A Woonsocket elementary school shows dramatic improvement in state testing.

01:57 AM EDT on Wednesday, October 27, 2004

BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer

WOONSOCKET -- Kevin K. Coleman Elementary School is like the Little Engine That Could. Faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, it huffed and it puffed and it pulled its students over the mountain.

Two years ago, the Woonsocket school's test scores were in the toilet. Less than a quarter of its fourth graders met the state standard in math and less than half did in English.

The poorest school in a very poor district, Coleman was ranked as a low-performing school that had to offer students a chance to transfer to a better school. It had nowhere to go but up.

This year, the school not only met the standards, it blew them away. Coleman's fourth graders made huge gains in math, far surpassing the state average, and it posted double-digit increases on the English portion of the state test.

Today, Coleman has joined the Barringtons of the world, becoming a high-performing school that is making improvement. It defies those who argue that demography is destiny, that children who grow up poor or black or speaking a foreign language can't make it.

Principal George Nasuti, a local boy who grew up in a housing project and attended seven schools in eight years, says the biggest reason for Coleman's success is a change in school culture. Teachers here have always cared about their students but they didn't expect very much of them.

A few years ago, when the federal No Child Left Behind law threatened schools with sanctions if they failed to improve, Nasuti had a heart-to-heart with his staff. He told them it was time to stop making excuses.

Journal photo / Andrew Dickerman

Sithisone Venevengsot, a fifth grader at Coleman, ponders a written excerise yesterday. The school has shown dramatic improvement in state testing.

At Coleman, 20 percent of the children don't speak English as their first language, so the school carved out 2 1/2-hour blocks where children could receive intensive instruction in reading and writing. The school opened early so these same students could get the extra help they need.

By contrast, special-needs children had always been pulled out of the regular classroom to receive remedial help. The problem was that these students weren't held to the same standards as their peers. The solution? Put them back in the regular classroom and add a special-education teacher who can address their needs.

In a fifth-grade social studies class, Allison Almond's students are studying the presidential election. Each child is composing a letter to the voters, which will teach them how to write a persuasive essay.

Almond, the classroom teacher, asks students to identify the elements of a persuasive essay. An essay, she says, needs to have an opinion or a point of view. While she leads the lesson, the inclusion teacher, Kim Cloutier, works with her children. Sometimes, she repeats a question or coaxes a child to respond. At one point, she asks a child whose attention has wandered to sit up.

It is impossible for an outsider to tell which children are special needs and which are not.

Constantly in motion, Almond seamlessly reinforces skills that her children have picked up in other classes. And she isn't afraid to interrupt her lesson to offer some thoughts on the political process.

"I wonder if four years from now, we will have a female candidate for president?" she muses. "Maybe it will be a him or her but I hope mostly a her."

"And the White House will be painted pink," one boy offers.

Coleman has also adopted a new way of teaching called the workshop model. Instead of lecturing in front of the class, a teacher might begin with a group exercise and then break into small groups. At the end of class, she will ask her students to share what they have learned.

This approach allows teachers to work with children of different abilities and gives children more than one opportunity to practice what they have learned.

In Lisa Tenreiro's English class, the children sit on the floor while she reads them a book about a little girl who has lost her mother. Tenreiro peppers the class with questions to make sure that they get what they are reading.

She asks the class to describe how one of the characters feels using the vocabulary words posted on the blackboard. A dozen hands shoot up.

"I think he's weird," one boys says.

"How about mysterious?" Tenreiro suggests.

Later, the fourth graders discuss the meaning of the word "ignorant" and Teneriro points out that the word "ignore" is embedded in the larger word.

Then, the class breaks to celebrate the birthday of a student, Maria. Three parents, who have been sitting quietly in class, hand out cake. Ten minutes later, the class settles down and takes a test.

Five years ago, most parents wouldn't have dared set foot in a classroom, Nasuti says. But all that has changed.

Last month, Coleman threw a barbecue in the school's parking lot to celebrate the school's dramatic achievements. Nasuti manned the grill, his staff cooked and 300 people turned out to share the school's success.

"It used to be, 'Those poor kids from Fairmount,' " Nasuti says, referring to the neighborhood. "Now, it's how high can we raise the bar."