ANNOUNCER:

This program is part of the American Graduate - Let's Make It Happen, a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Producating.

JIM GLASSMAN:

America is facing a crisis - a dropout crisis. In some high schools, the rate is a staggering 50 percent or more. But that's starting to change. I'm Jim Glassman. Join me for A Matter of Leadership - a special one-hour report as part of the public media initiative American Graduate - Let's Make It Happen. We'll profile what's working around the country and explore the vital role middle schools and principals play in addressing the crisis and reversing the statistics. This is Ideas In Action.

ANNOUNCER:

Funding for Ideas in Action is provided by Investor's Business Daily. Every stock market cycle is led by America's never ending stream of innovative new companies and inventions. Investors Business Daily helps investors find these new leaders as they emerge. More information is available at Investors.com.

JIM GLASSMAN:

All over America, each school day students arrive ready to continue their educational journeys. The goal is to prepare them for a bright future by going on to college or embarking on a rewarding career. How they do on that journey will affect the rest of their lives. There will be challenges along the way - classes that prove difficult, social pressures and off-campus distractions. Still many will emerge with a high school diploma equipped to navigate the future - but not all of them.

ROBERT BALFANZ:

There is no work in the 21st Century if you don't have a high school diploma.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Robert Balfanz is one of the country's leading experts on the dropout crisis. He says the future looks grim for those without a high school diploma.

ROBERT BALFANZ:

Currently, the nation has a graduation rate of right about 75 percent. Which means that there's about a million kids a year that are not getting their diplomas on time. There's four million in the Class of 2010. Three million got diplomas in June. If you're in your 20s, don't have a high school degree, don't have a work history, are you ever going to work? Probably not. But every year, we're putting a million kids towards that future.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Between 1970 and 2001, U.S. graduation rates declined by 6%. And despite modest gains in recent years, far too many students continue to fall through the cracks. As an official with the U.S. Department Of Education, Michael Yudin knows that the stakes are high for individuals, communities and the nation.

MICHAEL YUDIN:

It's absolutely a moral imperative that we provide them with the supports and the resources that they need to graduate from high school college and career-ready. But it's also an economic imperative. The countries that out-educate us today out-compete us tomorrow.

JIM GLASSMAN:

High school dropout rates are largely concentrated at particular schools in particular school districts. These persistently low-achieving clusters are called "dropout factories" and they graduate less than 60% of their students.

WENDY PURIEFOY:

This is a national problem.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Wendy Puriefoy, president of the public education network, works with low-income school districts around the country.

WENDY PURIEFOY:

This is what the school reform work is about in this country now, is to say that your zip code should not be your destiny. And therefore, we need to make sure that regardless of how much money your family makes or where you live, you have the right to a quality education because you live in America.

ROBERT BALFANZ:

Really the intersection is between poverty and dropping out. But because poverty rates are higher among minorities, we then get higher minority dropout rates.

JIM GLASSMAN:

If the dropouts from the class of 2009 had each received a diploma, they would have earned an additional $335-billion dollars over their lifetimes that would have been added to the U.S. economy. As a nation, we spend approximately $9-billion dollars a year supporting dropouts through public assistance like food stamps and Medicaid. Michael Brown heads city year's mission to increase high school graduation rates in urban areas.

MICHAEL BROWN:

Over a course of a lifetime, a high school dropout will make a million less than a college graduate. A high school dropout is eight times more likely to be incarcerated in his or her lifetime than a high school graduate. This could create an underclass, a permanent underclass in our society.

JIM GLASSMAN:

The statics sound bad because they are bad. Fortunately, there is another side to this story.

ROBERT BALFANZ:

The good news is when we think about it, we actually know where the problem's located. We know which high schools are producing most of the dropouts. Over the last decade, we've actually built up a lot of good evidence-based strategy that have evidence of working. We actually know what to do. We actually know that it takes to engage kids. We know what it takes to sort of nag and nurture them through.

JIM GLASSMAN:

We will explore two elements that are key to turning around the dropout crisis. Later we'll discuss how strong school leadership can create a culture of high expectations and high achievement. But first we'll take a look at the critical middle school years. Middle school may sound too soon to tackle high school dropout rates but studies show that the pre-teen years are a critical to high school success. Bob Wise is the former governor of West Virginia and current president for the Alliance for Excellent Education.

BOB WISE

The best news is that I think this country has finally woken up to the dropout crisis. And so a lot of attention given to early warning indicators, particularly in middle school, immediately capturing when a student is beginning to, one, miss a lot more class, number two fail a class, or number three, have disciplinary problems.

