A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

Implementing Schoolwide Projects - May 1994

Connecting Education with Experience

Blythe Avenue Elementary School
Cleveland, Tennessee

Overview

With a combination of Chapter 1 funds and dynamic leadership--and by concentrating on promoting early achievement, increasing parent involvement, smart uses of community resources, and improved staff morale--Blythe Avenue School is breaking the cycle of low achievement. The schoolwide project includes a readiness class for the transition from kindergarten to first grade, the whole language approach to reading, the IBM Writing to Read and Writing to Write programs, and a districtwide Discipline-Based Arts Program in which art is taught throughout the curricula. In 1993, Blythe Avenue was named an Arts Honor School by the Tennessee Arts Commission.

School Context

Blythe is located in a 50-year-old building in the heart of Cleveland, TN, 30 miles northeast of Chattanooga. The school enrolls approximately 250 students in grades K through six, all of whom live below the poverty line. Eighty-seven percent of students are Anglo, 12 percent are African American, and 1 percent are American Indian or Hispanic. Between 40 percent and 50 percent of students move in and out of the district during the year, as parents seek jobs and affordable housing. The school is the poorest in the district, with 93 percent of students receiving free or reduced-price meals.

Major Program Features

Academic focus. An emphasis on high standards begins early at Blythe because of the Chapter 1 schoolwide project's readiness program, which targets children between kindergarten and first grade who score below the 30th percentile on the standardized assessment. The readiness program introduces students to their community by taking small groups on field trips through nearby neighborhoods. On these trips, students learn how their personal and school experiences fit with the working world. A trip to a grocery store, for example, provides lessons about nutrition and applied mathematics--calculating costs and weighing and measuring vegetables--while exposing students to new foods and information about improving their diet.

The school used Chapter 1 schoolwide resources to establish an electronic infrastructure in the school. The Chapter 1 director purchased five IBM computers for each of the primary grades and six for each upper-grade classroom. Two networks, supported by more than $48,000 of software (including the IBM Writing to Read and Writing to Write programs), link the systems--one for grades K and 1, and one for grades 2 through 6. Teachers who initially were skeptical about the benefits of technology now are enthusiastic because of the students' improved literacy. Teachers use six days a year to learn about the hardware and software; according to the Chapter 1 director, "the computers [have become] an instructional tool to complement our programs, rather than [being] a separate program." All students receive 30 minutes of computer literacy instruction each week in an Apple computer lab. The computer literacy program is not supported by Chapter 1 funds.

Discipline-Based Arts Education (DBAE), an independently sponsored partnership between Cleveland City Schools and The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, strengthens the connection between arts and academics at Blythe. DBAE incorporates art history, criticism, aesthetics, and production, and is taught as its own discipline. Art is often integrated into other areas of instruction, including history, mathematics, social studies, and geography.

Planning and design. Blythe Avenue became a schoolwide project in 1989-90. To determine the best use of the funds, the district's Chapter 1 director held a brainstorming session with Blythe's faculty to identify the school's major needs and solicit suggestions for improvements. Teachers and parents responded to a survey, based on comments from the session, by ranking items according to their importance. Two priorities emerged: (1) to build a strong relationship between home and school and (2) to reduce class size. The school then used Chapter 1 monies to create the position of school-community coordinator to serve as a liaison to parents. Although structural constraints of the building precluded reducing class size directly, with the support of Chapter 1 funds the school added a multi-age class, a week-long reading and math summer camp program for fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, and a half-day, extended-year program for rising first- through rising third-grade students to work on reading and math skills during the summer.

Organizational/management structure. Using what the principal calls a "participative" decision-making structure, teachers and administrators collaborate in implementing major building-level decisions, most notably the evolving design of the schoolwide project. School-community coordinator Carolyn Ingram became the principal in 1992, and set as her goal increasing and improving student attendance and strengthening the school's relationships with parents. Viewing technology as the vehicle to capture student interest and motivation to learn, the Chapter 1 director immediately used schoolwide project funds to purchase IBM computers and software in order to support the whole-language approach to literacy.

Parent and community involvement. The school-community coordinator serves as Blythe's major link to students' homes. The coordinator serves as a liaison between the school and parents and the community and frequently acts as an advocate. For example, during her tenure as coordinator, Ingram provided basic necessities for one of the school's parents--an unemployed father of five--and located a house and job for him. Through her efforts, many of the community's wealthier residents have been encouraged to become volunteers at the school.

Efforts to involve parents in the school include informal breakfasts hosted by the principal--"Donuts for Dads" and "Muffins for Moms"--a grandparents' luncheon, and the traditional open house and parent-teacher conference nights. Parenting skills classes emphasize the importance of education, homework, nutrition, and drug awareness.

Evidence of Success

Even with a large number of transient students, attendance increased from 88 percent to 95 percent between 1990 and 1993. The Blythe Avenue School is the poorest in the district, but it has attracted about 15 students from other zones. Similarly, several teachers from the most affluent schools in the district have asked to teach at Blythe. Parent involvement, including increased attendance at Parent Night and other similar functions, has tripled. Between 1991 and 1993, students showed four- to 14-point percentile gains on the CTBS-4 Achievement Test.

Blythe Avenue Elementary School
1075 Blythe Avenue
Cleveland, TN 37311
(615) 476-8212
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[Engaging the Community in Learning]

[Laying a Foundation for Success]