Resilient children in an imperfect world: this school's system for identifying and reducing risk factors for children living in poverty helps stimulate their desire to excel in school.

In a perfect world, all children would be protected and nurtured like children ought to be. In a perfect world, every child would come to school daily, well rested and well fed. Each child would have resources and experiences at home that lead to a broad foundation of knowledge and experience. The family's income would be well above any national mean. Siblings would all be successful.

Children would never be exposed to foul language, violence or drugs. They would attend the same school from start to finish. Teachers would speak their language. And they would have complete access to health care.

In such a perfect world, teaching and learning would still be extremely difficult, but in the end, every child would learn. None would be left behind.

But, of course, this is not a perfect world. Our children do not all come rested, prepared, healthy and ready to learn. And it isn't always their fault. And maybe it's nobody's fault. Poverty, family dysfunction, high mobility and the challenges of learning English as a second language continue to represent the most daunting of risk factors. For all the technology of school reform, these conditions are consistently among the very root causes of an achievement gap that persists along socio-economic, racial and ethnic lines. They are the horsemen of the apocalypse.

No matter how many state and federal laws are passed mandating an end to the gap, no matter how many accountability systems are created to monitor student progress, no matter how many sanctions or rewards are conceived of to compel good people to comply, the presence of poverty will always suppress results. Perhaps until now.

At Mueller Charter School, we serve 900 children in a K-6 setting just five minutes from the border with Mexico. Ninety percent are children of color, 75 percent of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch and 55 percent are learning English as their second language.

We recognize that:

* Schools with high poverty and high numbers of English language learners are consistently outperformed by schools in more affluent communities;

* Children in poverty are exposed to far more significant risk factors than children from more affluent homes; and

* These risk factors can significantly inhibit academic growth and achievement,

But we also recognize that if we can reduce or eliminate those risk factors, we in effect remove barriers to learning, and can then engender significantly higher levels of school success for our students.

So that is our mission.

Capitalizing on our status and resources as a fiscally independent charter school, we have developed The Resiliency Quadrant System in an effort to nurture resiliency in children, to stimulate their desire to excel in school, and to help them overcome even the worst of life circumstances to compete every day in school. This integrated system aligns our services and programs, resources, time lines, schedules, processes and personnel and enables us to focus intense support for children who need it the most.

It works because we invest in our relationships with our students, our families and our staff.

At MCS we have adopted a calendar that features 200 instructional days. Our students return to school during the first week of August. By Labor Day, our teachers have conferenced with the parents of every student in their classroom, and the majority of those conferences are home visits.

In addition, they have reviewed each child's school history, consulted with former teachers, administered a battery of baseline assessments and thoroughly analyzed the results of the previous year's California Standards Test. They know their students, so they are prepared to utilize The Resiliency Quadrant System.

In late September we meet with our teachers to train them in implementing the Quadrant System. We provide them with a number of tools to help them make informed decisions about their children. For example, we discuss quadrant "personas." Borrowed from a model commonly used in software design, these personas represent a range of factors that might be typical of children in each quadrant. Then we distribute the quadrant worksheet, a single page divided into four sections. Teachers are asked to consider everything they know about the students in their class and tentatively place every child's name, one by one, in one of the four quadrants.

The criteria for each quadrant are as follows:

Quadrant 4: Children who are at or above grade level in both language arts and mathematics as measured by their performance on the California Standards Test in the previous spring.

Quadrant 3: Children who are approaching grade level and who can reasonably be expected to achieve a performance level of "proficient" or "advanced" on the CST as a result of their learning experiences and classroom-based interventions this year.

Quadrant 2: Children who are below and/or far below grade level. These are students who are experiencing life circumstances that make high academic achievement difficult and unlikely for this school year. It also would include students who have been consistently far below basic for multiple years.

Quadrant 1: Children who are experiencing a profound and immediate life crisis, such as homelessness, a death in the family, extreme family dysfunction or trauma.

In effect, by placing them in the appropriate quadrant, we can diagnose their individual learning needs on an academic, social and emotional level and ultimately prioritize the services they may need. But the system succeeds on the strengths of our relationships with our students and their families.

Once our students are organized into the quadrants, we initiate several simultaneous processes that are designed for the unique circumstances of each group.

