By Bill Zeeble
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-876279.mp3
Dallas –
Texas leaders hope to attack the state's troubling drop out problem with a pioneering program that's already showing promise in Dallas. The Middle School Brain Years program was demonstrated in a Dallas classroom this week and KERA's Bill Zeeble was there.
A small group of 7th and 8th graders in DISD's Dealey International Academy, are discussing a short work by Russian writer Tolstoy. But the real lesson here involves the teaching method. In the last legislative session, lawmakers ok'd $6,000,000 to partially fund this brain development program designed by the University of Texas at Dallas. It exercises the problem-solving frontal lobes still developing in 6th, 7th and 8th graders. This program teaches students how to learn, improving both their skills and odds of graduating. One of the program's designers, Dr. Jacquelyn Gamino, is teaching.
Dr. Jacquelyn Gamino: When we used these practices, do we find this stuff in the text we're working with? Student: Sometimes. Not always. You have to get the gist you have to use your frontal lobes to sort of, like, you have to sort of infer by the text there but it doesn't really, like, tell you right away. The stronger your frontal lobe is, like the smarter you'll get.
Gamino: Exactly, exactly. And what does that make us as adults? If we have strong fontal lobes in middle school, Nikola, what does that mean we can do better?
Student: We'll be able to answer questions better, infer better because once you get older your frontal lobes don't develop as much so they stay how they are. So if you strengthen, they'll stay strong all your life.
When this program was first tested on DISD 8th graders at Rusk Middle School, results impressed researchers. Before the program, 85 percent failed the critical reasoning test. Afterwards, 78 percent improved. The Middle School Brain Years program teaches students to eliminate unimportant parts of a literary passage, then connect what's left to understand the author's intent. Students say they've applied the basic method in math and science classes too.
Tricia Hilgart: It really helped me a lot, because it was more challenging and I like challenges and stuff.
Albert Lipscomb: It helped me do it better and mostly these were kind of new to me. It's kind of helped me with my classes.
Lt Governor David Dewhurst sat in on the class, & liked what he saw. He says the future of Texas depends on educated students, and this plan will help, especially for those at risk of dropping out. He does not believe the low figures reported by the Texas Education Agency.
Lt. Governor David Dewhurst: We See data from the TEA indicating that we've got a dropout rate of 1 percent or 2 percent but we all know that's impossible. When we talk to high school principals in cities all around the state of Texas we're hearing from teachers and principals that too many of our young people are dropping out.
Senator Florence Shapiro, a former high school teacher, chairs the Senate Education Committee. She says middle school has been considered by many teachers as lost years, when student hormones are raging, making classes tough to teach. She says it's time to rethink that.
Senator Florence Shapiro: As we look & drill down at our dropouts, we see we lose those students in middle schools. That's when they've check out, 416 they've checked out mentally. This is a golden opportunity to look closely at that middle school age.
Shapiro and other lawmakers hope to see the Brain health program spread to other middle schools across Texas. Shapiro says it won't solve the dropout problem, but it could sure improve it.