Portland, Oregon—Abby Myers calls herself CEO of Applegate Elementary School. But at 8:15 on a gray May morning, microphone in hand, the principal greets the students streaming into the cafeteria with the pizzazz of a Las Vegas performer. As the 50 percent of Applegate students who are entitled to free breakfast pile cinnamon rolls and French toast onto their plates, Myers sings over a taped accompaniment:
Good morning, good morning
Good morning to you.
Our day is just beginning,
There's so much to do.
As the food vanishes into hungry mouths, kids begin to sing along. Between verses, Myers works the crowd. "What's your purpose here today, boys and girls?" she asks.
"To learn!" pipe up a few voices from the K-3 audience.
"That's right!" Myers says. " To learn and take responsibility for your education," then lapses once more into song:
The world is a rainbow
With many kinds of people...
"And what are our three school rules?"
This is a little harder, but hands shoot up, and all over the room voices rise in a ragged but enthusiastic answer.
"Very good," says Myers. "Safety, respect, and responsibility." She follows with a quick chorus of multiplication tables as a third-grader points to equations projected on a screen in the corner. The volume level in the room climbs. By the time the first bell rings at 8:45, the group that entered as a sleepy, disparate rainbow of faces has been transformed. They leave for their classrooms alert, cohesive, and, to use Myers's word, "jazzed" to learn.
The learning at Applegate today is impressive. But it was not always so. This elementary school, located on the edge of industrial north Portland, was identified as one of 14 "crisis"schools in 1999 by the community-based Education Crisis Team, which challenged the Portland School Board to close the achievement gap between affluent, mostly white schools and low-income, largely minority schools.
Applegate possesses the kind of demographics frequently associated with poor academic performance: nearly 80 percent of students hail from low-income families, a rising number speak English as a second language, and only about 25 percent start and finish their elementary education at Applegate. In 1999, fully 40 percent of the school's African American third-graders tested low or very low in math, with another 40 percent meeting or exceeding standards. In reading, almost 20 percent tested low, while about 60 percent met or exceeded standards.
A scant three years later, Applegate's test scores bear no resemblance to those discouraging numbers. In both math and reading, not one child at Applegate tested low in 2002. In reading, nearly 88 percent of African American students met or exceeded standards, while in math, 100 percent did so. Given a decade of budget cuts in Portland that have only intensified in the last few years, how was this possible?
Under Applegate's previous principal, LaVerne Davis, test scores had begun to climb upward. Myers, who took the reins in 2001, solidified those gains with her own distinctive approach, a combination of the results-oriented acumen of a businesswoman, an ability to focus on everything from the big picture to the smallest detail, and a tough-love approach.
The latter two qualities are evident as Myers walks the halls, registering every desk out of place, every child straggling in after the bell. "You're late, Jonathan," she says, greeting a sleepy-eyed second-grader by name, as she does every child. "Can't be late!"
"We have high expectations of every student," Myers comments as she walks past a sign on the wall that reads, There's no such thing as no homework at Applegate. "We have a no-fault, no-blame environment. The children know that they may even have to keep an eye on the clock and wake their parents up, if that's what it takes to get here on time. They have to take responsibility for their education."
The overall framework of Myers's educational approach derives, surprisingly, from business. It's Total Quality Management (TQM), a strategy developed by statistician and management consultant W. Edwards Deming, who used it most notably to retool the Japanese automobile industry. Since 1981, many U.S. enterprises have also adopted it. Myers first encountered TQM while she was a Title I coordinator at another struggling north Portland school, Portsmouth Middle School. There, where Myers was an integral member of a faculty group that instituted TQM, she became a believer. She finds the business model an excellent fit for the educational mission. "As a teacher, you're working toward a product, which is student learning," she says. "TQM allows you continually to make research-based modifications and adaptations to produce a better product."
Among other things, a research-based approach requires the constant collection of numbers about performance. One of Myers's central innovations has been quarterly spreadsheets showing how each of Applegate's 215 students is performing. "If there's no improvement, we see it immediately and ask how to effect the change we need," she explains. "If a student shows effort, but testing demonstrates no gain, we ask, 'How can we change our practices?'" The spreadsheets are supplemented by a display in the conference room, where tags representing each student hang in columns indicating the level of test he or she has passed. This helps teachers get a clear visual picture of what's going on so they can readily share ideas for improvements. "Then," says Myers, "data can drive decisions."
To produce this data, assessment is continuous. "The school staff here has decided that quarterly assessments are required to mark student achievement, and I assess them in between, which means each student is evaluated every three weeks," says first-grade teacher Janice Davis. Every day, Davis asks one of her 19 students to read aloud to her. "If there's no progress, I get busy!" Davis says. Depending on the problem, she invites the student to join her after-school reading program or asks instructional specialist Vivian Colvin to work with the child.
Math spreadsheets recently revealed an alarming trend: Girls, who were doing as well as boys through third grade, were falling behind by the fifth. "So we created a gender-based math club," says Myers. " Now girls' scores have risen to parity with boys'."
Child development specialist Barbara Pittman finds that having data on each student helps in her work, too. "I can see how many children I provided services to this year compared to last," she says. "I can map out differences in attitudes and behavior—like how many suspensions we had, or how many students were sent home." Pittman runs Second Step, a violence intervention program; EIA Bucks (Empathy/Impulse Control/Anger Management), a program that supports the Second Step curriculum; and Conflict Management peer helping and tutoring. The data at Applegate, Pittman says, show positive change in all these areas. "The children's self-esteem has improved," she reports. "And when people feel good about themselves, they achieve more."
