms in 1990, Roundstone Elementary School was near the bottom.
In 1994, when David Pensol moved from a classroom to the principalship of this small rural school, he asked the staff to imagine what they wanted the school to look like in 10 years. "We knew it would be a long, slow, building process," he says. "We agreed that we needed to build a more positive, caring environment where we truly could reach every child."
Today, the school, which serves 260 students, 78 percent of whom receive free or reduced lunches, is one of the best elementary schools in the state. Its CATS scores have placed the school in the top 20 for several years, and its CTBS scores have been in the top 10 in the state every year since administration of the test has been required.
A key to Roundstone's success has been its faculty's intensive focus on curriculum development, teaching strategies, and close data analysis, including a great deal of work during the summers.
As part of the 1990 reform legislation, the state established academic expectations for every grade. According to Pensol, Roundstone teachers responded by doing "old fashioned curriculum work." They spent the nine days of professional development funded by the state replacing the textbook-driven curriculum they had been following for several years with a thematic curriculum aligned with the new expectations. At the end of the 1994-95 school year, teachers had assigned each grade level an underlying theme of "exploration" and topics based on social studies concepts such as "family" or "community." They had also reshaped the curriculum into nine-week units of study, providing for each unit an overview, detailed outline, and essential questions and activities.
This year of work led to many discoveries. Teachers realized that they needed additional time over the summer to work on curriculum and planning. Nine days of paid time during the school year was not enough, so they began to schedule some voluntary time during the summer. Jean Gabbard, a fourth grade teacher, explains how busy the school year gets: "During the year when you have the children, you are so concerned about their individual needs that it is difficult to develop quality questions." She and other Roundstone teachers also found that the best time to schedule curriculum work is the week after students leave. "Even though we are mentally and physically tired, if we sit down when everything is fresh in our minds, then we can adjust the curriculum and have the summer to work on the changes so that nothing is thrown in and disconnected."
Pensol says this curriculum work had another important result: it created a strong bond among the teachers. When the state cut the number of compensated professional development days back to four, his staff did not skip a beat. By that time the level of dedication was so high that the first summer after he became principal, Pensol scheduled the four days of compensated professional development during the summer and offered several seminars and workshops to teachers on a voluntary basis for no additional pay. The week after school was out, the staff spent five days refining the units of study. After that, the council hired a consultant to lead a week-long workshop on the writing process that included help teachers had requested with writing prompts. He also scheduled evening technology courses that met once a week. In every case, almost the entire staff came. According to Larry Hammond, the district superintendent, other schools in the district also realized the value of scheduling professional development time during the summer instead of during the school year. "Using the four days of compensated time during the summer," he says, "gives schools a strong start with ideas to build on during the school year."
After that summer, the Roundstone site-based council established two priorities for summer professional development work. First, they continue to schedule four to five days at the beginning of the summer to improve the units of study. "This is the heart and foundation of all of our work, and we continue to build on this," Pensol says. Second, the faculty has focused on meeting the needs of every child. With this goal in mind, the council has tailored several summer workshops to the concerns of individual teachers about specific students. When several teachers approached him because they recognized that individual students were struggling with reading fluency, the council agreed to bring in a reading consultant from the University of Kentucky to train all the teachers in strategies to address various reading needs. "The more strategies teachers have in their bag of tricks, the more likely they are to be able to help an individual child," explains Pensol.
Another tool that teachers and administrators use to individualize instruction is test scores. When the school receives state assessment results, staff members study them to see which students are not performing on specific tasks. In the last few years, for example, teachers have not been satisfied with students' progress on timed writing assessments. In response, they decided to hold a workshop this summer to ensure that all teachers are using consistent terminology for the writing process.
Today, despite the school's high ranking, teachers at Roundstone continue working to improve their strong academic program. "When other schools approach me to ask about our achievements," observes Pensol wryly, "I tell them that in one sense it wasn't so difficult. We had plenty of room for improvement."
