Rainier View Elementary -- A Take-Charge Principal Restored Discipline

First, `law and order.' Then, match the type of reform to the profile of students who attend the school, and methodically zero in on one academic discipline at a time. A school that was once demoralized is now filled to capacity. -------------------------------

The rebirth of Rainier View Elementary School is written in the beaming faces of the Head Start children as they line up in the hall for a trip to a pumpkin patch.

A much older child walks up to the preschoolers and tells them, "You guys have a good time. Try to bring back a big pumpkin. I'll eat the seeds."

Five years ago, students were so rowdy and fights so common that teachers in the Head Start program were afraid to let their preschoolers walk the hallways.

Students at Seattle's southernmost school scored so low on standardized tests that parents sent their children to other schools. When newly appointed principal Cothron McMillian visited Rainier View, she found teachers and other employees demoralized. She called her mother in tears, wondering if she had made a big mistake.

But since McMillian arrived in 1995, she and the staff have raised morale, boosted academic performance and won back the confidence of the community.

Test scores have risen steadily - an achievement that's all the more remarkable because the school's poverty rate is rising.

Rainier View is now filled to capacity, and turning some children away.

And district officials are examining Rainier View's changes to see if its successes could be duplicated elsewhere.

How did Rainier View do it? Not with a single strategic change, or even by turning everything upside down. Improvement has been a slow, methodical process that has focused on one major area each year.

In McMillian's first year at Rainier View, the staff concentrated on discipline and school climate. In subsequent years they tackled reading, then math and science.

To improve the school, teachers bucked convention and chose teaching methods that aren't universally popular - methods they believe are most effective with the school's predominantly African-American, low-income student body.

Some teachers who didn't care for McMillian's blueprint for change fled the school, while others were eased out. Only a few teachers have remained through the entire transition.

But even as teachers were leaving, the students were staying.

Christine Chambliss was disillusioned with Seattle schools when she enrolled her granddaughter, Tatiana Sanders, in kindergarten at Rainier View. She planned to transfer her granddaughter to a private school for more serious academics in the first grade.

"This is the year she probably would have been at St. Somebody's, even though we're not Catholic," Chambliss says.

But something surprising happened before the end of kindergarten: Tatiana, now a first-grader, became so excited about reading that she reads everything in sight during car rides - and insists on frequent trips to the public library.

"I'm just amazed at what they've done with my granddaughter," Chambliss says. "She's an average student. She's an average kid. They've turned her into an achiever. They've turned her on to learning."

Last month Chambliss received a letter from the school district asking to test Tatiana for admission to a program for highly capable or gifted students. For now, Chambliss is happy to keep the girl at Rainier View.

Many students continue to perform at a level far below Tatiana, but as a whole they are doing much better than they were five years ago.

Improvement hasn't been easy.

When McMillian was transferred from Laurelhurst Elementary - in a well-to-do North End neighborhood - she quickly realized she couldn't even hope to pull students' academic performance out of the basement unless something was done about the school climate.

Her first year was devoted almost entirely to enforcing discipline. She gave children and parents a clear message: Anyone fighting at school, no matter what the cause, would be suspended.

She told the new superintendent, the late John Stanford, that she wouldn't make any major changes in curriculum or teaching staff until she had brought about "law and order." Stanford agreed.

"We had tons of suspensions. I was suspending kids left and right," McMillian recalls. So many children were sent home that some parents grumbled the no-questions-asked suspension policy was too harsh.

But the number of suspensions - and fights - diminished. From 30 to 50 suspensions a year, the number has dropped to fewer than five. And that, she believes, has created an appropriate learning environment.

"I tell you, climate is everything," says McMillian. "Children know they can come to school, they're safe. Teachers know they can come to school, they're safe. The staff knows they can come to school, they're safe. That's important. I think a lot of times we don't put enough value in safety and security."

In her third year at Rainier View, McMillian won the approval from staff and parents to require students to wear blue and white uniforms. Parents say the change has helped make students more serious about their schoolwork.

