All across the US, education data tells the same troubling story: since the 2020 COVID disruptions, America’s students have struggled to learn nearly every subject, especially reading and math.
How bad is the problem? In 2022, age 9 students scored a 7-point drop in mathematics on the national report card, which was the first point drop in the test’s 50-year history.
But at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Academy in Queens, the opposite is true. Instead of falling test scores, St. Francis’s 4th graders actually outperform their peers in the diocese and across the US.
For example, according to the 2023 New York State Grade 4 Math test results:
- New York City public school students scored an average of 58.1%
- Diocese of Brooklyn students scored an average of 61.6%
- St. Francis students scored an average of 73%
As St. Francis’s principal Elizabeth Reilly explains, the school’s secret is surprisingly simple: small groups of students who need extra tutoring in Math or English Language Arts (ELA) meet for one extra hour each week — and over time, the cumulative benefit of all those hours really adds up.
“When I first became principal here two years ago, the direction from the diocese was, ‘small groups.’ That represented a big challenge for some educators, but I saw it as an opportunity to jump in and institute change right from day one,” said Reilly.
One instructor who embraced the new “small groups” philosophy is 4th Grade teacher Gianna Colandrea, who is now in her fourth year of teaching at St. Francis. “This is way different from my previous years of teaching, in a good way,” said Colandrea. “I used to be old school and teach from the board, but now I feel like small groups are the best way because it makes managing class much easier, and I also see that the kids get the most from it.”
Colandrea tracks students’ in-class performance and i-Ready scores, which measure students’ grade level progress. If she identifies students who need extra tutoring in math or ELA — two pivotal subjects that impact each other through word problems and language comprehension — she invites them to stay after school for one hour on Tuesdays or Thursdays.
In those hour-long sessions, Colandrea uses visual elements like blocks and organizers to help students turn abstract lessons into something they can see and touch — similar to the innovations that led Alabama to become the only state where 4th graders’ math scores improved over 2019.
“We start with remediation in skills they’re behind on from prior classes or grade years, then we move to reteaching what they struggle with during our current class time,” says Colandrea. “During these hours, every student is there for extra help, so there’s less stigma about needing academic assistance and the kids can just focus on improving without pressure. For example, the extra help has made a huge difference for one student who was struggling earlier in the year, and now she’s thriving. She’s able to problem solve, she’s more confident in asking questions, and she even got 100% on a recent test, which I wasn’t seeing from her before.”
In fact, some parents are so happy with the outcomes, they’ve asked if their children can keep coming back for help hours even after they no longer need them.
“You can’t overestimate the importance of how a child feels in the classroom,” says Reilly, who knows a thing or two about adapting to challenging situations: her very first job was teaching PE in a school that didn’t have a gym, so she brought the kids outside to exercise and play directly across from LaGuardia airport. “In small groups like we have at St. Francis, you get to know your students like a family. And when you see a student who’s smiling and getting 100%, and you know that you made a positive difference in their life, that’s what really matters.”
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