Lake County 'teaching to transform students lives'

Today is graduation day.

However, instead of senior high students, this Class of 2007 is the nearly 200 schools across the state moving off the No Child Left Behind Act's improvement list.

And though the way those schools reached graduation day differs, they all say they used a combination of cooperation, hard work and innovation to reach their goals.

"We're moving in a great direction," said Michael Nekritz, principal at Antioch Community High School, which just ended three years on the list. "This is a really fun time to be here."

Schools on the improvement list have earned failing grades by No Child standards, and they face mounting sanctions -- including offering school choice and doing a complete restructuring -- in return. To move off the list, schools must get passing grades on state exams for two years in a row.

Locally, Peter J. Palombi School in Lake Villa Elementary District 41, Grayslake Middle School in Grayslake Elementary District 46, Raymond Ellis Elementary School in Round Lake Area Unit District 116, Antioch High in Antioch-Lake Villa Area High School District 117 and Grayslake Central High School in Grayslake High School District 127 all accomplished the feat this year.

And Highland Park High School -- though not quite there -- is one of many more that has taken a solid step forward by passing this year after numerous failures.

Officials there said they'd made changes similar to those at other successful Lake County schools to go from missing the mark four straight years to making the grade in 2007.

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Tom Koulentes, Highland Park assistant principal, said the school got creative in helping struggling students catch up.

He said the school developed a "freshman academy" to identify at an early stage those who were falling behind, and put them in accelerated classes that actually moved faster.

"When you have students that are struggling, the traditional response is to remediate," Koulentes said. "There's a fundamental flaw with that logic. #8230; They never get caught up to their peers."

Instead, the school put lagging kids in classes where they learned concrete applications for abstract concepts, he said. Now, one of those classes is using geometry to redesign the courtyard.

"We can really do some exciting, relevant things with this knowledge," he said.

The school also tested students and found they had gaps in their learning, preventing them from achieving in more advanced classes.

For instance, Koulentes said, a student may have never learned a basic concept, and therefore would lag in future classes -- teachers would be none the wiser.

"The student may never have mastered fractions, but the curriculum moved on," he said. "We (had) to find a way ... to figure out, 'Where are those gaps?' "

And they did, creating a class targeting each kids' needs and providing them with small-class instruction on exactly those areas.

"Essentially, all of the students made substantial gains in their math," Koulentes said.

Antioch officials decided they had to tackle some systemic problems to help improve school performance, principal Nekritz said.

One major target was reducing the tally of unexcused and total absences.

"We can't teach them better if they're not here," Nekritz said. After emphasis on enforcement and some policy changes, the rate of unexcused absences fell about 70 percent and the total attendance rate rose 2 percent, he noted.

The school also instituted teacher walkthroughs to determine how students were using their time: Were they reading? Discussing? Listening to a lecture?

The data helped educators tailor classroom activities to improve students' performance, Nekritz said.

"I think that we have provided, or tried to provide, a systematic approach," he said.

Janet Elenbogen, chief education officer at District 116, said Raymond Ellis got off the school improvement list through the development of partnerships that took some time to take full effect.

"We believe that this was a long process. Last year was our first payoff, so to speak" Elenbogen said, referring to the school's 2006 passing grade. "This year, we had every expectation that we would achieve an equal level."

She said the school's emphasis on guided reading, an effort in which teachers group the students by their reading ability level, helped identify at-risk kids and get them the kind of intervention they needed to succeed.

"It was a concerted effort to really work on school improvement," she said.

For schools moving off the improvement list, though, the achievement isn't over.

They all say they're keeping their nose to the grindstone, and their goals are grand.

"I would argue that we're doing this to teach students differently," Koulentes said. "We're teaching to transform students' lives."