By Daniel Victor

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

It seemed no one was able to reach the child.

He didn’t talk much, or do much work in school. He was poor, black, and no teacher in the Steelton-Highspire School District had ever connected with him.

Then came his fourth-grade teacher, Kelly Mosby-Fowlkes. She, too, was black. She, too, grew up in Steelton. She, too, came from humble beginnings.

He started to trust her, and he worked for her.

One year later, he went to another school, and Mosby-Fowlkes got a call from his new teacher. The boy talked about Mosby-Fowlkes all the time, she said. The new teacher wanted to know: How did Mosby-Fowlkes get through to the child?

“It’s all about that relationship,” said Mosby-Fowlkes, now an assistant principal at Steelton-Highspire Elementary School. “And it’s something, when you share the same ethnic background, it’s just something special there. It just raises that level of comfort, of ease, of understanding.”

Most educators agree on the value of minority teachers, both for their ability to provide role models to the rising number of minority students and to battle stereotypes in the minds of white students. Some school districts said they recruit minority teachers.

So why are there so few of them?

The difficulty

Every school faces different challenges in attracting minority teachers, but they share one big problem: There aren’t enough candidates out there.

In the 2006-07 school year, only four midstate school districts had more than six minority teachers: Carlisle, Central Dauphin, Harrisburg and Susquehanna Twp., according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Most districts had fewer than three. Seven districts had none.

In all of the schools, the percentage of minority teachers lagged far behind the percentage of minority students.

The subject has been a passion of Mark Holman, director of human resources for the Harrisburg School District. The district has one of the state’s highest rates of minority teachers, 23 percent, a rate that is still far behind the district’s minority student population of nearly 95 percent.

He cites several reasons for the shortage. The federal No Child Left Behind law has made it more difficult for mid-career transfers into education, which is where districts often find minority candidates.

Minority students statistically score lower on entrance exams, and a higher GPA requirement thins the field further, he said.

Many minority parents are encouraging their children to go into more profitable careers, he said.

“If you want to have more African-American teachers, you have to get more African-American parents to send their sons and daughters to school to become teachers,” Holman said.

And though administrators from several districts said they recruit at historically black colleges, such as Cheyney University and Lincoln University in eastern Pennsylvania, those colleges produce few teachers, and it can be difficult to lure them away from bigger cities.

“I love central Pennsylvania,” said David Volkman, superintendent of Susquehanna Twp. School District. “But when we recruit at historically black colleges, sometimes it’s difficult to get folks to commit to us, because of where we are.”

Several districts say they focus on keeping in touch with alumni who are going to college to study education, hoping they’ll want to return.

For a district such as Steelton-Highspire, which has low teacher wages for the area, home ties often aren’t enough.

“We’ve had a number of cases where we actually recruited folks and had them move into the area,” Superintendent Norma Mateer said. “But after two or three years, they realized they could get much more money in a suburban district near us.”

The role model

James Sledge, an English teacher at Susquehanna Twp. High School, tells some of his students that he loves them as they leave class. About half of the students in his class are nonwhite.

A black man from Birmingham, Ala., Sledge was led to education by his family. Altruistic reasons and support from the district kept him in the job, he said.

“It allows students to see there are different types of people of color,” he said.

Tamira Howard, who is black, is hard on some of the black males in her class.

Howard knows that, before they come to her American Government or AP European History classes at Central Dauphin East High School, they’ve been labeled as trouble-makers.

But the Susquehanna Twp. High School alumna demands their respect and suspects they do respect her more than some of their other teachers. They’re not used to having black teachers.

“They need to see people like them that can do great things,” Howard said.

There’s a benefit to the white students, too, said Mary Kay Durham, superintendent of Carlisle Area School District.

“It helps all students realize we’re just a microcosm of the rest of the world, and it helps them learn about others and appreciate everyone,” she said.

Looking ahead, there are reasons for both hope and worry, Holman said.

Hope comes in the form of more competitive teacher salaries and the job stability of teaching when other industries are downsizing or restructuring. Teachers can be fairly confident that they’ll have jobs until they’re ready to retire, he said.

But the rising teacher standards, and the ability to make more money elsewhere, will continue to work against schools, he said.

“Every child should have the opportunity to see someone that looks like them as a role model,” Holman said. “By kids seeing people in these roles, they someday can see themselves in that role.”

