In the zone
Carroll takes on CMS’s toughest student populations
by Kathleen E. Conroy
kathleen@thecharlotteweekly.com

That’s because he feels certain “underperforming” students – not schools – have the best chance of recovery starting right now.

“I know that all children can succeed in school given the right resources and the right amount of love,” said Carroll, the new area superintendent for CMS’s Achievement Zone of 10 underperforming schools and a new Eight-PLUS Academy at Midwood. “If you continually treat them as if they are gifted and smart and talented, they will start to believe in themselves academically.”

Carroll should know.

Tall, fast-talking and popular, Carroll was principal at CMS’s Harding University High for seven years before accepting a position last summer with Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville, Fla. There, he managed several low-performing elementary, middle and high schools.

Under his leadership, Harding University High had been named to Newsweek magazine’s top 100 high schools four consecutive years (2003-06). Carroll came to CMS in 1993, working as assistant principal at McClintock Middle and West Mecklenburg High before being named principal at McClintock in 1997. In 1999, he became principal at Harding.

And now the lure of CMS’s Achievement Zone – along with a nudge from his high school daughter – has brought his family back to Charlotte. To tackle one of the biggest challenges: preparing 11,634 of CMS’s nearly 135,000 students to attain success and hopefully graduate.

“My whole background has prepared me for this job,” said Carroll, who is married and has two children at CMS. “This is the best opportunity I’ve ever had to assure that all youngsters have the opportunity to take high-level courses and that we prepare them to be successful.”

In mid February, CMS Superintendent Peter Gorman announced a major change for the district: dividing the system into six geographic areas plus one zone for achievement.

“We’re calling these ‘learning communities’ because they are focused on our core business – our students’ learning,” Gorman said. “We have tried to put the resources as close to the classroom as possible and as close to the people in the communities. We needed to decentralize.”

The decentralization is intended to move decision-making and authority closer to the classroom by giving schools more flexibility. Gorman said the plan would help each school become more closely aligned with the community it serves, and it would put resources and administration closer to parents.

Carroll’s area, the Achievement Zone, is composed of low-performing schools, including schools in corrective action under No Child Left Behind legislation, low-performing schools as designated by the state and underachieving schools designated by N.C. Superior Court Judge Howard Manning in the Leandro litigation.

Achievement Zone schools are Billingsville Elementary, Shamrock Gardens Elementary, Martin Luther King Jr. Middle, Sedgefield Middle, Bishop Spaugh Middle, Wilson Middle, Garinger High, E.E. Waddell High, West Charlotte High and West Mecklenburg High schools. Gorman also may add schools to the zone as he deems necessary. The new plan begins with the 2007-08 school year and Carroll is in fast-forward mode when it comes to planning for next year.

“We are building a plane and flying it simultaneously,” he said.

Literacy, first and foremost
During a CMS board meeting earlier this month, Carroll pointed out that the zone schools’ average scores on the N.C. Writing Assessment were 26 percent lower than the average scores for the entire district among elementary schools, 27 percent lower for middle schools and 23 percent lower for high schools.

Similar gaps exist for reading and math scores on the end-of-grade tests, where score differences range from a 15 percent gap in elementary reading scores to a 32 percent gap in middle school math scores. For end-of-course composite scores, the gap is 20 percent, with achievement zone schools averaging 46 percent on the tests when the districtwide average at 66 percent.

Carroll says one of the first initiatives at all zone schools will be a “laserlike focus on literacy, like you’ve never seen before.” He indicated that new programs and initiatives will be tested at different schools. “What works at some may not work at others,” he said. “But we’ll get it hammered out.”

Waddell may benefit from a new early college program and extended day program as well as double blocks of English and math, he said. West Charlotte will shift slightly to an alternate reform model, focusing on careers for graduates, if not college.

Pay them and they will teach?
Perhaps the biggest hurdle Carroll and his staff face are teacher vacancies, especially convincing proven teachers to come to the four challenged high schools within the zone.

As part of reconstitution required by Manning, 69 teachers were placed on “action plans”, earlier in the year, meaning they needed to retrain or refocus on how they were teaching – or risk losing their jobs. Of those, 48 chose to complete action plans and remain. But add to that 42 current vacancies at all four high schools and few “takers’” on $10,000 and $15,000 signing bonuses offered to teachers to accept positions at the schools, and that means teacher recruitment has moved into high gear.

At a recent CMS job fair, 29 guaranteed contracts were offered to potential recruits. And Carroll is sending a team of recruiters and school officials to Detroit this weekend (where 35 schools are closing) to recruit potential teachers.

If the vacancies remain, pressure for teacher recruitment will soon step up internally. Gorman has put CMS teachers on notice that he will reassign successful teachers from throughout the district to Achievement Zone schools.

“I don’t think that it will come down to that. But teachers have to ask themselves ‘Who do I work for – the school or the school district?’” Carroll said. “It’s just like working for General Motors or another company: One day you are working in parts and the next week you are transferred to a different division.”

PR nightmare?
Carroll admits one of his main goals within the zone is to improve community perception of the schools, which includes identifying how to resolve behavior and discipline.

This past fall, CMS released its annual school-crime incidents report, showing a marked decline in the number of guns found at schools in the 2005-06 academic year. There were 18 instances of students possessing a firearm in CMS last year, compared to 26 instances in 2004-05.

Although the total number of incidents increased, many of the most serious events remained at zero, including robbery, rape, death and kidnapping.

Two things rose significantly: the number of weapons and the number of drugs found on school campuses. The number of weapons found on school grounds was 378, compared with 307 a year earlier; the number of times controlled substances were found was 291, compared with 227 a year earlier.

A shooting at West Charlotte High this past fall had CMS officials on edge as have fights at football games at different area high schools. “We have the same problems as any other urban schools across the country,” Carroll said, noting that many of the perceptions are societal issues. “The family base is different today, the number of kids that move in and out of the area are so transient. Plus you’ve got growth – CMS has doubled in size since I first came here.”

Carroll also admits that CMS’s school choice plan introduced a huge difference in the demographics of many CMS schools “Yes, the whole resegregation issue has played a role.”

Carroll adds that while an average of 72 percent of students within the Achievement Zone are recipients of free or reduced-price lunches, there are also six magnet programs to attract students.

“We’re not looking back. I don’t want to analyze how these schools got where they are. But to the 11,000-plus students in the Achievement Zone it is our responsibility – from administrators to support staff to teachers to custodial staff – to ensure that our students succeed. ... If we get our students to a community college or to a trade school, then I’m happy,” he said. smiling.