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The patterns of red, green, yellow, and orange that colored a map of zip code areas in Philadelphia looked familiar to F. Joseph Merlino, as he glanced at the image tacked on an office wall. Drawing from his knowledge as director and principal investigator for the Mathematics and Science Partnership of Greater Philadelphia, Merlino concluded the map plotted PSSA scores by neighborhood.
He was wrong. It showed the rate at which children had tested for elevated levels of lead in their bloodstream.
“Holy cow,” Merlino recalls exhaling, as the immediate similarities in the rates began to sink in.
Wondering if an actual correlation existed, Merlino plotted the data of each area’s blood lead level and its elementary school test scores. His assistant came back with data showing that with each 10 percentage-point increase in micrograms of lead per 100 millimeters of blood, test scores also declined, finally producing a steadily downward sloping line graph.
Since that informal discovery a year ago, Merlino has joined a trickle of voices that have begun to question -- with lead poisoning generally viewed as a public health issue, shouldn’t its persistence now be viewed as a critical issue for educators?
More questions than answers
Years have passed since the dangers of lead seized
headlines and sparked widespread concern for children
living, breathing, and drinking in Philadelphia’s
mass of older building structures. Buildings constructed
before 1978 commonly bore coats of lead-based paint,
which the government finally outlawed in 1978.
But now that paint is cracking and peeling, with its resulting dust particles and chips posing particular danger to children under age three, who may inhale or swallow the lead-laden particles in the course of everyday activity.
Unfortunately, lead is a neurotoxin. Absorbed at high levels, it can cause death. But even low levels (10 micrograms per 100 millimeters) of exposure have been blamed for lowered IQs, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, and behavioral problems.
Philadelphia has responded over the years with an aggressive outreach and testing campaign. It has lowered the number of children aged five and younger who were tested and found to have elevated levels of lead in their bloodstream from 1 in 6, in 2000, to fewer than 1 in 10 today, according to the city’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program figures. But besides the concern for that 10 percent who still test positive, what has happened with the children who were previously exposed?
An alarmed Merlino set up meetings and shared his informal studies with Philadelphia Schools CEO Paul Vallas and the city health commissioner. He contacted daily newspaper reporters. Merlino says none have yet to demonstrate any real interest in addressing his findings.
Merlino writes in an e-mail, “I think the toxic environment/education connection needs to be comprehensively studied and adequately funded and given the high political profile it deserves.” He argues that Philadelphia, rich in environmental and biomedical expertise, is in an ideal position to study the topic and produce evidence that might finally justify to weary politicians and others the costs of genuine remediation.
Richard Tobin, director for the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, says, “We have had some discussions about the School District running a much more exacting study to look at the effects.” Other considerations include ways to integrate lead poisoning awareness into the school curriculum, and production of such multimedia educational materials as DVDs.
He also says of Merlino’s argument for a comprehensive study, “This concept has been around for some time.”
But Merlino is not the only one frustrated that Philadelphia is not doing more to connect lead and learning issues.
Focus on Philadelphia
The Arizona School Boards Education Association
penned the report, “A Strange
Ignorance: The Role of Lead Poisoning In ‘Failing
Schools’.” A chapter called “The
Philadelphia Experiment,” questions why
The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2000, in one
issue, covered lead poisoning’s hazards and
effects on children’s behavior, but in another
issue, another reporter omitted the possible effects
of lead in a story on the School District’s
exploration of special disciplinary schools for
disruptive students.
“Educators and politicians alike ignore the fact that the overwhelming prevalence of lead poisoning in Philadelphia’s ‘well baby’ clinics documented in 1992 has to have some consequences 10 years later in Philadelphia’s schools,” the report stated.
Well baby clinics, researchers and publications alike have documented the problem. An article in a newsletter distributed by “Voices for America’s Children,” formerly National Association of Child Advocates, placed the number of Philadelphia children screened twelve years ago that had elevated blood lead levels at 43 percent. It is reasonable to expect that among children enrolled in Philadelphia’s public schools, with a large population of poor and minority children, the rates were even higher. These children showed symptoms beyond those often blamed on the challenges of race and poverty.
