*****O N L I N E E X C L U S I V E *****
Gary Braudaway’s brown hair is orange today. The principal of Fort Worth’s historic Polytechnic High School is sprouting a carrot top as a fulfillment of his promise to dye his hair if students at the school in one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods ended a four-year streak of failing to meet the state’s academic standards tests. In what has been a cliff-hanger worthy of a Hollywood script, the kids this year turned in a win and then some.
The pressure on the students couldn’t have been heavier. Hanging in the balance was the very future of the landmark inner-city school. If the kids failed this year, state law required the Fort Worth school district to close Poly or turn it into an alternative school with a new name, as Fort Worth Weekly reported in “Solving the Poly Puzzle.”
This morning, the old auditorium was packed to the rafters with students, parents, alumni, teachers, the school’s board member Christene Moss, and top district administrators for the announcement of test results. Schools Superintendent Melody Johnson revealed that the students had not only passed but in most cases passed by hefty percentages over the state requirements and last year’s grades.
“Polytechnic High School will remain Polytechnic High School,” the superintendent announced, and the rafters shook with the cheers and yells of the students and their supporters. The kids passed out orange chrysanthemums to their teachers, parents and alumni – and Braudaway sat gamely in the middle of a stage filled with black and orange banners as five students spray-painted his hair bright orange, one of the school’s famous colors.
One observer laughed and said, “Did you ever think you’d see an auditorium full of teenagers cheering because they passed a math test?”
In four measures, showing results for all Poly students and then separately for African-American, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged students, the Poly kids’ scores (which are preliminary and will be made official before school is let out for the summer) exceeded “all expectations,” Johnson said.
In reading and language arts, passing rates for all four groups were 80 to 82 percent. That’s 11 to 18 percentage points higher than the previous year. The state requires 70 percent passing.
In math, Poly needed to post a 55 percent passing rate: In three of the four groups, the passing rate was 61 to 66 percent. The fourth group needed to “show progress” by increasing its passing rate over last year by at last 12 percent. That group brought up its scores by 18 percent. (The subgroups that didn’t make the overall target rates but still improved their scores were not identified by Johnson.)
In social studies, 80 to 86 percent passed. The state requires a passing rate of 77 percent.
Science was a new test this year, and the state required a 50 percent passing rate: In three of the four subgroups, passing rates were 61 to 64 percent. The fourth group needed to improve its passing rate by at least 6 percent over its performance on last year’s preliminary science test; they posted an 11 percent gain.
Braudaway, who took over the then-failing school three years ago, said he was filled with pride for what had been accomplished in so short a time. He gave credit to the student body and his teaching staff who “stood strong and stayed focused, no matter what the noise outside has been,” referring to negative news reports and critics who had written off Poly as a lost cause. “Our kids did everything they were expected to do,” he said.
One of Braudaway’s hair painters spoke to the crowd, explaining how the school’s mantra of “we are family” had made a difference to him. He stayed behind in Fort Worth this year to finish his schooling when his family moved back to Mexico, he said. A friend’s family gave him a place to live, and the principal, teachers, and students rallied to help him with money, food, clothes – and extras like a tuxedo for the prom.
Then he choked up, and Braudaway wrapped him up in a hug.
In an interview after the program, Johnson said the team at Poly had made a “heroic effort” under Braudaway’s leadership, which she called phenomenal. She said saving Poly had been one of her key goals since she took the superintendent job. “I was going to keep them [the state] from closing these doors if I had to chain myself to them,” she said.
There is one more worrisome hurdle Poly must overcome before it’s out of danger, Johnson said. That is the school’s completion rate, meaning the percentage of kids who graduate within four years plus one summer after entering high school. The problem is that the state education agency’s statistics on that measure always lag two years behind, she said. “Poly’s completion rates will be judged today on two-year-old data,” she said, which means the school could still face sanctions. “Where is the fairness in that?” she said. “Why should these kids face punishment because of the kids who dropped out two years ago?”
Johnson may have to keep those chains handy.
