ISTEP and READ 180

One of the key people in Stephanie’s school district – on a tour of all the schools in the district – spoke to a faculty meeting at Stephanie’s school Tuesday afternoon. In the No Child Left Behind world, one of the ways schools and school districts are graded is based on how students in various demographic groups perform on whatever the state’s standardized test is (in this case, the “ISTEP”).

A minimum number of students must be in a school or school district for the state and federal government to count standard test scores from those students – as a group – and Stephanie’s school – like most of the 13 elementary schools in her district – are too small and too Anglo to have many groups. Even with Stephanie’s school’s English as a New Language magnet program, there are not enough Spanish-speaking kids in the school to qualify as a Latino group or enough Japanese kids to qualify as an Asian American group. (For their first two years in Indiana ENL classes, ENL students’ scores don’t count – After that, they do.)

There are also not enough special education students in Stephanie’s school to count as a group.

The only groups in Stephanie’s school – which serves a largely Anglo, working-class student population – are Anglos and receiving free and reduced price lunches (an index of poverty).

This past year students in both of these groups in Stephanie’s school achieved – on average – at least the minimum ISTEP scores, and so Stephanie’s school “passed.” However, there are only three middle schools in the district, and many of these schools DO have enough students in other categories: Latino, African American, special education, etc. A majority of the kids in Stephanie’s program go on to the middle school with the ENL magnet program, Scribner (on the edge of the city of New Albany and the rural/suburban Floyds Knobs area). This middle school passed. But some of Stephanie’s kids and the most other Fairmont kids go on to Hazelwood Middle School, in the city, and this school did not pass (apparently thanks in part to decent sized African American and special education student populations whose average test scores were NOT passing).

Low scores by students in some groups in the middle schools and high schools in Stephanie’s district helped cause the school district to earn a failing grade the past couple of years. That means teachers in all schools across the district have received training in – the strategy the district apparently picked – “curriculum mapping” and have been required to practice this strategy. Ultimately, the state could take over individual schools or the whole school district, probably wiping out the existing school board and superintendent.

The new superintendent dispatched a key lieutenant to make the pitch to teachers such as Stephanie and her Fairmont colleagues: Even though your school passed, the test scores of some of your students who graduated to middle school helped the district fail. This is not only a problem for these students and their families, but also for the district as a whole, even for teachers in individual schools that passed.

(This administrator also assured the teachers that – even though the new Indiana state education chief – who came from their district – is pushing to license teachers with very little education training – people like me with history Ph.D.s should be able to teach middle school or high school social studies even if I’ve taken almost no education classes – that doesn’t mean that schools in their school district have to hire these folks as teachers.)

This year Stephanie is playing a role not only in helping her present and former students pass the ISTEP but also in helping non-ENL students do so. Not only is she working with a mix of ENL and non-ENL kids in after-school programs, but she is also teaching ENL and non-ENL students reading in her 90-minute “READ 180” reading classes (aimed primarily at students who are reading OK but slightly below grade level).

An employee of the company that markets READ 180 was slated to stop by Stephanie’s school this morning to do some additional training of Stephanie and one of her colleagues who also teaches READ 180 classes. This person was then slated to hang around and observe, which Stephanie felt was important enough that she tinkered with her lesson plans for the day. Hopefully this went well. And hopefully this kind of teaching in Stephanie’s schools and other elementary schools in her district will help produce middle school and high school students who will perform well on the ISTEP and help the district “pass.”