JIM GLASSMAN:

We start by looking at one middle school in Dallas, Texas that is boosting academic achievement by using student engagement both inside and outside of the classroom.

This is the Thomas C. Marsh Middle School award-winning ROTC drill team. It is one of the school's hallmark programs designed to instill discipline and high expectations in students from the surrounding disadvantaged and largely minority community.

CARLOTTA THOMAS:

We give all students that enter into this building a chance regardless of their background, their income level or their ethnicity. They have the opportunity to be the very best. And we insure our teachers with the skills and materials to do so. One of the reasons why we're one of the best schools in Dallas is due to our test scores, from last year. In writing we were 92% passing, reading we were 90%, math 90%, science 81%.

JIM GLASSMAN:

But such academic success didn't happen overnight.

DAVID BATES:

In 1999, it wasn't the best of place to work. Lot of gang activity. Lots of bullying, fighting, you know. Our scores were low. We were I guess you know, everything you would think of a big, large urban school district, public school kids. I guess that's what, you know, if you wanted to sum it up.

JIM GLASSMAN: Corporal David Bates was hired in 1999 specifically to establish an ROTC program as part of an overall plan to boost student performance. Getting students engaged in school is a big part of that effort.

DAVID BATES:

We started with nothing. And then we started fund-raising. We started getting uniforms. We started getting, you know, materials. I started writing my own curriculum. Four or five years later, we had all kinds of gear, and we started winning competitions. That's when we got a little bit of people "What's going on over there?"

A typical school day, okay, always starts off with you know, we call to attention and we tell them to take their seats. They all sit down the same way. Procedures are huge, the way we pass out folders, you know, the way I go over to calendar every single day, the way we take notes, the way we sit, the way we stand, the way we walk. Once I get that regimen in, it becomes real easy.

I teach first aid, land navigation, time management, organizational skills, history. I do what's called effective Army writing, and basically its just good writing skills. I call it that, and the kids think it's (LAUGH) you know, something different. But really it's just good writing.

CARLOTTA THOMAS:

Kids who are involved tend to have better grades and go on to graduate from college. So we do encourage for them to do something besides just coming to school.

ABRAHAM TEKLE:

I joined ROTC because I wanted to have the right to say that I was part of some of the trophies that are up there.

DAVID BATES:

When the kids perform for me, they perform at a high level and they don't want to let me down. So when I just put little things on the table like, "We do better. Your scores need to be better. You better do this, you better do that," they don't want to let me down. You know, at home, it's been okay not to pay their bills. It's been okay, you know, not to get a referral. It's been okay. That's what it's been. It's just been okay. Well, that average, okay stuff is not good enough here.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Coach bates sets high expectations, expectations that mirror those of the school at large.

CARLOTTA THOMAS We expect for students to have A's or B's on report cards. We expect them for them to go to tutoring if they need help. We expect for them to read. We expect for them to do science fair projects. We expect for them to be dressed appropriately for school, and to have great behavior. So anything that we want them to do, we expect for them to do at their very best.

NATALIE FRANCO:

The reason I joined ROTC is because I like what the program does. It changes people life.

NATALIE FRANCO:

What changed my life was from being out there in the street, like, just being bad, and stuff like that. And once I came in here, I learned discipline, how to treat people, how to respect people, how to respect my elders, parents, why they're here for us, why they do so much for us. And we are going to do something for them when we grow up.

JIM GLASSMAN:

For some students, meeting the expectations of the ROTC program can be quite a transition.

ABRAHAM TEKLE:

It's really up to them to see if they want to change because if you want to be in ROTC, you have to change. Like, you can't just be slacking off. You can't get in trouble in school. That'll leave a bad reputation on your school.

STEPHANIE ESCOBAR:

When I put my uniform on, it's an amazing feeling. I am proud of myself. And it makes you feel like you're actually doing something for your community. And I think that's really important. It's like the most exciting thing. You're out there and everyone sees you. And they don't just see you as this person. They see you as a cadet at Marsh Middle School.

DAVID BATES:

The discipline is not what a lot of people think discipline is like, you know, the pushups and this, that and the other. It's the self-discipline, the discipline to do what is right when no one is looking. You know, that integrity starts to come into play with some of these kids, like they know that they got to do well or, you know, they'll hear it.

BRIDGETT ROBINSON:

That spirit of community and a spirit of giving and leadership has kind of trickled down from the ROTC down into our core classes and into an overall campus environment.

JIM GLASSMAN:

All the teachers at marsh middle use job assignments to teach students responsibility and to get them invested in their own education.

