Disadvantaged African American Students in Urban School Double and Triple Scores
City Springs School – Baltimore, MD
City Springs School, located in Baltimore, Maryland, is a high-poverty school with a student population that is 99% African American. The school, a K-8 campus, had a history of low performance. Only 33% of 7th-grade students met or exceeded the benchmark standards on the Maryland State Assessment (MSA) exam in 2004-05. This means two out of every three children were failing!
Through the implementation of Direct Instruction with NIFDI support, City Springs has made extraordinary gains in student achievement. The school’s teaching staff were trained on critical aspects of the program, including student assessment, program delivery, and adjusting instruction to react to individual students’ needs. Through NIFDI’s coaches’ training model, the school’s leadership team developed the skills necessary to effectively lead a full-immersion DI implementation. As a result, the percentage of 7th-graders meeting or exceeding the state benchmark more than doubled, from 33% to 79% (see Figure 1).
Similar improvement has been made at the lower grades on the state exam. In 2007, only 26% of first through sixth graders were functioning on grade level in reading, and even fewer in math (See Figure 2 and Figure 3). By 2010 – just three years later – performance had nearly tripled, to 72% of students reading on grade level!
To learn more about the school and its DI implementation, watch the Battle of City Springs Epilogue, a documentary that captures the challenges of transforming the school. The video tells the story of a school that experienced years of failure before implementing the full-immersion model of Direct Instruction. The academic performance was terrible, and the school climate was just as poor. Students ran the halls, and teachers locked classroom doors to control them… and keep others out.
After six years of implementing full-immersion DI with support from NIFDI, the school is the epitome of success. The halls are clean and orderly. Students are well-behaved. Most importantly, student performance has improved dramatically. Students, teachers, and the principal take great pride in their accomplishments.