How special is Polk, one of the schools threatened with closure?

CEDAR RAPIDS - Polk Elementary School has changed since Daryl Spivey's first day of kindergarten in the 1950s, but so has the neighborhood.

The retired president of KSF Associates Inc. remembers his classmates as being mostly white and from blue-collar families, compared with the school's current diverse racial mix, 90 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch.

Spivey has remained closely connected to the school through his volunteer work with the Cedar Rapids Daybreak Rotary. He believes Polk provides something special for the students it serves.

“What is the same at Polk as when I went there is the culture,” he said. “They have a firm, but not rigid, structure with clear expectations.”

Despite its challenges, Polk has been an academic success story, at least in terms of the standardized test scores required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Polk's scores from the past decade are on a mostly upward trend. The school's 2010-11 results show a decade-high fourth-grade score of 79 percent proficiency in reading and math.

The school has shown such progress that it was removed last year from the list of schools in need of assistance after showing two consecutive years of improvement.

Polk wasn't the only school to improve during this time; it was one of six Cedar Rapids elementary schools to leave the list, said Mary Ellen Maske, the district's elementary program administrator. She attributes the progress to adoption of data-focused professional learning communities among teachers, before- and after-school extended days, and new reading programs.

“There wasn't really a single factor; we had a lot of programs that have contributed to the successes,” she said.

Requests to interview current and former Polk Elementary faculty were all referred to Maske.

William Freeburg was principal at Polk from 2002-06, retiring during his last year after 35 years. He attributed much of the school's academic success to experiential learning, where students take frequent trips around the area to build their experiences and vocabulary. This was important, he said, because low-income students don't get the same breadth of opportunities and experiences as those from more financially secure families.

“You could replicate some of that just by taking a field trip from Cedar Rapids to Marion,” he said. “So the youngsters that develop that experience build their reading skills and their language, too.”

Beyond classroom learning, many associated with Polk speak of a culture that encourages its students to think of themselves as on the path to greatness.

Christy Wolfe, a Coe College professor who coordinates the college's student teachers and volunteers at Polk, said students as early as kindergarten are told that higher education is in their future. This is important for Polk, since many of the students would be first-generation college students when they get older.

“It makes a difference to their own self-efficacy and their own sense of being to be able to do these things,” she said.

Coe's proximity and partnership with the school was cited by Freeburg and Spivey as instrumental to the school's culture. Wolfe sees the relationship as mutually beneficial.

One lesson she learned from working with Polk is to keep a basket of fresh socks in classrooms for snowy and rainy days when kids with older shoes come in with damp feet.

“The teachers at Polk know you can't learn with wet feet,” she said. “You can't learn that in a book.”

The school also receives support from the Daybreak Rotary, which pledged to assist the school during its formation, and Big Brothers, Big Sisters, which pioneered its Lunch Buddies program at the school.

Maske argues that none of these features are unique to Polk and that all of Cedar Rapids schools have a culture of high expectations, give their lower-income families the resources they need and receive assistance from area colleges and volunteers.

Former Polk teacher and facilitator Marie Wallace-Sears, now living in Houston, said not all Cedar Rapids elementary schools are equivalent.

“I left Jackson (Elementary School) and went to Polk, and people thought I had lost my mind. I've had people say, ‘I couldn't work there,' ” she said. “We all don't learn alike. We all are not A-plus students. We all aren't geniuses, but we all aren't special-ed, either. Somewhere in between, Polk was able to accommodate everybody.”

Related articles

• Polk Elementary 'has been our village'