Think you’re not college material? ‘No Excuses University’ tells grade-schoolers to think again

by Dave Evensen

From left, Jasminka Sabic, Deisy Molina Cortes and James Triplett sport their Illini colors. The fourth-graders at Anne Fox Elementary School in Hanover Park, outside of Chicago, are learning about the University of Illinois this school year in order to familiarize themselves with college.

One damp January morning this year, students gathered in fidgeting lines outside Anne Fox Elementary School in Hanover Park, just northwest of Chicago. The teachers waited until everyone arrived. Then they started the cheer.

“We are! Anne Fox!” the high-pitched group cried. “We are! College-bound!”

“Louder!” yelled a teacher.

“We are! Anne Fox! We are! College-bound!”

With a satisfied nod from the instructors, the backpack-lugging bunch filed neatly inside. The pupils marched through the halls to classrooms which each bore a university banner. Seventeen universities – one for every class, from kindergarten on up – have been placed on prominent display at the school. The flags of Notre Dame, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Texas, DePaul and others stretched down the corridors.

Approximately 25 fourth-graders entered teacher Amanda Smith’s classroom, adorned with the orange and blue of the University of Illinois. Banners hung on the walls. A bulletin board was filled with Illinois news articles and paraphernalia.

New Illinois T-shirts lay folded on their desks. After students put them on, Smith led them in reciting “Hail to the Orange,” followed by an Illini cheer. Finally they settled down for the day’s first assignment: Write about college.

“I want you to think about going to college and what you’re going to have to do to get there. Where do you want to go?” Smith said, pacing about the desks.

Pencils scratched paper. The tune of “Illinois Loyalty” filled the room.

We’re loyal to you, Illinois,

We’re Orange and Blue, Illinois,

We’ll back you to stand

’Gainst the best in the land …

James Triplett, 9, shot his hand into the air.

“How do you spell Princeton?” he said.

Smith sighed in defeat but couldn’t help smiling. “P-R-I-N…”

After all, the point of all this is not only to excite the kids about Illinois, Princeton or any other particular school, but about college in general, whichever one it may be. Smith herself isn’t an Illinois alumna – she graduated from Bradley University in 2004. Last fall, however, teachers chose universities from across the country as part of “No Excuses University,” an approach meant to battle high poverty rates and low academic achievement. Fox is just the third school in the country – and the first outside of California – to try the program.

Every Friday, students don school colors and put the University under a microscope. Smith’s students, for example, pore over Illinois news, facts, traditions and student life. They attend monthly schoolwide pep assemblies.

On Mondays, the program helps students – 20 percent of whom live at or below poverty levels – refocus on their bright futures. The No Excuses University shirts the children are expected to wear that day bear the year they plan to graduate from college – 2019 for Smith’s students.

The hope is that, by planting the idea of college early enough, more kids will attain the goal.

“We keep reminding kids that they can’t get to college if they don’t meet those smaller goals along the way,” said Principal Nick Myers. By the time some high-schoolers start thinking of college, they have already squandered their grades.

“We’re just trying to pound in that you’re going to be successful here, and you’re going to be successful in high school, and after high school comes college. After high school comes college. It’s not negotiable.”

There are encouraging signs that the program is making a difference. Test scores are up. Homework is improving. Discipline is better. Parents are more involved. For the first time, Smith said, teachers hear kids talk about college to each other in the halls and on the playground.

This is a milestone for a student population that in large part was unfamiliar with college. No Excuses changed that quickly. Within a few months of the rollout, the school conducted a dance and encouraged students and parents to show up bearing their university colors. More than 200 students attended the event, and Smith’s class, which had the most people show up in Illinois gear, won an award for displaying the most school spirit.

Back in her classroom, the music played on, and students quietly filled their pages. Marlene Garcia, 9, wrote that she wanted to go to college to become a teacher.

“I will have to work really really hard,” she wrote. “I would really want to go to college of Fighting Illini because I am learning about what the college is doing.”

Yazmin Nunez, 10, wrote, “While I am in college I will learn how to support myself. I don’t know which college I want to go to, but I have plenty of time to think about it.”

“When I go to college, I have to be prepared,” wrote 9-year-old Alec Cynova. “You got to know where your dorm is. Know your classes. Get good grades. Have all your school supplies.”

As for James, he wrote that he wants to go to Princeton – or Illinois.

“I mean who doesn’t love learning and college,” James wrote. “I love school, work, learning and education.”

No Excuses University originated in 2004 at San Diego’s Los Penasquitos Elementary School, a place similar to Fox. Approximately 40 percent of Los Penasquitos students live at or below poverty levels, and for years the school had the lowest test scores in the district. Many students are poor immigrants.

Attitudes began to change with the arrival of co-principals Damen Lopez and Jeff King. During district meetings about college readiness, Lopez was told that no research had been conducted about university preparation in elementary schools. Inspired, he decided that Los Penasquitos would be the research.

