Braintree Has Test Success System
The Boston Globe
Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff
September 27, 2004
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For the past five years, Braintree High School has bucked the trend: that students from more-affluent and better-educated communities score better than those from less privileged places. Educators and researchers say Braintree High School is a case study for why low-performing schools cannot make the excuse that their students are destined to score poorly on the MCAS.
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"Braintree shows that all children, irrespective of their background, can achieve the standards," said Paul Reville, executive director of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy at the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth or MassINC.
In a district where resources are limited, Braintree administrators said they link every decision and every dollar spent with student achievement. It is expected that teachers and administrators use test results to see where students are struggling and then change their courses accordingly.
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Unlike most high schools, Braintree, with about 1,450 students, has stuck to the old-fashioned model of separating students by ability for math and English classes. The high school gives equal priority to students of all skill levels. Instead of being programmed into "tracks," students can move up and down the system depending on their performance.
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Weaker students are identified before they come to the high school and placed in "strategy" classes to help build skills for the MCAS during their freshman and sophomore years. These courses have less than 10 students in each classroom and usually do not require homework or quizzes.
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Despite Braintree's success, some critics object to the school's emphasis on the tests. They say the district shortchanges students' education at the high school where electives are sometimes sacrificed for MCAS prep courses.
"When a district like Braintree focuses so intensely on boosting MCAS scores, they get the scores up but at the price of a richer and deeper education that the students deserve," said Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, a Cambridge group that opposes standardized tests.
School leaders, however, insist they must ensure that their students pass the tests and graduate. In Braintree, where less than a third of the population has a bachelor's degree, many parents are pushing their children to get a better education than they had.