Clips

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

Far in the background of Red Land Senior High School senior David Moyer’s desire to take a male date to the homecoming dance without being harassed are two words in a policy book that have divided area school districts.

In the policies that aim to shield students from harassment, 15 area districts include language to protect “sexual orientation” along with other classifications. Nine districts omit the words or don’t have policies.

A policy “sends the message that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students are a protected class in the same way any other minorities are,” said Michelle Simmons, director of the Common Roads support group for such teens. “Having a policy in place creates a culture of tolerance and acceptance.”

The West Shore School District does not include sexual orientation in its harassment policy, but that didn’t stop Moyer from twice taking male dates to homecoming.

“And no one said anything,” he said.

In Pennsylvania, sexual minorities are not legally protected by the Human Relations Commission, but Chapter 4 of the Pennsylvania School Code was amended in 1999 to protect sexual minorities from discrimination.

That was an impetus for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association to add sexual orientation to its unlawful harassment policy in 2000, according to Director of Policy Services Sharon Fissel. PSBA policies are distributed to member schools as nonbinding recommendations.

Several of the schools that omit the words have a catch-all such as “includes but is not limited to” preceding the list of classifications, but Fissel said it’s important to be inclusive.

“We recommend that the districts do have it spelled out specifically so that when they go to the policy to implement it and enforce it, they know what it covers,” she said.

The policies tend to inflame conservatives, said Warren Throckmoyer, an associate professor of psychology at Grove City College, whose research has focused on sexual orientation.

He said he is not aware of research on the effectiveness of anti-harassment policies, and he promotes anti-bullying curricula as an alternative.

“A lot of times, conservatives worry that the problems with bullying is just a way for schools to include indoctrination about sexual orientation,” he said.

Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, said her concern is with the normalization of homosexuality.

Students “shouldn’t be harassed because of their lifestyle, but the school should not be promoting their lifestyle,” she said. “By adding sexual orientation or gender identity, that’s what they’re doing.”

Several school superintendents said their policies were updated to include sexual orientation after PSBA sent out its recommendation, with varying amounts of resistance from the public.

“That was quite a debate,” Susquehanna Twp. Superintendent David Volkman said. “In the end, the board decided they thought it was best to include it with all the others.”

The schools that don’t have the words vary in how harassment is covered. Cumberland Valley, Greenwood, Northern York, South Middleton, Upper Dauphin and West Shore have long lists of classifications without sexual orientation, though South Middleton has proposed a revised policy that would add the words.

Susquenita, West Perry and Central Dauphin do not include sexual orientation in their policies.

Greenwood Superintendent Ed Burns, whose school policy was revised in 1998, said harassment of homosexual students is prohibited.

“I think it’s clearly covered, let’s put it that way,” he said.

Having words in a policy doesn’t make harassment go away, Simmons said. She considers teaching and relationship building as better tactics.

But “it has to start with the administration,” Simmons said. “If they send the message that that kind of language is not acceptable, maybe it filters to the faculty, it filters to other staff. Then eventually the students get to understand that and hear it.”

Moyer, who works as an intern at Common Roads, said he’s had a few uncomfortable moments in school, but he’s never felt in danger. A bleacher full of students yelled “faggot!” at him as he walked to gym class once, but he ignored them and kept walking, he said.

“It’s not the most comfortable thing, but it happens,” he said. “That’s just common vernacular when it comes to high school kids.”

DANIEL VICTOR : 255-8144 or dvictor@patriot-news.com

INFOBOX:

- A SAMPLE POLICY FROM MIDDLETOWN For purposes of this policy, harassment shall consist of verbal, written, graphic or physical conduct relating to an individual’s race, color, national origin/ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation or religion when such conduct: 1. Is sufficiently severe, persistent or pervasive that it affects an individual’s ability to participate in or benefit from an educational program or activity or creates an intimidating, threatening or abusive educational environment. 2. Has the purpose or effect of substantially or unreasonably interfering with an individual’s academic performance. 3. Otherwise adversely affects an individual’s learning opportunities.

