Day Of Reckoning By The Numbers

By LISA CHEDEKEL and RICK GREEN
This story ran in the Courant January 9, 2000

"Oh, man, look at Alakazam. Abra, Kadabra, Alakazam. You got those?" he asks Juan, who has brought a stash of Pokemon cards to school.

If Mrs. Winn could see him now, she'd roll her eyes, the way she did so many times last year, in third grade, when Guillermo would interrupt her rapid-fire lessons with his assorted comments and questions. Here it was, payday for all the work they had put into the Connecticut Mastery Test, and all he could think about was Pokemon.

Hey, fourth-graders have their priorities.

The buildup this morning had been torture. Guillermo knew something was up when his new teacher, Mrs. Amadeo, marched the class downstairs to Mrs. Winn's room. But it wasn't until they were huddled together on the rug that Guillermo understood: The CMT scores were back.

"Even if you didn't make the state goals, I want you to know, I'm very proud of you," Silvia Winn had assured them before calling them to her chair, one at a time.

He waited for his turn, transfixed. He watched Loren beam when Mrs. Winn announced that her reading score had doubled between a practice test in the fall of 1998 and the real test this October. He watched Edwin melt when she grabbed his arm and said, "You made it, baby, you made it," meaning he had reached the goal in math.

When she called his name, Guillermo worried that his heart might beat a hole through his Nike sweatshirt, so desperately did he want to impress her.

"Guillermo, how do you think you did?" she asked, prolonging the agony.

"I don't know," he said.

He knew he must have done OK. On an April practice test, his scores had fallen into what the new superintendent called the "golden band" -- a level just below the state goals. There was no way they could have slipped back, what with the after-school Power Hour, the daily drills, summer school.

The only question was: Did he do OK enough? He knew if he could meet the goals, he would be worth more points to Hartford, which was in last place on a statewide scoring index.

"You did awesome," Mrs. Winn said, wrapping an arm around him. He had reached the state goal in writing and math. He was still a few points shy in reading. "Great job," she assured him.

He was relieved. They all were. She wanted it that way. There was no reason to mention that none of the 13 test-takers, who had shifted last year out of bilingual classes, had passed the reading section. There'd be no purpose in pointing out that some students' reading and writing practice scores had climbed between September and April -- before Superintendent Anthony Amato came to town.

She pushed the positives: Nine of the 13 had met the math goals, compared with zero on the fall '98 practice test. Nearly all of their reading scores had improved.

As happy as he was that Mrs. Winn was happy, this wasn't the kind of high that could sustain a kid like Guillermo very long. By lunchtime, his world was back in balance: He grilled his classmates about why Jennytza was crying. He struggled to keep up with the new math curriculum, which seemed to jump around from one topic to another. He wanted to know when, if ever, the hands-on science lessons that had disappeared last spring were coming back.

In short, he had moved on. The test was old news. At age 10, he had a case of CMT burnout.

"There's so much about the test, the test," he said. "I don't want to think about it anymore. I know we had to learn it, but I'm done with that for now."

And he was. Back to business.

"Some of those cards, you know, they cost a hundred bucks," he said. "My father says, if me and my brother clean our room, he's getting us a bunch."

Work Even Harder

The number was practically tattooed on fourth-grade teacher Pamela Brunell's forehead last year: Jump 10 in your mastery scores and you're home free. Fail and you're gone. This is the "new Hartford," the one that will never be last again under Amato.

Last summer, this simple equation was her lifeline. Friday morning, rolling off Webster School Principal Freeman Burr's lips in a tense 8 a.m. meeting, it felt more like molten lead dripping on her skin as she heard they'd missed the goal.

Surprised? Maybe not. But she is devastated to see her children score poorly, especially when she knows most have made substantial progress in class since last year.

"Maybe a seasoned teacher would have done better," Brunell says, searching for some understanding.

Brunell's job had been on the chopping block last spring because she didn't get a top evaluation during her first year. It was Amato who saved her, with an off-the-cuff comment that sure, Webster could keep any teachers it wanted to -- as long as the scores go up 10 points.

When the eagerly awaited scores came out Wednesday, Brunell and Webster didn't come anywhere close to a 10-point gain.

Webster was the only school in the city in which every fourth-grade score went down, a crushing blow. For Brunell and Burr -- a new principal who went far out on a limb for this 46-year-old computer programmer-turned-teacher -- it is the worst news possible.

Yet, to walk into this woman's vibrant classroom is to see a more organized and assertive teacher, clearly more confident and growing in her job. She is more adept at discipline and keeping a lesson moving. Mastery tests, with all their goals and objectives, don't measure this stuff. They can't calculate how different Freddie, Scott or Sha'Corri feels about school.

"I made the right decision to get into teaching. Whether I made the right decision to get into Hartford, I don't know," she says on a hellish day at the end of a still worse week, between family crises and a job she has poured her soul into. "If the pressure since [Amato's] arrival is getting to me, what is an increase in pressure going to do? There is not a lot of room to breathe these days."

