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Home > Blogs > Springfield Schools News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > November > 20 > Entry
Central Academy: A closer look
About 50 community members attended Tuesday’s forum about Central Academy, a public school of choice in Middletown, hosted by a local parent’s group.
Springfield Partnership for Academic Challenge and Enrichment hosted the presentation by Dr. Dianne Suiter, principal of Central Academy at Middletown City Schools. They are hoping a similar program could be a fit for Springfield.
There’s a pretty generous amount of information about Central on it’s Web site if you are interested in learning more. Here’s information about democratic schools, the curriculum style Central adopted as its philosophy and model.
Parents with the group told me Tuesday they would like to organize a visit to Central Academy and keep the conversation going about whether a similar school could fit in Springfield City Schools and a relatively diverse population.
All five board members attended the meeting and I spoke to board member Don Reed afterward. He acknowledged that Central is an interesting concept, but the district does have finances to consider and there would have to be much more consideration before jumping into a project like that. He also mentioned that Suiter said the best way to start such a program is to have kindergarten and first grade classrooms and build up as the students get older.
We’ll see what happens from here.
There were a few big elements to Central that were part of the presentation and discussion Tuesday night. I went into most of them a little in Wednesday’s article but I’m going to delve into them a little more now.
• Multi-aged: Multi-aged is probably the most basic of these concepts. Students at Central are not grouped by grade level as in traditional schools. Instead classrooms have students from a span of a couple years. At Central this year, those groupings work as: early primary (kindergarten-1st); late primary (2nd-3rd); intermediate (4th-5th) and middle schools (6th-7th this year, will expand to include 8th grade next year. Students stay with the same teacher for each year of the grouping.
• Progressive: Progressive educations take many forms but typically — and in Central’s case — it means that projects are emphasized over textbooks and other “classic” methods. There’s also a heavy emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking.
• Democratic: The Democratic approach to education is not unique to Central but these schools aren’t common: the Alternative Education Resource Organization estimates there are fewer than 100 in the United States. Democratic is two-pronged. First, the students are consistently encouraged to consider their place as community members, first in the classroom then the school, city, state, nation and globe. The second part is that the education is student-centered. Students are encouraged to look into things that interest them and teachers incorporate the state standards into that.
• Non-graded: This may be one of the more confusing aspects of the school because they don’t use grades that many of us received as our measure of academic success. Instead family conferences are held each trimester where the teacher gives a narrative report of the student’s progress. Suiter gave a good explanation of it that essentially boils down to this: a letter grade like a “C” doesn’t tell you very much about the student’s work other than that it’s average but the narrative would tell you precisely what about the work earned a “C.” Many elementary schools are switching from letter grades to standards-based report cards which tell a student’s progress on individual concepts instead of an entire subject matter.
• Demographics: Springfield and Middletown are both classified as “urban” districts under Ohio law, a designation given to areas with high poverty rates. In Ohio, those urban districts form a group commonly referred to as the “Urban 21.” Springfield has a higher percentage of racial minorities and economically disadvantaged students than Middletown, but both have significant populations of students on free-and-reduced lunch. One of the things that SPACE liked about Central is its demographics, which are fairly representative of the district’s population. The school actually has a higher percentage of racial minorities than the district overall and a slightly lower percentage of economically disadvantaged (65.3 percent in the district compared to 53.6 percent at Central) and students with disabilities (19 percent in the district compared to 17.3 percent at Central) , according to the Ohio Department of Education. This is partly by design, Suiter said. The school has an allotted percentage of students to accept from each of the district’s neighborhood elementary schools. If any of the schools does not have the number of applications to fill that quota, the remaining slots are doled out to the other schools, she said. This is also something board member Don Reed noted when I spoke to him after the meeting, that the school’s population reflected the district’s but it has been set up to do so.
