Gianna Fornabaio, a short woman with large, bright eyes, may not look imposing, but she certainly sounds it to her fifth-grade class. As the students stare, gulping, at small note cards taped to their desk, she explains in a firm, booming voice how these tiny pieces of paper—their educational goals— would determine their education for the next few months.

“Do not lose these goals. Get to know them,” she said. “We are going to work, day in, and day out on each and every one of these goals, so that everyone achieves them.”

The pieces of paper are a cornerstone of PS 48’s educational strategy. At the beginning of the year, after an assessment by their teacher and conferencing with the child, teachers assign two specific goals to each of the school’s students: one for Math and one for English. Each goal is tailored to the student, encouraging them to strive to better their own skills, not merely to improve scores on a test.
“The goal cards were developed last year,” said Fornabaio. Everything is broken down and analyzed student by student to get their individual goals.”

Embracing a motto that calls their school “the Best School in the Universe,” teachers and administrators at PS 48 in Hunts Point have managed to transform a once-struggling school of over 1,000 students into a beacon of education in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Unlike many schools that teach to standardized tests, teachers at PS 48 are encouraged to implement a different philosophy: education and student engagement comes first, test-taking comes second.

Paradoxically, test scores are up. In fact, the school’s reform efforts caused the school’s grade on the Department of Education’s citywide progress report to jump from a C in the 2006/2007 school year to an A for the 2007/2008 school year.

PS 48 began its turnaround in 2001, with the arrival of a new principal, John Hughes. Hughes transformed it from a school of children asleep in class, sitting at desks in rows, and taught by clock-watching teachers into an offbeat school full of passionate teachers and enthusiastic students.

Judy Friedman has experienced the school’s transformation firsthand. She’s a veteran educator who’s been at the school for 13 years, and has been an assistant principal for four.

“With a lot of work, and a lot of change in administration, we’ve really managed to put our scores through the roof. We’ve made continuous progress since the time that I’ve been here,” she said.

According to Friedman, much of the school’s recent performance is due to a discriminating hiring policy that includes recruiting teachers from Teach for America and from other teaching fellowship programs.

“The administration really hand-picks the staff,” she said. We don’t go to the open market. So the staff are dedicated. They even—voluntarily—come to unpaid professional training.”

Some teachers, such as Fornabaio, are so dedicated that they will sometimes buy food and clothing for students, many of whom come from very poor families,.

The school’s teachers reflect its hiring policy. They are independent-minded and seem to be in ideological opposition to the tests-first attitude of No Child Left Behind.

“When you teach to the test, you’re doing coverage, you’re not teaching,” said Cheryl DeLeaver, a social studies teacher with a blunt demeanor, clothed in colorful African dress. “And the covering you’re doing is covering the teacher’s ass. You’re not doing anything for the child.”

DeLeaver, who has been with the school since 2003, teaches using a method of teaching called Universe Backwards Design, a system by which she teaches her material and then goes back later to point out what sort of information from her original lesson might be on a test, instead of only teaching only facts that will be on the test. She says the approach lets her student know when she’s teaching them as opposed to simply reviewing material for an upcoming test.

“The test review is not teaching,” she said. “I want the children to know that there’s a difference—that’s how I do it.”

Friedman, who has taken up greater administrative duties since Hughes left the school last year, is also not a great fan of tests, but sees them as a measure of accountability, a sort of necessary evil to make sure students are doing well, not as a purpose in an of themselves.
“We try to make it as fun as possible, we try to make games out of it,” she said. “It helps to make it seem like a necessary life lesson.

Despite the stark increase in academic performance, the school still has its own problems. The school’s environment category on the Department of Education’s progress report is still mired in mediocrity, having received a C. The grade is based on surveys given to parents and teachers.

While staff and administrators say they can’t explain this, one particularly low score in the environment category stands out: communication.
Heather Arabadjis, a second-grade teacher who’s been at the school for six years, says the neighborhood’s high proportion of families who speak only Spanish has a lot to do with the low communication scores.

“Most of the teachers here speak English. Explaining homework and how we teach things is difficult,” she said. “The parents have to help them with their homework, but they’re not sure how to do that. That’s the biggest challenge.”

Christine Pizarro, the school’s parent coordinator, said she often has to act as translator when parents and teachers meet.
“Parents can’t communicate with the teachers the way they want to communicate,” she said. “That’s where I come in.”

As a solution, this year Pizarro has organized a free, after-school English training class for parents, making PS 48 a school where entire families come to learn.

DeLeaver, the outspoken social studies teacher, said that she tries to teach to whole families, aiming education at their weaknesses in the same way the educational goals card target a student’s.

“It’s not about test. I teach from the perspective of where the families are at,” she said. “The child is one of the tools of educating the entire family. You’re not just teaching the child to read, you’re teaching an entire family to read.”