ACE motivates student success

Success is what every teacher strives for, and sometimes it’s not achieved right away.
At Shawnee Middle School, that success may have bumps in the road.
Just ask Tim McDaniel, who works with the Achieving Classroom Excellence program at the middle school.
The federally-funded program aims to provide students who need it the help necessary to pass the end-of-instruction tests administered by the state.
The seventh grade teacher said as students progress through the program, they improve their skills.
“We work on their basics and try to ensure their basics are down, so when they go to their class, they are successful there,” McDaniel said. “You want to motivate them, get them not to hate math. You want to give them early successes, just as you would as a teacher.”
Dr. Marsha Gore, executive director of curriculum and state-federal programs for Shawnee Public Schools, said one of the components of the ACE funding is providing remediation programs for students who need it.
The district is required to give extra help for those students who show unsatisfactory or limited knowledge of subjects, she said. Courses included in this funding are algebra I and II, English II and III, geometry, biology and American history.
“We’re thankful we have that money, especially with budget cuts,” Gore said. “We wouldn’t have the tutoring without this money.”
Money is allocated based on the numbers of students with unsatisfactaory knowledge and the numbers of students with limited knowledge, she said.
The most challenging aspect of all of this is working with the middle school students with all the changes they go through between sixth and eighth grades, Gore said.
“We try to get kids to see the big picture,” she said. “We’ve been very proactive in working with these students to talk about these, possibly awakening them. We’ve just got to reach them in a different way. Our biggest challenge, I think here, is giving the skills necessary.”
Shawnee Middle School Principal Brent Houston said staff will interpret the test scores of the students and find out why some students did not pass the exams.
“If they are low in math, we enroll them in an extra math course as one of their electives,” he said.
That’s the first line of defense to combat the low scores, Houston said.
As a second line of defense, the school offers tutoring during the school day and after school, he said. Staff has found that after school is not as effective.
The test scores, after being interpreted, will be used to assess where changes need to be made, Houston said.
“We try to get as clear a picture as we can as to what students might see on the test,” he said. “Then we create a curriculum to help students study for what they might see on tests.”
Teachers will have an idea of how many questions the test may ask in the area of a subject and build the curriculum around that, Houston said. The state provides those objectives to make it easier to prepare students.
“I’m going to sit back and look at percentages and say lets not spend as much time on this area because it’s not as big,” he said.
This philosophy is the one Houston said he used at Horace Mann Elementary when he was principal there and it worked.
“Scores went up,” he said. “That kind of strategy worked really well before.”
Another challenge is educating parents about how to work with their children as well, Gore said.
“We want to engage the parents more,” she said. “That’s all kids, not just the ones that we think will be successful. We’ve got to reach every student.”
It’s easier to work with the students if the parents are involved as well, McDaniel said. Parents play a vital role in this whole process.
“That’s really where we need to put our effort,” he said. “We’d love to see parents at the door asking for help.”
McDaniel sees success in the program thus far.
“You’re reward is not the pay, it’s the students’ success,” he said.
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Josh Burton may be reached by calling 214-3926.