Local HGSE Alums Share MCAS Successes

Two years ago, when Drew Echelson, Ed.M.’05, became principal of the Tucker School — a racially diverse elementary school in Milton, Mass. — one of his main goals was to improve student’s Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) scores.

In 2006, the MCAS results placed only 42 percent of Tucker students passing in English Language Arts (ELA) and the school remained on the state’s “needs improvement” list. However, a year later, Echelson’s changes and dedication have paid off as 74 percent of students passed ELA and 71 percent passed math. “We’re really proud,” he says. “It’s the highest increase we’ve had and we’re leading the district.”

How did Echelson and the Tucker School do it?

According to Echelson, much of what he enacted at Tucker was what he learned right at HGSE through with the teaching and work of Lecturer Mary Grassa O’Neil, Professor Richard Elmore, and Professor Richard Murnane, specifically his book Data Wise.

“My experience at Harvard with the professors has been invaluable in framing the work we do here [at Tucker]. It made things coherent about how to lead a school and to also think about how you move a school by focusing on issues of instructions at a scale for all classrooms so there is a real consistent level of instruction,” he says. “We did a lot of work around creating systems of instruction on data analysis to make decisions on what we’re doing well and how we can improve instruction. Here we say that a school is only as good as its lowest performing student.”

Echelson isn’t the only HGSE alum leading a school with outstanding 2007 MCAS scores. According to many of them, the secrets of their schools’ MCAS success include dedication to teacher instruction/professional development, interim assessment testing, and working within their communities.  The secret is decidedly not teaching to the test.

When Paula Evans, M.A.T.’67, opened the Community Charter School of Cambridge (Mass.) in 2005, a tuition-free, public school for grades 7–11, the students had low skills and learning gaps. Rather than focusing all the energy into converting to a standards-based curriculum, Evans forewent any form of teaching to the test.

“I think [standards-based teaching] diminishes their education tremendously,” Evans says. “We offer a tremendously rich curriculum built into our program, richer than anything we would do if doing prep for MCAS tests [became dominant]. We can’t afford to spend time in classrooms prepping for the test, and it doesn’t serve the students well.”

The first year results show that the Community Charter School is doing something right. Out of the 29 10th graders who took the test, 100 percent passed the English test and 93 percent the math; 86 percent scored proficient or advanced.

Through a strong curriculum that teaches 10th grade students about three revolutions and focuses intensely on reading and writing, students spent as little as an hour a week in school working on MCAS prep. Instead Evans supplemented their curriculum with MCAS preparation outside of school. She reached out to the school community and asked students, parents, teacher, and volunteers to commit additional time and effort to preparing 10th grade students for the test. Students met several times during February and April vacation. In addition, the students also spent time working on weekends for two to three hour sessions and even staying after school in the months leading up to the exam.

Although initially the extra time devoted to studying outside of school was met with mixed emotions, Evans says the students worked very hard and took it seriously. “They are very excited to look at where they fall…in the rankings compared to neighboring communities. They like what they see and are very proud of the results,” she said noting that it has given students a new sense of confidence and many are now eagerly preparing for the SATs and college.

In the nearby Boston neighborhood of  Dorchester, the Boston Collegiate Charter School also achieved impressive MCAS scores with 100 percent of 10th graders passing the math and 97 percent passing the ELA; 83 percent scored proficient or advanced. This marks the fifth year that over 80 percent of Boston Collegiate 10th graders have scored advanced or proficient on the MCAS.

“We work hard to get these results with the students, but we are not resting on our laurels,” says Principal Tobey Jackson, Ed.M.’98. “We still don’t have all our students in proficiency and that is our goal to bring everyone up.”

At the core of Boston Collegiate’s success is outstanding teachers, Jackson says, pointing out that they spend a lot of time on professional development, discussing what’s working, and visiting other schools. Although Jackson reveals that the school’s curriculum is carefully aligned to the Massachusetts frameworks, it’s the interim assessments and teacher instruction that has really made a difference in their results.

Interim assessments, which are given every six weeks throughout the fifth- and eighth-grade years, provide the staff with a snapshot of students’ progress. It also allows the teachers to determine what each student needs for instruction by the time they reach the 10th grade. “The teachers are trained to look at the data, analyze it, take away certain information, and develop an instructional action plan in response,” Jackson says.

Similarly, Echelson says interim assessments — designed by his teachers — have also made a big difference at Tucker, and help establish individual action plans for students and their learning. The Tucker assessments, given three times a year, and the resulting individual student plans have worked so well the number of special education referrals have been reduced from 27 in 2006 to one in 2007.

“The teachers really enjoy this collaborative collegial environment and focusing on the concepts of problem solving,” Echelson says. “We moved toward a model of workshop instruction, which allows all students access to same objective, but use all same materials based on entry point into the program. My thinking is if we give high-level tasks to students and expect a lot, they will do really well on the test.”

For each of these educators, the celebration of MCAS results can’t last long since a new year of testing is always right around the corner.

“The bar has been set very high,” Evans says regarding her first group of 10th graders’ test results.

“We worked hard to emphasize the importance of [MCAS] outcomes and to certainly get teachers [and] students invested in their ability to identify progress based on assessment,” Jackson says, noting that from day one he has been clear that MCAS results are not a teacher evaluation tool. “It’s just another source of information we have to help with the achievement of our students.”