BRIDGETT ROBINSON:

One way to make them engaged and feeling important is to give them a job or a task to do. And so, if we are doing a collaborative activity in a group, you might make one the actual spokesperson. You might make another one the actual person that is collecting the supplies afterward and sort of cleaning up the area. And you might make one the actual writer, the person that's actually writing the data down.

DAVID BATES:

The kids all have jobs. When you give a kid a job, he takes it seriously. But here, just passing out folders, not really a great job, but it's their job. They take it seriously.

JIM GLASSMAN:

In the ROTC program jobs range from menial to management.

NATALIE FRANCO:

My position here in JROTC, I'm commander officer. I lead morning. I lead every single day through all these students that come in here. They look up to me. And they would like to be up there one day.

STEPHANIE ESCOBAR:

Especially being a C.O., I learned that I could be a leader, no matter what it is, no matter what occasion it is. I learned how to be committed to something. And if you stay committed to something, you know you can achieve anything you want.

JIM GLASSMAN:

When students are engaged and well behaved, it is easier for teachers to do their jobs.

BRIDGETT ROBINSON:

If you're able to teach, then you're able to get results. If you're able to relate to the kids and there's less distractions with other outside of the classroom items then you're able to get the results that you need.

JIM GLASSMAN:

It's been 13 years since coach bates started the ROTC program at marsh middle. He's gone from 78 to 317 students. About a third of the student body now participates in the program. And while his drill team has won numerous national championships, he is most proud of his students' high school graduation rate of 97%. But he's not done yet.

DAVID BATES:

You know, everybody's "high school graduation, high school graduation." Well, I'm at the point now where I want to take it another step. The high school diploma, it's not as good as it used to be. My hopes and goals and dreams for the kids - 100% graduate from college.

WENDY PURIEFOY:

You're making a lot of choices about your future in middle school. It's here in middle school where you really do make the choice of are you going go to on to further post-secondary learning, whether it's going to be college or a two or four year college.

CARLOTTA THOMAS:

We do talk about college a lot at our campus. Our campus has become a branding campus for college. If you walk around the classrooms in this school you will see college bulletin boards, college projects. The students can wear college t-shirts. We have a college week and we take them on college field trips. We understand you're going to go to high school. So we just decided to take it a step further to make sure that you're going to be a college graduate.

LAUREN SHAW:

That's our way of showing them, "This is our culture. This is what we do at this school. We talk about going to college." So everything that we do, it's about going to college. When they know the end goal, they understand it. They know the reasoning behind why we do things the way we do them.

ROBERT VACQUEZ:

ROTC helped me prepare to go to high school because as when I came into this program, I didn't really know a lot of leadership skills. So when I walked in, right away I knew I was going to be a leader.

STEPHANIE ESCOBAR:

It helped me to be disciplined and organized. And it just helped so much with my grades. I had A's all year, never C's. It was just because of the ROTC program.

CARLOTTA THOMAS:

The kids love Coach Bates. They respect him. They do not think he's too firm. They understand that he has a goal for them so they want to live up to that goal and they do not want to disappoint him. They truly love Coach Bates.

DAVID BATES:

I like to think my students are the best in the world, and that's, I know 100% of the time, they are the best in the world when they're with me. Sometimes (LAUGH) when they're not with me, they're not the best in (LAUGH) the world. But that's what we work on every day.

LAUREN SHAW:

The kids are special here at Marsh Middle School because they understand that, in spite of some of their circumstances that they will achieve. They understand no matter what "I can make it. I will go to college."

JIM GLASSMAN:

Another way to make sure middle school students stay on the path to high school gradation is to follow and utilize data and information about how each student's performance.

ROBERT BALFANZ

Your attendance, and behavior and course performance are all in the teacher's grade book. It's not some exotic survey. It doesn't have to come from some agency. It's collected every day in the building. And so if you just pay attention to this and act upon it as soon as you see a kid going in a negative trajectory, you have a much greater sense of succeeding.

BOB WISE:

Many of our middle school students aren't reading at grade level. And when they're entering high school, a clear early warning indicator, a good data system tells you when a student's off track and immediately can trigger intervention. It's about personalization and it's also about the ability to develop that graduation plan.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Next, we'll visit a middle school in Indianapolis, Indiana, that is using individual learning data to identify students who are struggling in class. Those students then get the help they need to eventually graduate high school and prepare for a successful future.

A number of ingredients is needed to insure strong middle school academic success. The staff at Harshman Magnet Middle School in Indianapolis, Indiana has found a winning combination to help every student succeed regardless of his or her background.

