How Calhoun County’s schools have given poorer students a chance
Cynthia Johnson was thrilled with the news, but she was even more excited to share it.
On that day in December 2011, the principal of Calhoun County High School called her students, about 460 in all, into an auditorium for one of her signature “hype sessions.” Working the crowd as adroitly as any politician, she told them that Mick Zais, then-state superintendent of education, had come to the school bearing phenomenal news.
Zais had informed Johnson that based on its poverty level – about 91 percent of the district’s students are eligible to receive free and reduced lunch and/or Medicaid, a traditional indicator of poverty – the St. Matthews school was beating the odds.
Of nearly 40 South Carolina high schools with similar poverty levels at the time, Johnson’s was one of just six to receive a “Good” or higher grade from the S.C. Department of Education.
As she rose to the podium, it was that defying-the-odds lesson that Johnson was again determined to drill into her students, whose school had improved from an “Average” rating the year before.
“Average? Is that good enough?” Johnson asked, one hand gripping the mic and the other gesturing toward the crowd.
“No!” the students shouted back. “We’re better than that! We’re better than that!”
The clutches of poverty
Calhoun County High School and the Calhoun County School District as a whole – whose students return to classes next week – has been “better than that” in recent years, receiving “Excellent” grades in 2012, 2013 and 2014, the most recent available, despite the challenge it faces in schooling poor children.
Calhoun County sits at the edge of what has become known as South Carolina’s “Corridor of Shame,” a term made infamous by a 2005 documentary that showcased the challenges of rural school districts in the state’s 1-95 corridor.
Its school district wasn’t one of the original 39 plaintiffs in the 20-plus-year-old Abbeville County School District v. The State of South Carolina lawsuit. But its poverty numbers mirror some of South Carolina’s poorest school districts.
Nineteen South Carolina school districts had poverty indices of 90 or above in 2014, according to the S.C. Education Oversight Committee, the independent, nonpartisan organization that annually issues school and district “report cards” to measure academic progress.
But Calhoun County’s was the only one to climb out of that basement and earn distinction as one of the state’s top school districts. The state education department ranked Calhoun County School District No. 19 out of 82 in 2014 and gave it an “Excellent” rating, the highest on the scale.
Of the 18 other districts with poor students, 11 were among the state’s 13 worst, according to the education department. That’s no coincidence, said Melanie Barton, the EOC’s executive director.
Children in poverty often have more absences from school and don’t get proper nutrition or rest, all factors that have an impact on success in school, Barton said. And the frequent moving and lack of access to outside learning experiences – such as vacations and summer day programs – also limit their chances.
“It’s the total dysfunction of the lifestyle of a child with poverty,” Barton said.
If Calhoun County School District has developed a blueprint for schooling poor children, Calhoun County High School, where Johnson has been principal seven years, is the model built from it.
In 2014, students at Calhoun County High School generally tested better on the High School Assessment Program and in end-of-course exams than other high schools in the state with similar students – those within 5 percent of the high school’s poverty index.
The high school’s 91.2 percent on-time graduation rate was also significantly better than that – 72.4 percent – of high schools with similar students.
Johnson said the grades are simply a byproduct of her school’s everyday approach.
“If you keep what’s best for the children on the forefront, then all of the other things will come,” Johnson said. Prominent on her desk at the time was a pink post-it note with the names of three high school principals who planned to tour the school and learn what sets it apart.
Johnson had plenty to show them.
Creating a home away from home
It’s a Wednesday this past spring, and the students at Calhoun County High School are in between classes, bustling through the halls. No shortage of them approach Johnson – who stands in an intersection of two hallways and seems to know every one of them on a first-name basis – for help, guidance or just to say hey.
One student shuffles by, apparently hoping Johnson won’t notice him.
“What am I seeing?” she asks as he walks past. Without speaking, he pulls up his pants, fastens his belt and keeps moving down the hall.
Johnson realized when she arrived in 2004 that Calhoun County High School and its students “needed some work.” Johnson, originally from the small S.C. town of Branchville, started at the high school as the guidance director, where for three years she developed a feel for the students and their needs.
