"This place is going to change the world," says Lawrence Lezotte, an
education professor at Michigan State University and the head of Effective Schools, an
educational consulting firm.
The Overhaul
It was not always so in Ysleta. When Trujillo was hired in February 1992, school
buildings were crumbling from neglect, morale was low, and the district was still run much
the same as it was during the record 50-year tenure of a former superintendent who had
retired in 1980. Conditions were so alarming that the state education agency had assigned
a monitor to watch over the district and had even considered a state takeover.
Desperate to retain local control, the Ysleta school board lured Trujillo out of
retirement on the strength of the national reputation he had earned during a successful
but turbulent 35-year career in California schools. His most recent employer, the
Sweetwater Union High School District, near San Diego, California, paid him a hefty
severance to leave early despite the district’s widely acknowledged improvement
during his time as superintendent. (In 1989, a teacher and former union official had
leveled charges of corruption against Trujillo’s administration. Although a grand
jury and a state auditor found no evidence of wrongdoing, the accusations tarnished
Trujillo’s image.)
Trujillo’s leadership style has been no less controversial in El Paso. During
his six years in the district, Ysleta has been racked by bitter public infighting among
board members, much of it waged between those who support Trujillo and those who would
prefer to see him go. Several board members have criticized him for focusing too much on
TAAS scores to the exclusion of other skills, but the main disagreement seems to be over
whether Trujillo or the board ought to manage the district. His critics on the board have
proposed to establish personnel and finance committees that would approve job candidates
and control the bidding process for district contracts, thus limiting Trujillo’s
ability to determine spending priorities and form his own team of administrators and
school leaders. "He doesn’t want to have anybody tell him what to do," says
Charles Peartree, the school board’s secretary. "If he would mind his p’s
and q’s and work with the board, then I would have no problem with him staying
on."
It is not hard to see why the current board feels impotent. The board that hired
Trujillo gave him wide latitude to run the district as he saw fit, even amending his
contract to hand the board’s authority to hire and fire over to him (a power the
current board sued unsuccessfully to take back).
It was this latitude, though, that would prove crucial in establishing firm and
enforceable expectations for Ysleta’s principals and teachers. In his first meeting
with the district’s principals, he noted they had all received satisfactory
evaluations while the students continued to fail, and said, "This is the strangest
district I’ve ever been in. It has the dumbest students and the brightest
adults." His solution to this apparent contradiction did not go over well: They all
received one-year contracts, not the three-year renewals they had expected. He soon placed
all new teachers on one-year contracts, as well.
In the five years since then, 32 of 51 principals have left the district or
retired, as have 2,000 of 3,000 teachers (twice the previous turnover rate of 200 teachers
a year). Trujillo also shuffled the remaining principals around the district to find good
fits among the school leadership, the staff, and the surrounding community; within two
years, only two of the district’s seven high-school principals remained at their
original schools. (In most states, union rules block superintendents from making such
sweeping moves; Texas education unions have no collective-bargaining rights.) The one-year
contracts gave Trujillo added flexibility in laying off principals who failed to meet his
expectations, but in the end the threat was more important than any action—no
principals have actually been fired. Now principals whose schools are
"recognized" or "exemplary" for two years are awarded multi-year
contracts, and those principals may recommend members of their staffs for similar pacts.
More drastic steps were taken at Bel Air High. Though its test scores were good
enough for an "acceptable" rating, Ysleta officials concluded that the culture
of low expectations ran so deep at the school that fresh blood was needed. So they
"reconstituted" Bel Air, meaning the entire staff was asked to reapply. Fewer
than 50 percent were rehired. Trujillo points to the reconstitution as a signal event in
Ysleta’s comeback. "That sent a shock wave through the system," he says.
"It showed that I was dead serious about getting results."
He next established an "open enrollment" policy under which students
were allowed to transfer to any district school that had room. More importantly, the
district also changed its budgeting policy so that when a student changes schools, his
per-pupil funding follows him: High schools receive $4,200 per student, middle schools
$4,400, and elementary schools $3,800, with additional funding for special education and
LEP students. Principals must now retain and attract children or else watch the money walk
away. The district estimates that 3,000 of Ysleta’s 47,000 students switched schools
in the first year of this public-school "choice" plan.
Imposing such vigorous competition on principals who, as in most districts
nationwide, did not even wield the power to hire their own staffs would have been unfair.
So Trujillo gave principals broad discretion in running their schools. "They pretty
much let us operate our campuses," says Frank Burton, the principal of Hillcrest
Middle School. "If we need help, they provide it. If we don’t, they leave us
alone. [Trujillo] lets you do your job." In turn, the state’s accountability
system gave the district the tools to set clear, meaningful goals and to measure
performance and progress.
