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Patel charter school's grades show improvement after leaving USF control

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By ADAM EMERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 2, 2009

TAMPA - Just a year ago, University of South Florida leaders handed their experiment in elementary education over to the Hillsborough County school district, and the university was conceding failure.

The USF Patel Charter School had received an F on the state's report card and the university said it didn't have the money to turn around its performance.

When the state released its latest report card last month, the newly named USF Patel Partnership School on the university's campus received an A, this time under the district's control.

It got there with mostly the same students, most of them poor and at-risk. In less than one year. F to A.

"We had a real sense of purpose," said Julie Moors, a fifth-grade teacher who has been with the school since 2000. "We knew we could succeed."

The momentum shifted after the first few weeks of school, say the teachers who remained and the parents who kept faith. The school district infused the school with new technologies, a new curriculum and a new principal.

Administrators delivered the specialized training they promised and made reading, math and science coaches available. They installed new classroom libraries and converted one unused room into a computer lab.

The teachers whom the district kept relished the new attention.

Joanna Schaal taught third-graders at the charter school and saw most of them again this past school year when she took over the fourth grade. At 25, one of the younger teachers on the staff, she was eager for the district's professional development opportunities.

When it came to her lessons, she was encouraged to let students write with freedom, not with a formula. Let the students create, the coaches said.

When writing scores from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test came out in May, USF Patel posted one of the largest year-to-year leaps of any Hillsborough County school. Ninety percent of its fourth-graders passed the test, compared with 45 percent last year.

"The teachers that were there prior, we had each other, but you need a lot more than that," Schaal said. "It finally felt like it was led by a community of shared beliefs."

Prior to that, Schaal and others say, that support and those opportunities had been lacking.

The school's troubles reached their peak last summer, when the state gave USF Patel Charter its "failing" mark. USF was suffering its own budget cuts, and its leaders said they recognized that the charter school students needed more support than the university could afford.

The move angered the school's founders, who, while at the College of Education, got the school up and running at the urging of then-USF President Betty Castor in 1998. Their goal was to reach out to the poor neighborhoods that bordered their campus and to encourage researchers to discover the best ways to educate an at-risk population.

The school, however, later destabilized with high turnover among teachers and principals.

When it was first graded by the state, in 2005, it received a D. The following year, Hillsborough schools Superintendent MaryEllen Elia threatened to end the charter contract with USF, but renewed it after the school raised its grade to a C.

When the school received an F one year ago this month, the charter school board, which included the university provost and USF's education college dean, voted to turn the school over to the school district.

USF officials said they still wanted to be a partner and promised more involvement with the school than in years past. As the past school year progressed, however, the district asked the university to hold off while administrators overhauled the school and trained their staff, said Barbara Hancock, the school district's general director of elementary education.

Meanwhile, school leaders have been meeting with administrators and faculty in the College of Education to plan for a stronger partnership, Hancock said.

USF College of Education Dean Colleen Kennedy declined to speak with a reporter. Her spokeswoman, Kim Tucker, said Kennedy had a "full calendar."

Tucker released only a written statement from Roger Brindley, chairman of the college's childhood education department, who said he was proud of the school's new principal and pleased with her impact.

Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285.

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