Small Corbett School District draws big interest

By CASEY PARKS - The Portland Oregonian
Sunday, September 9, 2007 3:57 AM PDT

CORBETT (AP) — Hannah Robinson felt lost as a freshman at Sam Barlow High School in Gresham.

Before starting high school, she had attended Phonics Phactory, a small private Christian school in Gresham. At 1,850-student Sam Barlow, things didn’t feel right. Classes were big. The social scene was different. The academics didn’t challenge her.

Her mom decided to home-school Hannah and her two younger sisters. But after a year, that didn’t feel right either. The family didn’t want to move from their Troutdale home, so they applied for — and received — permission to go out of district to school in Corbett, six miles away. This year, Hannah, 16, will be a new student in a new town. But she won’t be alone. A quarter of Corbett’s freshman class will come from outside of the small town east of Gresham at the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge. In an area in which most schools are filling past capacity, the 670-student Corbett district boasts high test scores, small class sizes and great success on Advanced Placement tests. It has been ranked one of nine exceptional schools in Oregon, and Newsweek magazine named Corbett High as among the top 5 percent academically nationwide.

Only Riverdale High School, in the Dunthorpe neighborhood in Southwest Portland, has more transfer students — two-thirds of its student body. Eight years ago, Corbett wasn’t like this. Back then, double the number of students left the district than transferred in. But then Bob Dunton became superintendent. Under Dunton’s leadership, the district went to a four-day week, 71/2 hours a day, an hour longer than most schools. Fridays are dedicated to teacher planning and tutoring students individually.

Classes are based on ability rather than grade level. Students take ‘‘math labs,’’ a work-at-your-own-pace approach.

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Dunton moved ninth-graders into an ‘‘academy system,’’ where they spend the bulk of each day with the same students and teachers. School leaders say this provides stability, easing students’ transition into high school.

As the district’s academic performance improved, transfers began pouring in. Five years ago, 40 students transferred to Corbett. Last year, 90. This year, 140.

‘‘There are people in (Principal Randy) Trani’s office right now from New York, looking at Corbett because of the test scores,’’ Dunton said in August. ‘‘Realtors call us and jokingly thank us for increasing the property values. When test scores come out, our phones start ringing.’’

For Nancy Gyerko, whose 10-year-old daughter Ella is doing work two grade levels ahead at Corbett, the environment allows more academic success.

Ella’s home school, Troutdale Elementary, has about 440 students in K-5. Corbett Grade School has 290 in K-6. Because the school is smaller, Ella is able to work on an individualized track that challenges her, her mother says.

‘‘If you haven’t been small, you don’t get it,’’ Dunton says. ‘‘There are people for whom the institution of 200 teachers and 4,000 kids isn’t imaginable as a place to send your child.’’

For some kids, smallness makes socializing easier. When Hannah Robinson’s parents visited Corbett, they found seventh-graders doing karaoke before the morning announcements. ‘‘Everyone was singing,’’ says mom Kirsten Robinson. ‘‘There was a real sense of community.’’

Though the Robinsons acknowledge that attending Corbett means losing extracurricular activities such as drama, they say the small-school atmosphere gives their kids opportunities to be included in sports, making teams that would cut them in larger schools. Roger Robinson, Hannah’s dad, likes the fact that the principal knows every student’s name.

The demands of parents such as the Robinsons are the reason the Gresham-Barlow School District decided in July to allow high schoolers to transfer out. Before, district leaders said they couldn’t afford to lose students.

District finances depend on maintaining or adding students. The state gives Corbett $6,300 for every student enrolled. It gives even more for English Language Learners and special education students. If districts let students leave voluntarily, the state money follows that student to the new district. Some districts, such as Portland Public Schools, deny all transfers out. To leave those districts, a student’s family must pay tuition roughly equal to the cost to educate them in a new district. At Corbett, only one student pays tuition, about $6,000. The others were allowed to leave their districts voluntarily.

At Riverdale High School, in contrast, about 70 students pay $10,800 tuition. Riverdale was designed knowing it had to bring students in from other districts, Superintendent Thomas Hagerman says. To keep enrollment steady, the district advertises on billboards and in newspapers.

One Riverdale marketing campaign — smaller classes, bigger ideas — captures the notion that some students are better suited for certain schools.

Even in Corbett, 20 students, mostly ninth-grade girls, left the district this year. After all, no school is right for every student, Dunton says, and Corbett is a particular place. Teachers minimize testing. No student receives a letter grade before freshman year. But students are held accountable. A student skipping class is automatically suspended. And most students expect a lot of themselves. One girl enrolled in A/B Calculus at age 13.

‘‘If anything, by the time a student is commuting, they and their parents have already made an above average commitment to getting a good education,’’ Dunton says.

It was talking to Dunton that made Gresham-Barlow Curriculum Director Aeylin Summers change her mind about allowing students to transfer out of her district.

‘‘Most of those kids are coming out of tiny little parochial programs,’’ she says. ‘‘And (Dunton) said those kids are used to incredibly small numbers. I can’t argue that Corbett is a great match. We’re just trying to advocate for kids.’’

Dunton says Corbett High School needs 225 to 250 students to support a college preparatory program.

‘‘We are staffed at a level and rates of pay that will require the revenues generated by 700 students to make ends meet,’’ he says. ‘‘We are not interested in growth beyond that.’’

If growth continues, the district eventually will run out of space, Dunton says. ‘‘For me, personally, that’s going to be a hard time because I’m pretty fanatical about parents getting to go where they want. You only get to raise your kids once.’’

Students who live in the town of Corbett would get priority if that happens, he says. The district has already closed transfers into first through eighth grades.

If the district becomes too big, it will not be as successful, Dunton says.

‘‘The deep, dark secret is, we’ve built our success on understanding how to be small.’’

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On the Net:

Corbett School District: http://www.corbett.k12.or.us/

Riverdale High School: http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/riverdale/site/default.asp