ROBERT GUFFIN:

We have approximately 410 students in the school, of which 87 percent are free-and-reduced lunch. We have approximately 60 percent African-American, 30 percent Hispanic, 10 percent white.

LINDAN HILL:

This school is a story of remarkable turnaround. The principal and the faculty and the staff that the principal has gathered here has really, really embodied the whole sense of leading change, of establishing a sense of urgency, establishing a vision.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Before principal Guffin arrived in 2009, many staff members assumed that the majority poor student body couldn't or wouldn't learn. The students believed it too.

ROBERT GUFFIN:

Students were out in the hallways on a regular basis, not attentive in class. Heads were down. Some students wanted to go to sleep. There were fights in the building on a regular basis. We decided that that had to change.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Those changes resulted in significant academic improvement for Harshman students. Principal Guffin's first year, language and math scores on the Indiana state test improved by 9%. In his second year, they improved by an additional 28%. It was the greatest improvement in test scores by any middle school in the entire state. So how did the students and staff make such great strides in just two years? One key factor was colleting data on each and every student to determine where help was needed. Whitney Newton is in charge of gathering, analyzing and disseminating the data.

WHITNEY NEWTON:

The way that we look at students is each student is a holistic person. And we want information about them that will help us meet their needs across the board, everything from what they need in math to what they need at home and everything in between. So when we're collecting and analyzing data, we want lots of different pieces about each student.

ROBERT GUFFIN:

We are constantly looking at how our students perform today and how we can take that information as a teacher and use that to inform my instruction? What did they do? What do they know? Did they meet the objective that we planned for our classroom?

WHITNEY NEWTON:

So it's really looking at the goal for the end of the year which is broken down into the goal at the end of each unit, which is broken down into the goal at the end of each day. Alright. What are we going to do to get there?

JIM GLASSMAN:

The goal at the end of the school year is to pass an exam that measures a student's progress on basic academic subjects. It's called "The Indiana Statewide Testing For Educational Progress Plus" - otherwise know as ISTEP.

ROBERT GUFFIN

We'll take that ISTEP exam, look at where our deficiencies in our students were. And we will use that to plan an overall plan for each nine weeks or each semester or the entire year. We look at where students are strong, where students are weak. And how can we shore those areas up?

JIM GLASSMAN:

In addition to unit exams and report cards every 9-weeks, the staff at Harshman uses 6-question mini-tests called "scrimmages" to benchmark student progress.

WHITNEY NEWTON:

So we're looking at, every three weeks, "Did they get the standards that were in the pacing guide from the previous three weeks? And how are they doing with that?" As the coaches, we roll that data out to the teachers and give them a chance each month to look at that data as a team, analyze it, put it together, separate it into different formats, whether it's by standard or by sub-group.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Teachers collect data on a daily basis using what has come to be known as an "exit ticket."

ALEASE MONGER:

An exit ticket is basically, like, going over, like, basically what we learned in that class at that time. And we do it at the end of the class, like, before the bell rings.

JAKE BURSKEY:

It doesn't always have to be an official thing. But I always end a class with a wrap-up activity. It can be just asking questions, going into individual groups and asking individual kids and asking them in a way that they've got to think about what we've learned on a higher level.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Collecting all of this data is one thing but organizing it in a useful way is quite another.

WHITNEY NEWTON:

Because we have so much data that we're collecting and we're really trying to organize it for teachers, a lot of them are using data, but it's not very effective for them from their perspective because they have it in a packet here, in a file here, and it's on this computer program and here on this website. And so what we tried to do was bring it all together onto one database - very simple, just a two-column spreadsheet online that all the teachers can access at any time.

JIM GLASSMAN:

For example, if teachers find that 40-percent of the students are struggling with a topic, they will continue to emphasize it.

JAKE BURSKEY:

Part of my learning as a teacher is to use assessment as a tool to drive my instruction. So I may set a unit to last two weeks but if they're not getting it, I've got to continue to incorporate those while staying on pace with the curriculum.

JIM GLASSMAN:

If only one or two are having difficulty, those students can get personalized help from one of the instructional specialists.

MEE HEE KIM:

We pull out these students during their elective period, and work with them one on one, or a small group setting to master these standards in a really individualized, instructional kind of experience that they can't get within a normal classroom.

JIM GLASSMAN:

The educational specialists also use a strategy called "front loading" in many of their one-on-one teaching sessions.

MEE HEE KIM:

We kind of pre-teach them what they're going to be learning that day, so they're exposed to the vocabulary. They're exposed to the skill a little bit.