• Parental involvement: Last school year, the Middletown City Schools board voted to expand Central’s kindergarten to 6th grade program to include a middle school that would go through eighth grade. The day the enrollment for the 50 middle school slots opened up I went to the school around noon and there were already parents waiting in the gym to enroll their children at 7 p.m. that night. Some of them had been there since they dropped their children off at 8 a.m. that morning. For kindergarten enrollment, some of them actually camp out to make sure they get a spot. Programs like Central’s aren’t for every family, Suiter said. But the ones who choose is are very involved. The school requires families to sign a contract that states they will attend family conferences and volunteer in the school. The staff and Suiter accommodate families by working around parent’s schedules or meeting with them on their front porch or picking families up if they can’t get to the school to volunteer. Because it is a school of choice (a term that implies parents have to make an active decision to enroll their child there instead of the neighborhood schools), they can make stipulations like that that the neighborhood public schools cannot.
• Cost: The final key point about Central is cost but like so many things there are two sides to this one. Central Academy does not cost any more for the district to operate than any of its other elementary schools. The building-level per-pupil spending is actually the second lowest of the district’s elementary buildings, according to the ODE. Central’s curriculum program doesn’t require any dues to any organizations like some specialized programs might. But launching a school like Central would have some costs involved such as training staff members, finding space, etc. and Springfield is already in financial oversight with another $1.4 million in cuts coming down for next school year.
• Retention: One huge reason behind magnet schools is alternative education and using different approaches to provide the best education for all students. But most of the magnet schools in the state are in urban districts and it’s no coincidence that those districts have some of the most drastically declining enrollments in Ohio. Magnet schools are as much a tool to give parents choice — frequently provided by private and charter schools — within the public schools, thereby keeping students in the traditional public school system. Someone asked Tuesday night if Central had helped Middletown retain students. Suiter didn’t have any hard and fast numbers but before the middle school was added, some Central parents were taking their kids out of the public school system when they graduated from Central, she said. When the board was considering expanding the program last year, several parents said they would consider options outside of the city schools if Central did not offer a middle school program.
So did you attend the forum Tuesday? Would a program like Central Academy be a good fit in Springfield City Schools?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: School choice, Springfield City Schools
Comments
By Education1st
November 21, 2008 1:23 PM | Link to this
Where R the results?The bottomline if R tax $ R going to go towards something like this then there needs to be something that demonstrates its value academically and I do not see any stats convincing me of that (which typically means there R none).R schools R already financially strapped and spending additional funds to start a experimental type of program does not make fiscal sense.Once again R board members looking to spend $ we dont have on a program that has no proven track record of producing any better quality education than the traditional learning model.This to me sounds like it is fiscally irresponsible.By Megan Gildow
November 21, 2008 2:02 PM | Link to this
Education1st � this is a good question. I covered the topics that were discussed Tuesday in today’s post. If this conversation continues, I’ll delve into other things like Central’s ratings and academic data. But to answer your question very briefly: According to the ODE, Central has floated between continuous improvement and academic watch in recent years, the second and third of the state’s designations. That’s about the same as the Middletown elementary schools that have a similar student population in terms of students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students. The building is in “Academic Watch” this year. The last two years, Central was in “Continuous Improvement.” In 2006-07, Central met 7 of its 12 indicators and last year the school met 1 of 12.By Laura
November 21, 2008 2:23 PM | Link to this
I am a graduate of NEHS, but now live in SC. We live in a large school district (4 high schools and building another one) that has many magnet programs. The elementary school level has 7 ranging from “civil engagement” to technology to arts. The middle school level has 5 programs - The Learning Collabrative, Technology, Leadership, TWO Single Gender) and Arts. The high school level has an amazing 9 magnets. Some are for the extremely intelligent, Arts, Exercise Physiology, Technology, etc. All these schools take 40 or less students. The classes are smaller than ‘general population’ and are excellent. I would recommend having the magnet programs everywhere. Let the district open 1 program and see how it does. If it’s anything like here, it will flourish and will have at least a 2:1 application ratio!