Johnson said it was one of the state’s worst-performing high schools when she got there. Upon her appointment as principal in 2008 – she left in 2007 to help run an alternative school in Orangeburg for a year – she made a quick diagnosis: The school and its students needed a mindset change.
She felt students needed to be convinced they weren’t bound to fail just because they were poor, noting that poverty can affect self-esteem in high school, as some students realize they can’t afford the same clothes or sneakers as their classmates.
So, she and the faculty got to work building an emotional support system to prop up their students.
Staff development meetings focused on teaching faculty to build relationships with poverty-stricken children, who sometimes need the one-on-one attention. Teachers began wearing buttons that read “I Care,” Johnson said, which prompted constructive conversations between students and their instructors. Administrators, including Johnson, sometimes called parents when students weren’t showing up to class.
Johnson said teachers’ willingness to build those relationships, which she sees as crucial for poor children’s success, helped shape her hiring decisions. The result?
“We’re not just a school,” said Johnson. “We’re a family.”
Johnson said it’s common to hear stories of teachers and classmates pooling money to buy clothes for a student in need. Once, when several students’ parents passed away in quick succession, Johnson called for a “day of healing” in which the students finished their classwork early and gathered in the gym.
The relationships culminate each year with an emotional “Top Saints” ceremony in which teachers give testimonies of why they have nominated certain students to receive awards; often, the stories center on students who have persevered through tough conditions in the classroom or at home.
Changing the mindset at Calhoun County High School didn’t stop with creating that emotional support system. Johnson, a firm believer that expectations dictate success, also needed to motivate her students in the classroom.
Outlining the future
Upon accepting the job as Calhoun County School District’s new superintendent in 2010, Steve Wilson asked for time – two or three months – to evaluate the district and assess where it was lacking.
His conclusions led to seven “focus goals” meant to shape the district’s characteristics, habits and expectations and affect everything from personnel decisions to the district’s interactions with the public moving forward.
Those focus goals included points such as “intense focus on student achievement,” “sustained community engagement” and “professionalism and customer service.” They were formed around the concept of “teaching and learning,” a phrase Wilson stresses when talking about his district’s three schools, the other two of which are K-8.
That focus on academics, the first-time superintendent said, is partly what differentiates Calhoun County’s schools – home to 1,765 students in the past school year – from others with similar students. Calhoun County’s school district was one of three districts with similar students to receive an “Excellent” rating from the education department in 2014; 11 similar districts received “Average” or worse.
The district also received an “Excellent” rating in 2013 and 2012, up from receiving “Good” in 2011, “Average” in 2010 and “Below Average” in 2009.
“There is no correlation between poverty and the ability to learn,” Wilson said. “There could be a correlation between poverty and success in school.”
Wilson said that poverty-stricken children are more challenging and expensive to teach. They often require added emotional and academic attention, including after-school programs and online software like APEX, which helps students catch up in school, he said.
Many of the children entering the district’s K-8 schools are receiving schooling for the first time and need more intensive help, Wilson said, adding “you have to catch these kids early so you have a better chance.”
Wilson said the school district’s success also has come in part from hiring teachers who go the extra mile for their students.
“We’ve been fortunate that we have teachers of quality who have that empathy and compassion for kids in poverty to make sure that they’re learning,” Wilson said.
Another differentiator is the district’s data-driven approach, he said.
Wilson and his staff keeps a steady eye on the district’s data, reviewing test scores on a classroom-by-classroom basis and dropping in to evaluate teachers twice a year, looking each time for student engagement and correct teaching practices. When teachers are struggling in certain areas, there are staff development programs to help them.
“If teachers are teaching and students are engaged, you can be assured learning is going on,” Wilson said.
Getting the community involved with the school district through a program called “Key Communicators,” which Wilson started to give parents and guardians a chance to speak face-to-face with district decision-makers in town hall meetings, has also helped.