ROBERT GUFFIN

It allows them to be the person in the classroom who has their hand up first. It allows them to be the person in the classroom who people look to for the answers. The confidence that they gain and the pride that develops becomes something that is immeasurable and allows students to grow and begin to know, "I can do this."

DANIEL ESTRADA:

After I worked with Mr. Spencer, it was good because I could understand how the problem worked out. And it was cool.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Principal Guffin and his staff feel that sharing the data with the students themselves is a key to academic success.

WHITNEY NEWTON:

The teachers in their classes, so math and language arts, all took their ISTEP scores, handed them out to students, and had them fill out a reflection individually so that they could look at, "What was my score? What do I want my goal to be? Why was that my score? Why do I want this to be my goal?" and just really allowed each student to see, "Where am I in comparison to where I'm supposed to be this year.

JACOB SPRINGER:

Teachers here a strict but also want you to have fun, be safe, and to do what you got do to get the job done.

WHITNEY NEWTON:

It's really exciting, though, to hear kids say, "I didn't pass ISTEP last year but I'm going to pass it this year." It's really powerful to hear a student take that ownership and advocate for themselves and say, "I want to pass ISTEP this year so I am coming to your tutoring this week." We're teaching to our students, where they are, where they're coming in, and where we want them to be, to be-- successful and move on to high school and college and-- and (CLAP) jobs that allow them to be happy.

ROBERT GUFFIN

I've never known a student that has come to school and said, the first day of school, "this year, I'm going to get in trouble." Every student that comes to this school wants to succeed. And every year, they start out with, "I'm going to be my best that I can be." And how we respond to them makes a huge difference in how they behave in school.

JACOB SPRINGER

If you get good grades, that means you'll get far in life. And you'll have a house, maybe a good wife. You get good grades, you get to be anything you want to be.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Marsh middle school in Dallas and Harshman Middle in Indianapolis are just two schools making the kind of positive change that is happening all over the country. But transformative change doesn't happen on it's own. School leadership matters. A skilled principal can reduce the dropout rate of a school that is troubled in other areas, while poor leadership - even in a school filled with talented teachers - can condemn students to mediocrity. Dewey Hensley is a commissioner with the Kentucky department of education. He oversees a program that helps turn schools around through leadership mentoring.

DEWEY HENSLEY:

Having strong leaderships inside our schools, it's crucial. These leaders make the weather in the building. They help to change belief systems. Their ability to step up and say what's important, identify the goals along with their faculty and staff, to create a collective vision that moves kids and schools forward is crucial.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Next we look at ways effective leadership by principals and administrators can help boost student achievement and high school graduation rates. We begin in Las Vegas, Nevada where one principal has gained national recognition for guiding her school to excellence.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Its 6:30am. The start of another school day at Robert O. Gibson Middle School. Principal Linda Archambualt is already at her desk.

LINDA ARCHAMBAULT:

I love this school. And I've had people say, "You're crazy for wanting to be in an old building in an economically disadvantaged area of town." I stay in middle school because I know that if I'm successful in helping them make better choices, that their four years of high school are going to be fantastic. And that's my goal.

CAPRICIA PIERCE:

We have a great principal. I was very excited when she got the number one principal of the nation this year. And she loves us and she helps us with everything.

JIM GLASSMAN:

In 2011, she was named principal of the year by the national association of secondary school principals. She steered the school to a 98% attendance rate and introduced sought-after magnet programs in leadership and foreign languages. This was a big transformation. Principal Archambault arrived at Gibson Middle as an assistant principal in 2004. Like many schools in urban environments, Gibson struggled with a long list of debilitating problems. Most troubling was the violence.

LINDA ARCHAMBAULT:

I did believe that at some point time, either the principal or I would probably lose our life.

CAPRICIA PIERCE:

My sisters were telling me, like, there was fires in the bathrooms from kids starting them and a lot of fights in the lunch lines. People would get arrested.

PABLO NAVARRO:

Students were generally rude, apathetic, just a lot of screaming and yelling everything and loud voices

JIM GLASSMAN:

But violence in the school was only part of the problem.

LINDA ARCHAMBAULT:

They deal with a lot of issues. You know, the abuse at home, the neglect, the non-existent parent because they're working three jobs. Three families living in one home, two bedroom. hey deal with so many different things. It gets to you after a while.

LINDAN HILL:

Just because a kid is poor, or their parents are poor, doesn't mean that they don't have a lot of ability, that they don't have a lot of potential, because they do. Poverty, economic inequality, other kinds of inequalities mitigate against those kids having opportunities. It's not the ability that they lack. It's the opportunity.