In 1996, renowned University of Pittsburgh researcher Herbert Needleman -- who as a University of Pennsylvania medical student lived in what he termed the ‘lead belt’ of North Philadelphia -- discovered that, “controlling for race and socioeconomic class, mean lead levels in delinquents were significantly higher,” according to a profile on the researcher.
“Students, Toxins and Environmental Racism,” the cover story of the winter 2003 issue of Rethinking Schools magazine, noted that every four- or five-point decrease in IQ among children in the same population, may increase by 50 percent the number of children who qualify for special education.
Such evidence, Rethinking Schools writer Eric Ness says, raises the question, “How can politicians – including the Bush administration, which claims to care enough about the structure and performance of public education to dramatically rewrite education policy – ignore so much science that speaks to the very question of why some children can’t learn?”
A role for educators?
A lead poisoning/education connection is hardly
new territory for Tobin, at the Department of Public
Health. “In some areas where you work, 90
percent of kids in 1991 were exposed to lead,”
he says. “So you’re going to have some
effect from it. To me it seems obvious. But people
in the school system look at test scores and not
at IQs.”
Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth is a long-time Philadelphia champion on issues of lead poisoning. Health Care Projects Manager Colleen McCauley-Brown says further investigation of lead poisoning’s impact would produce a ripe opportunity from which Philadelphia could draw “all kinds of different lessons out, about city planning, community development, you name it.” But in terms of integrating prevention activities into the educational process, she says, “There are really great tools out there already, even for little kids – rhymes, chants, songs, activities. To integrate them into schools could perhaps be simple. But it wouldn’t have to be reinvented.”
Nationally, Milwaukee teacher Patti Peplinski, who has written a K-12 curriculum on lead poisoning prevention, advocates that such prevention lessons become as common in classrooms as discussion of fire prevention tips. “It’s common knowledge now to stop, drop, and roll,” she told Rethinking Schools’ Ness. “I want lead poisoning prevention to be the same way.”
School District spokeswoman Barbara Farley says the School District currently integrates into its curriculum everything from lead prevention steps for younger children and their older siblings, to environmental issues covered in the scope and sequence of the District’s health curriculum. She said the District partners with the city on grants that provide for lead awareness, abatement, and lead testing, and the two distribute a pamphlet on lead poisoning prevention.
Five years ago, the District reportedly spent $1.35 million, mostly in work hours, addressing another source of lead contamination – performing the cumbersome task of engineers’ “flushing” water lines each morning. Studies had shown that water outlets in 20 percent of nearly 300 of the Philadelphia School District’s older school buildings had unsafe lead levels.
“Our remediation program is essentially completed,” Farley said of that effort. A spokesman for the EPA, Mid-Atlantic Region, said that while the School District had “basically completed the majority of the plumbing work,” such as replacing faucets and valves, but “there’s still post remediation work” to be done. He said that largely entails testing.
“We won’t really consider the thing closed until the Philadelphia Health Department signs off on it,” spokesman Roy Seneca said.
So while measures to address lead poisoning’s dangers wouldn’t have to be invented, do schools need to rethink their perspective on lead’s impact?
The Arizona School Boards Association argues that schools have little choice: “School district governing board members have to face the overwhelming evidence that all children cannot learn if they have been lead poisoned, and thus if accountability for learning penalizes schools for not teaching children who have been poisoned, then schools have no alternative other than to take action against the poisoning.
“No amount of ‘best practices’ or educational fads or intensive instruction is going to make neurological connections between brain cells constructed of lead,” it stated.
Merlino insists of Philadelphia, “You’re spending $1.8 billion for education, trying to raise PSSA scores. Well, part of the problem might be something more systemic and organic that causes a systemic effect.”
