Columbus Monthly / November 2010 / November / Worthington: The three new R's

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Worthington: The three new R's

Worthington Schools is committed to preparing students for the challenges of the 21st century.

When it comes to learning at Worthington Schools, the district aims to focus on the three R’s. And while that does include reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic, the three R’s of which Jennifer Wene speaks are directly related to preparing students for life in the 21st century.

“Worthington will always believe in the three R’s—rigor, relevance and relationships,” says Wene, director of academic achievement and professional development for the school district. “We are trying to move out of the industrial age that has long left society. We’re teaching a new generation of leaders and we’re preparing this generation of kids to be adults.”

With technology changing so rapidly, it’s increasingly difficult to teach students everything they’ll need to know. But the district can prepare them to be good communicators as well as flexible, versatile, collaborative and creative individuals, she says. “If that’s not the ‘what’ we teach, it’s the ‘how’ we teach,” she explains. “We’re preparing for what you don’t know.”

The district received a grade of “A” in a recent random survey of 400 households in the district, says superintendent Melissa Conrath. That grade matches the “Excellent” rating the district received on its 2009-’10 report card from the State of Ohio.

“We’re an excellent school district,” Conrath says. “But it’s not just test scores. That’s not what defines the Worthington school district.”

“We have kids in college, freshmen, who come back and say they couldn’t believe how much better prepared they were,” she says. “We have people who grow up and come back to raise their kids here. Those are the qualities that really define the school.”

The broader community

Conrath says she knew Worthington was an excellent district when she became superintendent in January 2006, but she didn’t quite have a handle on just how great it was until she started working with the teachers, staff, students and community. People’s willingness to work on various programs, serve on committees or even just read to a child once a week is a key to the district’s success, Conrath says. “It’s one of those intangible assets, that people are willing to give of their time. . . . Having the entire community be involved is part of our success. Together we hold high expectations.”

Community involvement is a hallmark of the district, agrees Wene. “The school district is such an integral part of the community, and the community is an integral part of the school district,” she says, citing Project More as one program that exemplifies how the community directly affects student learning. Project More provides one-on-one tutoring to students with special needs and students who need assistance with reading. Volunteer mentors—community members as well as middle and high school students—provide 30 minutes of one-on-one instruction to help children with reading progress. The district currently has about 380 volunteers and is aiming for 1,000.

“For those buildings that have fully implemented that program, we’ve seen quite large gains in reading,” Wene says. “It’s a low-cost program with very high results for kids.”

Conrath also mentions the district’s partnership with a community-based organization called Partners for Citizenship and Character (PCC). It is through PCC, she says, that volunteers from the Circle of Grandparents share their experiences and values with students while also helping them learn. “They have worked closely with the schools through that group,” Conrath says. “They have a large number of senior citizens who go in and tutor in our schools on a regular basis.”

For more than 20 years, the Worthington Educational Foundation has benefited the district through its mission to fund projects that will enrich the learning environment for students across the district. Since its inception, the foundation has awarded more than $200,000 in grants to teachers and staff to help pay for such things as library books, iPods for French and music instruction, and mp3 players for special education students who can use the technology to increase their reading comprehension and retention.

Widespread impact

When talking about Worthington schools, you’re actually referring to an area much larger than the New England-style city centered at High Street and Rt. 161. In addition to the entire city of Worthington, the district’s enrollment boundaries extend to portions of Columbus, Perry Township, Sharon Township and the village of Riverlea.

After a student population peak of 10,800 students in the mid 1990s, the district’s enrollment now is around 9,400, according to statistics reported in its state report card for the 2009-’10 school year. Those students attend 11 elementary schools, four middle schools and three high schools (Worthington Kilbourne, Thomas Worthington and the Linworth Alternative Program).

The school population is as diverse as the community it serves. Today, the student population is about 8 percent African-American, 4.3 percent Hispanic and 6.5 percent Asian. There are 270 students in the district for whom English is not their first language. Those students speak more than 30 different languages.

As the diversity of its population grows and changes, the district continues to seek out ways to help each child succeed, Conrath says.

