Goals drive school year, Educators face tough guidelines
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Clive McFarlane, Telegram & Gazette Staff
August 29, 2004
- Schools will open across the state this year with little time for teachers to make kindergarten pupils feel at home or for returning students to share tales of their summer adventures.
School administrators will start the year keeping one eye on their school's performance goal and the other on the presidential election in November, the outcome of which could significantly change how schools are held accountable.
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Meanwhile, schools and school districts throughout the state are bracing for the release of a state report that will show whether they are making adequate academic progress, and whether more districts should be labeled underperforming.
Those making the grade will have little time to celebrate. The state will add several new MCAS tests this year, fulfilling a federal mandate to test students annually in English and math in Grades 3-8.
''We are approaching saturation,'' Worcester School Superintendent James A. Caradonio said.
''We are spending a lot of our creativity counting, accounting and complying as we move from one accountability audit to the next.
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According to the state and federal government, Mr. Caradonio and other school administrators have until 2014 to get it right, but must demonstrate progress by meeting annual benchmarks.
The umbrella of the state's three-pronged school and district accountability system is the federal government's No Child Left Behind law.
In general, the law seeks to improve teacher quality, raise student achievement in reading, math and science; use student test scores to determine school performances; and provide students in low-performing schools with opportunities to move to higher performing schools or to receive supplemental services, such as private tutoring.
Massachusetts' use of the annual MCAS tests to gauge whether schools and districts are on course to meet the federal mandates is the second arm of the accountability system.
The third arm is the state's Office of Educational Quality and Accountability, which evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of school districts in promoting student achievement.
Paul Reville , executive director of the Center for Education Research and Policy at MassINC., said that while it is true that the sum of the state's accountability measures might be overwhelming, particularly in districts with tight budgets, the measures are a necessary shift toward holding districts, schools and educators more accountable.
Previously, he said, the emphasis was purely on making students accountable.
''It is burdensome,'' he said of the new accountability standards. ''It is demanding, and it will get more complicated. But virtually every other institution uses data to set strategies that make them more successful.
''There is no reason it should not work in education. It is a diagnostic exercise. It is not 'gotcha.' We are trying to get some data on the table, so educators, using their judgment and experience, can make students more successful.''
Mr. Reville noted that there are signs that the new accountability demands are creating positive change in schools.
Worcester and Leominster, for example, are restructuring their secondary schools to create small student academies, with the goal of providing a more intimate and nurturing learning environment.
The Carnegie Corp. of New York and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are funding the initiatives in both districts.
The Worcester initiative is more than halfway through the five-year implementation phase. Four of the system's five comprehensive high schools -- North, South High Community, Burncoat and the vocational high school -- have each restructured their entire schools into three or four smaller academies. Doherty Memorial High School has implemented one small academy.
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The new battleground for educators, according to Lamey and others, will be to move the state and the federal government from the current practice of evaluating schools on the test scores of different groups of students each year, and to rate schools based on their ability to improve student achievement levels over the period in which those students are in the school or the school system.
So far, the federal government has balked at taking this approach, which educators called ''value added,'' but that could change, depending on who is elected president in November, Mr. Reville said.
