One Third Grade Is Moving on, and Mostly Up
June 26, 1997. The New York Times.
Room 3-223
Third-grade teachers throughout New York City are trying to meet Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew's goal for the school year: by spring, all third graders should be able to read on their own and at grade level. Last year, fewer than half of them could. This series visits one class trying to meet the goal.
NEW YORK -- With his third-graders off at their last gym class, Ted Kesler sat down at a tiny wooden desk Thursday morning to stuff report cards and standardized test scores into the manila envelopes that the children would soon carry home.
Working his way through the stack, he came to Erika Felipe, who had cut back her television viewing last winter, began spending more time with books and was rewarded with a reading score in the 99th percentile citywide. "That," said the teacher, "is my greatest achievement."
But then Kesler reached the envelope of another girl whose score ranked down in the first percentile, a sign of a disruptive year in which her mother had moved her out of
Thursday was the last day of school at
His students did better on the reading test, on average, than the rest of the city's third-graders, and he was jubilant about some scores. But in recent days he had found himself agonizing over what more he might have done for those who came up short.
He also thought that while important, the stark numbers -- 99 for Daniel Hessel, 78 for Jyoti Sharma, 36 for La-Toya Pankey -- barely hinted at the breadth of the work that the students had done in his class all year, as many of them blossomed into readers and writers.
"I feel like I did after I ran the
"You immediately feel a void in your life," he said.
For the 30 children and their parents, the emotions were powerful as well.
Kesler had urged his students not to open their report cards until they got home. But Isiah Wilson couldn't help himself, prying open the envelope to see if he had been promoted. As he read "Enjoy your summer, good luck in fourth grade," he pumped his right fist hard and shouted, "YESSSS!! I passed!"
Christopher Campbell was advanced to the fourth grade as well, but his mother saw it as little cause for celebration.
Though Christopher, who earned a black belt in tae kwan do before he turned 8, had made great strides as a reader this year, he failed to break through to those books that are divided into chapters and are the hallmark of third-grade reading. His score on the reading test was in the 10th percentile.
"I'm not happy," his mother said. "He's not ready for fourth grade."
In a year in which the Schools Chancellor, Rudy Crew, had set the goal that all third-graders be able to read at their grade level, Kesler pointed with pride to the performances of Erika, Jyoti, Daniel and the 13 other students who met that standard, scoring at or above the 50th percentile, or national average.
That means 53 percent of Kesler's students at Public School 75 on the Upper West Side of
"I'm definitely proud of that," Kesler said.
But Kesler found himself worrying about Chris and many of the 11 others who failed to come close to the chancellor's standard. And he wondered whether he had done an adequate job preparing them for fourth grade, where they will be immersed in reading-intensive subjects like social studies and science.
"I wish I could have brought more of them up," he said of their scores.
In the coming weeks, the scores at the citywide level, as well as those at individual schools, will be scrutinized by everyone from the chancellor to parents shopping for public schools. But the most immediate scrutiny will come from the parents of the children who took the test.
And most of them saw the scores for the first time Thursday night. But Kesler did tell several parents of their child's scores during the last week. He couldn't wait to tell Erika's mother of her perfect score, and when he did, mother and daughter immediately embraced. "And then I asked Kesler, 'Can I hug you?' " said the mother, Alexandra Felipe, who moved to
It was an embrace that acknowledged their team effort to combat Erika's television habit, which she curbed from four hours to half an hour a day. While Ms. Felipe, who works long hours, enrolled Erika in an after-school program in January to keep her away from television, Kesler worked with Erika to choose interesting books for her.
The payoff was soon apparent, as Erika shunned "
"I felt like, 'Hey, I'm a good mother,' " she said. Added Erika, who chose to celebrate with a Whopper Junior and fries at Burger King: "It makes me feel like I learned a lot."
But a low score can have an equally demoralizing effect.
After Janet Turner, who spoke only if her daughter was not identified, found out that the girl scored in the first, or lowest, percentile, she cried through a sleepless night.
"They didn't say it in so many words, but they were thinking that I failed," Ms. Turner said of Kesler and the other school officials who discussed the score with her.
Ms. Turner had moved to
"She's going to her fourth grade," Ms. Turner said.
Kesler said he felt he had given the girl his best, but he questioned whether he should modify his techniques for working with struggling readers. His method -- in which children are urged to use pictures and other contextual clues to gain meaning -- seemed to work especially well with the best readers in class, as well as others, like Erika, who arrived on the verge of the breakthrough moment when words on a page suddenly become thoughts, ideas and descriptions.
Tyler Newhouse, who loves to read aloud to the family cat, and Daniel Hessel, a prolific writer who put his hands together in prayer before the reading test, immediately took to the teacher's style, using post-it notes to track the main idea in a story and crafting elaborate short stories.
That each scored in the 99th percentile is gratifying, Kesler says, but not necessarily a barometer of their progress, given that they entered the class already proficient.
But for students like Christopher, a hard worker who made slow progress, Kesler says he needs better training, even though he holds a master's degree from Teachers College at
"That's an important message for Dr. Crew," Kesler said. "If he really is sincere about improving reading scores, he has to provide, from his office on down, greater training for teachers."
Kesler also said he wished he could promote students at the bottom of the class, like Christopher, to "bridge" classes, which bring together third- and fourth-graders for a transitional year. Without that alternative, he opted to promote all but one student because he thought holding back a third of his class would be devastating to all involved. He fears, though, that several may find themselves lost in fourth grade.
He also feels that test scores alone do not necessarily reflect a student's performance and cited Jyoti as an example. Though her score was in the 78th percentile, Jyoti is now reading fifth-grade level books like "The BFG" by Roald Dahl. In a way, she was a victim of the test's steep curve. Although she only missed 4 out of 40 questions -- meaning she answered 90 percent correctly -- her performance ranked her below 22 percent of third-graders nationally.
That analysis was of little consolation to Jyoti, who expected a 90. "I'm not exactly sure how I got that grade," she said softly.
As he looks back on his ninth year as a teacher, Kesler says he reached many of his goals, including the overarching one -- to create a nurturing environment where children could learn to love books.
There were more specific goals too. Kesler succeeded in getting part-time special-education help for Lawrence Marcel, who in the early weeks of school was only comfortable reading a book like "
"I am in a small boat that rocks on the waves far from the shore in the Atlantic Ocean,"
In the early days of school, Kesler had gazed enviously at the city's affluent suburbs, where he could earn more than the $48,000 a year he is paid now and have a class of 22 students.
Now, Kesler has decided that his place is in a
Thursday was a chaotic one in Kesler's class, as the students said their goodbyes, quizzed each other over summer plans and picked up their final art projects.
After leading each child out the front door and into the blazing midday sun, Kesler returned to his class and was startled to see Jyoti still there, bearing a wrapped gift and a card.
"Dear Mr. Kesler," she wrote. "You were a great teacher. I will miss you next year."
"That's beautiful," he told her, and then he hugged her goodbye.
From the New York Times, June 26, 1997 © 1997 The New York Times, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the