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Schools

Lakewood enlists parents to improve FCAT scores

Teachers coach parents on how they can help their children prepare for the crucial test.

By DONNA WINCHESTER
Published January 15, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - Help is available for struggling students at Lakewood High School, and for their parents as well. All they have to do is seek it out.

That was the message school and district staff delivered Wednesday night to about 60 families who attended a parent information night in the school auditorium titled "Teamwork Makes the Dream Work."

Intended primarily as a seminar to teach parents how they can help their children prepare for the upcoming Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the gathering also was a pep rally of sorts.

"Invest above and beyond what has been invested already," math teacher Walter Ruffin told the parents. "We need a little bit of an extra push."

Among the special programs available at Lakewood to help students, Ruffin said, is a Saturday morning "FCAT boot camp" that utilizes special software to familiarize students with the test. He also told the parents about a weekly session he hosts in his classroom to sharpen students' skills.

Early in the evening, physical education department head Chantel Moore delivered some grim statistics. Overall, fewer than half of the school's students are reading at grade level, she said. Fewer than 60 percent are performing on grade level in math.

But the number of African-American students at Lakewood who are working below grade level is especially troubling, Moore said. Last year, only 17 percent of black students were reading at grade level compared with 71 percent of white students. Meanwhile, only 34 percent of black students scored at or above grade level in math compared with 83 percent of their white peers.

Low scores overall caused the school to slip from a C to a D.

"I don't like Lakewood being a D school because I know we're so much better than that," Moore said.

Cindy Frewin, who works in the district's secondary mathematics office, told the parents there is a lot they can do to turn the situation around. Referring to a 56-page booklet that parents received when they arrived, she went over a "Top 10" list of tips students can use to improve their FCAT math scores.

Among them: becoming familiar with the formulas detailed on the reference sheet, studying the vocabulary terms that appear on the test, and reviewing the common mistakes made when filling in answer sheets.

Dawn Bannister, whose 15-year-old daughter Amber is a sophomore at Lakewood, followed along with Frewin. She said she had come to the meeting because she wants to make sure Amber passes the FCAT on her first try.

Statewide, high school students are expected to pass the high stakes test in 10th grade. They have several more chances to take it, but those who have not passed both the reading and math portions by spring of their senior year receive a certificate of completion rather than a standard diploma, regardless of their grade point average.

"Amber has been a pretty good student but I want her to go to college, so she needs to excel on that test," Bannister said.

The reason the reading portion of the test is so difficult is because it requires students to do more than read the words, language arts supervisor Darian Walker told the parents.

"This is a thinking test," Walker said. "What they want to know is, "Can you think?' "

Walker went over five steps students can take to help them pass the test, including reading titles and looking at pictures for clues before reading the text. She also suggested that students skip over words they don't understand because the words likely will become clear in the context of the sentence.

"Aim to get 70 percent of the questions right, because that's all it takes to pass," Walker said.

And yet so much depends on that 70 percent margin, said assistant principal Javan Turner. That's why it's so important for students to get as much help from as many sources as possible, he said.

"We put pressure on ourselves to find ways to help them improve," Turner said. "We also want to help parents help their children."

[Last modified January 15, 2006, 01:47:20]