Middletown Area School District, 2002

HOW DISTRICTS WORD THEIR POLICIES

Schools that include “sexual orientation” in harassment policies:

* Big Spring, Camp Hill, Carlisle, Derry Twp., East Pennsboro, Halifax, Harrisburg, Lower Dauphin, Newport, Mechanicsburg, Middletown, Millersburg, Shippensburg, Susquehanna Twp., Steelton-Highspire.

Schools that don’t include “sexual orientation” in harassment policies:

* Central Dauphin, Cumberland Valley, Greenwood, Northern York, South Middleton, Susquenita, Upper Dauphin, West Perry, West Shore.

Clips

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

In Derry Twp. elementary classrooms, the A, B, C and D grade markings you know from your childhood have been expelled.

Now K-5 students strive for a P, which stands for proficient. If a student gets a W, or working toward proficient, that’s OK, too. That just means the student has more work to do. There are no other grades.

The new standards-based report card, modeled after about 30 other Pennsylvania school districts that have undergone similar changes, stops ranking students and focuses on progress toward specific benchmarks, said Cindy Goldsworthy, the director of curriculum and instruction in the Derry school district.

It gives parents feedback in more specific areas and separates factors such as work ethic and behavior from academic concepts and skills.

“This is to get kids, especially when they’re young, focused on what they’re learning much more so than the grades they’re earning,” she said.

Instead of getting a B with an 85 percent in math class, a fourth-grade student might have a P for “Rounds numbers,” but a W for “Renames fractions as decimals.” A boisterous student might get a W in “Demonstrates self control.”

There are 73 grading areas on the fourth-grade report card. On the previous report card, there were 10. The goal is to have a card full of P’s by the end of the year.

Other area districts have changed the way they grade in elementary schools. In 2004, the Northern Lebanon School District began using checks, pluses and minuses instead of traditional letter grades. The Eastern Lebanon County School District uses an “E” for exceeding expectations, an “M” for meeting them, and an “N” for “needing support.”

Reg Weaver, president of the National Educators Association, said there’s been a nationwide movement toward replacing traditional grading systems, but no consensus. Plenty of districts are experimenting, and it’s best for local districts to decide what works, he said.

Any way to give parents more feedback will be beneficial, he said.

“Once the kid knows the home and school is communicating and working together, in most cases you’ll see a difference in behavior, and you’ll see a difference in achievement,” Weaver said.

The impact is reaching into classroom lessons.

Fourth-grade teacher Brian Blase documents more data than he ever has before, but he won’t write scores or percentages on papers, he said. That data helps him direct his teaching at individual needs, he said.

During a geometry unit, one group of students was taken aside for a lesson on line segments. A few others got help on identifying right angles.

Students at elementary age are less motivated by grades than their older peers, and the new system helps him identify problem areas, Blase said.

“Even a student who got an A on the quiz, maybe they still don’t know how to draw a line segment,” he said.

The district is using just two letters to avoid the feeling of rankings, said Joe McFarland, principal of Hershey Primary Elementary School.

Some of the standards, designated by gray boxes on the report card, come from the state. Others are the district’s own.

Lori Dixon, principal of Hershey Intermediate Elementary School, said nonacademic factors are still important, though separate from academic achievement. They’ll be evaluated in a separate section, and misbehavior will be sternly talked about, she said.

But “it really should not muddy the issue of what this child knew and could demonstrate to me,” she said.

Parents and students will receive the first report card at the end of October, but the school is preparing parents for the switch. At a meeting with parents last week, the reaction was mostly positive.

Deborah Smith, who moved to Hershey from Binghamton, N.Y., said the former school district of her fifth-grade daughter used a similar system.

“This way you look at it, and you know the specific area you have to work on,” she said.

But Dana Bergey, the father of a fifth-grader, was skeptical.

“P is going to be ‘good enough,’” he said from the audience. “I don’t want my daughter to be good enough. I want her to be the best she can be.”

After the meeting, Bergey said he had feared the system catered to the lowest common denominator. But after a talk with McFarland, Bergey felt more optimistic, he said.

PTO President Ann Marie Schupper said she has already seen results.

Her fourth-grade daughter used to compare her grades to her seventh-grade brother’s, she said. This year, when her daughter brought home a spelling test with three questions wrong, she had a different response, Schupper said.

“She said, ‘I only have to learn these three,’ as opposed to ‘Oh, I have three wrong,’” Schupper said. “That’s really a great mind set.”

Clips