JOHN JACKSON:

Poverty disables them, but it doesn't disqualify them. And I think it's very important that we provide every student a plan that will give them the academic, the social and the health supports necessary to overcome any types of barrier that they might have that impedes their opportunity to learn.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Principal Archambault realized that student's behavior inside the school and the impact of their lives outside the school weren't the only hindrances to learning. The school building itself, old and dilapidated, also presented a challenge.

LINDA ARCHAMBAULT:

I get frustrated because people say it shouldn't matter whether or not the kids are proud of the building. That is a bunch of malarkey. It does matter. And when I first got here in 2004, the kids would joke and say that the "G" for Gibson meant "ghetto." And they called it a ghetto school. It broke my heart. We had open, exposed wiring. We had holes in ceilings where you could see the sky, and it wasn't a skylight. How can you send the message that education is important if you don't deal with the facility and create a school that they're proud of?

JIM GLASSMAN:

The final challenge was dealing with students and parents who often spoke little or no English.

JANE PATTERSON:

We don't really have strong strategies to work with that particular population. And when they don't develop the literacy skills required to succeed in high school, their chances of moving on to higher education really become, you know, much more narrow.

LINDA ARCHAMBAULT:

Eighty percent of my student population is Hispanic. And it's a second language to most of the students.

JIM GLASSMAN:

All of these obstacles led to what seemed like an insurmountable achievement gap. Test scores were low with only 27 percent of the students demonstrating proficiency in math and language arts. As school leader, Principal Archambault knew that she'd have to address each and every one of these issues.

LINDA ARCHAMBAULT:

When I became the principal in 2006, I knew that we had to make a change. And it had to occur fairly quickly for the behaviors to get under control.

JIM GLASSMAN:

So she started with the basics.

LINDA ARCHAMBAULT:

We implemented some programs, and those programs included character education, a serious unit on respect. We began teaching students skills that we thought that they should know, and found that they did not have, such as being polite, holding a door, please and thank you, excuse me. And once we started teaching the social skills, we started seeing change.

JIM GLASSMAN

Gibson Middle School's band director Pablo Navarro has been with the school for 15 years.

PABLO NAVARRO:

Our principal, Linda Archambault, has been instrumental in trying to change that climate here. And it's worked. If you walk down the hallways, you'll hear a lot of students saying "good morning," "good afternoon," "how are you?" They want to strike up a conversation. Very polite, they'll open the doors for you. That's something we didn't see 15 years ago.

KAMILIA MEYERHOFF:

Dr. Archambault is the protector of this school. This is her baby and that's in a good way. She is very protective of the students, very caring, And she's protective of the building, too

JIM GLASSMAN:

Principal Archambault next turned to the building itself. She solicited help from the very people who would benefit most from a school make-over - the students.

ZACHARIAH RAHAMAN:

We also did the beautification and it was, we really liked it. It looks better than just grass. We're all really proud of it because we all knew inside that we all worked at it and we had did this.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Even principal Archambault rolled up her sleeves.

KAMILIA MEYERHOFF:

Comparing her to other administrators that I've had, she puts more of her heart into this building.

PABLO NAVARRO:

How many times have we heard, "Lead by example. Lead by example." And we believe it and we-- we think it's true, but we won't lead by example if we have to mop up the floor. If we have to sweep our own rooms or paint a wall. And those were the things that really reached me, because I realized, "If my boss can do it, then I can do it, too." And that was very encouraging.

JIM GLASSMAN:

But there are some things beyond a school leader's control like the issues that students deal with away from school. Many of Gibson's students are considered poor. Eighty percent qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch. Principal Archambault and her staff had to first make sure her students were ready to learn.

LINDA ARCHAMBAULT:

We have students who aren't showering because they don't have hot water. We offer a shower here at school. We wash clothes for students when they need it. We have students who come to school that are sleeping in cars. So they can't do their homework, because they don't have a light to work from. We offered an opportunity period in the morning where the teachers come in and there's a half an hour where they're in their classrooms. Students who have tried to do their homework at night and aren't successful can go in before school and get individual help. And that's made a difference as well.

JANE PATTERSON:

Research tells us, the two major factors are what happens in the classroom and what happens at home. What parents can do is really become partners with their teachers in the education of their children.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Engaging parents in a way they understand also helps student performance. Many schools around the country offer language support for their student population. But how many schools offer it to parents as well?

LINDA ARCHAMBAULT:

One of the biggest steps that we've taken in engaging our parents is to provide almost every communication in Spanish and in English. I have 12 faculty that are bilingual in addition to the office staff. And that in itself has encouraged parents to feel more comfortable coming in. We even offer tutoring for students where the parents can come with them. And the parents take us up on it. They feel that if they learn that math or the English or the reading that it'll be able to transfer to the other children coming up. And I'm surprised at the number of parents who show up for that.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Addressing behavior, the building, home life and parental involvement had a positive effect on the students.