Contact Notebook staff writer Sheila Simmons at 215-951-0330 x156 or sheilas@thenotebook.org
The School District of Philadelphia is exploring the hiring of several private companies to serve as “transition managers” for schools in its “Small Schools Transition Project,” a multi-million-dollar initiative scheduled to culminate with 26 new or reconfigured high schools by 2008.
These new schools are being created primarily by converting middle schools to high schools, by turning branches of existing schools into separate schools, and by replicating charter high schools.
The School District experiment with putting schools under private management already involves 45 schools, but only one is a high school. A December 22 Reuters wire service story stated that Vallas in an interview, “predicted half of Philadelphia's schools will be run by private companies or universities within four years.” A School District spokesman said the statement was inaccurate, and that Vallas had intended to convey that more than half of schools would have an outside partner, but not necessarily a school manager.
Joseph Jacovino, Project Manager for SchoolWorks, said his Massachusetts-based educational consulting group had submitted a proposal “to be involved in the partnership agreements,” for small high schools.
“My understanding is that if the resolution goes through, we would be partnering with Bartram Motivation and Bartram Human Services,” he said.
If approved, the SchoolWorks contract would be a limited partnership that would last three to four years, according to Jacovino. He added, “I believe the schools would then manage themselves. They’re still part of the District. We would just help them get established.”
“We’re not doing anything yet, but we’ve had conversations,” commented Gary Solomon, assistant vice president of educational partnerships for Princeton Review, another firm expected to be involved in the transition project.
In a phone interview from his Chicago office, Solomon said the firm was “absolutely” interested in participating.
Meanwhile, two Philadelphia middle schools being converted to high schools are already managed by New York-based Victory Schools – FitzSimons and Rhodes. The schools are adding a new high school grade each year and are on course to becoming “small” high schools prior to the 2008 date, according to Ben Wright, Victory Schools Philadelphia superintendent.
Details of “Philadelphia 2008,” the title that Vallas said had been given to the project, are expected to be released this month, when Vallas said the District would submit the Small Schools Transition Project management contracts to the School Reform Commission for consideration.
Vallas talked briefly about the project after the December 15 School Reform Commission meeting, where the SRC approved a $60,000 technical assistance contract for Next Step Associates, run by former District administrator Cassandra Jones, to oversee the project.
According to the District’s Chief Academic Officer Gregory Thornton, Next Step will act as “project manager” overseeing such issues as “enrollment, college partnerships, AP (Advanced Placement), IB (International Baccalaureate).”
“One of the things we wanted to be certain of is that we had someone showing that those components were in each one of the high schools,” Thornton said.
The District initiative comes amidst renewed calls from education advocates to break up the District’s large neighborhood high schools. Evidence has shown that small schools produce better learning environments than do large urban high schools, resulting in fewer violent and disruptive incidents, better student performance, lower dropout and suspension rates, more teacher control, and less anonymity among students and between teachers and students.
A majority of Philadelphia high school students are enrolled in schools of 1,500 students or more. Although some local small schools advocates have maintained that small schools should carry 400 or fewer students, the District has said its new and reconfigured high schools will typically be limited to enrollments of between 800 and 1,000 students, but with some smaller numbers of students.
Convincing the School District to provide a “pot of money” to hard-to-staff schools to fund approved reforms that would help those schools attract more qualified teachers is the goal of a new campaign spearheaded by the Philadelphia Student Union.
These proposed “teacher equity grants,” are at the top of a list of demands the group discussed with District officials, prior to staging a protest on a cold and rainy December day outside the School Administration Building, as part of a campaign targeting unequal distribution of qualified teachers among schools.
“The main thing is, put more money into teacher incentive grants,” Student Union Executive Director Eric Braxton said, noting the group’s members hoped to set up meetings with District officials to continue discussing the option.
