A taste of victory, finally, for a struggling Newark school
NEWARK, Due north.J. — The scene could have come from any schoolhouse principal's dream, but there it was before Erskine Glover's eyes, happening in reality.
Information technology was the beginning day of the 2014-2015 academic twelvemonth at Quitman Street Renew Schoolhouse. Students and teachers were crowded into the combined cafeteria-auditorium, and Glover's boss, Assistant Superintendent Peter Turnamian, was on stage.
He was there to congratulate them. Of all 45 unproblematic and center schools in Newark, Quitman had the greatest exam score gains in reading the prior leap. Its math improvement was tied for fourth-highest in the city.
"There is no greater leader in the commune than Principal Glover," Turnamian said, and the crowd cheered and applauded enthusiastically. "You have the best of the all-time. Get on your feet." Even more incredible was what Turnamian said next to the entire staff: "It is an extremely special thing to say you've been a part of a whole schoolhouse turnaround, and you are on the route to achieving that. I know information technology'southward been the result of frustrations and perseverance through challenges."
Minutes before, Superintendent Cami Anderson had also lavished praise on Quitman and other schools striving for turnarounds at a press conference in the Quitman library. A "Celebrating Student Success" banner was behind her, and the country education commissioner was at her side. Anderson was looking for practiced news on a mean solar day when her new school consignment process was nether heavy public attack, only of all the places in Newark she could have gone to find it, this was where she turned.
In November, Glover had another dream-similar moment when a prominent pedagogy applied science weblog published a list called "100 Schools Worth Visiting." And there was Quitman — long confined to the rungs of New Jersey's lowest-performers — at No. 19.
Only two other schools in the state were on the list, which was based on programs in "blended learning," or combined personalized-electronic instruction. Aimed at educators and reformers who want to develop "an innovation mindset," the post on the web log Getting Smart said it was based on a few thousand school visits and recommendations from the field. It held upward "schools that attain extraordinary results, create powerful learning experiences, and/or have created innovative technology blends."
"Quitman Unproblematic School in Newark is making good strides in a tough place," the post said. The local news ran an commodity virtually Quitman's recognition, and the city schools' advisory board passed a resolution of praise.
Could it exist? For iv years since taking the helm of Quitman, Glover had been doing everything in his power to shed the school'south losing reputation, working himself to exhaustion with 4:30 a.g. alarms and untold missed family unit dinners — and building a staff willing to do the aforementioned. He pushed himself to continue afterward having his left hip replaced two summers agone and his right hip resurfaced a year later. He was in bed recovering from his first surgery when he got the news that the 2013 test scores were again rock bottom, and Turnamian had to talk him out of resigning.
But, yep, ii and a one-half years into a turnaround initiative that gave Glover hiring ability and more than resources, Quitman has turned a corner. The civilization is significantly improved, the staff has stabilized, and classrooms generally are filled with students who are non simply working just actually learning. At last, grueling effort has translated into exam score gains at a schoolhouse serving poor, minority students and a continually increasing number of children with learning and emotional disabilities. Peradventure most of import, there has been a psychological shift here: It now seems possible for Quitman students to accomplish excellence and realize the dream of economic prosperity.
Related: A Newark school prepares — again — to reinvent itself
Yet, there's a long way to go. Despite the gains, scores on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ Ask) remain an embarrassment to Glover, 45, who is frequently his own worst critic, and are painfully low by any standards. The state reported 2014 pass rates ranging from 14 percentage in eighth-course math to 64 pct in fourth-grade scientific discipline. In reading and math, no pass rate exceeded twoscore percent — fifty-fifty lower than prior years, but the tests had gotten more difficult.
District officials' conclusion almost Quitman's comeback came non from laissez passer rates but raw numbers. NJ ASK is scored on a scale of 300 points, and 200 is passing. Quitman's average reading score for all grades tested went from 175 to 183 this year, a bigger bound than whatever other school in the city. In math, the school went from 173 to 181. In other words, many students are creeping closer to the pass mark, just they aren't there yet.
Quitman is testament to the fact that school reform done honestly takes a long fourth dimension. A fasten in scores tends to be the last piece to come, after strong leadership and pedagogy are in place. Nationally, many teachers and administrators don't want to work nether circumstances that require self-sacrifice and constant outside scrutiny.