LINDA ARCHAMBAULT:

We started seeing them transform from kids that were in survival mode to students. From that point, we started working about the academics. We knew if we didn't get the culture and climate under control that the academics would never occur in a classroom. And we're at a point now where the academics are the focus for the students here at school.

JIM GLASSMAN:

At Gibson, academic achievement has increased more than 100% over the past five years. Test scores have gone up from a 27-percent proficiency rate to 60%.

KAMILIA MEYERHOFF:

The change in the culture as affected the students and the student performance. They have more confidence. They feel more secure here. They're getting that positive reinforcement that they need inside the classroom and outside the classroom.

CAPRICIA PEIRCE:

I am proud to go to Gibson because knowing the way Gibson started out and it wasn't that very good of a school and no one wanted to go here because of all the bad things people were hearing about it. And now you're hearing our principal is a great principal, got principal of the year. And Gibson is like one of the best schools of the nation now. Yes, I'm very proud to go here.

LINDA ARCHAMBAULT:

I think the role of the middle school is to prepare the students for high school and that it's critical for their success in high school. If they don't go to high school with the basic skills that they need, and if they don't go to high school with the right attitude and the right work ethic, they're not going to be successful. We do what we can to make sure that we're meeting their needs so that when they do go to Western or to any other high school in the city that not only are they prepared, but they shine as Gibson students.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Though schools in urban and rural America may seem worlds apart, they actually share many of the same challenges. In both, poverty and low standards go hand and hand. How do transformational school leaders get the resources and training to help turn their schools around? Sometimes it starts with asking for help.

JIM GLASSMAN:

A high school principal's job is never easy.

KEVIN GAY

The gamut goes from being a nurse to a janitor and sometimes to a counselor or whatever. But generally it's an exciting day.

JIM GLASSMAN:

And principal Kevin Gay has lots to do to keep Leslie county high school in Hyden, Kentucky on track to continue its successful turnaround.

PRINCIPAL KEVIN GAY:

I feel like my job as principal of the school is to support our teachers in teaching and learning and that my top priority is that our whole school is about student learning by constantly learning and looking at where we're at and where we need to go.

LAUREN LITTLE:

Mr. Gay is very active within the student population. He's always out walking around at lunch. You know, checking on everybody. He'll talk to you. He's very nice. He's a good guy. He's a great person and he's here for the right reasons.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Like many rural schools around the nation, Leslie county high faces age old problems.

DEWEY HENSLEY

Often, in rural communities, you have high levels of poverty where there's been generational poverty over a period of time there's almost a status quo in some Appalachian counties, for example, where the same families stay at the same social strata over generations. That makes change sometimes very difficult. It also creates a culture or a mindset in the community that has to be changed.

MICHAEL YUDIN:

The challenges in rural communities are indeed different, right, the economies of scale, the ability to recruit and retain the best teachers is definitely a challenge. But we need to make sure that we're looking at rural communities and providing them with the opportunities to succeed and achieve.

DEWEY HENSLEY

In rural areas, re-staffing isn't such an easy option because there's not that large pool of teachers, there's not a lot of schools in the district where transfers are easy to make happen. They're limited to that transformational model which means that they're going to invest in the professional development of their teachers and are truly progress monitored to see those results.

PRINCIPAL KEVIN GAY:

When I first arrived at Leslie County High School we were identified as a persistently low-achieving school. We were identified as a bottom 10 school. Only 15% of our students were scoring proficient or distinguished in mathematics that year and about 40% in language arts and reading.

KEVIN GAY

I'm originally from this area and so I knew the teaching staff, I knew the students were capable of much more.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Principal Gay sought aid from an innovative state program to help his existing teachers realize their potential. The Kentucky Department of Education assigned him an educational recovery team.

DEWEY HENSLEY

We scour the state and find people who become educational recovery specialists. Those specialists are highly skilled. They go into the school and they work in math, in literacy, and a third person who's a leadership person that works to mentor and support and help the principal. That unprecedented amount of support to go into a single school is very valuable. They work really hard to ensure that when they leave in three years, two or three years, that as they leave, they leave behind strong teachers, a different attitude about the school, and measurable success.

SUSAN BROCK:

I have seen dramatic change in the time that I have been here.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Susan Brock was brought in to work directly with Principal Gay and the administrative staff.

