July 21, 2010

Charter School Partners’ first-annual Closing the Gap schools list has ranked TiZA No.1 among the state’s highest-performing public schools in serving children in poverty.

TiZA ranks first on the list of 10 highest-performing schools. TiZA scored a 93% and a 67% in overall math and reading scores, respectively. Data was culled from the Minnesota Department of Education’s 2010 MCA-II test scores. The list includes eight other charter schools that are working hard to close the achievement gap.

“The early results from the 2010 MCA-II scores are in, and the headline clearly is this: While the 2010 test scores for Minneapolis and St. Paul were disappointingly flat from 2009, numerous charter schools showed solid and impressive gains in closing Minnesota’s achievement gap,” said Al Fan, Executive Director of Charter School Partners.

Charter School Partners is a non-profit organization whose mission is to increase the number of high-performing charters in Minnesota and the number of at-risk students being served.

TiZA has worked hard to close the achievement gap by removing the stigma that underprivileged children will underperform. Instead, TiZA faculty and staff instead focus on creating a plan for success.

“There is am achievement gap between white and black students,” said Dr. Mahrous Kandil, TiZA Board chair and campus director for the school’s Blaine campus. “The reality is there. And we understand that.”

“Yet we believe everyone can succeed,” said Kandil. Not succeeding in another school does not mean students cannot succeed in TiZA.”

When students enroll at TiZA, they work with a school director, a lead teacher, a classroom teacher, and sometimes an ESL or special-education teacher in an effort to create achievement benchmarks for the school year.

The result, Kandil said, is that the students have a goal they want to achieve and can map targets for getting there. “The students themselves start to adopt the goal. They are held to have high expectations and we help them get there.”

At TiZA’s Inver Grove Heights campus, more than 85 percent of students qualify for reduced or free school lunches and more than 70 percent are English Language Learners (ELL). However, TiZA has been able to help close the widening achievement gap in Minnesota among underprivileged versus privileged children because of the school’s ongoing commitment to students and to working with each other.

“A significant component of the success is staff development,” said Asad Zaman, TIZA Executive Director “In the beginning of the year, we have two full weeks of customized staff development. It motivates each teacher / staff to take charge of his or her students’ academic performance.

If a majority of students do not achieve the benchmarks laid out at the beginning of the year, the students are required to restudy the materials in an effort to create real success.

Students with similar backgrounds who are underperforming in other schools are doing so because their needs are not being met, said Magdy Rabeaa, assistant campus director. Yet TiZA sees this as an opportunity to help students achieve more---and most importantly, to help them achieve well beyond what’s typically expected of them at other schools.

“We are fortunate to have the cooperation of our staff, students, and parents to achieve student success,” said Rabeaa,

“Our parents are very involved at TIZA. Over 95 percent of the parents attend the parent-teacher conferences. If they are not able to make it, we accommodate with a phone call or rescheduling the conference,” said Rebeaa.

“We are very proud of the academic performance of our students. Our staff—and the parents of our students--are very focused on holding students to higher expectations. That is what makes us successful.”