Seattle Schools' Anitra Pinchback-Jones Wins Milken Educator Award

2018 Seattle Anitra Pinchback Jones reaction 1In a great piece of news, today Rainier View Elementary principal Anitra Pinchback-Jones won the Milken Educator Award. Congratulations!

From the Miklen Family Foundation:
Pinchback-Jones was named a 2018-19 recipient of the national recognition, which comes with an unrestricted $25,000 cash prize. She is the only Milken Educator Award winner from the state of Washington this year, and is among the up to 40 honorees for 2018-19.

The Milken Educator Awards, hailed by Teacher magazine as the "Oscars of Teaching" has been opening minds and shaping futures for over 30 years. Research shows teacher quality is the driving in-school factor behind student growth and achievement. The initiative not only aims to reward great teachers, but to celebrate, elevate and activate those innovators in the classroom who are guiding America's next generation of leaders. Milken Educators believe, "The future belongs to the educated."
A Seattle native, Pinchback-Jones is committed to public education, serving students of diverse backgrounds, mentoring other principals and ensuring that the culture of excellence she has driven at Rainier View is permanently embedded in the school ethos. Pinchback-Jones leads the charge for continuous improvement together with her faculty, and Rainier View students deliver some of the highest achievement and growth scores in the state.

Every morning, Principal Anitra Pinchback-Jones gathers students and staff at Rainier View Elementary School in Seattle, Washington, for an all-school meeting. She welcomes students, letting them know that their teachers are excited to see them and have prepared outstanding lessons for the day ahead. Pinchback-Jones reminds young people to work hard and try their best. The principal intentionally reinforces a culture of excellence and high standards. When new students arrive at the school, they spend several days visiting classrooms from kindergarten through fifth grade to illustrate the high expectations consistent among grade levels and teachers. Rainier View students deliver some of the highest achievement and growth scores in the state, and the Council of Great City Schools places Rainier View in the country's top 1 percent for students of color.
Pinchback-Jones holds the same high expectations of teachers. She pores over assessment data and creates tight systems to ensure that students have access to rigorous content and ever-improving instructional practices. The principal creates a master schedule including daily literacy and math blocks. Teachers submit weekly lesson plans that align instruction with district and state standards. Pinchback-Jones encourages faculty to give new reforms a chance and, in turn, they often serve as a model for other schools to emulate. When Rainier View was inundated with observation requests for one such reform, the principal required visitors to provide both positive feedback and suggestions for improvement.
A strong leader in Seattle Public Schools, Pinchback-Jones serves on the Principal Professional Development Team, planning and delivering ongoing education to help all the district's principals improve their practices. As a literacy lead principal, she showcases excellence in literacy instruction, rolls out new literacy curriculum, and has designed professional development with teachers to support innovative literacy practices.
Pinchback-Jones earned her Bachelor's Degree in Sociology from University of Washington in 2000 and a Master's in Teaching in 2001.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I don't know anything about this principal or school, but the write-up sounds great.

Assuming it's true that "Rainier View students deliver some of the highest achievement and growth scores in the state, and the Council of Great City Schools places Rainier View in the country's top 1 percent for students of color," I wonder how these students fare later on. If one SPS school is doing such a good job at, presumably, reducing the achievement gap, shouldn't SPS be looking into whether or not those elementary gains persist through middle and high school? Do RV students continue to make high achievement gains in middle school? Do RV students end up graduating at higher rates than comparable students from other elementary schools? If the district is supposed to be so focused on eliminating the achievement gap, why aren't they looking more closely at the data they surely have?

data please
Anonymous said…
Rainier View is a small school of only 245 students. Maybe that is a key. That allows students to get individual attention that they probably can't get at larger schools.

http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/summary.aspx?groupLevel=District&schoolId=1&reportLevel=State&yrs=2017-18&year=2017-18

245 Enrollment May 2018
74.5% FRL
39.2% Black/African American
32.5% Asian
12.9% Hispanic/Latino of any race(s)
11.3% Two or more races

some data
Rom said…
She sounds great. Congratulations to her and the hard working kids of Rainier View!

An old Times article says that in 2004 she had her class at African American Academy pretend "to be a football team. Class was practice. Tests were games. The WASL, she told them, was the Super Bowl. She got their parents involved. She kept students after school until 5:30 four days a week, and if they complained that other kids didn't have to work as hard, she told them: 'Success looks different.'"
(http://old.seattletimes.com/html/education/2003272003_achievement23m.html)

Rainier View test score trends:
proficiency on 3rd grade ELA SBA
2014-15: 73.5%
2015-16: 48.6%
2016-17: 67.7%

proficiency on 3rd grade math SBA
2014-15: 73.5%
2015-16: 63.2%
2016-17: 83.3%

proficiency on 4rd grade ELA SBA
2014-15: 85.0%
2015-16: 72.7%
2016-17: 58.8%

proficiency on 4rd grade math SBA
2014-15: 85.0%
2015-16: 81.3%
2016-17: 67.6%

proficiency on 5th grade ELA SBA
2014-15: 78.3%
2015-16: 73.9%
2016-17: 85.3%

proficiency on 5th grade math SBA
2014-15: 60.9%
2015-16: 60.9%
2016-17: 73.5%

proficiency on 5th grade science SBA
2014-15: 69.6%
2015-16: 52.2%
2016-17: 70.6%

family satisfaction with school quality (about 10% of families responded to the survey)
2014-15: 72.5%
2015-16: 72.8%
2016-17: 78.2%

student perception of school climate
2015-16: 65.5%
2016-17: 55.2%

Anonymous said…
Some typos you could correct -- It's Milken not Miklen
- Once an Editor, always...
Anonymous said…
@ some data,

