Teachers’ coaching program helping boost student test scores at Hazleton Area

HAZLE TWP. – Officials attribute significant growth in math and reading scores at Hazleton Area High School over the last two years to a new initiative in which teachers coach other teachers in classroom strategies.

Hazleton Area is one of 24 schools in 15 districts throughout the state participating in the program – the Pennsylvania High School Coaching Initiative – funded by the Annenberg Foundation.

Ellen Eisenberg, executive director of the coaching initiative, said preliminary data from the last two years show that Hazleton Area High School students’ math scores have increased 31.7 percent, and reading scores increased 34.7 percent. The statewide average growth rates are 9.4 percent for math and 7.6 percent for reading, she said.

Eisenberg said school districts across the state were invited to apply for funding to participate in the initiative. Hazleton Area’s application fulfilled all the criteria, she said.

The program provides funding to the school districts to hire new teachers to replace current teachers who are trained as literacy and math coaches.

The program pays $55,000 towards salary and benefits for each new teacher, allowing one teacher for every 600 students in the high school. Hazleton Area has seven teachers working as coaches.

Eisenberg said the teachers were released from their regular teaching responsibilities when they become coaches. Each coach works with between eight and 15 teachers each week.

Hazleton Area teachers who became coaches received two training seminars during the summer before the program was implemented in fall 2005, and additional funding pays for their continuing education.

And while the initiative focuses on math and literacy, teachers in all subject areas work with the coaches to understand “how best to help engage kids” and to develop “consistency in language and practice from one class to another.”

The initiative employs a “before-during-and-after” concept of collaboration. Teachers work with the coaches on lesson plans, sometimes co-teach with the coaches in the classroom, and then work with the coaches afterward to discuss what new teaching strategies worked well and how they could work better, Eisenberg said.

The initiative also provides mentors who work with the coaches and visit them at the schools four times a month.

Ernie Harper, a leadership mentor with Foundations Inc., Morristown, N.J., is one of three mentors who work with Hazleton Area coaches.

He said coaches also conduct study groups for teachers, and district teachers have made tremendous strides in “engaging students in a very concrete way and making their lessons meaningful.”

Harper also noted that the initiative has provided $110,000 in funding that allowed teachers to take 153 courses and earn up to 4.5 graduate credits.

The initiative began a few years prior to implementation with a conversation between Pennsylvania’s former Secretary of Education Vicki Phillips and Gail Levin, executive director of the Annenberg Foundation, Eisenberg said.

“They realized that in order to help students do better ... we in education have to change teaching practices and school practices if we want to change student outcomes,” Eisenberg said.

Eisenberg said the foundation is working with the state to try and find funding to maintain the program for at least another year.

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