SUSAN BROCK:

We actually began by something that most businesses do which is looking at a vision and mission statement. You know, without a vision the people perish and that's kind of what we've dealt with here. Is that we do have to have a school mission and vision.

DEWEY HENSLEY

In persistently low achieving schools, really in all schools, but it's magnified in persistently low achieving schools, is the idea of culture. A leader and the people inside that building, they create the culture.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Part of that culture is making sure that students feel included and valued in their own education.

SUSAN BROCK:

We had to change the mindset that we were not making change or trying to increase student achievement because of test scores. That test scores are just a result of students actually learning and becoming college and career ready and going on to whatever their post-secondary ambition is.

TROY NAPIER:

When I come in as a freshman, it was a really different. Not much work. Not much homework. The teachers didn't really teach you that much. And as the years went on you could tell that there's a big change because you had more homework and teachers worked harder. The administration worked harder. Everybody was just all in one together for a certain purpose. When I see somebody doing that it makes me want to work hard myself.

DEWEY HENSLEY:

If we're able to take those kids from the fringe and make them feel that they belong, make them feel that the school is theirs to a degree and that they're valued and significant in the school, then what we do is we give them that sense of belonging. Our ability to create that sense of belonging is a first step toward dealing with disenfranchised students who become our dropouts.

JIM GLASSMAN:

With a vision and culture of high expectations in place, Principal Gay and the educational recovery staff began to introduce new procedures and protocols.

KEVIN GAY:

Initially they helped develop processes and systems. And early on in the turnaround process we had so many processes that needed attention that it was really important for them to be here to help gain that critical mass that we needed for school turnaround. The new systems deal with all aspects of school life including discipline, scheduling, communications and progress reviews.

SUSAN BROCK:

We work from a plan, a school improvement plan, that's very tailored to what we do here. We refer to it as a 30/60/90 day plan because we monitor very closely every 30 days. We don't work in the dark. We use the data and we make decisions based on the data, individual student data and school data.

CYNTHIA COLLETT:

We've changed our communication flow. Instead of it being teachers are not really sure what's going on, we know first hand what's going on. We're always in touch with what's going on with the administration.

SCOTT MELTON:

The administration supports the teachers now a lot. It's not a one-way path. We can talk to them, tell them, make suggestions, and they do their best to try to help us with that.

JIM GLASSMAN:

The educational recovery team also introduced professional development for instructors.

SUSAN BROCK:

ERS stands for educational recovery staff specialist. There are ERSs are in math and language arts.

SCOTT MELTON:

Our educational recovery specialists, she's in our classrooms just about every day. We have meetings with her at least once a week.

SUSAN BROCK

Working with teachers here and building the capacity to identify individual student needs and work with those has made the most difference.

SCOTT MELTON:

We test children throughout the year and we find the gaps. We try to fill in those gaps and catch them up to where they're supposed to be. And I think that's one of the reasons we've done so well in the last couple of years.

LAUREN LITTLE:

We've got a great staff here at Leslie County High School. They always, you know, want to help you and if you need extra help they'll you know, stay with you after class or help you with problems that you may have.

KEVIN GAY

We've talked about how the conversations have evolved from management-type issues into 99% of all our conversations are about student learning. If you go talk to teachers it's about student information, student data that they have, and what we can do to improve. And I think that's a true indicator of a successful school.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Since the program was introduced in 2009, Leslie County High School has attained both a higher graduation rate and better student achievement.

PRINCIPAL KEVIN GAY:

The school's performance is wonderful. Our mathematics percent proficient and distinguished is at 53%. Our reading scores proficient and distinguished are at 83%. So it's been a huge increase over the last two years.

JIM GLASSMAN:

Which ranks Leslie County 27th out of 250 high schools in Kentucky.

KEVIN GAY:

What makes me most proud about the school is our students and their effort and how proud they are of their accomplishments that they've made over the past two years. We've talked to them and talked to them about giving their best effort. And that's all we can ask of them. And they've done that.

LAUREN LITTLE:

After high school I'm probably going to go to college. I haven't decided where yet but probably major in biology, go pre-med and then go to med school.

SCOTT MELTON:

I want them to understand that just because they're from eastern Kentucky doesn't mean that they can't score well on a test, that they can't go to college and be whatever they want to be. That's the truth.

JIM GLASSMAN:

As we've seen, transformative school leaders set a culture of high expectations for students, teachers and even themselves. This attitude of achievement can go a long way to boosting American graduation rates. This concludes our look at the national dropout crisis as part of the American Graduate - Let's Make It Happen initiative. For ideas in action, I'm Jim Glassman. Thanks for watching.