Does wearing an Illinois shirt make math easier? Antwain Windham, at top, may hope so. Of her pupils, such as Elizabeth Navarrete, above left, and Marlene Garcia, teacher Smith said, “I just feel like [they] are coming to school more excited than ever before.”

He pulled an all-nighter and drafted No Excuses University, named for the belief that every child can get to college. Now, more than two school years later, he’s explaining his school’s turnaround to visitors from around the world. Test scores at Los Penasquitos now rank 10th out of Poway Unified School District’s 23 elementary schools.

No Excuses University is now spreading across the country through TurnAround Consulting, co-founded by Lopez and King. By this fall, they expect several more elementary schools, including another one outside Chicago, to adopt the program.

According to Lopez, No Excuses lets students know “that the road to the future starts today as they enter kindergarten. No Excuses University has put a face on what it is we’re working toward.”

Fox Elementary is in many ways a mirror image of Los Penasquitos. Approximately 80 of the school’s 398 students live in poor circumstances. During the 2004-05 school year, Fox’s Illinois Standards Achievement Test scores ranked last in Schaumburg School District 54.

In fall 2005, an upbeat Nick Myers arrived as Fox Elementary’s new principal. Student performance began to improve under his changes, but in spring 2006 Superintendent Ed Rafferty encouraged Myers to go to California to learn more about No Excuses University. When he reported back, teachers showered the idea with praise.

Lopez said that becoming a No Excuses school requires only an approved application and staff attendance at an institute, but the Schaumburg school district elected to pay TurnAround Consulting $8,000 for four days of additional training. Fox Elementary began No Excuses University at the start of the 2006-07 school year, and the results have been electric.

Assessment tests indicate that by January of this year, students were as proficient in math and reading at the midyear point as their Fox counterparts were at the end of the 2005-06 school year. While the next round of the ISAT won’t be administered until March, Myers said he expects a big jump over 2006 scores.

Improvements are noticeable in other areas as well, such as discipline. Myers said as of early January, no out-of-school suspensions occurred, compared to several by the same point a year ago.

Smith said the staff has become more excited about the school, too. They’ve been encouraged by more parent feedback and a greater sense of community around the building, she said.

“I really think our school in general has become a more positive place,” she said. “

No Excuses University has a growing number of believers outside grade-school circles. Notably, universities and their alumni are beginning to respond. The Univer-sity of Nebraska, for example, sent backpacks full of supplies to its classroom at Fox. A sixth-grade class that adopted Northern Illinois University was invited to tour the school.

Smith’s fourth-graders caught the eye of Martin Neumann ’99 ENG, MS ’04 ENG, a UI graduate student in both the Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering program and the Medical Scholars program.

Neumann, who led the Orange Krush student fan section at Illini basketball games as an undergraduate, was dismayed that Illinois was not mentioned in news reports about Fox collaborating with colleges. He sent notebooks, pencils and a banner to the classroom. The students responded with a thick stack of orange and blue thank-you notes, and Neumann, along with fellow alumnus Richard Stockton ’97 ENG, JD ’00 LAW, sent each of Smith’s pupils an Illinois T-shirt. Both the chancellor’s office and the University of Illinois Alumni Association sent packages of Illinois items to the class.

Neumann is now trying to raise money to bus the kids to visit the campus. As of January, the children had not yet met him – they knew him only as “Marty” who wants to be a doctor – but he had made an impression where distant connections can make a big difference.

After the college writing assignment, Smith deployed laptop computers for her students to take a virtual tour of the Illinois campus. They spent the next 45 minutes soaking up details about the University.

“Some of you probably forgot what a Quad is. We’re going to look it up again,” Smith said to the class.

“Doesn’t quad mean four?” said DeVonte Lane, 10, holding up four fingers.

“In math it means four,” Smith said, “but we’re learning what it also means in college.”

The kids chatted excitedly as they surfed the Web site. The school was bigger than they imagined. They couldn’t believe students crossed campus by bus.

“Ms. Smith!” one yelled. “There’s a swimming pool at this school! It’s huge!”

Andrew Collins, 10, nudged his partner when he came across a picture of the Student Services Arcade Building.

“Holy schnapple, look at this arcade,” he said, in awe. “I’m going to this school.” After a moment of searching, Andrew sat back in his chair, disappointed.

“All it is is more computers,” he muttered.

Seated across from him, 9-year-old Mackenzie Agosta kept the disappointment in perspective.

“If we go to college, we know all about it,” she said.

DeVonte knew that the U of I has one of the biggest libraries in the world. “See?” he said. “I was listening.”

Cassandra Carrillo and Deisy Molina Cortes, both 10, studied a page about Altgeld Hall. When asked if they knew anything about college before this year, both girls shook their heads and went back to work. Later on, they’d hang their college essays on the wall along with pictures of themselves in their No Excuses University shirts – just in time for conferences, when their parents would see them.

Evensen is a freelance writer in Champaign.

Photos by Lloyd DeGrane