Retired teacher proposes a missing link in education

After dedicating more than 50 years of her life to the education of children, a Pullman native is introducing what she believes is the missing piece to academic – and life – success.

Accountability.

Jan Link, born on a wheat ranch outside of Pullman in the 1940s, said her years working in Washington and Oregon public schools as a teacher, curriculum director and principal taught her not only what works in education but, more importantly, what is missing.

“I wanted to be a teacher. Once I was a teacher I wanted to fix it again, so I became a curriculum director and then an elementary principal,” she said.

Link said regardless of her position, she couldn’t make the changes she wanted.

“Education is in trouble if we do not make changes to hold students, parents, school staff and all adults accountable for giving students the support they need for school success,” Link said.

Link’s program, Learning Lab, will seek funding of $600,000 a year through the 2021 academic year from the 2017 Washington Legislature. That would allow the program to be started in 10 middle schools around the state.

Paul E. Pitre, chancellor of Washington State University’s Everett campus, is supporting the program as a way to help students be more prepared for college.

“The Academic Link Outreach program and its Learning Lab concept provide new strategies that can help to close the access gap,” he wrote in a letter to the Legislature supporting the program.

Link retired from the public school system in 2000, with 41 years under her belt, and opened a tutoring center.

She said, “I thought, ‘What didn’t I have when I was a principal that I really needed?’ It was extra help for kids.”

But she found that both her center and other tutoring programs, such as Sylvan Learning Center, were more expensive than many families could afford.

She said it really saddened her that the public schools weren’t adequately focusing on students who needed help.

“Everybody pays for schools and they shouldn’t close at 3 o’clock,” she said. “They should stay open and help if kids need it.”

“I focused and wrote a grant for a middle school,” she said. “The focus of the grant was what needs to be in place so kids can be successful and feel good?”

“A lot of it is holding them accountable,” she said. “They want to be held accountable just like they want to be disciplined.”

When the grant was approved, Link worked with the Edmonds School District to get 50 students who could benefit from her program: PATH to College Success.

She said, “The majority of them were low-income children, because that’s where the grant money was.”

Link said she focused on four elements of the program.

“The first thing is a very strong parenting program,” Link said. “The parents and the kids signed a contract that said if the kids didn’t pass the state test, or if they got any Cs, Ds or Fs, they will connect with me.”

Second, Link said she kept a close eye on the students’ grades, checking each Wednesday for changes and communicating with the students and parents if they had dropped beneath a B – even if they didn’t reach out to her.

Third, they were offered sweet rewards for jobs well done, she said.

Fourth, they were given a place to get extra help each week if they needed it, she said.

“I spent three years with them, seventh grade, eighth grade and ninth grade,” she said. “Back in that time – it was 2010 – all of the attention or most of the attention was on high school: help them graduate, pass those classes and pass the state test. I felt if you went back and got them when they were about 11, 12 years old and mentored them, they would be stronger students.”

“At the end of the ninth grade we had 16 straight-A students out of 48, and we had three others that only had one other grade,” she said. “Ninety percent of our grades were As and Bs because that’s what we expected, and the kids worked to get that. One hundred percent of the students graduated from high school. The state average is 78 percent.”

As the years passed, Link didn’t stop working with the children – who were quickly becoming adults – but kept in touch, following their progress through graduation and into college.

“All of them went on, except for two that are planning to go on, but they have some things to get in order,” Link said. “This proves to me if you give them support, they will be successful.”