Pursuit of excellence

The Worthington School District received another grade of “Excellent” on its state report card for 2009-’10 and has met every standard on the report card for seven years in a row. While the results from state achievement tests are important, however, they are just one of the indicators of the high achievement in the district, Conrath says.

Last year, the district’s high schools counted 12 National Merit Scholar finalists among their graduates. Around 90 percent of the district’s graduates pursue some form of higher education, and those graduates have earned millions in scholarships over the years. The district offers more than 180 high school courses for its students, including 19 AP classes as well as other accelerated or honors courses.

The Worthington staff is among the most experienced in Central Ohio. Around 70 percent of the teachers in the district have earned at least a master’s degree, and there are many who have PhDs.

Growing with the times

The Worthington Schools curriculum emphasizes reading and writing and helping each child succeed, while aiming to exceed the state standards that are required of every district in Ohio. But the Worthington district isn’t happy to rest on its laurels. Administrators and staff members constantly assess their instructional content and methods of teaching to see if there are ways to better meet the needs of the students.

“When you look at what is the greatest asset in Worthington Schools, it really goes back to the passion and commitment of our staff to continually seek out new ways to engage our students,” says Conrath. “The culture here is the relentless pursuit of how best to serve the students.”

One example of that dedication to facing challenges and making changes is the restructuring of the middle schools in Worthington. In the future, middle school students will be selecting majors and minors and choosing electives. The goal of the plan, Wene says, is to help students figure out what their interests and passions are, so they can be better prepared for high school and college.

Part of the reasoning behind the restructuring, Conrath says, was to manage the curriculum for grades seven and eight more effectively, in a way that added quality to the students’ lessons.

The district also periodically reviews and revises every major course of study. “My push with the teachers is we need to work to the future,” Wene says. Out of those reviews have come some notable programs.

Project Lead the Way resulted from technology teachers studying ways to better prepare students to use technology in the 21st century. At the same time, the idea of emphasizing core science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses for students was coming to light in the educational world. In reviewing how they could upgrade their program, the teachers discovered Project Lead the Way (PLTW), a national, nonprofit organization that provides rigorous and innovative STEM experiences for middle and high schools. The curriculum of the program, developed by teachers and professionals, emphasizes critical thinking, innovation and problem solving, says Bryan Brown, a technology teacher at Thomas Worthington High School.

Since the program was implemented in the district five years ago, “Worthington students have earned the rights to over 2,000 hours of college credit while enrolled in high school PLTW courses,” Brown says. In addition, graduates are reporting back on how well the program prepared them for college. “In fact, one engineering honors student reported that the curriculums were so similar between PLTW and freshman engineering, the professor utilized her as a lab aide throughout the quarter,” he says.

Abby Hackworth, a junior at Worthington Kilbourne High School, signed up for a before-school PLTW activity when she was in eighth grade at Perry Middle School. A friend wanted to do the before-school program and encouraged Hackworth to sign up for it as well. “She wasn’t going to do it if I didn’t sign up, and I wasn’t going to do if she didn’t,” she says. “We both had no idea of what engineering was in eighth grade.”

While her friend didn’t pursue PLTW courses in high school, Hackworth has. From eighth grade up to the present, the courses have become increasingly difficult and tailored to different fundamentals that would be required of an engineering student. In eighth grade, for example, she learned how to use software she would later need. As a freshman, “we mostly learned how to sketch,” Hackworth says. “That’s pretty much the basis. You draw everything you build.” Sophomore year brought an introduction to the principles of engineering and using math formulas to solve problems. Junior year, she says, will be about digital electronics.

The honors student says she feels fortunate that she landed in the program. “I feel like I’ll already have an advantage in college because I’m already learning the software, the fundamentals, the technology,” she says. “The whole point of engineering is that you’re meant to solve a problem, and I think that’s what I enjoy about it.”

Another subject area that has undergone an update similar to the technology department’s is the physical education curriculum, Wene says. What folks used to call PE or “gym class” now is known as Wellness 4 Life. It encompasses all of the skills, knowledge and fitness habits that students will need to stay fit and healthy into adulthood.

