One recent fall morning, kindergarteners at Tuckaseegee Elementary School wrapped up their art class with a dance party. Principal LaTresha Wilson said her teachers offer fun activities like this as an incentive to keep kids engaged — and that's part of how the school has scored big advances after years of lagging.
“What can we do to get them hooked? What can we do to get them excited?” Wilson said during a recent visit. “And if that is, at the end of a lesson, they’ve earned a little dance party to get those wiggles out before they go back to class and have to sit down and learn, let’s do it.”
Wilson says building a warm school culture has been a priority since she took over two years ago. At that time, Tuckaseegee had a D rating from the state and was on North Carolina’s list of low-performing schools. In just two years, it’s no longer a low performer, and it’s now rated a B rating, its best on record.
In a year when CMS set district records for school improvements, Tuckaseegee had the highest growth index of any Title I school in the district and the fourth-highest growth index of any school in CMS overall.
“I have core values of love, learn, lead, and ‘love’ was first,” Wilson said. “And so to make sure that you feel that around the building was my main priority.”
A hometown principal
Wilson is a west Charlotte native whose parents still live nearby. She’s still a member of the Mount Carmel Baptist Church just down the road. She began her teaching career here back in 2006. She said Tuckaseegee parents have always believed in the school. But there’s a new buzz in the community.
“But now with it increasing, it's kind of that extra pride where it's like, I don't have to send my child here just because it's in the neighborhood, but I want to send my child here because it is a great school,” Wilson said.
So how did Tuckaseegee turn things around? Wilson said it started with culture. She wanted to tackle stereotypes about Title I schools.
“We had those deep conversations, right?” Wilson said. “And when those things happen that aren’t necessarily in the direction, we call those things out. And we were upfront with that.”
Title I schools receive extra federal funding because of high levels of poverty in their communities. Nearly all of Tuckaseegee’s 561 mostly Black and Hispanic students are eligible for free and reduced lunch, according to federal data.
Cameron Grimes sends her two boys, George and Prince, to Tuckaseegee. She said when she first moved to the area about two years ago, she was hesitant to send her kids to the school. But George’s first year convinced her that Wilson and her team were on the right path. Now, she believes the school is a resource to the community.
“Poverty and poverty mindset is a cycle,” Grimes said. “The majority of people in that sphere only can only reach for what they see. And this is so important to me because Principal Wilson is raising the ceiling. So that means they're seeing more, they're exposed to more.”
She said Tuckaseegee teachers encourage family involvement in a caring, non-judgmental way. They challenge students. Grimes said Wilson’s community ties help, too. The school got new, free school uniforms through Wilson’s sorority, and Wilson’s church is a faith-based partner, offering educational programs, including a summer camp.
“Principal Wilson is so embedded in the community,” Grimes said. “We see her all the time. My children are familiar with her.”
How to improve a school
There’s no silver bullet to improving a school. Wilson said her team has tried to build a culture of high expectations and academic rigor, aided by Tuckaseegee’s magnet program for academically gifted students. While only 47 students are seated in that program out of nearly 600, the whole school benefits from the magnet programming.
Keeping that magnet program robust has been a challenge in itself, Wilson said. Since students elect to go to magnet programs, overcoming the “low-performing status” in attracting students can be difficult.
“That has been truly, I think, an area to where we're gonna start seeing our (magnet) population, students choosing our school as choice because we are a (magnet) school and we are showing that our kids are growing at high levels and they're performing,” Wilson said.
Many of Tuckaseegee’s strategies are being employed elsewhere throughout the district, including administrators’ focus on poring over individualized student data.
Tuckaseegee teachers review student-by-student data weekly and analyze work samples to identify where students are struggling and provide targeted support. Each teacher has a coach from the administration, and the school’s “multi-classroom leaders,” work collaboratively with teachers across the building to tackle challenges.
But Wilson also points to her staff. Teachers offer tutoring, even when extra compensation is not available. Wilson says you’ll often see her staff out in the hallways during morning drop-off with flash cards, quizzing students as they come in.
“Every minute truly, truly counts and everyone knows that they're a part of that instructional,” Wilson said. "Even though they may be part of social-emotional, they may be a part of the ML kids, no, no, no, no. Everybody is a part of all of our kids. We work together."
Christina Klukow is a fourth-grade teacher at Tuckaseegee. She’s been here for 14 years, so she’s seen firsthand how the school has changed. For one thing, students are more motivated — something she attributes to the school’s data tracking, encouraging students to beat their own scores. She also credits her colleagues, who are often here before school starts and long after school ends.
“There are people who get here at 6 a.m.,” Klukow said. There are people who get kicked out by the custodians at 8 p.m. So it's a lot of people hours that we're putting into preparing things.”
She says the mood is lighter now, after years of being labelled a D school.
“Now it's like, okay, we've identified what's wrong and we're working on things like culture, we're working on things like the data, we're working on things like, just the power of positivity. It sounds a little cliché, but it's true,” Klukow said.
Challenges remain
There are still challenges ahead. Multilingual learners and special education students saw improvements last year, but those groups still lag behind other students. Wilson said the school has implemented morning labs for both those groups.
And while Tuckaseegee saw huge gains in math, fifth grade reading was down. And, like many other schools across the state, third-grade reading scores were down. Wilson said her team is focused on improving that, and the state has invested millions into training teachers on the science of reading, which state leaders say they hope will impact this year’s scores.
But Wilson noted her second graders saw big improvements last year that’s not captured in the state data.
“We're sending our kids to 3rd grade better prepared,” Wilson said. “And that's because we are preparing them for 3rd grade before they get there.”
Still, Wilson believes she has the team in place to keep momentum going. In a state where teacher retention is a challenge, she has kept her faculty mostly intact this year. That could help make sure the culture of improvement sticks long-term. The walls of Tuckaseegee are decorated with pictures of the Super Mario Bros. to reflect this year’s theme: “Level Up.” Next year’s theme?
“It’s going to be ‘All gas and no brakes.’ So we’ll have racecars going around next year,” Wilson said.
