Ms. Bethany Hamilton

Bethany Hamilton, Principal

Phone:

(303) 934-7805

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Bethany Hamilton, Principal

Ms. Gail Jacson and Ms. Bethany Hamilton, principal of the Denison School, led 10 students to Takayama.

The group also included Bethany Hamilton, principal at Denver Public Schools Denison Montessori and several Denver district officials.They outlined for the state licensing staff the Montessori curriculums used at accredited post-secondary schools such as the AMI-based Loyola University, and tried to demonstrate broad equivalencies between the two.

But state officials didn t see enough matches between the two approaches, Hamilton said.There s a greater commitment to the idea of standards in Colorado now: standards for students and standards for teachers, in the environment that NCLB has created, she said.I think school officials are really interested in preserving those standards.According to Hamilton, they aren t in the mood to provide much leeway to non-traditional curriculums.

The outcome of that small-scale campaign held some extra urgency in Denver, because of another NCLB-related change that was occurring.Colorado officials also closed an adjunct teacher licensing program this year that had enabled several Montessori-trained teachers to gain three-year teaching licenses in Denver each year for most of the last decade.

Under the adjunct rules, college graduates who had completed Montessori training at accredited colleges such as Loyola or Xavier University could obtain a temporary teaching license in Denver public schools after passing content and Praxis tests.

The end of adjunct licensing will immediately affect seven Denver Montessori teachers whose licenses are expiring this year, Hamilton said.We could lose teachers in our programs as a result, and we may have a harder time replacing them, under the new regulations.

That setback came despite strong support from the Denver district for its three growing Montessori programs.They ve advocated hugely for us, Hamilton said, even though the affected staff are only a tiny fraction of the district s corps of 4,000 teacher.

Bethany Hamilton, Principal
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"They went kicking and screaming," says Denison principal Bethany Hamilton, but they all completed the requirements, and were able to minimize their cost by using an online program that Hamilton and others helped arrange with a state college.

The HQT reforms went even further at Denison, requiring classroom assistants to pass a new battery of competence exams or return to college for two more years.

"We have really talented assistants who've been in the classroom 20, 30 years who thought they would lose their jobs," Hamilton said. The paraprofessional's union eventually established a tutoring program that helped all the assistants pass the new standards.

"These are wonderful people, and they were really scared. Is that really what NCLB set out to do?"

But NCLB's major continuing impact on Denison is the testing, and in Denver "that's tipped over into assessment overload," Hamilton says.

Like most urban districts, Denver struggles to meet AYP goals, and a new administration in the district is staking part of its improvement strategy on developing more comprehensive data on student progress.

Driving that effort is a battery of tests that now includes reading, math and writing tests for all children in grades 3 though 8, language acquisition tests, basic skills tests and quarterly district benchmarks.

Montessori ends up paying a price in the classroom, Hamilton says.
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Hamilton says federal lawmakers can reduce those unnecessary pressures if they adopt a couple key changes when they reauthorize NCLB.

First, fund the unfunded mandate. The state recognizes now that there's too much money going into testing, taking resources away from materials and teachers, she says. Denison devotes a full-time position to coordinating assessment activities for part of each year, and each test takes 6 to 12 hours out of normal classroom work. "It's a monster to organize."

Second, ratchet back the testing and performance pressure. A few weeks ago, Hamilton listened to some lawmakers speculate that the congressional coalition that passed the 2001 NCLB law had dissolved, making fundamental changes likely during reauthorization. "I felt sort of wildly excited for a few minutes," and she continues to hope that a loosening of the federal law this year could be a tonic for the district and Denison.
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And Hamilton says that, despite losing a few teachers who wanted to be free of NCLB's regiment of extra-Montessori requirements, morale is high in the school.