Wilson said the program creates dialogue with parents about report cards, policies and upcoming dates; plus, it gives parents a chance to voice their concerns.
“If they won’t come to you, you’ve got to go to them,” Wilson said.
Barton, the EOC chief, applauded Wilson’s efforts, saying that districts like Calhoun County’s need strong leaders who “stick to what’s important.”
“Leadership is the key,” Barton said. “If you’ve got leadership, you can do it. Leadership and community engagement is what it’s about.”
Wilson said some superintendents have reached out to him in recent years to ask about his district’s progress, looking to pick up a few tips for their own.
“There’s no big secret: It’s teaching and learning,” Wilson said. “You can’t overemphasize that.”
All over the walls: Reminders students can succeed
When class is in session, the halls of Calhoun County High School are eerily quiet. No aluminum locker doors are slamming as students bound tardily from one class to another. No one is goofing off in the hallway, contemplating a late return to class from the bathroom.
It’s a product, Johnson said, of her “10-10 rule.” Students at the high school are forbidden to leave for the first or final 10 minutes of their 54-minute-long classes, and in the 34 minutes between, they are rapidly going through course material. Students who must leave class can’t return without a signed, time-stamped note from an administrator.
Johnson, whose peeves include sagging pants and students wearing hats or hoods indoors, designed the system to keep students in class, a nod at the high school and school district’s ever-present emphasis on “teaching and learning.”
While you probably won’t see a wandering student, what you might notice walking these halls are posters on the walls – many of them meant to encourage students to perform in the classroom.
Years ago, when Johnson was guidance director, small posters in every classroom read, “We are unsatisfactory,” a needed motivational tool, Johnson said, to lift the school out of mediocrity.
Now, displays on the school’s walls are more optimistic.
In the past school year, one hallway wall was home to a large board, titled “Unlock the possibilities,” with pictures and bios of the high school’s significant or famous graduates, plus names of graduating seniors with some of their top college options. It’s a daily reminder, Johnson said, that Calhoun County High School students can make something of themselves.
More common are posters with tables of the students’ collective High School Assessment Program and end-of-course test scores, complete with columns comparing them to the rest of the state’s students and the school’s goals.
The point? Give students a constant reminder of where they are academically and what they are working toward.
“I think that kids push a little harder when they know where they are individually or collectively,” Wilson said of the posters.
Beside each of those posters is another that outlines each class’s goals for that year. The goals are a product of an “advisee-adviser” program Johnson devised in her second year as principal to put students’ education partly in their own hands.
One day every month, students at Calhoun County High School leave their classes. On half of those days, the students meet with their clubs; Johnson said she sets aside the time during school for clubs to meet because poorer students who ride the bus would be left out of after-school extracurricular activities.
But the other days, the students split up by grade level and meet with advisers. In these “advisee-adviser” sessions, each grade sees its adviser to discuss how the year is going, set goals and receive guidance. Juniors, for instance, are pushed to take the ACT and begin looking at colleges. Seniors, who are expected to have applied to at least three colleges by December of their final year, are briefed on how to apply for financial aid and scholarships.
Each class sets a goal for the year, usually centering on test scores or some other metric.
Johnson said her students thrive on that sense of competition and in having a hand in creating their own goals, sometimes excitedly coming to her with newspaper articles written about their academic progress.
“If the students are going to make or break us, we’ve got to have them involved. We’ve got to have them at the table,” Johnson said. “They like that. They like taking ownership.”
Johnson, who as guidance director was instrumental in scratching the school’s “tech prep” classes and raising the minimum bar of classes to “college prep,” admits that Calhoun County High School’s work is not done.
She’d like to see ACT scores improve, for instance, as well as for the school to return to an “Excellent” rating next year.
But Johnson, who lives within the borders of another school district but has sent all three of her children through Calhoun County public schools, trusts in her school just as much as its students.
“It’s a different type of pride now,” Johnson said, “because they understand that they can be successful.”
This story was originally published August 14, 2015 at 8:30 PM with the headline "How Calhoun County’s schools have given poorer students a chance."