"Nosotros have a distance to travel," Glover said when he took the microphone from his boss that September afternoon, "but the beautiful affair about waking up every mean solar day is that we get to start all over."
"Nosotros take a distance to travel, but the beautiful thing about waking up every twenty-four hours is that we get to start all over." — Quitman Chief Erskine Glover
This school year, that's truthful literally. Terminal jump was the final administration of NJ ASK, and now, New Jersey students are preparing for a much harder test to measure out their knowledge of the national Mutual Core instruction standards. Glover is proud of his students' improving analytical skills as they learn Common Cadre standards in their classrooms, simply he worries about their power to bear witness what they know in the time allotted for the new exam.
Quitman also started over this year with approximately 100 additional students as a result of the city'due south new school assignment plan. And for the third consecutive year, district officials have steered more special instruction students to Quitman because they believe they will become good services there. In November, the school received a new class of students with behavioral disabilities, the about difficult population to manage.
Enrollment remains in flux; every bit of mid-Dec, it was 667, up from 493 when the turnaround procedure began. Near grades added new classes so course size did not increase. Many of the new kids arrived with bookish deficits and some aren't used to a schoolhouse civilization that is focused and positive; 1 administrator ofttimes reminds longtime students to prove their new classmates how to "behave similar a Quitman Peacock." But Glover is thrilled to see parents choosing his school. In most cases, it was one of families' top 3 selections, and at the very least, parents are not pulling their children out. That is moving toward exactly what he wants: for Quitman to be in every bit high need equally Newark's top-performing charters.
"We're finally at the table," he said.
Leaving the By Behind
Turning around a failing school is one of the hardest jobs anywhere, and despite much national attending to the problem, few places have done it successfully. Starting a new school without historical baggage is far easier, which is why many cities, Newark included, have adopted the divisive strategy of closing the lowest performers and kickoff fresh. That has given a major opening to charter schools, public schools that operate privately.
But Newark has likewise many depression-performing schools to close them all, and in 2012, Superintendent Anderson targeted eight to try to put the by behind them. These "renew schools" had the pick to change their names, merely parents didn't desire to, and Quitman Street Community Schoolhouse simply became Quitman Street Renew School.
The school opened in 1963 in a new 3-story building at 21 Quitman St. that replaced an former school torn down around the corner. Information technology served families in new public housing towers and old tenements in the city's Central Ward, once a bustling working class Jewish enclave. Those days were fading, and Quitman'south educatee enrollment has always been predominantly African-American. When race riots tore through Newark in July 1967, the National Baby-sit stormed into Quitman and evacuated all white staff members working in a summertime kindergarten preparation program. The schoolhouse closed for iii weeks in 1970 and 11 weeks in 1971 during teacher strikes, the longer i racially polarizing.
Through the years, a distinguishing feature of the school was its variability. Former staff, students and community members retrieve information technology differently, largely based on the strength of the principal at whatsoever given fourth dimension. That fluctuated profoundly, and so did the quality of education from 1 classroom to the next. For a while in the 1970s, the school had success group students past ability level, according to longtime teacher Harriet Knevals, and then smart kids weren't held back and their struggling peers could get actress attention.
There was a brief merger with a since-closed schoolhouse next door for students with behavioral disabilities. 6th- through 8th-graders were transferred elsewhere and brought back. In that location were years when students came from all over the city, as they practise over again now, and years when everyone came from the aforementioned four public housing towers, just one of which is still standing. Early days when the building was filled to capacity with more 1,500 students and nearly 40 students in some classes gave way to plummeting enrollment.
In 2000, Turnamian — now the banana superintendent — founded one of Newark's commencement charter schools in the Central Ward in part to give families an culling to Quitman, by so well-established in its reputation for violence and instability.
Glover arrived as principal in 2010, having worked his way through the ranks of Newark Public Schools as a 6th-grade teacher, math staff developer, applied science coordinator and banana principal. His get-go two years, he was required to keep teachers who were non producing results, and a threat of closure was a huge distraction. Hired by former Superintendent Clifford Janey, Glover had to re-interview for his chore first when Anderson became schools chief and again when the renew school process began.
