Vista College Preparatory’s downtown Phoenix campus was the only Title 1 charter school in the state to receive a 2018 National Blue Ribbon award for academic excellence.
VCP-Hadley is a high-performing, tuition-free, public charter school educating a high-minority and low-income student population of about 370 students, located in downtown Phoenix at 6th Avenue and Hadley Street.
The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program recognizes private and public elementary, middle and high schools across America for their overall academic excellence and their exemplary progress in “closing achievement gaps among student subgroups”, according to the U.S. Department of Education website.
“For us it was really just a testament to all of the incredible hard work that our teachers, our scholars and their families have put in,” said Julia Alperin, a founding teacher of VCP-Hadley and the current director of curriculum and instruction.
VCP-Hadley was established in 2013, and is a slow growth model school which means in their founding year, they accommodated only kindergarten through first grade. Each year following, the school has added a grade level and accommodate up to grade six as of the 2018 fall semester.
Every year since 1982, the U.S. Department of Education has sought out and celebrated schools that consistently demonstrated the model that all students can achieve to high levels, and it has affirmed the hard work of those involved in these achievements through the National Blue Ribbon School award.
This year, the Department of Education honored 349 schools in the country with the program, making VCP-Hadley among the best in the nation.
After a two-year-long, rigorous application process, it was announced just last year that VCP-Hadley was a nominee for the award, Principal Roxanne Zamora said.
“We had to show we were not only able to get these results in one year but that we were able to sustain and continue to achieve those results in the second year,” Zamora said.
The school serves a high population of low-income students with over 90 percent qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch.
“The entire approach that our team has taken has consistently allowed for us to prove that every student, no matter where they’re from, can attain a high-quality education as long as they have access to high quality education,” said Julia Meyerson, founder and executive director of Vista College Preparatory.
After college, Meyerson participated in a fellowship called Building Excellent Schools that allowed her to travel around the country and study the highest performing charter schools serving low-income communities. She used the best practices she studied as the basis of her school model.
“We have an extremely rigorous curriculum here at Vista College Prep,” Alperin said. “We believe in the importance of literacy and college preparation starting as early as kindergarten.”
Alperin said when she was teaching kindergartners, many of them had never held a pencil or a book or even spoken a word of English, but last year 80 percent of those students, who are now fifth graders, were proficient in their reading and math state tests.
“We feel like we’re closing that achievement gap and we can hold them to those extremely high standards, and as they continue, and we look at our test scores, we’re thrilled to say we’re performing at the same level as students of more affluent districts,” she said.
Students at VCP-Hadley have an extended day starting at 7:40 a.m. and releasing at 4:00 p.m. with 40 percent of that day focused entirely on literacy instruction.
VCP curriculum is highly data driven by spending time each day reviewing assessments and assignments and changing instruction to make sure it meets the needs of each student.
“While the curriculum we use is very specific, it’s not just the curriculum, it’s how we train teachers to execute it,” Zamora said. “We are literally teaching phonics on fire. It is so fast, so engaging and there’s a lot of core response.”
Instructors spend every Friday reviewing data collected throughout the week from each lesson and assessment where they select which skills need further practice. Along with this, the school has monthly data days when the students stay home and the teachers spend the day analyzing data and then learning new strategies and techniques based on their findings to make sure they are best serving their students, Alperin said.
“We have a really strong culture of feedback, we observe our teachers on a weekly basis whether new or a veteran on the basis that everyone always has room to improve,” Zamora said. “Everything that we do is mobilized around the academics and how we are going to relentlessly work towards closing that achievement gap by any means necessary.”
Every summer, VCP requires all incoming teachers to participate in a three-week summer institute where they practice managing behaviors, strengthening their “teacher voice,” reading a lesson, looking at data and breaking down questions for students that may be stumped on an answer.
“Teaching is truly a performance art,” Alperin said. “They need to be fully prepared and rehearsed.”
Though the award is a testament to the school’s hard work, there’s still room for improvement.
“I think I would say that the teachers, the leaders, our students, demonstrate excellence through a deep desire to always be better,” Meyerson said. “Yes, we got the Blue Ribbon award this year but we are always thinking of ways that we can improve.”
Contact the reporter at rlstallm@asu.edu.