Although the District celebrated the addition of more school-based teacher hiring opportunities as a major teacher-equity initiative in last fall’s new teachers’ contract, a number of education advocates have insisted this and other contracted steps do not go far enough in providing incentives for teachers to work in schools that are chronically plagued by higher teacher turnover and a lack of certified and experienced staff.
The Student Union also called for other measures targeting hard-to-staff schools: more new teacher coaches, more teacher mentors, smaller class size, additional money for supplies and materials, a cadre of permanent substitute teachers for hard-to-staff schools, the best principals for the most challenging schools, and better access and communication regarding teacher qualifications.
During the protest and news conference, Student Union member Nasir Farlow, a junior at Bartram High School, relayed one ninth-grade student’s issues with inadequate teaching: “He told me it’s hard for him to pass because he has had no math teacher for two months. They send a different ‘sub’ every day, along with a different worksheet. This is no way to learn.”
Farlow said a Teacher Equity Platform, signed by 27 organizations, some of whose representatives also spoke during the protest, had provided suggestions to address the issue prior to teacher contract negotiations.
“However, now that the contract is done, it is clear that it does little to solve this problem,” Farlow said.
Tomas Hanna, the District’s executive vice president for Human Resources, said the District was interested in the students’ suggestions as well as other options that could increase teacher equity.
“We’re looking to identify funding” that would support additional efforts, Hanna said.
He also pointed to the District’s own steps toward promoting teacher equity – including the school-based hiring practice that the District said will give schools a say in the filling of some 75 percent of teacher vacancies, and establishment of a list of 25 “incentive schools” where teachers can get up to $2,400 in tuition reimbursement.
January
12: School Reform Commission Meeting. 1 p.m., School District
of Philadelphia, 2120 Winter Street, 2nd floor Auditorium.
To register to speak, call 215-299-7850 by 4:30
p.m. the day before the meeting.
January
13: School District Parent and Community Roundtable.
10 a.m., School District
of Philadelphia, 2120 Winter Street, 1st
floor boardroom. Parents and leaders of community-based organizations
gather to discuss District programs and provide
parent insight into initiatives.
215-299-3634.
January
14: Through Her Eyes: Works in the Photopoetic
opening reception,
by former Notebook writer Beandrea Davis.
5:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. University City Arts League,
4226 Spruce St. Free admission. Exhibit runs through
Feb. 5. 215-382-7811, or info@ucartsleague.org.
January
15: We Were There by Yvonne Latty: A Teacher’s
Workshop. 1
p.m. – 5 p.m., Church of the Advocate, 1801 W. Diamond St. Historian Jacqueline
Akins, will prepare you to teach the book or supplement
curriculum on American history. For reservations,
contact Education Coordinator Chris Thompson at
215-232-4485 or cthompson@artsanctuary.org.
January 19: School Reform Commission Meeting.
1 p.m., School District of Philadelphia, 2120 Winter
Street, 2nd floor Auditorium. To register to speak,
call 215-299-7850 by 4:30 p.m. the day before the
meeting.
January
22: Walk for Life 3. 12
noon. Broad & Spring Garden St. to City Hall.
Walk begins at 12:30 p.m. Sponsored by Mothers United
Through Tragedy, to celebrate the lives of loved
ones lost through violence. 24-hour hotline: 215-227-5331.
July
21 – July 24: National Coalition of Education
Activists 2005 Conference. Saint
Joseph’s University. For information: 215-735-2418,
www.nceaonline.org.
January
10: Extended Day Begins. Grades 1 & 2.
January 18: Benchmark Test. Grades 3 – 8. Students test their mastery of math and reading lessons covered in this school cycle.
January
24: High School Benchmark Test Week. Students test their mastery
of math and reading lessons covered in this school
cycle.
The Notebook NEWSFLASH welcomes brief
announcements of events addressing issues of quality
and equity in Philadelphia public schools. Email
your submission to flash@thenotebook.org
with ‘coming up’ in the subject line.
We cannot guarantee the listing of your event.
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