-- Perry

Big day

This Thursday Vincent went out to work - helping a family move - with his father, for the first time since his own Ohio move. He said it was hard work, much harder than unloading Halloween costumes into the Halloween Express store. I got word that - thanks to Obama/Democratic Congress reforms to student loan programs - my lender has approved me for income-based loan repayment, which means Stephanie and I should just barely be able to afford to start making payments not just on her loans but also on mine. And at work and church, everything finally got turned in on the World Mission strategic planning project I worked on a lot in September and October and Wednesday PM I finally led a church Outreach Council meeting that I was pretty happy with. Mom and I continued to talk about both her future and ours. And I completed another stage of helping to prepare for a gathering of the non-Anglo folks who work at the Presbyterian Center, the Presbyterian Distribution Center, and the Presbyterian Foundation. And - last but not least - although plenty of fall leaves will continue to come down into our yards - we had tried harder this year (not waiting for Vincent) to rake front-yard leaves onto the "curb," where the City of St. Matthews picks them up - but, awfully early, for our trees - and today - after I've been raking for 5-10 minutes every morning after walking the dog - and after I got in a last 5 minutes of raking - city staff picked up our front yard leaves (pictured above). We'll still have plenty - esp. in the back - to rake into big brown paper yard bags - but not as many as most years, since we got so many in the pile for the city.

-- Perry

Denmark in New Albany

Stephanie had hoped that like last year Vincent could come to talk with her after-school Culture Club when they dealt with Denmark. With Vincent unavailable, Stephanie tried to of Vincent's friends who had gone to Denmark. Nathan is the son of friends of ours, a current Brown School senior, whose family had (like us) twice hosted Danish exchange students. I picked Nathan up from his mother's school and he came with about a dozen pictures from his time there last summer (same summer Vincent was there, I believe). With a majority of time devoted to questions and answers, Nathan - who, thanks to me, was late - talked for about 30 minutes. Stephanie had hoped to show a Denmark video and also have the students make Viking helmets. But the video had yet to arrive and few students had brought in the plastic gallon milk containers to make the helmets. So they talked with Nathan and colored Viking sheets afterwards. Perhaps the video (which now has arrived) and helmets next Monday.

-- Perry

Movie spree

In the middle of driving Vincent out or him taking out, Stephanie and I saw six movies in eight nights - in the last couple of weeks - ironically none with Vincent, who was at first working in the evenings and then - in hindsight - getting ready to leave. The first movie we saw Vincent would have seen - "It Might Get Loud" - the rockumentary with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and U2's The Edge. Continuing in that vein the next night was "This Is It," the documentary/concert rehearsal film with an amazing Michael Jackson. Next was the Drew Barrymore rollar derby movie "Whip It," with Ellen Page of "Juno," which was OK. And then Michael Moore's pro-social democracy "Capitalism: A Love Story," a movie he hinted at in "Sicko" but that loses steam as it misses the biggest mass movement of the past year, the right-wing Tea Party movement. It turns out because it was his last night town Vincent missed a movie I thought he'd like, by one of his favorite directors, Quentin Tarantino, the ultra-violent World War II fantasy, "Inglorious Bastards," with Oscar-worthy performances by Christopher Walz and even the female leads. Exhausted Friday after Vincent's departure we limped to see Matt Damon in "The Informant!," an odd movie with Central Ohio ties that we perhaps should have skipped in favor of the St. Matthews holiday walk. Ironically, this spree was bookended by two other movie events. 2 1/2 weeks ago on my day off - before Vincent went to work - he and I went to the discount theater to see - for the 2nd time - the Harry Potter 5 movie. Then this past Wednesday - one year after Election Night - I spent a couple of hours with past and present Obama campaign and Organizing for America volunteers (pictured above) watching "By the People," a fascinating dcoumentary about the Obama campaign - particularly about the early days leading up to the crucial Iowa caucuses and a handful of very young (including some Asian American) volunteers/coordinators who helped make everything happen. What a difference a year makes.

-- Perry

Tough season

We've stuck with the Seminoles and embattled Coach Bobby Bowden throughout this difficult college football season (tough for University of Louisville fans) and have gone to several Kentucky Seminole Club events. Vincent of course missed the disappointing Clemson game this past Saturday night. Above our president, Mark, and we helped his girlfriend - they met on Facebook - celebrate her birthday. Below one of the more serious fans ponders the second half. Behind him is John, the former club president, who's active in local Republican party politics. I'm on afraid on this night - during a rare not close game - we drowned our sorrows in a little too much food.

