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Good to great
BY TAMMY KRIKORIAN, SUN STAFF WRITER
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Published on: March 30, 2006

Alice Byrne Elementary School isn’t usually associated with organizations like Girl Scouts of America, Starbucks or Walgreens.

But the school’s approach to teaching its English Language Learners has earned it a spot in the PBS documentary "Good to Great," based on Jim Collins’s best-selling book of the same name.

Since Juli Peach has been principal at Alice Byrne over the last eight years, the school has gone from having 60 percent of its third-grade ELL students reading at the third-grade level to 90 percent.

Sam Tyler, the executive producer of the documentary, summed up what he’d learned about the school’s best practices in three points.

First, he said, is the attitude that every child is entitled to learn how to read.

"Failure is not an option," Tyler said, adding that if a child doesn’t pass, the fault is placed on the teacher rather than the student. "They’ve set a very important bar."

Second, Tyler said, is that the approach is "sophisticated" yet "very disciplined and very basic."

"Every kid is understood as an individual," he said. "They’ve learned how to identify, assess and work with each kid."

The third element, he said, is the "culture of expectation."

As students scores improve, it creates momentum: parents get more involved, students feel good about themselves and they
continue improving.

The results would not be possible without Peach’s leadership, Tyler said. She is humble and shares credit with the teachers, but takes any blame for herself.

Tyler and a crew of six others filmed at Alice Byrne and around Yuma on Tuesday and Wednesday to highlight Arizona public
schools as one of seven organizations featured in the film. The documentary will also feature Girl Scouts of America, the Dallas Police Department, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Amgen (a pharmaceutical company), and Walgreens. It is expected to air on PBS no sooner than January.

Tyler said Collins’s book "Good to Great" used research to identify 11 companies in the last 25 years of the 20th century that outperformed their competitors.

After a research team of 20 people narrowed down 1,400 companies that had been in the Fortune 500 during that time period to the 11 featured in the book, they went inside each company to identify the reasons for success.

"What attracted me was that it was research-based, not opinion," Tyler said. He approached Collins about making a film, and they sought out organizations — both in the social sector and business sector — to use in the movie.

"I think it’s awesome," said Peach, who was interviewed for the movie. "Anytime you can highlight education ... anytime you can show education in a positive light, it’s great. We’re making progress."

Juli Peach (far left), principal at Alice Byrne Elementary, sits at a table with Anne Bredemeyer, Tracey Turner and Diane Laguna in a reading intervention meeting for one of their third-grade students as they are filmed as part of a PBS doc

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