Failure spawns school's reinvention

BROCKTON -- Brockton Superintendent of Schools Basan "Buzz" Nembirkow has come up with a radical alternative to fixing a failing elementary school: Close it, send the students elsewhere, and reopen it as a middle school for the gifted.

Come June, that will be the fate of Gilmore Elementary School, which has failing rates as high as 50 percent on state tests and often ends up last on parents' list of school choices.

No Massachusetts school system, as far as state education officials know, has tried this approach. The school's parents, who did not learn about Nembirkow's plans for the school until after the decision was made, are responding with a mixture of consternation and confusion. Although many say they do not like the idea, they say they feel powerless to stop their children from being uprooted. That gifted children will take their children's spots is not the issue; it is that their children will leave a school they like.

"I just wish they'd pick a different school," said Debbie Simpson, 34, who attended Gilmore as a child and sends two children there. "I was upset about it at first, but there's no point arguing about it. This is what they're going to do."

The idea, some educational researchers say, does not make sense at a time when common practice is to keep children in a struggling school, and put pressure on teachers and the principal to figure out how to raise the test scores. If anyone is moved, it is usually the principal and perhaps the teachers. Shifting gifted students, too, further puzzles some educators, who say that the same students might do just as well or better in a regular school with good teaching.

Meanwhile, sending Gilmore's failing students to other schools may do nothing except disrupt their education, they say. There is no evidence that closing schools is the right solution, said Richard F. Elmore, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

"What you're actually doing is just kind of moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic," Elmore said. "The real issue is, 'What's the quality of the teaching and learning that's going on in classrooms?' "

But other researchers praise Nembirkow for acting now. Parents may be upset about their children being moved, but researchers say it is a bigger gamble to keep hundreds of students in a low-scoring school and wait for the state to intervene.

"Which is worse, being in a failing school or having to move to another school and having an opportunity to learn?" said William Guenther, president of Mass Insight Education, a nonprofit educational research group.

School district officials, including the Brockton mayor who chairs the School Committee, say it is a preemptive move against a possible state takeover of Gilmore, and a signal that the school district will not allow low-performing schools to languish. Nationally, educators have debated for years how to repair failing schools.

In the fall, Gilmore's kindergartners through fourth-graders will move to other schools to make room for the gifted program. Fifth- and sixth-graders and a couple of English as a Second Language classes will stay at the school -- renamed Gilmore Academy -- for a year.

Nembirkow said he does not plan to let the former Gilmore students founder in their new schools. Many of the 364 students may go to Huntington Elementary School, the nearest to Gilmore, and he plans to provide intense teacher training, more computers for teachers and students, and possibly a longer school day for failing students there. Nembirkow said the closing is just the first step in a broader plan to improve Brockton schools, including offering full-day kindergarten to all students and expanding middle schools by 2007.

He said he would track Gilmore's students using their individual student identification numbers after they leave and make public how the group fared. Typically at a failing school, the principal is the first to go. But Gilmore's principal will stay at the middle school for the gifted because most of her experience is in the upper grades, Nembirkow said. Most of the teachers will move to other schools. Nembirkow said he would provide training to teachers and make the move as painless as possible.

Nembirkow, who became superintendent in July, is betting the rest of his career that his plan will pay off. "Something has to be done now," said Nembirkow, 60. "I'm not going to sit here and tinker around the edges. Some drastic changes have to be made for the benefit of the kids."

Sometimes, he said, leaders have to break up a failing culture to force change, whether the institution is a school or a business. In the past, he said, he tackled low-scoring schools at Chicopee by making teachers reapply for their jobs.At Gilmore, he examined test scores, talked with parents and teachers, and saw that the school was one of the least popular choices in a city that allows parents to select their children's schools. With the backing of the school board, Nembirkow decided to close the 40-year-old school to address two issues at once: eliminate the threat of a state intervention at Gilmore and make room for a gifted school.

Laurell Anderson, co-president of the school's PTA, said she was surprised last month to hear that Gilmore would close. "I don't want to move my child from one school that's in jeopardy into another school that might also be in jeopardy -- and then you come to me next year and say that didn't work," she said.

The state says Gilmore is low performing, and Mass Insight Education includes the school on its list of the state's 100 worst schools. But Gilmore is "nowhere near" a takeover, according to the Education Department. Under current rules, it takes years of failure before Massachusetts would consider taking over a school.

Nembirkow said Gilmore's low test scores -- failing rates range from 15 percent to nearly 50 percent, depending on the grade -- and its lackluster progress are reasons to close it. But he refuses to blame the failure on the teachers, the principal, or the children.

For many Gilmore teachers, the end is perplexing because the reasons for the failure are hard to determine. The school has spacious classrooms, new textbooks, and cheery yellow walls. Teachers have coaches to help them teach math and English. They point out that 80 percent of the students are from low-income homes, and a third are not fluent in English.

Nancy Kunce, a Gilmore teacher for 18 years, corrects papers on Sundays and poured her own money into her classroom, buying extras, including a stuffed bat, to excite third-graders about science. She created stations around the classroom for hands-on activities. As she spoke, a girl pulled two cards out of their sleeves and matched "late" and "tardy" at the synonym wall station.

Two other children sat at another table, listening to an African folktale on headphones to work on reading.

George Donovan, a second-grade teacher, called the reason for the low performance the "million-dollar question."

"If we knew what it was, we wouldn't be underperforming," he said. "We all think we're in a good school."