The program, adopted by the Board of Education in December 2009 and based on the belief that physical activity increases brain function, aims to prepare students from kindergarten through grade 12 with the skills and knowledge they need to get fit, stay fit and lead healthy lives. The new curriculum will offer a variety of activities and individual assessments of students’ cardiovascular health and upper and lower body strength. The plan enables teachers to “design individual fitness plans that go well beyond whatever they have in their PE classes,” says Wene, who adds that data will be collected at the building level and district-wide. “I’ll be interested to see if we can identify an age where fitness starts to drop off,” she says.

Just as the Wellness 4 Life curriculum grew from a team of teachers who studied how to improve the physical education curriculum, Phoenix Middle School rose from a group of teachers and a principal working to create their dream school. “Phoenix offers a great alternative for kids who need that mastery learning,” Wene says. “Failure is not an option.”

Phoenix, housed in the former Perry Middle School building, grew out of a quest by the district, says Jeffrey Maddox, principal of Phoenix Middle School. “They came to the staff and said, ‘Dream of your ideal middle school,’ ” says Maddox, who graduated from Worthington High School in 1990. “Four groups formed and formulated some pretty cool plans. Phoenix was ultimately the one that was chosen.”

The goal of Phoenix Middle School is to help kids better understand themselves and their relationship to the world. The curriculum is relevant to what they need to prepare for the future, and students are asked to take responsibility for their own learning and evaluation of their progress. The mastery assessment that is required may not always come in the form of paper and pencil tests, Maddox says. Students are encouraged to demonstrate mastery of a particular topic in a number of ways. “It might be a project inside a speech, inside a pencil and paper test, inside a larger community project,” he says. “The rigor is very, very high.”

What Maddox likes about this approach to learning is that it removes the element of students “shopping” for grades and estimating how many more points they need to earn a certain grade, something he says he knows he did as a student.

“It is absolutely everything we thought it would be and more,” Maddox says of the middle school, which also requires a lot of parental involvement. “A little while ago, we looked at the video of the presentation we made before the board, and [the school] is more than we thought it would be. It’s so great to see the students engaged, the parents actively engaged and to see a growing community.”

In fact, the concept has been so successful, Maddox says, the Phoenix school might look different next year—the goal is to add grades five and six to the building starting with the 2011-’12 school year. “We’ll look at what we ideally want in an elementary school within a four-grade school,” he says.

As a product of Worthington Schools himself, Maddox says the experience has been especially rewarding. “It is very humbling to be in a district that is constantly looking at different ways to do things,” he says. “School is not one size fits all.”

Fiscal responsibility

The fiscal health of the district is by far the greatest challenge facing the Worthington School District, as it is in any other district in the state, Conrath says. In a district dedicated to constantly improving the way it educates its students, she says, the challenge is, “How do we do that with shrinking resources? All districts are going to be hit by the state budget, an over-reliance on property taxes and a phaseout of the business tangible tax.”

The State of Ohio is eliminating the business tangible tax—a tax on the inventory businesses have on hand—and is replacing it with a commercial activity tax. The latter won’t bring in as much revenue for schools. “Because of the change, Worthington Schools, beginning in 2012, will lose about $15 million annually,” Conrath says. “That’s 13 percent of our budget. It’s going to be a huge challenge for us to deal with.”

The district continually looks at ways to make the most efficient use of its resources. The recent middle school restructuring is a perfect example, the superintendent says. “We pursued changes to the middle school structure to run it more efficiently and effectively,” Conrath says, adding that she believes the changed curriculum will result in more effective middle schools.

A reduction in teaching staff and administrators made the middle schools more efficient, she says. Before the changes, there were 132.6 teachers/administrators in Worthington middle schools; this year, the district has 120.77 people in those positions. The restructuring will trim $250,000 in the 2010-’11 academic year and $750,000 in 2011-’12. As Conrath says, “We are very much committed to using the dollars that we have efficiently and effectively.”

Michele Lemmon is a freelance writer in Columbus.