Reading & Rithmetic done the O’Dowd way = excellence
The closer you get to the Pinecrest Academy Inspirada charter school in southern Henderson, the more you sense you’re in the middle of a construction zone.
No matter which direction you look work crews are building homes, parks and roads and installing utilities and landscaping on what had been large swaths of open desert.
While that construction can be carried out on an exacting timetable and its results are easy to see, what Michael O’Dowd is building at the K-8 charter school — a learning environment which prepares students for college and a career — isn’t so simple to comprehend, nor does it lend itself to a definitive timeline.
Still, the reason the school wanted the 50-year-old O’Dowd to become its principal — he took over in April after the school’s first principal resigned — is that he’s been able to do what few administrators can: Quickly turn a school into a high achieving academic performer.
In the 2011-2012 school year, for instance, he and his staff turned Wallin Elementary in the Clark County School District into what the state classified as a high-achieving school — then the state’s top rating — in its second year of existence.
Most experts say it takes three years for a new school’s staff to even work in concert on defined instructional strategies, let alone win awards. Incidentally, Wallin went on to earn the state’s newest top honor, a “5 Star” rating, from 2013-2015.
In 2009, while leading CCSD’s high achieving Lamping Elementary, O’Dowd was selected by the National Association of Elemetary School Principals as the National Distinguished Principal for Nevada.
“What’s happened at schools where I’ve been didn’t happen because of me,” O’Dowd said recently as he sat in his office. “I had great teachers and involved parents.”
One involved parent at Pincrest Inspirada is Kevin Haff, who retired from the Air Force as a Lt. Colonel. He and his wife, Darlene, enrolled their daughter, Lyndsey, in the school after he left Wallin in Henderson.
“We followed him because he’s a leader with vision,” Haff said. “At Wallin he learned where the best elementary schools were in the nation (Boston area) and went there to find out what he could integrate here. He knows how to utilize time.”
One thing O’Dowd quickly integrated was a half hour of independent reading each day by students.
He said studies showed students could be exposed to 1 million new words in a year that way.
After directed study of reading or math, O’Dowd also saw to it students get about 15 minutes of recess.
Research, O’Dowd said, has found that free time gives students time to process what they’ve learned, just like sleep does. He said that when a child moves on right away to another complicated subject, he doesn’t retain as much.
What O’Dowd is proudest of is something he calls “power hour.”
While all 125 students in, say, five classes of third grade students, get 100 minutes of reading per day, only half of that is spent directed by their home room teachers, where 25 students of differing abilities learn to work together.
The other 50 minutes — the “power hour” — is directed by five instructors teaching on five different reading ability levels. That way, O’Dowd says, a student is grouped with 24 other students in a class of the same ability.
Those who can move faster, do so. Those who need more help, get it.
Nobody gets bored or left behind, he said. Math is taught in much the same way.
Brian Allen, at third-grade teacher who followed O’Dowd from Wallin, said the power hour ensures teachers work together, often making decisions about who should be moved up or down in reading classes.
O’Dowd — he taught gifted and talented students before becoming an administrator — said the most important decision he makes is the hiring of teachers.
“I need to make sure they share my vision,” he said.
Michael Barton, CCSD’s chief academic officer, said O’Dowd was long seen as innovative.
“We hated to lose him.”
O’Dowd said he left CCSD for a new challenge and the chance to receive retirement pay while earning another paycheck.
Allen said it’s no secret why teachers at the 950-student school follow O’Dowd’s lead.
“Nobody works harder than he does. I came in two hours early one day and he was already in. That’s the kind of commitment you want from your leader.”
Paul Harasim’s column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday in the Nevada section and Monday in the Life section. Contact him at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273. Follow @paulharasim on Twitter