Related: A Newark schoolhouse leader'due south urgency to renew
In the summer of 2012, Glover used his new hiring authority to supplant half the teaching staff. Despite hundreds of hours of interviewing, not all his choices turned out to be the correct ones. Five teachers had quit before the 2012-2013 bookish year was out, including the entire middle school math and science team. Glover has needed to make several new hires again each of the past 2 summers, just this year, about half of the 17 openings were new positions because of the enrollment increase, raising the size of the teaching staff to 66. This time, he was required to make well-nigh of his new hires from a pool of district employees looking for reassignments, merely he's generally happy with the squad he has currently, and he's accepted that staffing will always exist a work in progress.
He sees his challenge as building an establishment stiff enough to outlast any individual'southward departure — peculiarly, one day, his. This year he seems newly invigorated to meet that job through.
Hanging in the school part is a T-shirt designed by staff members who did a walkathon for breast cancer. "We Don't Quit, Man!" it says in ruby-red letters over a blueish background.
Glover nodded toward the shirt one day as he passed past. "We sure don't," he said.
College Standards Coming
Another cardinal reform has been more time, not only for students in the classroom but too for teacher preparation and collaboration. Quitman teachers get a $iv,000 stipend to work an extra hour a 24-hour interval, four Saturdays a year and ii weeks in the summertime.
Glover says the summertime time is especially critical to acclimatize new staff and set the right tone for an upcoming year. Teachers at most schools, in Newark and nationally, return each August or September merely 2 days earlier their students. Northward Star Academy, a network of 10 charter schools in Newark that are amongst the nearly highly acclaimed in the country for reversing the achievement gap, sets a higher bar: New teachers go three weeks of training each summer, all staff get two weeks, and students return a week before the rest of the metropolis.
For the second one-half of August, the Quitman squad prepare upwardly shop in the cafeteria at the school side by side door, which is now an early on babyhood center, as custodial staff scrambled to gear up Quitman's classrooms. On Aug. 28, with a calendar week to go before students' render, the cafeteria walls were blanketed in more than 70 pieces of white and yellowish poster paper. Teachers had written everything from chapter summaries of the book "Failure is Not an Pick," required staff reading, to the materials they need to teach specific instructional standards.
Glover gave the group three minutes that forenoon to complete a xv-question survey on their work environment. (Timing tasks is important so not a moment is wasted. This is a strategy N Star uses with both children and adults.) Sixty-nine pct agreed or strongly agreed that their colleagues "have a civilisation of learning and collaboration by continuously seeking to abound their instructional practice." Fifty-three percent said colleagues are "productive squad players who contribute to a professional person school culture." Similar surveys in prior years had comparable results. Glover said he hoped to reach 100 percent in all categories past June.
Related: Hidden successes, public shortfalls and a make-or-break year for i Newark school
Next, he gave 5 minutes to practise a sample problem from the new exam replacing the NJ ASK. Called the Partnership for Cess of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), it will be used in thirteen states and administered online.
Office A: A farmer plants 3/four of the field with soybeans. Elevate the soybean to the field as many times as needed to show the fraction of the field that is planted with soybeans.
Office B: Type a fraction different than 3/four in the boxes that besides represents the fractional part of the farmer ' southward field that is planted with soybeans.
That was a third-grade problem. In the days of NJ Ask, information technology would have shown upwardly in fourth or fifth course.
Next came a harder example. It required knowledge of the term "rectangular array," which not all the teachers recognized. (It refers to equal-sized boxes making upwardly a rectangle.) Students were asked to write a multiplication equation using R for the number of rows in a rectangular assortment with 56 small-scale tiles and seven tiles per row.
Glover told them that this, also, came from the sample third-grade test.
"What?!" someone cried out.
The principal asked all pre-kindergarten through 2d-grade teachers to stand up. "Y'all are the ones who need to make sure your students can exercise this trouble," he said. Even pre-kindergarten classes tin can talk about what a rectangle is and what the word "equal" ways.
"No 1 should become to 3rd form," he said, "and not know how to draw a graph."
'On Height of Everything'
Despite his unrelenting schedule, Glover couldn't say no when he was recruited this autumn to coach an 8-year-onetime boys' soccer squad in Due north Brunswick, the township where he and his family live. (He got involved coaching for the league when his now-17-year-old son started playing soccer at age 4, but he had never before led a team his son wasn't on.) He initially said he was merely filling in just ended up serving the unabridged season. He never finished work in time to make the 6 p.m. practices on Monday and Wednesday nights, and so he had soccer trainers hired to work with the children until he could get in that location at 6:45 or 7. He treated the 10 second-graders like professionals, analyzing what went well and what they could do amend later on every game. They ended the flavor viii-4.
