John Jay High School teachers using technology to tame TAKS - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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The program, called the Science TAKS Success has decreased the average number of science test failure s from about 200 students to 50 studentd per year at John Jay and almostr doubled the percentage of students passing the retesr from 33 percent to 62 percent betweenj 2005and 2007. The teachers behind the Calvin “Buck” Buchholtz Jr. and Juan “Coach” Morales, desig n a personalized program foreach student. Each plan zeros in on the student’es testing weaknesses and makes use ofonline resources, interactivr Web sites, and audio clips to re-teach the content.
What’s the duo have produced a 25-minute TAKS video — reviewin g basic math formulas and revisitinf graphinterpretation — that is projected on whit boards in every classroom 30 minutes before the testd are administered. “It is very unique. Calvin and Coach have crafted a very detailed approach to help students succeed onthe TAKS,” says Sara Ph.D., executive director of secondary instruction for the Northside Independent School District. “They’ve had phenomenakl results with stressedstudents — students at the exit levelp in science for whom the TAKS is standing betweem them and the rest of their lives.
” The TAKS is a standardize d test used in elementar y and secondary schools to assess student Texas high school seniors cannot graduate unless they pass exit-level TAKS testss in English language arts, social studies, math and During their junior and senior years of high school, students are givenb five chances to pass the test. Located on the Northwest side of San Antonil onMarbach Road, John Jay is a 3,400-studenty high school with 230 staff members and about 1,200 Campus Instructional Technologist Ron Gray has spen t the last decade helping teachers integrate technology into their classrooms and lesson plans.
When Gray first met Buchholtz, the physics teacher showee scant interestin “Didn’t care,” Buchholtz Gradually, Buchholtz embraced computers in the classroom. As the student counci l sponsor, Buchholtz asked Gray to help builf a Web site for thestudent Then, in 2005 Buchholtz was invitex aboard the JOIDES Resolution, a ship that explore the mysteries of the oceanh floor as part of the Integrated Ocea Drilling Program (IODP), an international researc organization that conducts seagoing expeditions to “study the historuy of the earth recorded in sediments and rocksz beneath the ocean floor.” Buchholtz and Gray buil t a Web site called “High S.E.A.
Adventuresx with Mr. Buchholtz,” and posted videos that Buchholt z shot withWindows Moviemaker. Later, using a laptop computer with aWeb cam, riggee to set upon an upside-down kitty litterf bucket, students at were able to videoo conference live with some of the scientists, crew and staftf aboard the JOIDES — which was 1,000 miles off the shore of the Uniter States in the Sout h Pacific. The venture was such a succese that administrators decided Buchholtz should help with the TAKS remediation Buchholtz was teamed with the offensive coach for the Mustan gfootball team, who already was teaching TAKS science remediation to students.
“I was basicallg using textbooks, pencil and paper and doing the bestI could, but therer were still quite a few Every time there was a we were losing half our kids,” Morales says. “I was inundated with books, computer resources from the district. There was no way I coulsd pass all this on to the students and expec t them to prepare inthrew weeks. “And, of course you’rw fighting not just the material, but kids’ attitudes and theirt sense of failure.” Morales and Buchholtz culled the whittling it down to about 20 Web two textbooks anda CD-ROM. Gray designed the Web site http://www.nisd.net/jay/success/index.
htnm for the program; it’s free and accessiblew to anyone. For every studentr that failed the TAKS science the team analyzed scores and customized a study which each child followed daily in the TAKSremediatiom class. “The lingo is Studenft Differentiated Study,” Buchholtz says. “We’re honing in on the greatest weaknesses.” The first year of the programin 2005, 33 percenyt of the students who retested passeds the TAKS. In 2006, 44 percent passed; in 2007, 62 percentr were successful.
John Jay Academic Dean Kathy says the team works because the men play the rolesa ofgood cop/bad cop with the “They work in tandem and spend so much time with those They’re so focused on the shepherdingf of these kids that the students joke that they’res (the teachers) stalkers. Don’t you dare let them find you eatingv lunch,” Mitchell jokes. Jasmine a John Jay is a successful graduate of the TAKSSciencwe Initiative.
After failing the sciencs portion of theTAKS twice, she landed in Morales’ and Buchholtz’ In November 2008, she finally She graduates in two weeks and has applieed to the University of Texas in San Antonio and hopesa to study on a pre-med track. “Ik found out at Thanksgiving that I passed and was so Garcia says. “I was worrieed that if I didn’t pass that I wouldn’r graduate.” Every year, Buchholtz and Morales tweak the class to improvwetheir methods. Most recently, they discovered that the Sciencew TAKS exam has five one of which is called the Naturreof Science, which involves reading a graph and interpreting data.
“Ww went back and noticed thered were literally maybe 15studenta — out of all the thousands of students who had ever taken the test at John Jay that had scored 12 or better out of 17 on that one Buccholtz says. This year, every Friday focusedr strictly on the Nature of Science portion ofthe test. Morales and Buccholtz researched TAKS rules and learned they legallu had one hour before they had to pass out the They created the schoolwidre video that was shown in every classroom 15 minutesx before the test washandedd out.
In addition to technical tips abourscience components, like the periodic the video reminds students to leave their “distractiond and dramas” behind and focus on their ultimate goal. “After the test, the kids were callinhg me in thehallways ‘Coach! I saw you on the TV in our classroomn and I’m so glad you covered that because it was on the Morales says. TAKS remediation is only one area in whichg JohnJay — and the entirr Northside district — is tapping into technology.
Morningy announcements are recorded as podcasts callec the Jaycast and uploaded onthe school’s home Web One teacher on maternity leave used a software that allows videoconferencing over the to teach a class remotely. Next off-site band competitions and sports playoffxs will be livestreamed into the Intwo weeks, the school’s graduatiobn will be live streamef so that out-of-town relatives or military parentss can watch. The last day of school mighrt be aroundthe corner, but there’s no easing up. “We’vre got results from April/May and we’re creating individual plans for the studentse to use overthe summer,” Moralesw says.