-- Perry

Au revoir, Vincent

Stephanie and Vincent's father (pictured above) chat while Vincent and his friend Aaron (not pictured) say good-bye, at 6:15 p.m. Friday. The streaks are from the camera trying to take pictures without flash at dusk, with the main light from Vincent's father's and Vincent's lit cigarettes. After smoking since the day he turned 18, Vincent had quit for several months, but started smoking again this past week. Aaron and Jessi had helped Vincent pack belatedly as he threw books, DVDs, video games, and a few clothes into two duffle bags - and then went back to get the Wii. We wouldn't let him take Frisco.

We've talked with Vincent episodically since then - and he's talked and texted with other Louisville friends (including two different young women). He's stayed and visited with relatives, then moved into a house near Morse and Westerville roads (and Easton) in Columbus: http://columbusoh.apartmentfinder.com/Columbus-Apartments/Thornapple-Apartments-Apartments. Unfortunately, his name is on the lease and the utilities. He's moved in some of his father's stuff and played video games, eaten cookies, and slept some at home.

-- Perry

Disco inferno

Below was the scene at one of the first Halloween Hillcrest Avenue houses we stopped at, the one whose front yard turned into a de facto disco.

Cruising with Elvis

Elvis and two friends drove down Hillcrest Avenue in their pink Cadillac.

Halloween 2009

Enough of my Presbyterian Church Research Services colleagues dressed up for Halloween (above) that we entered the Presbyterian Center Halloween contest. We did not win. Our former colleague Jamie stopped by with her husband and two of their daughters (below).

Grandma (still our colleague at the Center Linda) helped get one of the daughters ready for the costume competition (they didn't win either).

Below was the child winner (about to let exhaustion and the nerves from the competition get the best of her) and her mother.

The night before Halloween Vincent got back from work - he ended up working some 10 days in a row.

While Vincent worked and then went to a Halloween party, Halloween night our friend Sarah came over for dinner and then we wandered over to Hillcrest Avenue - Louisville's legendary Halloween street, just a block from our church. One of the first houses whose decor I noticed included an impromptu disco, with some great music and passersbyb getting up in the front yard suddenly to dance (below).

We wondered why they didn't shut down the street to cars - and in fact later that evcening a car hit a kid - but if it were closed off no one would have been able to cruise in their car - like Elvis who we had just missed in Las Vegas - who cruised by with two friends in a pink Cadillac.

Sarah and Stephanie were very good at looking carefully at the witticisms in the front yards of some of the decorated houses (in between other somewhat tasteless or grotesque items). With thousands walking up and down the street, there were plenty of people watching possibilities too.

One place we stopped was in front of a house that turned out to be owned by a University of Louisville trumpet professor - with his brass quintet playing. While we were there, they shifted from classical music to the "Ghostbusters" movie - and then, seconds later, the Ghostbusters unit dropped by - and danced to their own theme music.

Another house featured a Peanuts theme, including Linus and Sally waiting for the Great Pumpkin.

When we arrived at home, the full moon shone out.

Stephanie had gotten a turtle outfit for Frisco. But Frisco was pretty quick to doff the hat/turtle head. Here he's still got the body on. We've taken him to Hillcrest before but it's so packed we left him home. We dressed him up briefly after we got home. Vincent had planned to go trick or treating with Jessi and friends but ended up working from mid-afternoon to 9:15 p.m. - selling Halloween costumes up to the bitter end - and then went to a party with Jessi and friends. Sarah went home and - other than picking Vincent up later - we stayed home with Frisco.

-- Perry

Vincent news

After a big argument we had on Sunday night and Vincent finishing up with his job and then not coming home last night (and me staying elsewhere for the second time in a week), Vincent confessed that he was heading to Ohio to stay with his father later today (Friday morning discussion pictured above). We’ll see what happens. Stephanie stayed home and Vincent is sleeping.

-- Perry

Understanding church growth

What makes churches grow?

