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Just three years ago, if you had asked almost any citizen of Richmond, Va., to rate Woodville Elementary academically among the city’s 31 public elementary schools, most would have placed it near the bottom. Historically, the school has served as many as 500 children per year, almost all of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunches and live in public housing projects in Richmond’s crime-ridden East End. At Woodville, it was difficult to determine which was lower—the community’s expectations for the school or the achievement of its students.
“Some of our teachers had begun to believe that the students were already achieving to the best of their abilities,” says Rosalind Taylor, who became Woodville’s principal in 2003. “I had to dispel that notion.”
Already, the school was beginning to show signs of improvement. It had recently achieved full state accreditation, which means that 70 percent of its students passed the state Standards of Learning tests, or SOLs. Taylor’s goal was to ensure that Woodville met the yearly benchmarks spelled out under the federal No Child Left Behind legislation. If it did not, Woodville would be managed by the state’s Department of Education.
She knew that motivating her staff to embrace further change would be a challenge. That’s why she was delighted when Richmond City Schools selected her to participate in a new program developed by U.Va.’s Partnership for Leaders in Education (PLE). A three-year-old alliance between the Darden School of Business and the Curry School of Education, this program helps educational leaders gain the skills necessary to manage increasingly complex schools and school systems.
To prepare a cadre of educational leaders uniquely qualified to turn around Virginia’s lowest-performing schools, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner tapped PLE.
Taylor was one of the first participants. “It’s intense, focused and well planned,” Taylor says of the program, which brings together principals and other school- and district-level leaders for sessions led by Darden and Curry faculty. Once educators return to their jobs, they receive ongoing coaching and support from PLE staff and program graduates.
“We focus on providing leadership education to intact work teams, rather than one or two leaders from each district,” says Tierney Temple Fairchild, who holds an M.B.A. degree from Darden and a Ph.D. from Curry and serves as PLE’s executive director of research and development. “We want to build leadership capacity within and across stakeholder groups so members work together more effectively for students.”
The PLE faculty use the case instructional method, leading participants through actual situations faced by real-life organizations, which helps them develop the capacity to make decisions quickly, yet thoughtfully.
Taylor believes that this hands-on approach to problem solving is just what she needed. “It has given my team direction, and has helped us realize that we share accountability for Woodville’s performance,” she says. Taylor reorganized her school staff, creating teams to identify goals and attack problems right away. She revitalized the dormant PTA, established partnerships with local businesses and encouraged involvement by volunteers from the city’s faith-based groups.
Today, Woodville Elementary is vastly different than it was just two years ago. This year, the percentage of students who passed the reading SOL increased from 74 percent to 98 percent, and those passing the math test jumped from 76 percent to 96 percent. The school also met the yearly federal benchmarks for the first time.
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