So... do FRL and minority students do better later on if they went to smaller SPS elementary schools or had smaller class sizes? What I want to know is if SPS is looking into whether these apparently positive RV elementary school gains hold true in future years, or if they are short-term gains.

Further research on RV might also help the district tackle various disparities, which is supposed to be one of their main goals. Do RV students ultimately qualify for HC services at higher than expected rates? Do they take more AP/IB classes down the road? Are they more likely to graduate in 4 years, go to college? If RV elementary gains translate into increased academic success in high school, that may suggest that EARLY efforts to address disparities will eventually bear fruit, as opposed to honors for all type approaches that begin in middle or high school, when disparities may be harder to reverse.

data please

Rom said…
Well, the proficiency for RV's FRL students is 64.4% in ELA and 72.2% in math. This is phenomenally high compared to FRL students at many Seattle schools.

Here's the list of schools ranked by highest to lowest reading proficiency for FRL students. Rainier View comes in at an astounding number 11 out of the whole district. That's remarkable work on the part of the principal, the teachers and the students:
Cascadia Elementary
Roosevelt High School
Nova High School
Cleveland STEM High School
Franklin High School
Ballard High School
Salmon Bay K-8 School
TOPS K-8 School
Wedgwood Elementary
Garfield High School
***Rainier View Elementary***
Alki Elementary
Frantz Coe Elementary
John Hay Elementary
Nathan Hale High School
Mercer International Middle School
Bryant Elementary
Greenwood Elementary
Salmon Bay K-8 School
Chief Sealth International High School
Pathfinder K-8 School
B.F. Day Elementary
Olympic Hills Elementary
View Ridge Elementary
Ingraham International High School
McGilvra Elementary
West Seattle High School
Hamilton International Middle School
West Woodland Elementary
Loyal Heights Elementary
Genesee Hill Elementary
Maple Elementary
Lawton Elementary
Catharine Blaine K-8 School
Hazel Wolf K-8 School
Rainier Beach High School
Wing Luke Elementary
Madrona K-8 School
Broadview-Thomson K-8 School
Denny International Middle School
Madison Middle School
Kimball Elementary
TOPS K-8 School
McClure Middle School
Olympic View Elementary
Fairmount Park Elementary
Beacon Hill International School
Lafayette Elementary
Stevens Elementary
Hazel Wolf K-8 School
Eckstein Middle School
Arbor Heights Elementary
Louisa Boren STEM K-8 School
Adams Elementary
West Seattle Elementary
John Stanford International School
Thurgood Marshall Elementary
Jane Addams Middle School
Aki Kurose Middle School
Laurelhurst Elementary
John Rogers Elementary
Daniel Bagley Elementary
Green Lake Elementary
Whitman Middle School
Catharine Blaine K-8 School
Hawthorne Elementary
Whittier Elementary
Northgate Elementary
Washington Middle School
Pathfinder K-8 School
Van Asselt Elementary
Dearborn Park International School
Highland Park Elementary
Broadview-Thomson K-8 School
Emerson Elementary
Queen Anne Elementary
South Shore K-8 School
Graham Hill Elementary
South Shore K-8 School
Roxhill Elementary
Lowell Elementary
John Muir Elementary
Sand Point Elementary
Interagency Academy
Bailey Gatzert Elementary
Madrona K-8 School
Gatewood Elementary
Dunlap Elementary
Leschi Elementary
Orca K-8 School
Concord International School
Viewlands Elementary
Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary
Louisa Boren STEM K-8 School
Licton Springs K-8 School
South Lake High School
Sanislo Elementary
Thornton Creek Elementary
Sacajawea Elementary
Orca K-8 School
Licton Springs K-8 School
Seattle World School
Anonymous said…
Read some of the articles attached to this episode of Hidden Brain.

https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666993130/zipcode-destiny-the-persistent-power-of-place-and-education

If you can, listen to the podcast of it. It talks about long term gains for poorer children and how earlier invention is better. High School is too late. That doesn't mean you shouldn't still try to offer high school kids better classes, it just says you aren't going to get as much gain out of it.

HP
Jet City mom said…
I’ve been working at a school with a high esl & FRL rate as tutor for the past month or so.
Frankly, my student seems very capable, good handwriting, good expression when reading, certainly better than my daughter at that age.
I have not yet spoken to the young woman who is in charge of placement, but we are zipping through the assignments. Sometimes doing two in a session.
I could be overly cynical, but it makes me wonder if students ability is being underestimated in order to instill outside programs.
Just wondering if anyone else has had that experience.

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