This is a question that some of the folks who work here at the Presbyterian Center are concerned about.

It’s also a question of interest to many folks around the country involved in religious congregations or even in secular organizations, like ours, some of which are facing membership decline.

Finally, it’s a question that receiving a church newsletter in the mail a couple of months ago really hammered home to me.

For a couple of years my family was active in a West Central Florida mainline Protestant congregation: Kirkwood Presbyterian Church, in Bradenton, Florida.

Founded in 1980, Kirkwood had experience solid growth throughout most of its short history, including during the two years that my family was there.

But a couple of years ago the church’s founding pastor, Pastor Bill – the only pastor the church had ever known – retired.

It probably should have come as no surprise to me to read in this newsletter about the church’s financial problems.

I also went to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Web site and found that Kirkwood has suffered a couple of membership dips in recent years, including a rather sharp one in the past year.

Knowing that even mighty Kirkwood was suffering membership and growth problems renewed my interest in understanding church growth.

I’ve talked with a number of you all about the work my Research Services colleagues and I have done trying to identify factors that influence how much churches grow. We’ve looked particularly – but not exclusively – at Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) church growth.

These are some of the sources of data we’ve used.

- Census 2000 data gives us information about the characteristics of the communities in which congregations are located.

- For Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations, the Session Annual Statistical Report gives valuable information about congregational characteristics, including membership totals.

- For the 500 or so Presbyterian congregations that participated in the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Survey, responses by worshipers to the U.S. Congregational Life Survey worshiper’s survey give vital information about congregational characteristics.

- Finally, responses by congregational leaders to the U.S. Congregational Life Survey congregational profile and leader survey give information about characteristics of pastors.

One of the first steps researchers would undertake with these data would be to use a statistical technique known as regression analysis. In its simple form, regression analysis assesses to what extent the values for one variable predict the values for another variable.

Here are the simple regression analysis results for a half a dozen of the factors that best predict net percentage membership change between 2000 and 2005. I want to direct your attention to the top three factors in particular.

The half a dozen plus factors and the standardized single regression coefficients for them are:
- Prioritization of children’s and youth ministries score: .274
- Percentage of worshipers age 65 or older: -.26
- Shared leadership practices score: .241
- Prayer as percentage of time the leader spends in paid ministry during a typical week: -.146
- Salary and housing benefits: .145
- 1995-2000 net percentage membership change: .142
- Percentage of residents age 25 or older in the zip code in which the congregation was located with bachelor’s degrees: .122
- Total membership: .104
- Leader’s age: -.052

Prioritizing children’s and youth ministries is a scale that combines responses to several different U.S. Congregational Life Survey worshiper’s survey questions. Congregations that prioritize children’s and youth ministries are more likely to grow.

You’ll note the negative sign next to the statistic for percentage of worshipers age 65 or older. That’s because there is a negative relationship. Congregations with a lot of older worshipers are LESS likely to grow. Younger congregations are MORE likely to grow.

Finally, shared leadership practices is another scale that combines responses to a number of different worshipers’ survey questions. These include questions about how good a match you think there is between your congregation and your pastor and how much church leaders pay attention to people like you when they’re making decisions.

The next step would usually be to run a multiple regression analysis. This technique includes values for a bunch of variables and asks how well, collectively, they predict – in this case, church growth. It also sorts through the individual variables and tells you which ones predict best.

As soon as you try multiple regression analysis with these data, which we have done, you run into two challenges. First, the best we’ve able to account for is about a quarter of the growth. That’s not terrible, but it’s not great. For us, Presbyterian church growth still remains somewhat unpredictable.

Second, the values of many of these variables are interrelated. And that’s really a no-no in multiple regression analysis. For example, it turns out that congregations with a lot of older people tend NOT to prioritize children’s and youth ministries. If you throw caution to the wind and include both prioritization and percentage of older people in a multiple regression, older people drops out.

