Program gets Pittsburgh students ready for Promise
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Jordan Helterbran, a ninth-grader at Pittsburgh Langley High School, works on his resume in a room filled with "stickies" of comments by students about others' essays.
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Pittsburgh Langley freshman Jordan Helterbran isn't likely to miss doing an English assignment again.
He knows teacher Jennifer Wright will call and email home to say he missed work or just to provide an update.
The teen has improved his English grade, and at the end of the first semester he was "Promise ready."
That means his grade point average was above 2.5 on a 4.0 scale and his attendance was 90 percent or better. If he stays in city public schools and keeps that up, he'll qualify for up to $20,000 -- more if he meets other requirements -- in college scholarships from the Pittsburgh Promise.
Or as Jordan puts it, "It means I'm going to be able to get somewhere in life and into 10th grade too."
Chalk one up for the student and the Promise Readiness Corps, a team of high school teachers who take a group of ninth-graders under their wing and work to make sure they don't fall through the cracks.
"We're really a support structure for their success," said Ms. Wright, team leader.
The corps is being piloted this school year in eight city schools and will roll out this fall with full or partial teams in five of those schools -- Allderdice, Brashear, Carrick, Langley and Oliver.
As participants in one of the district's new career ladders, corps teachers in the fall each will be paid $9,300 extra a year for their additional duties, which include starting a scheduled day that is 44 minutes longer and working five extra days. The pilot teachers were paid a smaller stipend.
For this fall in the five high schools, 48 corps teachers have been selected plus 12 others who will have hybrid roles that include the corps. The fall cadre was competitively chosen via applications, interviews and classroom observations.
Ninth grade is one of the most critical points on the road to graduation.
Nationwide, more students fail ninth grade than any other grade in high school, according to the National High School Center at the nonprofit American Institutes for Research.
Yael Kidron, a senior research analyst at the National High School Center and co-project director of the U.S. Department of Education's Doing What Works initiative, said research shows the transition from eighth to ninth grade is a time of stress, with increased academic requirements, decreased parental connection and greater influence of negative peer pressure.
First Published April 18, 2011 12:00 am