Children in Quadrant 4, for example, are already at grade level and demonstrating continuous academic growth. Nevertheless, they must be challenged every day to extend their learning, to go in greater depth and breadth, and always to accelerate and stretch their competency within the grade-level standards.

Their classroom teacher is their primary support provider at school. Through differentiated instruction and an emphasis on the multiple intelligences, Q4 students can be served in the context of any classroom, while their natural talents and interests are continuously stimulated.

Students 'on the bubble'

Quadrant 3 students have different needs. They represent nearly 50 percent of our school enrollment. Many are "on the bubble," having barely missed scoring at the "proficient" level the previous year. Some literally missed being at grade level by one or two questions.

These are the children that many schools pour their time and resources into because there are a lot of them, they are the easiest to move into Q4, and the movement of Q3 students into Q4 will yield impressive school-wide results and give the API a big boost.

We want our Q3 students to move into Q4, but not just to bump up our API. Many of these students have overcome the same risk factors that proved debilitating for the children in Q2. They demonstrate resiliency in many ways that we need to replicate with Q2 and Q1 students.

If we capitalize on their resilient nature, we can accelerate their academic growth and get them to grade level. We can literally teach them to perform to their full potential for the remainder of their school career and beyond.

To accelerate these Q3 students, we use three strategies: individualized instructional plans that are based on a thorough diagnostic analysis of each students unique academic strengths and needs; opportunities for intensive after-school tutoring and homework programs; and a monthly process for collaborating around student work in what we call our academic growth conferences.

Our academic growth conferences include several components. First, our teachers gather students' writing samples to bring to the conference. Using a common rubric, each grade level scores the writing samples and then conducts an item analysis to identify trends in student work that may be keeping Q3 children from performing at grade level.

For example, one grade level may find common mistakes in end punctuation while another grade level discovers weaknesses in how students organize a persuasive paragraph. Next, the teachers develop several short-term goals to address those performance trends. Finally, they brainstorm potential instructional strategies that each teacher might use to achieve the goals that they have created. In the interim between the academic growth conferences, teachers now have a specific target goal as they continue to improve students' writing. When they re-convene in a month, they will review their progress, and then begin the cycle again, looking for new trends emerging in their students' work products.

The academic growth conferences are conducted with Q3 students in mind, but all children's work is included. The process is effective because, along with differentiated instruction and after-school support, it tightens teachers' focus and creates a cohesive approach to instructional improvement.

Students with risk factors

Unlike our Q3 students, children in Quadrant 2 tend to be very fragile and unlikely to make enough strides to perform at grade level on the California Standards Test. Most have risk factors that are compromising their academic progress.

Schools have historically resigned themselves to the notion that these risk factors are beyond anyone's control, and that Q2 students need to just work harder. They definitely need to work hard, but through the alignment of our resources we can also provide a network of significant support that helps many Q2 children overcome their adverse circumstances.

After teachers complete their quadrant worksheets in September, our student support team schedules a one-hour conference with each teacher to talk about their Q2 students. The student support team includes the principal, assistant principal, school psychologist, head counselor, student advocate, nurse, literacy coach, speech therapist and resource specialist--all full-time positions at Mueller.

The school's resiliency monitoring conferences focus on risk factors and life circumstances of our Q2 students, but the ultimate goal is to foster resiliency in struggling children.

During the resiliency monitoring conference, each teacher presents the case of every student that they have placed in Q2. The steps are the same for every Q2 student discussed:

1. The student support team, along with the classroom teacher, first creates a detailed risk inventory that specifies all known factors and circumstances that have a potential adverse impact on the child's learning. The inventory addresses risk factors associated with family background, parent support, health, attendance, academics and behavior. Within these categories, the team details each risk factor and assigns it a numerical value as it relates to the student: (3 = significant impact on the child's learning, 2 = moderate impact, 1 = some impact). For example, under family history we may indicate that the child's father is incarcerated and assign that risk factor a "3."

2. After completing the risk inventory, the team then reviews a draft of the student growth plan that the teacher developed in preparation for the conference. This plan is very similar to an Individualized Education Plan in that it targets specific academic needs of the student and describes goals, benchmarks, interventions and assessments needed to address those needs.