Friday, there was no breathing room. Soon after she was handed her scores, she launched into the tightly scripted reading curriculum. All day, she followed the schedule that every other fourth-grade teacher in the city follows. There were the usual problems: homework not done, books not brought to class.

In the afternoon, Burr arrives toting a handful of proclamations, congratulating students for their work. It plays bittersweet to those who know that Webster's scores were disappointing.

Freddie, a veteran of Amato's after-school, summer and Saturday programs, asks Burr why he and his classmates are being congratulated, when the writing scores went down so much.

"Keep this in mind," Burr tells him. "Rewards really come through hard work."

Brunell wonders how much harder she can work. As much as she wants to stay in Hartford, she has some serious questions, even as she believes in Amato.

"We are walking them through answers. We aren't teaching the concepts but in any form than are on the test," she said. "Our goal is to inspire the children to want to learn, to be inquisitive, to want to read. I don't understand how you inspire them by drilling."

But if Brunell wants to stay, there will be little time for second-guessing. She's four chapters behind in her math lessons. In two weeks, there is yet another round of practice tests. Still, there is room for hope. Brunell is convinced her students will show significant gains.

Enjoy The Ride

"You're sure about these scores? These gains are just incredible," he says as DeJesus, the district's testing coordinator, and Aquino, a deputy superintendent, show him the 10-point jumps in the district's reading scores and the 15-point jumps in math. "I knew the math would do it for us, but I didn't know it would do it this much. These gains would be 'Wow!' anywhere in the country."

He flips once more through the pages, his dark eyes darting from digit to digit. "You're sure about these scores?"

It is Tuesday. It is a miracle he made it through Monday without racing down to DeJesus' office and tearing into the nine cartons of test results that had arrived via Federal Express. He hadn't had a decent night's sleep since mid-December -- including that vacation in London, between Christmas and New Year's, when his wife had tried to distract him. Nice try, Gillian.

There is a lot riding on these numbers. Hartford's reputation, for one. His own, for another. They have been inextricably linked since he arrived here in April and made the "never be last" pledge. He had proven himself in New York City, where his district's test-score ranking had climbed, but a repeat performance in Hartford would give him new credibility. His pledge had received so much media attention, who could remember that Hartford teachers had begun preparing students for the 1999 test six months before he arrived?

At a closed-door cabinet meeting Tuesday afternoon, his top administrators -- many of them New York imports -- shower him with praise.

"I think this superintendent has brought an attitude of hope to this community," Aquino says.

"I do believe you made believers out of nonbelievers," says his chief of staff, Robert Henry.

"Imagine how grateful the parents are," says Marta Bentham, his parent coordinator. When Amato meets her gaze, both their eyes fill with tears.

He is emotional, drained, giddy one moment and introspective the next. When he returns to his office, he sinks into a chair and begins talking about the need for "perspective."

"This is just one nice upswing in a series of upswings we're going to have," he says.

The man who has been obsessed with test scores now wants to make sure he is not perceived as obsessed with test scores. He is an educator, a visionary -- not a number-cruncher. In modern-day public education, is there a difference?

"The CMT was overshadowing everything else -- early childhood, technology, school-to-career programs," he says. "We're going to stay the course, but evolve the course. I don't want to lose the momentum."

Wednesday, as news of the scores spreads, he is awash in TV lights for most of the morning and mobbed by kids at the two schools he visits later. Bloomfield Superintendent Paul Copes sends flowers. A Hartford parent sends champagne. Congratulatory calls pour in.

At Rawson School, teachers who had grumbled about his narrowly focused curriculum join in the celebration. Kids vie for his attention, even request his autograph. Amato smiles warmly, absorbing every compliment.

He is the outsider let in. He is the stranger assimilated.

He is Hartford's newest player.

Epilogue

"There was excitement, and I think there was a whole ton of relief," said DiFiore, who has become of his school's biggest boosters of Amato's reforms. The coach of the Bulkeley High School baseball team last year, DiFiore left his fifth-grade teaching job this year to coordinate reading programs at Fox.

"I've totally changed. It's nothing like I've ever done before. I thought the increases in the scores were really good. Now people are really buying into it," said DiFiore, who doesn't think he'll have time to coach this year.

For parent liaison Juanita Rivera, who has journeyed from the welfare rolls to a job as a parent organizer at Hooker School, the CMT news arrived quietly. Most scores were up at Hooker, but there was little celebrating. The CMT results are a long way from mobilizing parents who have never been involved in school before.

"Everything is going good," says Rivera, who'll soon be starting night school again and is taking computer training classes. "I want to do so many things."

Jason DeThomas wasn't among the Kennelly School eighth-graders whose scores on the 1999 test were lauded by Principal Zoe Athanson over the loudspeaker:

"Don't you ever believe that you're not the very best!"

Jason, who is being held back for the first time after years of being socially promoted, has adjusted to his second stint in seventh grade. That doesn't mean it was easy to watch from a distance as his former classmates who went on to eighth grade celebrated their test-score gains.

"It's nice for them," said Jason, who still struggles with reading and receives little extra help. His report card has improved this year.

"There's not even one 'D' in there," he brags.