Not in class? St. Louis students can expect a knock on the door

St. Louis — Carnahan High School of the Future attendance officer Charlie Bean was exactly where he was supposed to be on a blustery January morning. Demetrius, a Carnahan ninth-grader, was not.

Bean, as is his routine, spent the first 40 minutes of school nudging malingerers from the hallway into first-period classrooms. Demetrius missed his bus and concluded it was too cold to walk the mile and a half to school. He was sitting at home.

Before Bean and Carnahan Principal Alice Roach helped revolutionize the way the St. Louis Public Schools attacked the attendance problem, that's where Demetrius probably would have remained for the day.

Instead, he knew getting to school required only a phone call.

"I'll be right there," Bean said, after taking Demetrius' call to Carnahan's administrative office. Ten minutes later, courtesy of a chauffeured ride in Bean's BMW, Demetrius strolled through Carnahan's front door and headed for class.

Chalk up another victory in the full-court press by the St. Louis Public Schools to boost attendance. The effort is the cornerstone of a plan to reduce a 22 percent dropout rate and instill a culture of learning in a district where failure has long been the norm.

It's axiomatic, officials say, that the district's success balances on a simple, guiding principle.

"You've gotta be here in order to learn," said Vashon High School Principal Barbara Sharp.

When Roach arrived as principal at Carnahan three years ago, she assumed control of a school where more than 40 percent of the students blatantly rejected that theory.

The 57 percent of Carnahan students who did show up on a regular basis, Roach recalled, had a habit of wandering into school at all times of the day.

To Roach, the situation demanded an all-out assault on tardiness and absenteeism.

She tabbed Bean, who had worked with neglected and troubled students at Vashon before coming to Carnahan, to lead a team of administrators, social workers and counselors to meet the challenge of chronic truancy head-on.

Carnahan soon had a database of telephone numbers to contact parents and guardians each morning that a student was absent without notification or reason.

The tactics mirror those used by court truancy officers. But unlike court programs that target only chronically absent students, the Carnahan team reaches out even to kids such as Demetrius, who is in class 99 percent of the time.

Carnahan's new attendance officers relied on data, culled from various sources, that identified myriad reasons certain students were frequently absent or tardy.

The data, Bean found, altered his job description.

"My job is to know every kid in the building," he says. "Not just their faces, but their attitudes and their backgrounds, too." Sylvia Rousseau, a professor of clinical education at the University of Southern California, said the school's approach had been embraced by Los Angeles and nearly every other urban district that has taken aim at low attendance rates.

"Poor attendance," Rousseau points out, "is a symptom of something else going on."

Those symptoms take the form of transience, teenage parenthood, part-time jobs that leave little time for study or sleep, absent parents and other hallmarks of poverty.

"A lot of our kids are forced to take on adult roles," said Vashon guidance counselor Wanda Garner.

Once the Carnahan system was up and running, students quickly became aware of another aspect of the process: All students who miss two days of school without an excuse can expect to see Bean on their doorstep the next morning.

"My students have a fear of me," said the amiable Bean, half-joking. "They don't want me to come to their house."

In three years, Bean figures the number of Carnahan students he has roused from sleep probably stands at fewer than 20.

Today, when Bean guns his BMW out of the Carnahan parking lot, it's to fetch a stranded student — such as Demetrius — for a friendly ride back to school.

But those 20 unwelcome visits delivered a powerful message:

Carnahan's attendance rate, approximately 57 percent in the 2005-06 school year, is now more than 91 percent.

Eventually, the success at Carnahan — a middle school undergoing a transition into a high school that will graduate its first class of seniors in 2010 — reached school district leaders.

Last summer, shortly before the start of the 2008-09 school year, the district's Special Administrative Board allocated $400,000 to adopt the Carnahan prototype by placing attendance officers in 10 other city high schools.

It's a decision, said administrative board member Richard Gaines, that's expected to deliver both educational and financial dividends.

Because average attendance is used to calculate state funding, each 1 percent rise in the district's percentage rate translates into $1.5 million in additional state revenue for the St. Louis schools, Gaines said.

"If we can get the attendance rate from where it is now to (the state high school average of 90 percent), it will mean a dramatic change for us in terms of money from the state," said Gaines. "That's the revenue side. On the education side, it's obvious that we'll just do better if these kids are in school."

Revenue rarely enters the discussion when the Vashon attendance team gathers for its regular meetings.

The team draws on data so narrowly defined that it can, for instance, identify students chronically absent on Mondays.

"I can go to the system, pull data tracking first period attendance and know immediately which kids are coming late to school," said Sharp, the Vashon principal. "With that information we know as a team which students to target."

Once the analysis begins, much of the team effort is devoted to identifying the symptoms — in Rousseau's terminology — keeping kids from class.

"When you don't address any of the (other problems), you're cultivating a habit for kids who feel school is not important," said Rousseau, a one-time superintendent of a unified Los Angeles school district. "And when they exhibit that type of behavior, it doesn't help their education."

Thanks to the new attendance strategy and incentives that include a cupcake party for the class with the best attendance, Carnahan's gains are slowly being duplicated at Vashon.

The school's attendance rate, 66 percent in the 2006-07 school year, now stands at 81 percent.

Courtesy of Steve Giegerich, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Carnahan’s Dr. Alice Roach named Principal of the Year.

"Dr. Alice Roach, principal of Carnahan High School, can add another honor to her long list of achievements. Her “tough love” approach and devotion to her students helped her to win the 2008 Outstanding Principal of the Year award by Teach for America-St. Louis. Dr. Roach is being recognized for her dedication to closing the achievement gap." Source: SLPS Spotlight News, December 12, 2008.

Do we love the children? By Eddie Roth, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"I’m trying to get my arms around public education in the city of St. Louis, and one of my primary methods is to find out who is taking risks to accomplish hard things and go talk to them.
Alice Roach is someone more than one person has pointed me to.

She is principal of Carnahan High School of the Future, on South Broadway and Gasconade Street, and recently learned that she is one of 25 winners of the national MetLife Foundation Ambassadors in Education Award, which honors principals who build partnerships in the community.

I spent about an hour with Dr. Roach on Wednesday, and hope to return next week to observe and learn more about the school from her, the teachers and students.

But in speaking with her about the kind of things that can help make an urban school district work, she told me something that seems fundamentally correct:

She says love for the children is what drives her to succeed as a principal, and that she expects the adults in the building to behave as though they love the children, too.

So, treat the children as you would have others treat your children?

This seems like a serviceable adaptation of the golden rule for educational policy."
Courtesy of Eddie Roth, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 5, 2008

Welcome to my online journal.

To the online visitors:

Wecome to my online journal where I'll share with you my life-long compassion for children, education, and urban St. Louis. I've been a St. Louis Public Schools educator for 37 years as a teacher, principal, and school district administrator.

I'm humbled to be appointed the 2008 Principal of the year by Teach for America.

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Dr. Alice Roach.