Trenton Central High Adopts PSI-PMI
Local Leaders Push Challenges Aside and Do the Right Thing for Students
Sometimes, when the challenges are sharpest, people rise to meet them with surprising clarity and powerful unity. That’s what has happened in Trenton, where leaders from the Trenton Education Association (TEA), the Superintendent, Trenton Central High and Dunn Middle Schools’ administrators, and the Trenton Board of Education, came together to bring the Progressive Science Initiative® (PSI®) and the Progressive Mathematics Initiative® (PMI®) to two Trenton schools.
Trenton Central High has been the poster child for distressed schools for quite sometime. Crumbling walls, leaking ceilings, and pervasive mold made teaching and learning difficult. Furthermore, the political battle surrounding the facility’s neglect was discouraging. No wonder, then, school’s state Performance Report portrays a deeply challenged school.
In general, Central’s 1900 students have not been successful in navigating the school’s current science curriculum, and many abandon science after a single year of instruction. Too few of Central’s students, 83% of whom are economically disadvantaged and 97% of whom are Black or Hispanic, progress to higher education.
Dunn Middle School faces similar performance challenges. Now a Priority School, Dunn has not met its No Child Left Behind progress targets in math for either the school as a whole or for any reported subgroup of students. Most of Dunn’s students are economically disadvantaged (93%) and either Hispanic (65%) or Black (29%).
Trenton’s educators were in search of instructional changes that work for their students when, in November of 2013, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) Executive Director Wendell Steinhauer convened a meeting, inviting the presidents of some 50 NJEA local affiliates and their Uniserv Field Reps to learn more about PSI and its sister math program, PMI.
Trenton Education Association (TEA) President Naomi Johnson-Lafleur was present, as were Janice Williams, TEA’s Grievance Chair and Christine Clark, TEA’s Communications Vice-President. Together with a representative of the NEA, they heard CTL Executive Director Bob Goodman describe the positive impact PSI had on student achievement in other New Jersey High Schools with similar student demographics and performance challenges.
Not long afterward, a broader number of educators in Trenton began to explore PSI, often via meetings with CTL Program Manager Patrick Chestnut. “I started to follow up on the November meeting and soon reconnected with Scott Munro, a TEA member and lead teacher at Trenton Central who had previous PSI training. From there, a natural group of interested parties emerged. It was an exciting process.”
STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBERS FROM TEA, TRENTON CENTRAL OFFICE AND BUILDING ADMINISTRATORS, TEACHERS, AND CTL STAFF
Over the next several months TEA members and leaders, district administrators including the superintendent, and the school board came together in support of implementing PSI at Trenton Central and piloting PMI at Dunn Middle School. Critical considerations in that decision were PSI and PMI’s track records in advancing student achievement in general and advanced placement science course participation in particular, their metrics and alignment with key standards, their low cost, and their technology-enabled, student-centered approach.
Janice Williams, TEA Grievance Chair, is enthusiastic about bringing PSI to town. “The Trenton Education Association is excited about the launching of the PSI initiative at Trenton Central High School Main Campus. We are thrilled with students being given the opportunity to be exposed to high levels of physics, chemistry, and biology. This will provide them with the academic skills needed in the 21st century to be competitive with their counterparts. We look forward to the continued collaboration with the New Jersey Center for Teaching and Learning.”
“The Trenton implementation adoption was extraordinary,” said Dr. Rosemary Knab, CTL’s Director of Research and Operations, ”despite enormous pressures and complex politics, all the adults got in a room and said ‘this is the right thing to do for our kids.’” Though complimentary to all participants, Knab singled out the TEA for special kudos, noting, “They really were a model of how local union affiliates can be effective leaders of education reform.”
The implementation is already underway. CTL staffers have trained 15 Dunn Middle School Teachers in CTL’s Teaching Methodology; they are now prepared to implement PMI in the fall of 2014. If all goes well with that pilot, a broader implementation could follow.
John Dunston, Math Leader at Dunn Middle School was enthusiastic about training offered to date. “NJCTL did a wonderful job introducing PMI to our staff, illustrating the features, advantages and benefits of using advanced technology to deliver PMI’s common-core aligned, instructional content to students. Our teachers found they were able to seamlessly integrate the PMI model into an existing curricular framework for instructional enhancement almost as easily as implementing PMI’s turnkey model in its entirety.”
Beginning this March, fifteen teachers from Trenton Central began PSI’s Algebra-Based Physics Endorsement course, in order to be able to teach physics to incoming freshman by next fall. Having those teachers trained and ready to go will allow Trenton Central to take crucial steps toward adopting the physics-chemistry-biology instructional sequence that underpins higher student science achievement outcomes.
Trenton Superintendent of Schools Francisco Durán expressed his enthusiasm this way, “This change is an important move in empowering our teachers with the skills and content needed to truly enhance our science curriculum.”
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