Glover hated losing equally a kid playing basketball, and he still does. He is constantly breaking down Quitman's performance like a omnibus breaks downwards a game to refine strategy. This has led to numerous changes at the school over again this twelvemonth.
Each homeroom at present begins the day with a "forenoon coming together" that helps accost students' social and emotional needs. School ends for students 20 minutes earlier, at 3:10 p.chiliad. instead of 3:30. Reading and math are being woven into fine art, music and even physical education, with classroom teachers attention those subjects with their students. The move is an attempt to preserve instructional minutes while giving teachers an uninterrupted hour of planning time together at the end of the solar day, which Glover felt necessary to eternalize collaboration.
After-school tutoring this year is targeting the neediest students, versus last twelvemonth when students in the eye were asked to stay. Of 169 struggling students invited, 123 enrolled in the after-school program, which runs at Quitman until half-dozen p.one thousand. with YMCA employees offering arts, fitness and squad-building activities. In the spring in that location will be pond off site.
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The school expanded its apply of composite learning, an exploding trend in education nationally considering of its ability to personalize instruction. Concluding year, Quitman'due south third through 5th grades piloted the initiative in reading and math, dividing a class into three groups based on ability for a particular skill. One group works with the teacher, the 2d works online and the last works individually or in pairs on assignments with old-school books, pencil and newspaper. Every 20 minutes in most classes, the groups switch stations. This year, Quitman brought blended learning to sixth through eighth grades and to science and social studies.
On the unseasonably warm Monday before Thanksgiving, students in Tiffany Wingate'southward fourth-class reading and social studies form were learning about holidays in India. Although all three groups read the same passage, Wingate moved through it more slowly with the students who needed help with words similar "considered" and "harvest" than those who paused only for "Lakshmi."
Jackie Pugh, who helped Quitman design its composite learning plan, has been impressed with the school. She works for Pedagogy Elements, a visitor that hosts a website where students can log on to notice digital lessons Quitman purchased from many vendors all in one place. The company's marketing director heard about the upcoming "100 Schools Worth Visiting" listing, and Pugh recommended Quitman. A spokeswoman for the web log, run past former Nib & Melinda Gates Foundation executive manager Tom Vander Ark, said that recommendation was how Quitman made the list.
"They're totally on top of everything they're doing," Pugh said. She also nominated vice primary Evelyn Vargas-Okparaeke to speak on a panel at a national teaching technology conference; although the proposed panel was not selected, it was still an honor for Vargas-Okparaeke to be recommended from the 118 schools that Education Elements works with nationwide.
Composite learning, along with a districtwide emphasis on giving students all-encompassing feedback, is a lot of piece of work for teachers. Christina Patterson-Bright, a twenty-year Quitman veteran who teaches seventh- and 8th-grade English language, said the strategy of individualizing instruction is similar to what's been happening in special education for decades. "We're doing the exact same thing with 23 students that a teacher with a special needs class does with half-dozen," she said. She said the model is extremely time consuming, "simply we all want what's best, so nosotros do it." She grades papers at her three sons' sports practices and does lesson plans while cooking dinner.
Patterson-Bright said all her colleagues are working similarly hard. But non all are getting the results she is. Year afterward yr, her students have posted the highest gains in the school on NJ Enquire. Asked how she does it, she paused. "I think I make them experience that they tin do information technology, even though many of them are not on form level," she said. "I teach them to struggle, and I teach them that information technology'due south OK, if you testify what you know and struggle with information technology. That'due south better than merely saying yous tin't do it and failing."
The Way Forward
Data assay has e'er been a potent adapt for Glover, who was an undergraduate statistics major, and it was sorely lacking when he arrived at Quitman. Ane of his key hires has been Callie Franklin, whom he brought on in 2012 equally the school "data coach." Amongst many responsibilities, she analyzes educatee performance and works with teachers to tailor their instruction appropriately.
Franklin remembers the anxiety she felt soon afterwards she took the job when she had to present Quitman's student performance data for new staff members. "I've never had to nowadays numbers and so depression," said Franklin, who previously held a similar position at some other Newark school. "You have no command of the data, but you have to own that data."