"Now kids don't focus on what they're wearing and brand new clothes. They focus on learning," says Monica Ayers, a Rainier View graduate and a parent who volunteers in the school 15 hours a week.

Chambliss, a PTSA vice president, says, "When you've been around children as long as I have, you recognize when the children are in control and when the adults are in control. Ms. McMillian rules with an iron fist. It's a good and caring iron fist."

The disciplinary changes wouldn't have meant much, however, if they hadn't resulted in substantial academic gains. Near the end of McMillian's first year, she and the teachers began talking about how they could help students become better readers.

Since then, the school has tackled one subject each year as a target for improvement. Teachers have targeted reading, math, science and - shades of yesteryear! - penmanship.

Reading remains the highest priority. Forsaking the "whole language" approach to reading, Rainier View teachers rely on phonics-based "direct-instruction" methods. In direct instruction, children are given specific reading strategies rather than figuring them out for themselves.

McMillian and curriculum specialist Megan Ware believe Rainier View students are learning more with direct-instruction methods than with whole language.

Children who aren't reading well are given extra help from volunteer tutors and staff specialists during the school day. After school, student tutors from Rainier Beach High School - paid through telecommunications baron Craig McCaw's Team Read program - take up tutoring.

"Some get a double dose or a triple dose of reading. It depends on their needs," McMillian says.

With funding from Costco, Rainier View hosted a two-week reading camp last summer for 100 struggling readers from four South End elementary schools. Using the Phono-Graphix curriculum, the students reportedly improved an average of half a grade level.

New this fall is a before-school "breakfast club" in which students gather in four grade-level book clubs.

Stung by news that none of Rainier View's fourth-graders met the state's tough new math standards on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) in 1998, Rainier View last year brought in a math consultant to work with teachers and students. Two teachers were sent to a national math-training conference and are now helping other teachers improve their teaching of math. Two more teachers will attend the math conference this year.

The school's one-subject-a-year approach to reform seems to be working. The number of fourth-graders meeting state learning standards jumped from zero to 26 percent in math and from 11 to 35 percent in reading last spring.

Despite long-standing skepticism among teachers about "teaching to the test," fourth-grade teacher Amy Hull is unapologetic about the school making a concerted effort to raise students' WASL scores.

"On the classic standardized tests it doesn't make sense to teach to the little pool of information that's on the tests," Hull says. "With the WASL we're teaching thinking skills and the ability to express themselves - which I hope are things all teachers would want to teach."

A group of Hull's students worked on those skills recently as they read Deborah and James Howe's popular children's novel, "Bunnicula." A boy wanted to know if the character Chester was a dog. Hull suggested looking for clues in the text and figuring it out. Does Chester jump on the back of an armchair? she asked. Does he growl? What would be dog behavior? What would be cat behavior?

Rainier View's reputation has improved dramatically since Marlene Fuller enrolled the first of her four children there five years ago. "People said it was the school for people who were rejected by other schools. Now that Cothron has taken over, that's totally changed."

Rainier View was one of six schools the Seattle School District honored this fall for making significant gains on tests in of reading, writing and composition.

The rise in WASL and other standardized test scores is particularly striking in that it has come at a time when the proportion of children poor enough to qualify for free lunch has risen from 64 to 73 percent.

A number of ingredients have gone into the school's makeover: better discipline, methodical changes in curriculum, involvement by teachers in setting academic priorities and the school budget, and replacing teachers who didn't like the new approach. Most of the faculty has been replaced during the past five years.

The school has benefited from Seattle's policy of sending extra money to schools like Rainier View that have more children in poverty or in need of special services.

Once major changes were set in motion, it took time to see the benefits.

"You cannot implement a program in one year and expect something to happen - not if you're doing a thorough job," McMillian says. "It has taken us a solid three to four years to see the fruits of our labor." Keith Ervin's phone message number is 206-464-2105. His e-mail address is kervin@seattletimes.com