The Challenge
When Duncan Smith became principal of Frankford Elementary in 2005, the school had already made tremendous strides. His predecessor, Sharon Brittingham, turned the ailing school around in her ten years as principal, setting high expectations for both students and teachers and implementing a number of support programs to make those expectations a reality. Through the establishment of professional learning communities for teachers and mentoring programs for students, she made remarkable changes to the academic environment at Frankford Elementary.

Before Brittingham's tenure, "Teachers believed that their students would never be able to reach high standards of rigorous academic achievement since over 70 percent qualified for free and reduced lunch," said Smith. "But as staff members began to ask themselves why students were not successful, and found ways to address their needs, the general philosophy changed and expectations became much higher. As a result, the students responded." As Superintendent Lois Hobbs explained in an Achievement Alliance profile of Frankford Elementary, "If you take all of the excuses that kids come from poor homes or speak Spanish, then you don't get anywhere." She continued, "First you raise the bar for the adults, and then you raise the bar for the children." Today, more than 90 percent of all students meet or exceed state standards in reading and math scores, compared with 53 percent when Brittingham began her tenure at Frankford Elementary in 1996.

When Smith received a phone call during his first day on the job at Frankford Elementary announcing that the school had won the Education Trust's Dispelling the Myth Award, he knew he had big shoes to fill in the wake of Brittingham's retirement. His challenge would be to keep the momentum of the school's remarkable transformation, and to ensure that the students at Frankford Elementary would continue to be successful.

About Frankford Elementary
Founded in 1929 as part of Pierre Samuel DuPont's initiative to build schools for black children in Delaware, Frankford Elementary was initially named after George Washington Carver and was an all-black school until the late sixties. In 1969, the school was renamed Frankford Elementary during the consolidation of local districts and the creation of the Indian River School District. Today, the school consists of 38 percent Hispanic, 32 percent Caucasian, and 30 percent African American students. In a community where most residents work low-wage jobs for the area's poultry plants or as service workers at resorts in neighboring beach towns, most of Frankford's students are from low-income families, and more than 80 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch.

Frankford Elementary has five hundred students, including children in special education, pre-K, and a program for the deaf and hearing-impaired. In addition to the Dispelling the Myth Award, the school was recently honored with the Intel and Scholastic Schools of Distinction Award, named a 2004 Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education, and has been named a Superior School by the Delaware Department of Education for four years running.

Step One: Maintain the Momentum
While the staff and students at Frankford Elementary were experiencing tremendous change in expectations and performance, Smith was working at nearby Indian River High School as assistant principal. "I came to Frankford as a newcomer both to the school and to primary education," said Smith. "Consequently, many members of the staff had reservations that the school wouldn’t be able to maintain its past successes." But Smith was quick to reassure his new staff that while he wouldn't radically change Frankford Elementary, he also wouldn't rest on his laurels. "As I told people when I came to the job, we're not going to try to fix what isn't broken," explained Smith. "But, we are going to look for areas where there is room for improvement."

Step Two: Identify Areas for Improvement
Smith prepared for his first year as principal by spending the summer pouring over assessment results from all of the students at Frankford Elementary. While many of their scores were impressive—with math, reading, science, and social studies scores in the 90th percentile—there was one area which lacked consistent positive results: writing. "We do not have a districtwide writing program here in Indian River, so everything is very piecemeal," said Smith. "This is something that our teachers are really asking for." Smith has responded by calling on writing experts from the University of Delaware whose program, the Delaware Reading and Writing Project, he plans to institute in the upcoming school year.

At the district level, administrators are implementing changes in the way teachers approach curriculum. Indian River School District recently adopted the Learning Focused teaching strategies created by educator Max Thompson. Through various professional development seminars and training opportunities, the district has given teachers new tools to create effective and engaging lessons. The strategy, which hinges on identifying an "essential question" for each lesson, emphasizes the importance of measuring student comprehension. If a student can answer the lesson's "essential question," than he or she has a clear understanding of the material presented. Smith emphasizes the value in methods that allow for quick assessment of student progress and performance.

Step Three: Ensure Children Have the Support They Need
"I think what we do well here at Frankford is find the areas in which our students have weaknesses, and put the proper supports in place for those students so that they can be successful," explained Smith. Many of these support systems were created during Principal Brittingham's tenure, but have continued to operate and grow under Smith's watch. One unique aspect of Frankford Elementary's system is the overwhelming support and involvement of the community-at-large. While many Frankford parents cannot contribute much time to the school due to work constraints, a number of community leaders and professionals from neighboring towns donate their own time and services to Frankford's mentoring program. Organized through the national program HOSTS, these mentors step in to provide tutoring help in whatever subject the student's classroom teacher designates; student progress is monitored regularly by mentor and teacher alike. The mentor program has grown continuously since it was established six years ago, and now serves approximately one hundred students at Frankford Elementary—which is almost 25 percent of the student population. 

