Audio Slideshow of Minerva Middle School
Minerva is in tough times, with half of its families listed as disadvantaged. The economic base to support schools is limited because it is a small place - about four thousand people - and rural. It sits where southern Stark, northern Carroll and western Columbiana counties come together amid family farms, woodsy hills and not much else. And just 15% of adults in the community have college degrees. So, why is its middle school - often the toughest of school level in even the best districts - doing well?
Richard Mikes says the answer is partly in how the locals look at things. He’s a life-long resident and was Minerva Middle School principal for twenty four years before retiring in 2010. He’s back walking the halls for a "say hello" visit, and taking me on a tour.
Mikes: We live in a community that has a lot of rural poverty. I grew up on a small farm just northeast of here. And I think there are some disadvantages, but I think there are also many advantages in this community. And, I say that in the sense of the community pride. Families, students, teachers: you know there is a great pride in wanting everybody to achieve, and do really, really well.
Best Practices
Tom Gannon is from thirteen miles up the road. He’s co-chair of the education department of the University of Mount Union in Alliance. He is a researcher and international lecturer on "best practices;" has been a middle school teacher and principal; and has studied Minerva schools.
Gannon: From what I know about Minerva, there is a great relationship between the school district and the parents. And I think that is critical. In a small town like Minerva, parents are actively involved in the schools. When that happens you not only have higher achievement, you also reduce some of the disciplinary problems which beset many schools, and in particular middle schools and high schools in the United States today.
But, Gannon, Mikes and others say the middle school’s progress is from more than parental involvement. There is a plan: "manage" each student’s education as a process from before first grade through high school (Minerva’s graduation rate is 97%); test - a lot; and focus, far more than most districts do, on core reading and math skills - what superintendent Doug Marrah says are really the communicating tools for progressive learning. And Marrah says teaching kids to use these tools - through double math and double reading classes and the like - starts early, which means work in elementary school is part of why the middle school is getting a good "report card" from the state.
Marrah: There are three indicators when you look at the actual report card of above expected growth. Reading 5th to 6th grade they’re above, 6th to 7th, they’re above; 7th to 8th, thy’re above; every year they’re above. Well, that’s part of what pays off.
Mount Union’s Gannon says Minerva is in sync with latest education theory, and is turning theory into results.
Gannon: The literacy and numeracy skills are critical. They need to be introduced, and they need to be reinforced. They’re on to that: where they’re keeping the eye on the prize, so to speak, and the prize is fundamental skills in reading, writing and numeracy - and that worked.
Back at the middle school, Austin Catlett is an 8th grader in algebra class. He’s nearing the end of the elementary-through-middle-school part of the education process in Minerva.
Catlett: I always remember from elementary school they kept saying that high school and in college and even middle school it’s going to keep getting harder. They always told us that - and tried to teach us - and I think they did a real good job. Yeah, we always had to read a ton of books. And we took those SRI and and AR tests all the time, and I didn’t like 'em very much... but they helped.
Interventions
Managing how students go to school, and perform, often goes back to parental involvement. In Minerva, when school staff decide a student has a problem or weakness an "intervention program" kicks in. It’s along the lines of the parent-teacher conferences used for generations, but more focused on specifics, and actions to be taken, and it involves specialists. But implementation can be tricky. Susan Coy-Kamph, a local business executive who went to Minerva schools and whose daughter was in the middle school, says trying to have positive engagement with faculty and counselors can be frustrating if there is a room full of experts some of whom may come across as clinical about your child, and overbearing.
Coy-Kamph: The process can be intimidating with just too many people involved. You find yourself feeling like what you really have to do is step in and defend your child. Instead of engaging, it is alienating, and that doesn’t help anybody.
Professor Gannon agrees.
Gannon: What interveners need to remember is the need for parents in the equation, and guard against overwhelming them.
He also warns against experts becoming formulaic, and urges looking at each child as a unique personality with his or her own set of abilities.
Gannon: Well, I mean, it’s a noble end. They’re trying to get the kid to achieve more. You need to avoid, I think, having all these degreed adults, with titles like learning consultants, social worker, school psychologist. I think maybe one or two individuals, and the parent, to try to bring the parent along, but also, while you’re doing that, at middle level or the elementary level, find out ways for every kid to be star in their classroom; be a talent scout.
The Economy
The superintendent says he agrees and that Minerva’s intervention program is sensitive to those points. But, he and others in the system say that while parents who are supportive and engaged in their children’s schooling are still the norm in Minerva, deepening economic problems in the community are being felt. Unemployment in the three counties has been above 10% for the last two years; more than 15% of the children are in poverty; and teen pregnancy, while below the state average, is not unheard of.
A very short walk across the driveway from the middle school is Minerva Elementary. These are modern well appointed buildings sited together on a thirty-acre campus, with the public library, and athletic fields, a few blocks from the center of town. Both were about two-thirds paid for with state school construction matching funds.
Assistant Elementary Principal Diane Ruff and curriculum specialist Gretchen Westerly agree that some effects of poverty are increasingly showing themselves.
Ruff: About half I’d say are supportive, and half, well, it’s not that they don’t want to be supportive, they care about their kids and want things to be better for them, but...
Westerly: Yes, their own lives are sometimes a train wreck, and it’s just very hard to overcome that and even though they want the best for their kids, sometimes they just can’t get past that to put their kids at the top.
The economy is starting to affect another key group in the Minerva school system too: its teachers, including at the middle school. Current middle school principal Ray Davis - he took over for the retiring Richard Mikes after nineteen years as his assistant - says state spending cuts and layoff possibilities that accompany them, as well as a massive change in the state’s collective bargaining law that would do away with seniority, teacher tenure and minimum pay, are creating challenges.
Davis: Morale is not high right now, because of Senate Bill 5. How can it be? I mean, they start to get depressed, they start to worry, they start to wonder if they’ll be back next year or not. So, that’s something else that we deal with when you’re talking about a new challenge. I just think morale is a very critical part of society and any environment that you have.
Meanwhile, local funding remains a problem. Voters did pass a $14 million special bond issue in 2001 - to qualify for that state double-match for the new school buildings - but have rejected every operating levy since 1991. The two principals, Davis and Mikes - they worked together in the middle school so long they really do finish each other’s sentences - attribute those no votes to "the money just not being there" in Minerva. But, they say what is there, underpinning their school’s progress, and future, are a widely-held respect for education, and a sense of community pride in each generation doing better than the last.