It’s not crystal clear how to interpret this. But two things are clear:

Prioritization of children’s and youth ministries is a better predictor of growth than percentage of older people; and

There are some congregations with a lot of older worshipers that DO prioritize children’s and youth ministries, and there are some younger congregations that do NOT.

To illustrate, let’s go back to Kirkwood. This is the inside of the sanctuary at Kirkwood – obviously, when there aren’t any people in there.

Kirkwood is a snowbird church. Bradenton is a big retirement area. In the summer Kirkwood might have a couple of hundred people in worship. In the middle of the winter, in both services put together, there might be over 1,000 in worship.

This was one of the most memorable Kirkwood rituals while we were there. At the start of worship Pastor Bill would walk around the room with a cordless microphone and ask newcomers to introduce themselves. But he’d also ask oldtimers returning after a while to identify themselves. He might give me the mike and I might say: “I’m Bill Adams, and this is my wife Martha. It’s great to be back at Kirkwood. We’ve just gotten back to town from Baraboo, Wisconsin. Go, Packers!” And all of the Wisconsin people would clap. Actually, lots of people would clap.

You might think that a congregation with this profile would NOT emphasize children’s and youth ministries. But you would be wrong. I know more about the youth ministries. While we were there, there were active middle school and high school youth groups and bustling Sunday school classes. The church paid, modestly, several talented, enthusiastic people to help lead these. And the church had my son – not always the most enthusiastic church participant – help out with the sound system for the 11 a.m. services. This was one way they involved children and youth in worship.

What does knowing a little bit about the church growth data and the Kirkwood experience tell us?

Demography is not destiny. “Objective” factors only go so far in influencing church growth. Just because you’ve got a pastor who’s the right gender, or a congregation that’s the right age, or a community with the right education level – doesn’t necessarily mean your church is going to grow. An old people church might CHOOSE to prioritize children’s and youth ministries, which we know can be a factor in growth.

There’s a little bit of a Is the glass half-full or half-empty issue here. A colleague of ours, knowing these data, has quipped that: Presbyterian churches – even those in advantageous situations – still find a way to screw up growth. I prefer to look at things the other way around. Even for churches that are in “objectively” disadvantageous situations, there is still room for maneuver, still opportunities, still possibilities for growth and decline.

I’d like to think that – if Kirkwood Presbyterian Church – on Easter morning 2005 – in that sanctuary – could somehow persuade my son to be baptized as a Christian and to be confirmed – churches around the country – of whatever denomination, in whatever situation – should be able to find a way to grow.

I look forward to hear your comments and questions, starting now.


P.S. What might this mean for Toastmasters clubs like ours? I don’t think you can apply lessons about church growth one-to-one to the experiences of secular organizations. I do, however, see a couple of possible implications. Our club has people with a pretty broad range of ages in it. I have, however, seen clubs with mainly younger people or mainly older people. Judging from these data, we might become a little nervous about the growth prospects of a club with mainly 80-year-olds. It’s not exactly clear why having a lot of older people might be bad for church growth – or what a older club should do about that – but there does seem to be a connection.

With shared leadership practices, it seems clear that – as with churches – in a club in which a lot of different people are involved in activities and club decision-making – and that all the offices are filled, and the officers are all active – that this kind of club would be more likely to grow. Let’s stay active and stay mixed-age if we want to grow!

-- Perry

Big day

Today is a big day. It's Vincent's last day of work at Halloween Express. Apparently, they've finished up selling off discounted items and packing and cleaning up more quickly than they had thought they would, and the store finishes packing up today. This morning I've got to be around to answer questions about a big survey project that my colleague Jack and I worked on for the World Mission unit - after I mistakenly sent an e-mail meant for Jack - complaining about additional requests they've made of us - to the client. Then after lunch I'll be giving my first Toastmasters speech in a year and a half. About church growth findings and our experiences at Bradenton's Kirkwood church, the speech builds on an earlier Toastmasters speech and the presentation I gave at the Religious Research Association annual meeting two weeks ago in Denver. We'll see how it goes.

-- Perry