University of Massachusetts > STEM > Four Schools Get Chance to Reverse Failures

TURNAROUND SCHOOLS: Four Schools Get Chance to Reverse Failures

As pilots, they can devise plans

By Maria Sacchetti, Boston Globe Staff  |  March 28, 2007

Over the next two years, Boston will try to transform English High.

Enrollment at the nation's oldest public high school will be cut from 1,200 students to 800. The school day will be expanded by about an hour. And the stakes will rise: Struggling teachers could be transferred to another school, and truants could find a school official knocking on their door.

Yesterday, the state Board of Education approved plans by four schools, including Boston, as part of an experiment to give failing schools more latitude to devise their own strategies to improve.

English High and the three other schools, in Springfield and Fitchburg, have been facing state intervention after years of dismal performance on statewide tests. But the state, which has had little success with the remedial plans it has imposed on failing schools, decided to give the schools more autonomy by turning them into pilot schools, following a model Boston created in 1995 to compete with independent charter schools. Pilot schools, like charters, have more freedom than traditional public schools. They can set longer school days, choose their staffs, and determine how they spend their budgets, but are overseen by the school system.

Board chairman Christopher R. Anderson said the board's unanimous vote signals a new, swifter approach to attacking school failure. Critics have blasted the state for allowing high failure rates on state tests to drag on for as long as eight years in some schools without requiring radical changes.

"I think it's unconscionable that schools have been allowed to languish to the detriment of . . . students," Anderson said after the meeting in Boston. "The motivation here is to truncate the timeline."

The schools must improve test scores in two years or face state intervention, the harshest penalty for failing schools under state law.

The schools' failure rates on MCAS exams range from 9 percent of eighth-graders in English at Academy Middle School in Fitchburg to 81 percent of seventh-graders at Springfield's Duggan Middle School in math.

The 1993 Education Reform Act poured money into schools, but also called on the state to intervene in failing schools on a timeline overseen by the state Department of Education.

The law gave state education officials the power to take such steps as ousting the principal and dictating how schools should improve. Ideally, the process leading to state intervention should take about three years from the time the school is flagged for improvement, but critics say it has dragged on longer.

They have pointed to Putnam Vocational Technical High School in Springfield, one of the four schools becoming a pilot, as an example of delays in state intervention. At the Putnam, roughly nine of 10 students flunked the MCAS from 1998 to 2001, and the state didn't consider intervening until late 2005. The board gave the school another year to improve, and then the pilot proposal was made.

Within the three systems with the failing schools, administrators had to negotiate the terms of the pilot schools with teachers unions. The faculty at each school voted earlier this year to become pilot schools, though many teachers are still skeptical.

Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union, said teachers voted in favor of the pilot school mainly because it was better than state intervention.

"There isn't a shred of evidence that making people work longer hours without any rights and forcing students to go on extended day . . . will be a positive experience," Stutman said yesterday. "We hope it works. But there's no evidence that it will work."

Boston School Superintendent Michael Contompasis told the state board yesterday about the challenge to win teachers' support.
"A lot of time, a lot of energy, and a lot of arm-twisting has gone on," Contompasis said.

At English High, crowding forced the school to convert some hallways into classrooms, which partly led to the call to cut enrollment, according to its improvement plan. Tutoring for students has been haphazardly administered, and teachers had about a week of professional development each year, the plan said.

At English High, teacher training time could triple to three weeks. To boost family involvement, the school will teach English to immigrant parents. The school will create two small learning communities within the building, dividing students and teachers into groups, creating a "home away from home," the plan said. The goal is to prepare all students for college, though 40 percent of sophomores failed the math MCAS last spring and 27 percent flunked English.

English will reduce its enrollment through attrition from the existing school population and by enrolling smaller freshman classes starting next fall.

Plans for the other schools are similar and include such remedies as lengthening the school day, reducing class sizes, and expanding teacher training. The schools said they plan to hand-pick teachers, though many current teachers will stay.

Springfield Superintendent Joseph Burke said letters were sent to Duggan and Putnam teachers that they should sign on to the schools' new improvement plans or transfer to another school.

Academy Middle School is hunting for a new school principal and seeking to lengthen the school day by at least half an hour.

State Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll was initially skeptical that giving the schools more power would work. But Driscoll said yesterday that he could see how the approach has energized the four schools.

Anderson had proposed the pilots on his first day as board chairman in November.

"My first reaction was, why are we giving more autonomy to the schools that are failing?" Driscoll said at the board meeting, held at the Richard J. Murphy School in Boston.  

The PDF files on this page require the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.