The El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence: Is it Possible to Turn Big City School Systems Around?

The Answer Seems to be YES.

A Forum — January 8, 1999

For school reform efforts to be successful, they must be built on a foundation of healthy community and parent engagement, said Anne T. Henderson, consultant with the Institute for Education and Social Policy at New York University, and co-author of Urgent Message: Families Crucial to School Reform. Henderson said that healthy communities involved with school reform will exhibit the following characteristics: (1) parents are active and press for accountability and good results; (2) school improvement is ongoing and parents are always involved; and (3) parents work with their children at home as well. The Urgent Message report includes examples of low performing schools and how, after parents and the community became involved, there was significant improvement. El Paso, Texas was one of those communities.

El Paso represents the fifth poorest congressional district in the United States and is a bi-national community, with the City of Juarez, Mexico, just across the border. El Paso has a population of 650,000, approximately 70% being Hispanic; 135,000 students attend El Paso schools, with 85% of them eligible for free or reduced price school lunch. In 1992, only about one third of the Latino and African American students passed the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TASS).

With failure rates running so high, the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) became concerned about the number of students from El Paso schools that needed remedial education. The El Paso schools, equally concerned, raised the point that almost 80% of their teachers were graduates of UTEP and therefore, the problem of student achievement belonged to both of them. Both systems agreed that serious reform was needed and that any reform effort must involve the K-16 system. Dr. Susana Navarro, now Executive Director of the Collaborative, with help from the Washington, D.C.–based Education Trust, decided to create the Collaborative to reform the K-12 school system as well as teacher education programs.

The El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence was formed in 1991 with a wide range of educators and community and business leaders, according to Alicia Parra, Deputy Director of the Collaborative. Members include the superintendents of the three large local school districts, the community college president, the president, provost and dean of the college of education of UTEP, the mayor, representatives from the business community and the chamber of commerce, a county judge, state education resource center personnel, and representatives of inter-religious sponsoring organizations. The goal of the Collaborative is to ensure that all children are successful in school and are prepared to enter and be successful in a four-year college. The Collaborative will achieve this goal by reforming the entire education system (K-16) and by involving the entire community in the reform effort.

In six years of work, the Collaborative has seen dramatic increases in student participation and achievement in academic courses. In 1992-93, 63% of students were enrolled in Algebra 1 by the end of 9th  grade. In 1997-98, 99% of students were enrolled in Algebra 1 by the end of 9th grade. Enrollment in Algebra II increased from 45% to 65%, and enrollment in Chemistry at the 11th grade increased from 32% to 50% during those years.

Students in El Paso also showed improvement in the TAAS. The TAAS combined passing rates for math in grades 3, 8 and 10 for Hispanics increased from 36.2% in 1992-93 to 79.7% in 1997-98; for white students the rates increased from 63.1% to 91.4% during those years; and for African American students, the rates increased from 32.3% to 75.1%.

Ms. Parra discussed nine key components to the Collaborative’s success. They are:

1. Reform efforts must be standards-based. Standards are held high for all students, who are tested and benchmarked at grades 4 and 8. Developing these standards in 7 disciplines took two years of working with teachers, educators and members of the community, and all participants said it was worth the time and effort to end up with standards that were well developed and widely supported.

2. Assessments must be aligned with the standards. It has also taken a long time for the Collaborative to develop the assessments, but it is critical because "what gets tested gets taught."

3. The Collaborative’s work is focused on whole school reform and it seeks to change fundamental beliefs about teaching, learning and achievement.

4. Reform must include K-16, teacher preparation and teacher education, colleges and universities. UTEP has now changed the way they prepare teachers and professors by providing many more field-based experiences.

5. Use data at key points to create an urgency for change. Create a vision of an ideal school and then see what the data say about where you really are. In El Paso, parents wanted to see their children become high achievers, and the pass rate of 33% for Latino and African American students shocked many parents into action.

6. Policies must be aligned to support reform. The Collaborative works to see that policies at the K-12 level and at the collegiate level are mutually supportive and aligned. Working together, the community college and university eliminated remedial classes for students, and high schools increased graduation standards to now require four years of math and four years of science. If needed, students get extra help in these courses, rather than in general remedial classes.

7. The accountability measures must be very clear and unambiguous. The TAAS is a very clear measurement of where students and schools are in terms of their performance. While the public may not like some of the low scores, the statewide tests make clear where improvement is needed, or in other cases, how much performance has improved.

8. A full, robust set of support systems must exist and include professional development for all members of the collaborative, especially for teachers. The Collaborative has helped teachers upgrade their content knowledge and reduce the isolation teachers often experience. Reform depends upon teachers and their ability to understand what high quality teaching and learning looks like. The Collaborative, with funding from foundations and other sources, has been able to provide many of these professional development opportunities.

9. Providing technical assistance to individual campuses to strengthen their capacity to engage parents in their efforts. The Collaborative has worked with campus administrators, teachers and support staff to plan, develop and implement strategies for partnership building with parents, and offered training to campus and district staff to develop their skills and design strategies for parent development.

Ms. Parra said that a community must have a guiding vision and principles to govern everyone’s actions and that changes in governance, structure, accountability, curriculum and professional development must all be in place, and work must progress in each area simultaneously. She stated that without all of these areas being addressed, change will not occur.

Triana Olivas, Principal at Sageland Elementary School, El Paso, described the changes she has seen at her school as a result of the planned reform efforts of the Collaborative. First, she said that her greatest challenge was trying to move her staff and teachers forward – they were very entrenched. The Collaborative helped to provide various forms of support for the school as it moved to its vision of Accelerated Schools and created "microsocieties" which are companies in the school that teachers and students work in for one hour per day. Ms. Olivas indicated that the opportunities for professional development provided by the Collaborative were critical in making the changes she envisioned. The Collaborative and the school have also worked to increase the involvement of parents by using them as teacher aides and volunteers in the microsocieties. The school has seen its TAAS scores increase from 30% and 40% to the 90%’s, with math scores at 94%.

Myrna Castrejon, Program Coordinator for Parent and Community Involvement, said a critical part of the Collaborative’s work is to involve parents in the work and reform efforts of each school. Ms. Castrejon stated the Collaborative’s philosophy: "If we believe that all children can learn to high standards, then we should have the belief that their parents must be involved in a meaningful way in that education and that their contribution is significant and important, regardless of their level of learning or education." The parent component seeks to promote continuous learning for parents and their children and has four components: parents as learners (the schools offer continuing education and literacy classes for parents), parents as teachers (parents help with after-school programs and programs like the microsocieties), parents as leaders, and parents as advocates (teaching parents how to change the culture of the school). Given that one-third of the parent population in El Paso is functionally illiterate, finding ways for parents to be meaningfully involved at school is a serious challenge. The Collaborative has begun a literacy initiative, which is designed to get parents to think of themselves as readers and writers and to enable the parents to help their children in school. As a result of this initiative, a number of the mothers have now enrolled in community college and some are getting their GEDs.

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