From Texts to Technology

Jan 07, 09:25 AM

Jan. 7--Only three years and two concrete staircases separate the students in the fifth- and eighth-grade science classrooms at Erie's Grover Cleveland Elementary School, but the classes themselves are worlds apart.

In December, fifth-grader Selene Maggio sat cross-legged on the carpet upstairs in Room 210, hunched over a miniature parade float she helped build using materials from a science kit.

The room buzzed with chatter about an upcoming show in which students would finally get to show off their various vehicles to the rest of the school, but Maggio sat silent, thinking.

"I think we need to take some weight off of it to make it go faster," the 10-year-old finally said before leaping up to adjust the small fan that powered the float.

Meanwhile, in a small classroom on the lowest level of the school, eighth-grader Andrea Ortiz sat slumped over a worksheet, puzzling over true-or-false and multiple choice questions about atoms. Later, following an all too familiar pattern, she'll read the chapter review from the textbook, take a test and wait for her grade.

The class only does experiments once in a while because there aren't always enough microscopes, lab aprons or other equipment to go around; when that happens, teacher Brian Bradley ends up demonstrating most concepts from a podium at the front of the room.

"We do the best we can with what we have," Bradley said and shrugged.

The two classrooms are an example of the divide that still exists in the district between the old textbook-and-chalkboard method teachers have been relying on for years and the hands-on, investigative style of learning experts say U.S. students need in order to catch up to their international peers.

The answer to bridging the gap, Erie School District administrators say, lies in a five-year, $15 million College Bound grant from the GE Foundation.

The GE Foundation, the Fairfield, Conn.-based arm of General Electric Co., created its College Bound program in 1989 to increase college enrollment rates at more than 20 targeted high schools across the United States. In 2005, it expanded the program, committing $100 million over five years to increase enrollment and boost math and science scores at school districts in select GE cities across the nation.

The foundation chose the Erie School District as the fourth recipient of the grant in April, following districts in Louisville, Ky.; Stamford, Conn.; and Cincinnati. Those districts received awards ranging from $15 million to $25 million. A fifth district, the Atlanta Public School District, was awarded a $22 million grant in October.

The Erie grant is the single largest gift in the history of the district, and it is believed to be the largest nongovernmental grant ever given to any Pennsylvania district.

"We want the Erie School District to become the first world-class urban school district in the nation, and this is the first step," Erie schools Superintendent Jim Barker said.

The first major expenditure of the grant money came in December, when the Erie School Board voted to approve a 10-year, $3 million-plus plan to overhaul the district's computer network system and build an online database of student information.

Through the database, teachers will have instant access to real-time information about student attendance, grades, standardized test scores and disciplinary issues, among other things. And, for the first time, they'll be able to track and respond to student achievement trends quickly, online, instead of searching through years of test score reports. The idea, district officials say, is to create a more effective, efficient classroom that leads to higher student achievement.

But perhaps the greatest, or at least most visible, change for students will come over the next few years, administrators say, with the introduction of new math and science curriculum that focuses more on hands-on, collaborative learning and less on chalkboards and textbooks.

To that end, the district will spend about $4 million over the course of the grant to buy enough hands-on science experiment kits in every elementary and middle school classroom. Before the grant, all the elementary schools had access to at least some kits, but there weren't enough to go around, said Jim Rutkowski, one of the district's project managers of the grant.

The goal is to get students more engaged and interested in science through doing chemical reactions instead of simply reading about them in a textbook, an approach countries like India and China have been using with much success for years, Rutkowski said.

"As a country in the '60s and early '70s we were leading everybody, and then we put it in cruise control, rested on our laurels," he said. "As we were coasting along, the rest of the world started flying past us, and now we're playing a catch-up game."

The grant is about more than making science class fun.

It's about reaching students now so they have the tools later to compete in a flat world where science, engineering and technology skills are key, said GE Transportation Chief Executive John Dineen, who helped Erie land the grant.

"There's going to be a lot of competition out there in the future, and we need creative, innovative, well-trained kids to figure out how to make our economy work in that type of world," he said. "The economy is moving ahead, with or without them, and companies are going to be able to get talent wherever they need it."

In Jen Swigonski's fifth-grade science class at Grover Cleveland, Selene Maggio and her classmates have finished testing their parade float and are dutifully recording speed and distance measurements in their journals.

They've also kept track of a budget -- one brown connector piece costs 100 play dollars -- and recorded any modifications they made to the float (a wooden block they used to weigh it down made it too heavy, so they added metal washers to an axle instead).

"This isn't like my old school," said Maggio, who moved to Grover Cleveland from Blessed Sacrament School in third grade. "We never explored. Now we get to find out things for ourselves."

Swigonski said she sees Maggio and other students becoming enthusiastic about science.

"Experiencing it makes it stick, and they can relate to what they're learning," Swigonski said. "Even the struggling students, they really look forward to science now."

When Brian Bradley and the other middle school science teachers in the district learned Erie was going to have an unexpected $15 million to spend, they set to work crafting a wish list to create the same kind of hands-on classroom: microscopes, stereoscopes, triple-beam balances, lab aprons, basic lab equipment.

"At this level, the more (hands-on experiments) they do, the better," Bradley said.

For 13-year-old Andrea Ortiz, the best, most exciting science classes are the infrequent ones in which she and her classmates get to do experiments or activities. With the grant, she's looking forward to doing more.

"I think it'd be fun," she said. "It makes it more interesting because you get to see and actually, like, touch and feel what's going on. ... Usually right now we just look at it in a textbook."

Some students don't learn best by reading from a textbook, Ortiz said. Getting to do more hands-on activities will "show those people what they can do."

Perhaps even more important than the money, the grant gives the district access to the resources, connections and brainpower of a global corporate giant, Erie School Board Vice President Jeanine McCreary said.

It takes away any excuse for not being able to boost math and science scores, increase college enrollment, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the district overall, McCreary said.

"This is the kick in the pants that we needed," she said. "Now we have to get it done."

The way Dineen sees it, Erie has a few advantages over larger cities like Louisville, Cincinnati and Atlanta when it comes to doing just that.

Erie's big enough to "pull something like this off," but small enough to do it quickly -- especially if the district is able to enlist the help of volunteers and leaders in the education and business communities, Dineen said.

That help might take the form of businessmen and women mentoring in schools, perhaps, or just spreading the word about the importance of science, math and higher education.

"People care in Erie," Dineen continued. "People care about the community, people want to make it better. People are looking for ways to make sure this community is economically competitive in the future. That's not the case everywhere."

The report card will be a few years coming, however. It'll take that long before the district has enough data to tell whether the grant has helped increase math and science test scores or send more high school seniors onto college.

In the meantime, Rutkowski has an ear tuned to faculty lounges and hallways.

"As the science (kits) start coming in and teachers start seeing some positive trends and start talking about it in the faculty rooms, that's the first indicator" that the grant is working, he said. "It's the students, too, in the hallways, being a little more excited and energetic about going to class."

The real test, he said, will come four or five years after the grant expires, when today's second- and third-graders graduate from college. If students choose jobs in math, science or technology-related fields, especially here in Erie, well, that's success, Rutkowski said.

"A lot of the changes we want to see are going to take time, but change is going to come," he said.

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