A Magnet for Others
More recently, Ysleta was able to capitalize on a clause in the Texas education
code that allows districts to open their doors to students from neighboring districts. In
1993, the state responded to a court order to equalize school funding throughout Texas by
raising the state’s subsidies to poor districts. The state now funds 50 percent or
more of every school district’s budget (nearly 70 percent in Ysleta’s case), and
the amount of state aid is based on a district’s average daily attendance, no matter
where the kids come from. Last year, 2,000 nonresident children streamed into Ysleta
schools, reversing years of declining enrollment and bringing millions of dollars in state
aid (roughly $3,800 per student) with them.
This has enabled Trujillo to spend nearly $20 million a year on school renovation,
technology upgrades, and other capital improvements. He has targeted most of this funding
into the schools south of Interstate 10, which for years has been the dividing line
between the haves and have-nots. Those south of the highway suffered from decades of
neglect, mainly because the residents living north of the highway were wealthier and spoke
better English.
Trujillo shook up central administration as well, changing its culture from one of
oversight to one of customer service. "We flattened the organization," he says.
"We said the resources were here to support the schools, the schools are not here to
support us." The curriculum supervisors for each grade level and subject were
organized into four intervention teams and sent into the field. Initially they focused
their skills and experience on low-performing schools, but there are none left. So four
teams of 15 each were whittled down to two teams of 10, and they serve as roving
curriculum and management consultants to schools that request help. Many of the
superfluous administrators were sent back into the schools as principals and assistant
principals, trimming the central administration budget from $9.9 million to $8.2 million.
The District of the Future
If the story of Ysleta were solely one of a hard-driving superintendent,
market-style reforms, and rising test scores, that would be enough to distinguish it from
the vast majority of urban districts. But Ysleta educators, though they draw great pride
from test results, recognize that the TAAS is merely a test of minimum skills. "You
really shortchange children when you teach to the tests," says Gloria Hoyos, a
teacher at Ascarate Elementary. "We pride ourselves on teaching higher-order
thinking." And their mission statement—that all students will be fluently
bilingual and prepared for college—demands more than minimum skills.
If you talk to Ysleta officials about bilingual education, they will praise
bilingualism as an asset. "You used to get paddled for speaking Spanish in
school," says Lionel Nava, the principal of Riverside High. "Now Spanish is
becoming a business language. I tell my kids, ‘Don’t lose that language.’
" This makes sense when one considers that they live as close to Mexico as Americans
can without changing citizenship. In El Paso, and especially in the Ysleta school
district, bilingual employees are highly valued.
Ysleta’s academic reputation is
so strong that 2,000 children
from outside the district
attend schools there,
bringing millions of dollars
in state aid with them.
Ysleta’s high pass rates on the TAAS English-language tests indicate that
Ysleta’s approach to bilingual education does indeed work. In turn, Ysleta’s
success with bilingual education suggests that the problems with bilingual education may
not be the pedagogy itself but the absence of accountability and the failure to measure
progress.
In Texas, a child labeled "LEP" may take the state tests in Spanish for
up to three years before he must switch to the English-language version. If he still
isn’t fluent in English, his test scores will then drag down his school’s
rating. So Ysleta closely tracks its LEP population, testing their language skills at the
beginning of each year. Their level of English proficiency is scored on a scale of one to
five (four indicates full fluency, five extreme proficiency). After four years in the
program, children are expected to reach level four. Any child that hasn’t will
receive one-on-one tutoring. The district also produces a report for principals that
identifies kids who have fallen into the "danger zone"; that is, haven’t
met certain benchmarks on the way to full fluency. Teachers give them more help.
"It isn’t that hard to get kids to learn two languages," says Irma
Trujillo, the director of the district’s bilingual programs (and no relation to the
superintendent). "People have just not put in the time and trouble to monitor
academic progress and to expect it."
It may disappoint bilingual ed’s critics to learn that Ysleta does not
practice immersion. On the contrary, each district school uses one of two bilingual
methods, either "Spanish 5" (also known as "late exit") or
"two-way dual language." In Spanish 5, 90 percent of a child’s instruction
in first grade is in Spanish, and that percentage slides to 50 percent by the fourth
grade. In the early grades, academic concepts are introduced in Spanish first. Once a
child learns a concept, he is also taught the English vocabulary associated with it. By
the time they begin learning to read English in the third grade, they already know how to
read and they know many English words.
Most Ysleta schools use Spanish 5, which focuses solely on LEP students, but by
the turn of the century all schools will use two-way dual language in order to meet the
district’s goal of having every student graduate bilingual. (Within the next decade,
Trujillo predicts, Ysleta will make bilingualism a graduation requirement.) In
"two-way," a classroom is assembled with an equal number of native Spanish
speakers and native English speakers. At first, they receive most of their instruction in
Spanish, because English-speaking children can be immersed without losing their English
skills. Spanish-speaking kids immersed in English, by contrast, may not otherwise hear
enough Spanish to retain their fluency. By the fourth or fifth grade, the teacher is
conducting classes half in Spanish, half in English.
