Tuesday, Dec. 6
December 6, 2011
Jake P. Lipari
December 8, 2011
Gov. Bobby Jindal said education will be a priority in 2012 and with that began the first in a series of school appearances Monday, with a visit to Dularge Middle School in Terrebonne Parish. Jindal was hosted by school district officials and told how that image of education in the school system’s District 7 has changed.
Dularge Middle School opened in 1977 and once held the reputation of being where students were poor performers with discipline problems.
The Bayou Dularge is an area that has 78.7 percent of students eligible for the free or reduced meal program. Once an impoverished and problematic area, school officials contend, it might still have a high poverty level, but its educational performance has made a change for the better.
“K-12 education will be our top priority going into the New Year,” Jindal said. “It is so important for Louisiana to out perform the southern and national economy, [that] we need to make sure we are getting a great education for every one of our students.”
Jindal said he came to Dularge Middle School because of it being in a high poverty and high performance area. “What the principal and her teachers are showing here is that every child in Louisiana can learn. They are not making excuses, they are simply doing a great job.”
The Louisiana 2010-2011 performance grade card issued a B+ for Dularge Middle School, where 84 percent are producing at or above their grade level.
“During the past four years, Dularge Middle School has been the only school in the state to consistently meet all state objectives,” Terrebonne Parish School District Superintendent Philip Martin said.
Since 2006, Dularge Middle School has met or surpassed the school district’s overall baseline performance score. Principal Cheryl Degruise said she likes to think her school can be an example for others.
Degruise added that with more than 200 students, teachers at Dularge Middle School are able to offer a 20-1 attention level to their students.
“I know that our school is high performing school in the high poverty [area],” Degruise said. “One of the things that has brought us to that point is the biweekly professional development we do for our teachers. It is based on where our needs are and where we need to go. Right now we are trying to focus on our struggling learners and I think that will get us over the top.”
Degruise credited her teachers and staff working as a team as the secret to success.
District 7 School Board member Roger Dale DeHart noted that Mulberry Elementary School, which is part of this district and the only elementary school in Tri-parish region to secure a grade of A+ on the state’s 2010-2011 performance grade card is in this district and that students from Dularge Middle School include many of those high achievers working their way up the system.
“The test scores being in the elementary school,” DeHart said. “It is [matter of] continuance. The governor is fascinated with the test scores that we have [with] high poverty high performance,” DeHart said. “Very few school in the state have had [the] track record] as [Dularge Middle School] and he wanted to see how we accomplish that.”
DeHart credited securing good teachers to create a stable faculty and administrators, plus getting children to care and improving parental involvement among lower grade students have enhanced performance ability.
“We had four schools identified as in the state and this was one of them,” Martin said. “We are anticipating maybe a couple of more this year. Those successes are reason to be appreciative, but we still are not satisfied.”
Martin said that no single initiative could be credited for the school’s turn-around. “Dedicated people working hard toward a common goal. That would be the one summary statement. This school has gotten the performance pay every year since we have gotten it. It is across the board salary range of $3,000 whether you are the principal or a teacher.”
The Terrebonne Parish School District is the only one in the state that has implemented performance pay, and among a small number nationwide. “But not everyone is doing it the way we are doing it,” Martin said. “Some people say performance pay doesn’t work. I agree with them if you don’t do it right. If it is not done correctly it does not work, but we have a model that the results speak for themselves.”
Martin said that performance pay is not a single element generating improved teacher and student performance.
Responding to criticism that the governor’s visit and a claim of improvement does not seem to fit the C grade given to the school district last year by Department of Education, Martin said that the way those grades are calculated does not give an accurate picture of school district performance.
“We fall in the middle in terms of letter grades, but in terms of the 70 districts in the state we are among the top 25,” Martin said. “We have a 7.4 plan in place. We call it 7.4 because we are 7.4 points away from a B. I can live with a B. Prefer an A, but can’t live with a C. We were going to move to the next level. ”
The governor praised merit pay being delivered to schools by the school district to those locations that meet growth targets. “They have been focusing on at risk students,” the governor added. “They have been intervening before [children] fail. This has been a leading district [that has] been voluntarily implementing reforms.”
Jindal said that one of the most important changes to be made is the coming year deals with teacher evaluations. “That way you can reward teachers who are effective.”
For teachers that are not meeting their level of expectancy, Jindal said their remaining in given schools district would be re-evaluated.
“Value added assessment is a great tool,” Jindal said. “It is so different from what has been done before [because] it looks at where the students start and compares where they end at the end of a school year.”
During his one-hour visit to Dularge Middle School, Jindal stood in on a fifth grade class taught by Madenna Voisin, but spend the bulk of his time in a private meeting with Degruise, Martin and Assistant Superintendent Carol Davis.
“It is exciting to see that right here in Louisiana we’ve got educators committed to the fact that every child can learn,” Jindal said. “The adults here are showing that they are willing to make the tough choices and hold people accountable to make sure our kids are learning and progressing.”
Martin said that during his meeting with the governor, Jindal asked how the state could enhance their objectives. “He was very complimentary of Terrebonne Parish,” Martin said. “Primarily it was to sit with him and explain things we feel are important in education and look at how we can improve student achievement as it relates to the entire state.”
“You’ve got to look at the needs of every school, not the wants,” DeHart said. “This school had poor academics and behavior [problems],” DeHart said. “That has completely turned around, but that took a lot of people, a few different administrators and good teachers. It didn’t happen overnight, but we continue building.”
Terrebonne Parish School Superintendent Philip Martin, left, Gov. Bobby Jindal and Dularge Middle School Principal Cheryl Degruise visit 5th grade students in Madenna Voisin’s class. MIKE NIXON
