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Junior Benchmarks under way in 65 middle schools
Sunday, April 09, 2000 By Rhonda Miller , Post-Gazette Staff Writer
It wasn't that Pittsburgh native Susan Bratten didn't have a good life in Atlanta.
She and her family lived in a nice suburb, and she worked in her own photography business. An enthusiastic fan of many sports, she enjoyed moonlighting in public relations for the Atlanta Braves.
But after 14 years away from home, she began to pine for the Steelers, Penguins, Pirates, family culture, good schools and the close-knit neighborhood feeling of Pittsburgh.
Bratten's homecoming in 1997 was spurred by the Post-Gazette's PG Benchmarks series, which compares Pittsburgh's economy, government services and quality of life with similar metropolitan areas across the nation.
Now, she has a second use for PG Benchmarks. She is using the Junior Benchmarks program with her seventh- and eighth-grade pupils at Independence Middle School in Bethel Park.
Junior Benchmarks, initiated in 65 Western Pennsylvania classrooms in February, is a new middle school curriculum that has students competing to persuade a fictitious robotics company, Bates Technology, to locate here.
Along the way students uncover a broad spectrum of facts, figures and views about Greater Pittsburgh and their own municipalities. They develop skills in writing, interviewing, analyzing graphs and developing a Web site.
The curriculum was developed by the Post-Gazette and the Center for the Study of Middle-Level Education at Duquesne University. It is presented to schools by Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania, which offers a range of kindergarten through 12th-grade curricula centered on economics. Other partners in the program are KDKA-TV and Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm.
The Junior Benchmarks curriculum requires students to do research and conduct interviews based on specific questions related to the business climate, economics, transportation, education, government and related quality of life issues in their hometowns and the region.
For instance, they must learn how people in their community earn a living, what the top two employers are, how many crimes are committed in the municipality per 1,000 residents and what forms of transportation are available.
The research culminates in a competition with prizes. Schools with more than one classroom in the project must hold preliminary judging at the school and submit one final entry.
The first notch on the Junior Benchmarks competition time line is the April 28 deadline for entries to be postmarked. Finalists will be notified by May 15.
On May 31, the 10 finalists, with a maximum of six students from each school, will present a 500-word persuasive essay and a 15-minute video on why Bates Technology should locate in their area.
Prizes in the competition have students pushing to do their best, teachers said. First place is a personal computer, which can be taken home, for each student in the winning class. Second prize is a portfolio of Pittsburgh stocks, one share each of Mellon Financial Corp., USX/US Steel, DQE and H.J. Heinz Co., for each student in the class. Third place is a $100 savings bond for each student in the class. All prizes are donated.
As for the daily work on Junior Benchmarks, there are triumphs and challenges, said teachers.
"The program is fabulously organized," said Megan Lizewski, a gifted students teacher at Marshall Middle School in the North Allegheny school district. "It gives the students good directions, and then they can easily run with it on their own."
Lizewski's students, however, have run into obstacles getting interviews and information from some government officials, she said. "I'd like to work with this project again next year, and I would probably precede the student calls with a letter to officials who might be used as a source."
Interviews were moving along well for principal Sister Roberta Kardell's students at Incarnation Academy. They recently interviewed their city council representative, Barbara Burns. They are planning to visit a local robotics firm to get a close-up view of the type of company they're trying to win over in their final presentation.
"The kids are really excited about doing interviews because they get to be treated more like adults," said Sister Roberta.
The Incarnation Academy students, like others in the program, are often spending after-school time doing interviews or other parts of the project.
The project also asks students to get information about other PG Benchmarks metro areas from the newspaper's online version of the benchmarks project.
"It's definitely a challenging activity," said Lizewski. "I see the kids struggling to figure out what to do with all this information."
"I keep hearing that students are getting a better appreciation of Pittsburgh," said Dennis Gilfoyle senior vice president of Junior Achievement. "We're already having calls from people who want to sign up for Junior Benchmarks next year."
Batten is using her personal experience to complement the curriculum to help students convince the imaginary high-tech firm that Pittsburgh, and Bethel Park specifically, is the place to be.
Bratten left Pittsburgh in the mid-1980s for a job with a new financial company in Atlanta.
"I didn't want to live my whole life in one place," said Bratten, who married and had a son while in Atlanta. But after many years there, she found herself reading the Sunday Post-Gazette and eagerly digesting PG Benchmarks.
"I started taking a second look at coming back to Pittsburgh," she said. "Benchmarks made direct comparisons between Pittsburgh and Atlanta. As I kept reading it, I realized that the good quality of life in Pittsburgh has remained and that, economically, the area is making a comeback."
Bratten moved back to her native Mt. Lebanon in 1997 and attended Slippery Rock University to complete her teaching degree.
Now a first year teacher, she is excited about using the Junior Benchmarks program with her class of gifted students at Independence Middle School.
She, like other teachers involved in the project, is part of creating the project's boundaries.
"I'm letting the students come up with what they want to do for the final project. Since nobody's done it before, we're all at the same point. It's not like other competitions, where some schools tend to win over and over. We're going to be as creative as we need to be and see how far it takes us."
The parameters for the final essay and video, aside from length and time, have been left wide open, said Christin Miller of Junior Achievement.
"All the students have the same tasks, but we want to see how much research they do, how deep they go, how they present it and if the message is conveyed," said Miller. "Since it's the first year, we don't want to limit any possibilities."
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