In eight "schools-within-a-school" around the district, students choose
whether they want to learn in "two-way" classrooms. At Alicia Chacon
International School and Hacienda Heights, both elementary schools, the entire school is
"two-way" and 10 percent of class time is spent learning a third language,
including Mandarin Chinese, German, or Russian. For 130 spots, Alicia Chacon had 300
applicants last year.
A School for Every Child
Alicia Chacon and Hacienda are just two of several district "magnet"
schools that cater to the intellectual diversity and various needs of Ysleta’s
students. Bel Air High is a health-professions magnet school for students interested in
becoming doctors, nurses, or X-ray technicians. Ysleta High, which was in such disrepair
that state officials recommended its demolition, has become the district’s
performing-arts magnet. The school recently added a new music wing and plans to add two
dance studios and a black-box theater. Mission Elementary builds its educational approach
around the principles and organization of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Most of the
students have become scouts and many of the teachers are scoutmasters; the school pays for
uniforms.
Sageland Elementary runs a "microsociety" in which students earn
"microbucks" for attendance and "purchase" products from student-run
businesses. A separate building houses businesses and government agencies such as the post
office, the El Pueblo restaurant, and a courthouse with all the accouterments: a witness
stand, an American flag, and a haughty judge. Students learn to revile the taxman early in
life. Internal Revenue Service agent and fifth-grader Augustine Valverde says, "What
I like about the microsociety is when I go to the classrooms, they all say, ‘Do I
have to pay the taxes again?’ " Sageland students graduate to Ranchland Hills
Middle School, and the principal there says, "Of my students, [the ones from
Sageland] are very confident, the most creative. Our leaders are from the
microsociety."
The district funds Sageland’s microsociety through a $3-million grant program
it established to encourage innovation at the school and classroom level. Any teacher or
principal with a promising idea may write a grant proposal; Sageland won nearly $200,000
to operate the microsociety. Sageland kids who want to continue learning about business
can operate a firm at the Student Entrepreneur Center, a 14-acre site that holds quarterly
"mercados," or flea markets, where students hawk their wares. In the future,
Trujillo hopes to establish a magnet program for entrepreneurialism there.
Perhaps no Ysleta school better represents Trujillo’s commitment to the
education of every child than Cesar Chavez Academy. Its wrought-iron gate, stone pillars,
manicured lawn, and tree-lined driveway lend the appearance of an old Southern plantation
home, but its set of Pepto-Bismol-colored, one-room school buildings suggest you’ve
entered Candyland. Nothing about its appearance suggests that it houses Ysleta’s most
troubled kids.
Students who are expelled from other schools or who land in the juvenile justice
system are sent to Cesar Chavez. Principal Lilia Limon says 67 different street gangs are
represented on campus. Yet as you walk the school’s grounds, students clad in red
shirts and black pants introduce themselves, deliver firm handshakes, and say,
"It’s nice to meet you." You enter a classroom and the students stand, line
up, and greet you one at a time. Limon claims the school had only three fights last year.
In most districts, these kids would be the castaways, the incorrigibles. At Cesar
Chavez, they have at least 10 computers in each classroom and a staff that treats them
like family. "I always felt unwanted everywhere else except here," says one
student. The school’s reputation has grown so much that two-thirds of its students
are now there by choice. Rosa Aguilar had dropped out of school to support her family; she
came to Chavez Academy and recently received a $1,000 scholarship from an educational
software firm to attend New Mexico State University.
Threats to Success
As its SAT scores indicate, Ysleta still has a long way to go before all students
are prepared to enter a four-year college. Tenth grade, the only high-school grade that
takes the TAAS, is also the only grade in which Ysleta students still trail the state
average, though that gap has narrowed significantly. Some districts in this situation
might discourage low-performing students from taking the SAT to inflate their average
scores, but Ysleta has nothing to hide. The district has in fact begun paying the test
fees for students taking the SAT or the Preliminary SAT (PSAT), as well as offering SAT
mini-camps during the summer free of charge. "We will see a huge jump in scores over
the next two years," promises Trujillo. The district has also raised the academic
requirements for graduation, including four years of college-preparatory math, science,
and English, to align them with typical college requirements.
Unfortunately, it seems likely that a foolish school board bent on
self-aggrandizement will push Trujillo out before he can accomplish all that he wants. The
school district had pulled him out of retirement, and at his age (65), his farmhouse in
Virginia looks more appealing than battles with a school board that will not support him.
He has indicated that if the school board meets his buyout demands, he will probably leave
sometime this fall.
