By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
INDIANTOWN - A large bulletin board in Consuelo Macedo's classroom at Indiantown Middle School warns her students of the formidable vocabulary words they will stare down on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in March:
Alliteration. Personification. Interpret and Analyze the Main Idea.
Underneath the sign sits a group of six students, the school's newest arrivals from Mexico and Guatemala.
They are learning to count to 10 in English.
On his first day of school in the United States, a Guatemalan boy is working on a quiz showing different symbols. A teacher's aide explains in Spanish that he is supposed to write the English word for the number of objects he counts.
He misses every question.
The teacher's aide patiently spells the correct answers as he writes them down, beginning with "o" . . . "n" . . . "e."
Many other Indiantown students began their Florida education in the same way, left at the doorstep of the small, rural school in western Martin County by parents who understand little of what goes on inside. Many are the children of orange pickers, factory workers and dishwashers, living in cramped cinder block houses with a dozen family members, and no books. Some speak Kanjobal, an unwritten Mayan language. About 90 percent qualify for free or reduced price lunch.
But the students' scores on Florida's standardized test have leapt forward every year and now rival the results at much richer schools.
Except for scores of students who did not attend the school both the fall and the spring, have learned English for fewer than two years or are in Exceptional Student Education programs, which are subtracted from reports statewide, every single one of Indiantown Middle's eighth-graders passed the FCAT writing test.
In math, Indiantown Middle had 89 percent of its students passing the test and 67 percent scoring in the top three of five achievement levels, more, for example, than Boca Raton Middle.
The school's reading scores, however, fell short of the state's benchmark for an A or B school this year, so Indiantown Middle scored a deceptively average-appearing C.
But by measure of obstacles overcome, Indiantown Middle School's students rank among the best in Florida. A statistical analysis by The Palm Beach Post shows that schools with comparable family incomes to Indiantown Middle average only about 37 percent of their students at level 3 and above in math. The school nearly doubled that percent. Only two other schools in the state beat expectations by more. Three years ago, when Debra Henderson took the job as principal, Indiantown Middle ranked a dismal D. Staff turnover was about 40 percent, Henderson said, with teachers rushing to take positions in coastal communities, closer to most of their homes.
District leaders allowed Henderson to create an entirely new staff. Any teachers who wanted to stay had to interview for their jobs, and those who said they would prefer to teach elsewhere were given transfers.
Henderson interviewed more than 100 applicants, and picked the best. Today the teacher turnover is 5 percent, she said.
"You can dump all the money in the world into a school, but it is the teachers that make the difference," Henderson said.
The Indiantown community also has helped to give the school its backbone. Families from several countries - Haiti, Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador - have somehow all managed to find Indiantown, a one-stoplight community 20 miles west of Stuart, the nearest town.
Henderson said Indiantown Middle parents value education as much, or more, as involved volunteer parents of other schools.
"We don't have a lot of people here during the day, cutting out letters. But our parents are extremely supportive of what we're doing here," she said.
Guadalupe Hernandez, 13, says her mother tells her to finish her schoolwork before she gets started on her chores: cooking, cleaning and helping care for her younger siblings.
"Homework first, then the tortillas," she says.
On the morning announcements the week of Thanksgiving, Henderson asked students to reflect on their blessings, like the gift of a good education. This point would be lost on most middle schoolers, but students at Indiantown Middle have a little more perspective.
Guadalupe Hernandez said she knows school is a great gift, so easy compared to working in the fields or cleaning oranges at the factory.
"My favorite thing is coming to school every day," she said. "You just learn, sit in the cool air, and eat."
Norma Sanchez, 14, loves school too.
Last year she came home from school with important news - she had been tapped for induction into the school's National Junior Honor Society. The society was a mystery to her mother, who finished only the second grade and doesn't speak English.
Sanchez explained that it was something good, something big.
"I told her that it was for the leaders of the school, the people with the highest grades, who are the most involved," Sanchez said. "She was proud of me. She said, 'Even if I would have finished school, I wouldn't have made that.' "
This year Sanchez is in Pam Peterson-Daly's algebra class, on an honors track for high school. For the first time last year, Peterson-Daly recommended 25 of 90 graduating students for honors classes in ninth grade. A guidance counselor questioned that placement, Peterson-Daly said, assuming that the students must have been graded on an easier scale than those from other middle schools.
The counselor suggested that the students try summer school, to see what they could do. Soon after, Peterson-Daly got a call from the summer school teacher, asking why the smart, well-prepared students were in her class.
This year, Peterson-Daly says, the high school should trust her recommendations. The school's teachers feel less and less that they have something to prove to the rest of the county, she said.
Now they have a reputation to uphold.
Copyright 2001 Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
December 16, 2001 Sunday
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