She focuses her analyses on what the school can control, which is improvement. She's well-nigh interested in how well Quitman has fared on the NJ ASK with students who have been there two years or more, which last spring was just over half the students tested: 161 kids in grades four through eight. Among those students, 68 percent showed growth in English language and 48 percent grew in math.
Franklin also broke downwards the scores by "significant growth," students who jumped 10 points or more on the testing calibration of 300. Forty-four percent fabricated significant growth in English, 34 percentage had meaning growth in math and 31 percent had information technology in both.
A breakup of scores by classroom shows that 89 percent of Patterson-Brilliant'southward returning students grew, and 75 percent showed significant growth. This reinforces Glover's belief that great educational activity matters.
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Jessica Allen, a dynamic fifth-grade math and science instructor who puts in hours even longer than Glover's, roughshod brusk of her goal of getting lxxx per centum of her students to pass NJ ASK final spring, just 78 percent of those at the school two years or more grew. She didn't know that, though. Glover did not have Franklin review the scores with teachers, telling them not to await dorsum and focus instead on preparing students for the new test, which will require completely dissimilar skills.
But on internal midyear exams, Allen was not pleased. "It's hard to look at a score when you know you tried and so hard, and you know the kids have learned a lot, and it's just not showing in the scores at the time," said the Virginia native, whose third-floor classroom feels similar to a class at Northward Star with a combination of loftier behavioral expectations, focus and joy. She plays silly songs similar "Boogie Shoes" then students tin let loose switching from i blended learning station to some other, fifty-fifty if she just gives them 10 seconds to go in that location. At the station where students exercise pencil-and-newspaper work, she maintains folders for each of the 50 students she sees every day with worksheets and games on the specific skills they answered incorrectly.
The most important skill some of her students struggle with is reading, and the PARCC is filled with math word problems. "How are they going to answer the questions?" she asked.
To recognize Quitman students for their exam score growth, the district had a book giveaway at the school on Nov. 19. A Scholastic sales representative dressed up every bit the children'due south volume character Clifford the Big Red Dog, and a district math specialist donned striped articulatio genus-socks as Clifford's owner, Emily Elizabeth. The pre-kindergartners shrieked for them. Kindergartners wore reddish and white "True cat in the Hat" hats. The books were fix in the gym, which middle schoolhouse honors students had decorated with inquiry projects about other countries. The words "Creating Global Citizens" were painted across a handmade poster of the world, fixed to the middle of the floor. In classrooms, students spent the day on class-broad projects.
3rd grade, for instance, learned virtually communities, with different stations about politics, economics and transportation. Glover was impressed with what he saw when he dropped in. (He usually clocks iv miles a twenty-four hours on his pedometer just walking around the school.) The third-grade instructional squad used to be among Quitman's weakest. No longer. But Glover is frustrated that in that location are notwithstanding children arriving in third form unable to read.
In Dec, well-nigh one-half the classrooms showed substantial progress on internal midyear exams. He worried most the one-half that stayed brackish. "You don't ever want to exist the school that shows some gains and falls back," he said.
Dream and Wake
Growing upward in Rochester, Due north.Y., Glover learned how to navigate gang territories and had to worry nearly beingness robbed every bit he walked domicile, just like his students at Quitman. But he and his wife have raised their own 2 children in a very different surround.
Thirty miles south of Newark, North Brunswick is a racially diverse suburb with a relatively low poverty rate. Virtually a 3rd of public school students authorize for gratis and reduced-price lunch, versus 93 percent this yr at Quitman. Glover lives with his wife, son, girl and mother in law in a iv-bedroom house on a quiet, tree-lined street.
He and his wife have been "pescatarians," (vegetarians who swallow fish) for health reasons since 1992, when they were higher sweethearts at the University of South Carolina, and they have raised their children without meat. Yolanda Kennard-Glover trains probation officers and other law-enforcement officials at the Princeton campus of Rutgers University. The couple have five degrees between them — vi if Glover ever finishes his Columbia Teachers Higher doctoral dissertation.
On Glover'due south commute, which takes 45 minutes on a proficient solar day, he passes strip malls, car dealerships and the main Rutgers campus before merging onto the New Jersey Turnpike. Exiting the highway in his argent Volkswagen Passat, Glover drives on potholed streets with decayed housing and fast-food joints. The blocks immediately surrounding Quitman accept been redeveloped with public townhouses in the past decade, and with a new senior complex on the fashion, Glover expects increased law presence that will help requite kids safe passage in addition to protecting the elderly.