3. The team then brainstorms additional support that might be necessary for the student, the parents or the teacher in order to achieve the goals of the student growth plan. An intervention plan is created that may include getting the family medical insurance, enrolling the child in an after-school program, insuring that the student wear his or her glasses every day, or including the student in a weekly counseling group. This process may also generate a referral to outside agencies. This is where the team aligns our systems to help children develop their sense of resiliency and overcome adverse circumstances in their lives.

We want to see our Q2 students move up at least one performance level every year. They may not make it to grade level or Q4, but we can certainly provide the support needed to move from far below basic to basic. We can stabilize them until they can get back into the game.

All of the work completed in the resiliency monitoring conferences is stored in a powerful in-house database. We created a custom program that organizes all of our data, student records, support plans and inventories. The information can be viewed for individual students, a specific class or an entire grade level.

In addition, we can easily request reports of all students needing health insurance or all Q2 students who have a history of domestic violence listed in their risk inventory. This is very valuable to members of the support team, who can call up every Q2 student for whom they have a responsibility.

While it serves as a snapshot of individual children in time, our database is treated as a living document that is constantly renewed and updated so that every staff member has the most reliable information available on our students.

Clearly the data developed during this process must remain highly confidential. Teachers can access the database through an individual code, but only members of the support team can actually modify the information. Typically only completed interventions or parent contacts are added outside of the resiliency monitoring conference.

The support team and classroom teacher will meet two more times during the school year to formally monitor the progress of Q2 students. In February, the teams meet to review each child's progress on the student growth plan.

Finally, in May the team will meet to monitor each Q2 child's progress and review placement options for the next school year. If they are a sixth-grader moving on to the middle school, a transition plan is developed and shared with that school's counseling staff.

For students who have struggled all year and who were placed on a retention plan during the October conference, a decision must be made to socially promote or retain the student. The retention plan includes a detailed counseling component to assist the child in any social, academic or psychological difficulties associated with repeating a grade. It also includes a parent component, and a process for strategically selecting next year's teacher.

Students in profound crisis

Quadrant 1 (Q1) students are in profound crisis. They are temporarily homeless, or they have just lost a parent, or they are experiencing a life-threatening illness. They need focused, intense caring and attention and we have the capacity and system to provide it.

Our student advocate becomes the primary case carrier for the handful of children that are placed in Q1. A risk inventory is developed for Q1 students during the resiliency monitoring conferences while the student support team is assembled.

The teacher continues to focus on academic progress because daily school participation contributes to a child's sense of stability. In addition, however, our student advocate creates an individualized network of services for children and, if need be, their families. Those services may include family counseling, health care referrals, CPS notification or referrals to community resource centers.

Ultimately, the resiliency quadrant system is designed to engender academic success for every student. Our system ensures that we are organizing all of our resources to give all students an opportunity to reach their full academic potential, even if it does not occur until they are in middle school, high school or even later in life.

The API, AYP and other accountability systems do not take these factors into account. Nor should they. All schools have children who come to them with difficult personal and life circumstances. At MCS, we do not make excuses about our students, but we can not afford to treat them all the same.

Still, as a result of this system, we have seen some promising developments:

* Our API improved from 520 to 706 in five years (a gain of 186 points).

* We have achieved our AYP goals for all critical target groups every year.

* Our overall school attendance improved from 94 percent in 2004 to 96 percent in 2005.

* We have seen our mobility rate stabilizing from 34 percent in 1999 to 19 percent in 2005.

* We have provided medical insurance referrals for 245 families, with 80 percent of those families gaining health care coverage.

Raising children, not test scores

We should not have to wait until we get a call from the police department or the hospital to discover that we have a student in a life crisis. We should not have to scramble to piece together the life history of a child whose family moves from school to school with alarming regularity. We should not have to ignore the effects of poverty, or pretend that learning English is easy to do. We should not forget that improving the school's API may not be a high priority for a child settling in to his 10th new foster home.

In fact, we should never forget that we are not in the business of raising test scores--we are in the business of raising children.

Through the MCS resiliency monitoring system every child has a name. There are no excuses. There are no easy fixes. But there is a reliable network of support that lifts children and their teachers and gives them powerful tools to battle together. This is how we build relationships that lead to learning. This is how we engender achievement. This is how we foster hope.

Kevin Riley is principal of Mueller Charter School in Chula Vista. He can be reached at [e-mail].