A remarkable thing happened at Bay Shore Middle School this year. The number of students passing the grade 8 math test went from 44 percent to 74 percent. The percent scoring at mastery went from 14 percent to 26.5 percent.

The results came in one year. The gains were years in the making. "In hindsight, it looks like it was easy, but it was a lot of hard work, sweat and tears," said Terry Giusto, a 25-year veteran of the Suffolk County district.

Teamwork was key. Educators interviewed by New York Teacher credited many factors in Bay Shore's success, including a supportive board and administration; planning and collaboration time; resources for Academic Intervention Services; and a commitment to test-item analysis and quality professional development.

PICTURED: Bay Shore Middle School faculty

Up against it

Just last school year, the middle school was up against the wall. The State Education Department had put it on a watch list after only 44 percent of eighth-graders tested proficient in math the year before. If the school did not show "adequate yearly progress," it would face state sanctions.

Making that list was disappointing because faculty, staff, administrators and community members had already been working hard to improve student learning. A supportive school board backed the efforts of the 490 members of the Bay Shore Classroom Teachers Association, led by Mary Ann Gomez.

"When the state Board of Regents started efforts to raise academic standards seven years ago, we started work right then," said Gomez, who teaches Spanish at the high school.

Six years ago, the district started an ambitious summer school remediation and enrichment program and passed an $18.3-million bond to expand technology and elementary building capacity. Four years ago, teachers started requiring students to explain their math answers in writing. Two years ago, the district started providing AIS that included extra help before and after school for struggling students, and paying retired teachers to return to the classroom to work with small groups of students during class.

The district's professional development plan, created by a team that included a majority of teachers designated by the local union, provided relevant, hands-on professional development aligned with the new standards. Teachers were paid for 20 hours of summer professional development.

"Everyone pulled together from the start," Gomez said.

Analyzing the tests

Bay Shore also made a commitment to using test-item analysis to strengthen instruction. Teacher Mike Cohen puts his three decades of experience to work coordinating K-12 curriculum and analyzing test items - identifying patterns in student understanding of vocabulary, concepts and skills. (For districts without this expertise, help with item analysis is offered through Boards of Cooperative Educational Services.)

For example, analysis revealed students' understanding of ratio and proportion was weak. "That made sense because we weren't doing that specific topic until late in the year," said Judy Galletta, a grade 8 math teacher.

So a math lab on shadows was switched from the spring to the fall. "Their assignment is to find the height of their shadow in inches," said Giusto. "Then convert that to feet, to centimeters and meters. Then they compare it to their actual height." Students detail the mathematical steps they take in measuring and conversion, and identify sources of errors in the exercise and how to avoid them.

Bay Shore used item analysis to pinpoint areas where practice needed strengthening. The next steps: professional development tied to the standards, time for staff to consult and implement new strategies, and AIS for students. With the help of a Goals 2000 grant, the district hired a consultant to work with teachers on how to introduce a wider variety of math principles in lessons.

"I am a much different teacher than I was four years ago," Galletta said. "Now I use concepts like'foreshadowing' and'blending' when I teach."

It's a word thing

Bay Shore's analysis found problems with math vocabulary.

"We gasped the first time we saw a question that asked for a'multiplicative inverse,' because most of us use the term'reciprocal,'" Galletta said.

Teachers developed a vocabulary pre-test to see where kids are weak. Now they play vocabulary bingo in math class.

"Yes, math is numbers but you still have to be able to communicate clearly," Giusto said.

To provide extra help to Bay Shore's Spanish-speaking students, the district turned to high-school math teacher Giannina D'Esposito, a native of Peru. "Yes, the numbers on the board are the same (in both languages)," D'Esposito said. "But if you are lost and someone tells you the supermarket is two blocks to the right and four blocks to the left and you don't understand what a block is, you're never going to get to the supermarket."

Tests showed the results. Two-thirds of the English-as-a-Second-Language students passed the test in May.

Item analysis also revealed that, while kids had the math skills, they were having difficulty explaining how they found solutions. To help, the district paid retired master teachers to work in small groups with students.

Retiree Ron Mincio, a 34-year veteran grade 6 math teacher, said size is the key to the problem-solving seminars. "With only four to six students, you really work," Mincio said. Last year, with the help of a $90,000 Goals 2000, secured with the assistance of Long Island Regional School Support Center, the program ran for seven months.

Karen Mincio, a retired elementary teacher who had served on the district's math committee, said, "When we would get together to discuss problem-solving strategies, it was amazing how we all could come up with so many ways to help the kids."

For example, teachers stress a consistent approach in seeking solutions. (First, underline the question in the problem. Next, underline the key words needed to solve the problem. Make sure to answer the question asked.)

"I remember a question about pounds of food and making hamburgers," Mincio said. "So many kids would just put down the pounds of hamburger needed, instead of answering the question of how many hamburgers would be made."

Giusto saw a connection between what she was asking kids to do and what teachers were asking themselves to do professionally.

"We had to take a risk. For me personally, it was really scary to take strategies that I thought had been successful for years and throw them away to try this where we work on problems all year long," Giusto said.

Supportive school board

Bay Shore School Board President Greg Nardone wondered at times if the new approaches were too much of a risk. He admits that when the district got its results last fall, he was disheartened - but the board didn't give up. "We turned to the teachers and administrators and listened to what they thought they needed," Nardone said. That included a $83.7-million bond act for secondary buildings.

Now that the grant money has dried up, the school board unanimously agreed to continue funding the programs. Superintendent Evelyn Blose Holman praised the cooperative efforts: "The Board of Education had the insight in supporting (the classroom) efforts, but the teachers made it happen."

It is key that the school board agreed to continue funding the district's new strategies, Galletta and other teachers agreed. Those include:

• essential weekly grade level and team planning meetings for collaboration, curriculum review and brainstorming.
• a paid consultant to work with grade 8 math teachers during the school day.
• hiring an additional guidance counselor so individual conferences could be held with every eighth-grader.
• scheduling double periods of math.
• instituting a student reward system for the five weeks before the grade 8 math test was given. (See sidebar.)

Principal Steven Maloney said the increase in achievement took an incredible amount of time and energy. "The entire culture of the school was geared toward making sure kids took this seriously," he said.

Like Maloney, Galletta believes students will continue to improve. "Remember that each new group of children we get has the benefit of a more enriched elementary curriculum aligned to the standards," she said. "We've always known they could do it. Now they know it too."

- Betsy Sandberg