Staff dedication is a crucial element in Applegate's success. "There's lots of after-school work here initiated by teachers, students, or their families," says Colvin, who stays until 6 p.m. most nights. "We find that even the kids are very willing to extend their days."
Yet staff were not always so unified behind a common vision. At the beginning of Myers's second year as principal, she and the staff undertook a two-day workshop to do the hard work of developing a common core of educational values. "We agreed on professionalism, respect, trust, commitment. By the end, everyone signed on to these values," says Myers. Myers also asked staff to place arrows on a board indicating their goals. Initially, the result resembled a weather pattern gone berserk, but by the end of the exercise, all arrows pointed the same direction.
However, the process of truly uniting all staff behind Myers's vision proved a little rockier. She expected that.
One of Myers's oft-repeated mantras is,"Change is hard, change is messy, change takes time."
She notes: "When I came, SARAH also came," referring to an acronym for common reactions to change: shock, anger, resistance or rejection, acceptance, and, finally, hope. "SARAH was brutal last year," she admits.
A woman of prodigious energy, Myers cast a critical eye on virtually every aspect of how the school was run. For example, she read every report card teachers had written, correcting spelling errors when she found them. Not everyone appreciated such scrutiny, but all got her point: from now on every aspect of their work would be held up to inspection and high standards.
Myers also focused immediately on aligning curriculum with academic standards, and instituting best practices—giving feedback to students, for example, and using assessment results to guide instructional decisions. She organized the classes to ensure small size, and began to hold professional development workshops on site so that children could see that adults are learners, too. Last year, Myers had teachers rate workshops and report how useful they were; she put those data into a spreadsheet to help people make more efficient choices in the future.
Like their teachers, students at Applegate encounter substantial support along with high expectations. Myers has invited all students to review with her the data that are accruing about them, from attendance to performance, in their cumulative record folders. With Myers's help, they decide what accomplishment they are most proud of and where they want to improve, and then devise strategies to accomplish their goals.
Myers applies a similarly open approach to discipline. "We had two kids slapping each other recently," she says. "I showed them the part of the school manual on behavior and left them alone to problem-solve. They came up to me later and said they realized I could suspend them, but they proposed lunch detention instead." She smiles. "I accepted their proposal."
Myers works continually to build more partnerships and find more resources for the school. She and the staff have tapped a variety of sources, for example:
Several local doctors have "adopted" particular classes, buying them materials, assemblies, and the use of buses for field trips.
The 1950's-era school building also reflects the resources and effort that staff, parents, and children have put into the school. Halls and rooms are bright and clean, walls covered with class projects, explanations, and reminders. Posters show what it was like on "Vehicle Career Day" and advertise Chess for Success and the after-school girls' club.
But the primary way the children are supported is by the intense attention they receive daily from staff, in class and out. "We all want to make this a positive experience for the kids," says Janice Davis. "Everything fits together in our program. We collaborate a lot. We're hearing each other. I'm always asking, 'How can I better prepare my kids for that end of the hallway?'" She gestures toward the upper grades.
Kindergarten teacher Jill Iverson, who has been at Applegate for 22 years, agrees. "The emphasis here is on staff working together, and the administration supports that."
As you walk the halls, it's clear that at Applegate no child is anonymous. Not only do the principal and the teachers know each student, but so do Colvin, Pittman, and the office staff. The small size of the school helps make this possible, and the administration works to preserve that atmosphere. Within it, children prosper. "Students here are not just meeting expectations, they're excited about possibilities," says Colvin. "I see openness, eagerness, and confidence."
Iverson believes that changes at the district level have also been important in supporting improvement. "The institution of student report cards that are the same across the district makes a huge difference," she says, "not to mention the increased focus on standards and benchmarks. These help us know what's going on with the children and help us to keep them focused." Iverson also appreciates the new districtwide math curriculum—Investigations in Numbers, Data, and Space published by Dale Seymour Publications—and the professional development that prepared teachers to use it. In general, staff development has been crucial in encouraging improvement. At staff meetings, Myers keeps routine business at a minimum so the staff can remain riveted on educational concerns.
Although parents are supportive of the changes in the school, Myers admits that they have been slow to get involved. "We have many single and working parents, many grandparents raising their grandchildren," she says. "Plus, many parents never experienced school as a positive place when they were students. We're working on creating a culture and climate that is friendly. It seems to be happening. We have about 60 percent coming now to our family nights."
Although improvement at Applegate has been significant, even stunning, Myers and her staff hope for still more. When the principal arrived, she sent out a needs assessment to discover what kind of school the community wanted. The answer came back loud and clear: a center for arts and technology. Today, several architectural drawings of a proposed two-story technical center drawn by volunteers from the firm of SERA Architects hang at the end of the hall—a vision of what the school could become. But the vision looks more and more like a chimera in the brutal, ever-tightening budget squeeze that has been wringing programs and dollars out of the district for more than a decade. The total allocation for running the building this year is a scant $15,000; a third of that is eaten up by rental and service on a copy machine! Last year, Myers wrote a grant proposal to the Portland Public Schools Foundation for money to plan an infusion of arts into the curriculum. That proposal was turned down. So at the moment, the community's vision remains a dream. But Myers—ever the optimist—hasn't given up. "We are currently looking at any and all grant opportunities for funding," she says.
As the morning's motivational breakfast draws to an end, Myers leads a rousing pledge of allegiance and one verse of My Country 'Tis of Thee. She then looks over the crowd, waiting for quiet. Into the momentary hush she says, "Third-graders, future leaders of America, exit, walking."
The kids move out with confidence. Maybe they don't have a brand-new building or access to all the arts and technology possible. But they know they're getting a good education—as good an education as anybody. 
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