His son, Khamisi, was mischievous when he was footling, and the principal often thinks of him when he sees students with similar antics. The boy has grown into a mature high school senior immersed in college applications and focused on competitive soccer. Because Khamisi is sociable and likes to please his peers, Glover knows he and his wife would take needed to worry more had they raised him in Newark, where young blackness males are all as well susceptible to gang recruitment. Khamisi and his sister, 14-year-old Akilah, too have been raised in a house with both parents and a grandmother while many kids in Newark alive with simply one adult.
Newark and many urban cities are striving to ameliorate educatee performance with personalized schoolhouse environments. Newark'south eye school students stay in their simple schools through eighth grade, and high schools tend to be modest and specialized, with enrollment determined past an application process, not past neighborhood.
The suburbs, meanwhile, have kept large zoned middle and high schools with a broader range of course and extracurricular offerings. In North Brunswick, anybody attends Linwood Middle School, with more than than one,300 students, and North Brunswick High, with nearly one,800. Akilah, a quiet freshman who loves to trip the light fantastic toe, takes the bus there while her big brother gets a ride from friends. They can go days without seeing each other in the edifice.
The Glover kids' school day is the standard American half dozen.5 hours, and students practise not go on as many college trips as peers in Newark, since the expectation is that their parents volition accept them. Khamisi recently sat in on English language and psychology classes at Goucher College exterior Baltimore while on a soccer trip and wondered whether he was ready. Kennard-Glover said both her children inherit their father's cocky-doubt.
Khamisi's acme choices are the University of Due north Carolina at Chapel Colina and at Greensboro. He'due south thinking he might want to be a criminal lawyer or, at his father'southward suggestion, take a career in sports direction, but he isn't really sure. Akilah is leaning toward dance teacher or business owner, maybe of a sneaker store.
She is only ane yr older than the eighth graders at Quitman. For all the differences in their schooling and upbringings, they have a lot of similarities, hoping for a bright future and unsure what information technology volition concord.
Nayely Jimenez, 13, a Quitman eighth grader with long hair and glasses, has already started the Rutgers Future Scholars program, which will give her actress academic support through loftier school and pay her tuition if she chooses to attend the university. But she tin't say nonetheless where she'll want to go. "My friend is planning out her life. I'chiliad like, 'What? You don't know what's gonna happen,'" said the daughter, who is interested in being an art therapist or a scientist.
Her classmate Tyishina Kelly, fourteen, said in an interview last month that she wasn't sold nevertheless on higher, especially if it would mean moving away from home. She was staying with her grandmother and her mother'southward much younger brother, a ten-year-old Quitman fifth-grader. Tyishina said she didn't know if she would exist able to go out her mom, living in North Carolina, once they were reunited. "I just accept to retrieve over it," she said. A few weeks later, she moved south sooner than planned. Another Quitman eighth-grader recently left when North Star had an opening, since attendance will guarantee him a coveted spot for high school.
Glover has been feeling nostalgic lately that Khamisi is about to turn eighteen, on January. 9. Where did the years go? His wife was pregnant with their son when Glover took his outset teaching task in Newark Public Schools. Now here he is at his senior soccer banquet, wearing a bow necktie just like his dad. And his baby daughter, whom he nurtured on his own for the first month of her life while his married woman remained hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism, looks like a beautiful grown woman, taller than Yolanda and with features unmistakably like his.
On i hand, Glover feels guilty that his work keeps him away from habitation for such long hours, and he especially wishes he were effectually for more than dinners together. ("He works a lot. Like a lot," Khamisi said.) This fall, he fabricated a delivery to leave early when Khamisi had soccer games on weeknights and to travel with him to weekend away games. "I give it to him," Khamisi said. "He was there."
Yet the rapidly passing time in his ain family makes Glover all the more mindful of how urgent his job is. He, as well, wonders what the future will hold, only for however long he stays at Quitman, he will never let upwards on the intensity he imposes on himself. Turning around a school is a long procedure, but his window of opportunity to touch each life is then limited. A childhood is preciously short, and so the dream is over.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news website focused on inequality and innovation in teaching. Read the entire Hope to Renew series most Quitman Street Renew Schoolhouse.
Source: https://hechingerreport.org/taste-victory-finally-struggling-newark-school/
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