School board hears from improvement consultant

By Jennifer Edwards (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Tuesday, April 21, 2009

NATCHEZ — When Ilean Richards eats a slice of cherry pie, she expects it to taste like cherry pie. But she said that simple piece of logic does not always work when dealing with the school districts.

And that, Richards said, is a problem.

“You have to concentrate on your own vision (for the school district) and be focused on that,” Richards said. “When you let other distractions in, that’s when things don’t end up tasting right.”

Richards, a former superintendent of education for the Leland School District in Washington County, spoke to members of the Natchez-Adams School Board about the changes she and her colleagues implemented in that district to help Leland students excel.

Richards was invited to speak to school board members by board member Dr. Benny Wright. Richards now works as a consultant with school districts across the state in their efforts to increase student achievement. Richards has also worked the State Department of Education.

When the Leland schools were first rated on the one to five scale, the district received a level one rating. Since then, Richards said, the schools, which are now rated individually, consistently received level 4 and level 5 rankings.

Richards told board members that the key to the turnaround in Leland was establishing expectations for principals, teachers and students. And then, Richards said, making sure those expectations were being achieved.

“We had to keep the expectations in front of us and say ‘this is what I expect from you,’” she said. “That is what we must do if we want a child to be successful.”

But Richards said outlining expectations isn’t enough. She said, for any school district that is hoping to elevate its achievement level, changes must be instituted.

“Since we had failed as a school district, we realized we could no longer do what we had always done,” she said.

The changes Richard instituted in Leland all focused on one thing — the children, she said.

“That should be everyone’s focus,” she said.

One of the first changes implemented by Richards was a renewed focus on teaching reading skills. She said on state test, reading and English were tested separately. But in most classroom settings they are grouped together into one period.

For that reason, she started a district-wide reading requirement. Each child was required to read a certain number of books each school year. The number was assigned based on the grade-level of the student.

Any students who did not complete the required reading, received an incomplete grade.

“As they became more fluent as readers, their achievement went up across the academic board,” Richards said.

That, she said, is because all subject matter is based on the reading and comprehension of materials.

Additionally, Richards said her school systems had a large number of teaching assistants. Richards said the students were better served by using the money from teaching assistants salaries to form more classes.

“We reduced the class size and put those children with qualified teachers,” she said.

Richards also said some focus had to be put on teachers and making sure they are able to fulfill the expectations they have been given.

Part of that means finding time to work with them one-on-one to better their skill set, Richards said.

She also said that forms of further development for teachers had to be tweaked to make sure they were fruitful.

One change was moving the district’s early release day from Wednesday to Monday and requiring teachers to remain on school campuses until 4 p.m. each of those days.

“We had a good 2 hours on Monday and 45 minutes on Wednesday, where we could just train teachers,” Richards said.

She also implemented three additional training days at the beginning of the school year before classes were in session.

Another responsibility placed on teachers was to have them create portfolios to track student success. She said teachers were required to reflect on the data they compiled.

Part of the data required was a record of students with a large number of absences.

“I wanted to see what the teachers were doing about (the absences,” Richards said. “I wanted to know what kind of home contact the teacher had with the child and the family.”

Richards said she wanted to know how the students were progressing before standardized testing came around. To do that, the curriculum was outlined in such a way that provided time for the grade level objectives to be taught by the end of the third nine-weeks grading period. At that time, the students were given a comprehensive test.

The results from that test were used to outline the objectives for the fourth nine-weeks grading period and what skills needed to be polished before testing began, Richards said.

“By the fourth nine-weeks, the students should be thinking and applying what they have been taught,” Richards said.

The changes implemented in the Leland schools weren’t easy, Richards said. But what made her and the rest of the district push through was the commitment they had to the students in the schools.

“Once (the children) find out you care about them, they will do anything under the sun to make you happy,” she said.