Coordinated by Renee Clark, the HOSTS program requires a lot of flexibility, as students are pulled out of regular classroom instruction to work around the mentors' schedules, but the rewards far exceed the drawbacks. "The mentors become very attached to their students," said Smith. "At Christmastime, the mentors filled three classrooms with donated gifts, which the kids took home on the bus right before their winter break." The mentors' generosity towards the mostly underprivileged students at Frankford Elementary isn't just limited to holidays; they have also contributed school supplies, first aid supplies for the nurses' station, and whatever else is needed. Many of these mentors belong to the congregation at St. Ann's Church in nearby Bethany Beach, which has become a sort of patron organization to Frankford Elementary. "A few years ago a preschool teacher told her father that she was concerned about some of her students who often came to school hungry. Her father went to church that Sunday and shared the problem with the congregation, and they came up with a program called 'Food for Thought,' which takes financial contributions to cover students' delinquent lunch bills so that no child goes to class hungry," said Smith. "The church has donated more than $10,000 to that program in the last five years."

In addition to the tutoring provided by the mentoring program, Frankford Elementary also has implemented programs to address weakness in specific subject areas, such as the Soar to Success reading intervention program, which pairs slower readers with reading specialists for small group help; the Early Birds program, which gives an extra thirty minutes of reading support before the first bell rings in the morning; and the Math Club, which meets before school and during recess to provide extra math help. Frankford Elementary also has Homework Help, an afterschool program that provides drop-in assistance and a quiet, comfortable place for students to finish their assignments before going home. The Homework Help program is especially effective in a community where many of the students' parents are English language learners themselves, and aren't able to coach their children through most of the assignments.

For Smith, the emphasis is on constantly assessing students' progress. "We monitor each and every child," he explained. "Each marking period, we sit down with teachers and the reading specialist, and we talk about the kids and how they are doing. If students are struggling in one area or another, then we identify those areas and that's where we put supports in place. I think other schools could really be successful with this model as well."

Step Four: Continue to Evolve
Being flexible and willing to try new approaches when performance starts to lag is key to Frankford Elementary's success. When assessment scores in social studies dropped from 90 to 86 percent last year, Smith took another look at the social studies curriculum to find a solution. Next year, the school will begin using the Learning Focused strategies for social studies in addition to language arts and math lessons, where the strategies are now used. Frankford Elementary is also beginning to grapple with preparations for adopting new state curriculum standards in line with new state assessment programs. And Smith will continue to examine areas where students need additional support to address a particular need. "You always hear complaints about money or about time, and there have been those talks here at the school," said Smith. "But in the end, where teachers were initially frustrated because their students were coming and going to the HOSTS mentoring program or to a Soar reading group, or they were coming in a little bit later in the morning because they attended our Early Birds program, the teachers now step back and think, 'This is what's best for this child.' And it all works."

Conclusion
The staff at Frankford Elementary uses the motto "No excuses," meaning that they demand the best from everyone, regardless of race or socioeconomic factors, and they make sure to give all students the support systems they need to ensure success. Smith said of their philosophy, "We want to make a change. If we say that our kids can do well, we have to find the means and the ways to do it. We can't keep making the excuse that our students are poor or minority, and therefore can't do as well as their white peers, because that's just not the case." Smith admitted, "That was a big culture change around here. But, as the kids began to perform to expectations, the teachers believed even more that they could do it." 

Through the use of grant funding to support before- and afterschool programs, the help of a generous community, and high expectations for all students, Smith—and Principal Brittingham before him—have transformed Frankford Elementary into a school that parents are willing to cross district lines for. Because Delaware offers school-choice, parents can send their children to any school that they can drive to, and it's rather telling that faculty and staff members choose to bring their children from neighboring, more affluent communities to attend Frankford Elementary. "We call Frankford a school for everyone because we have students from all different backgrounds, and it's just amazing how they all work together," said Smith. "My daughter is a kindergarten student here, and her best friend is a Hispanic girl whose sister is deaf, so my daughter has picked up some Spanish and some sign language so that she can communicate. It's fascinating to watch her and her peers learn from each other."