New England Public Radio

Southbridge To Discuss State Takeover Proposal For Schools

Residents and teachers in Southbridge, Massachusetts, will get a chance Monday to sound off on a proposal to place their school district under state receivership.

Massachusetts Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester says the Southbridge school district has gone through seven superintendents since 2011, and that academic performance and graduation rates have remained low despite being under state watch for a dozen years.

But Scott Lazo, who heads a newly elected school committee, blames the state and former school committee members for the district’s troubles. Lazo says he will ask the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to delay a takeover vote while his committee and a new superintendent, who is set to be appointed Tuesday, put a turnaround plan into action.

“Give us one year. And I will show you, as the chairman of the school committee and the support staff that we have, that we can get this job done quicker than the state can with a consultant,” says Lazo.

The state board is likely to vote on Southbridge late next month.

Monday’s public hearing is at the Cole Avenue Auditorium in Southbridge from 4:30-7:30 p.m.

 

Mass. Graduation Rate Increases In 2015

Graduation rates continued to improve in Massachusetts last school year. About 87 percent of students graduated in four years, an increase of just over a percentage point from the previous year. On Thursday, Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester also touted a decrease in the dropout rate to 1.9 percent. He says a total of 5,346 students dropped out last year.

“That is 5,346 students too many, but that is a huge improvement over where we were ten years ago,” Chester says.

Several western Massachusetts districts saw improvements. 66 percent of Springfield students graduated last year, up by five percentage points over 2014. Holyoke’s graduation rate moved up nearly 2 percentage points to 62 percent.

Massachusetts’ data on graduation and dropout rates

Receiver Named To Turnaround Holyoke, Mass., School District

Steve Zrike, a school superintendent from eastern Massachusetts will be the receiver for Holyoke’s under-performing district starting July 6th. It’s been just over a month since state education officials voted to take over the city’s schools.

State Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester introduced Zrike before a small group of elected officials and his family at Holyoke High School. Zrike, who grew up in a bilingual household,  started his introduction in Spanish and then continued, in English.

“I do not come to Holyoke with any preconceived notions of what should be done,” Zrike says. “I promise to listen and to learn from you, and especially from the recently constituted local stakeholders group, in order to assess what is and what is not working.”

Like outgoing Holyoke school superintendent Sergio Paez, Zrike has a doctorate in education from Harvard. He’s credited with leading turn-around efforts at schools in Boston and Chicago. In suburban Wakefield, Mass., where he’s finishing up the school year as superintendent, Zrike launched a ‘parent university’ to provide families with workshops on a range of topics. He  echoes what countless others have said over and over during the state take over process– families are necessary to student learning in Holyoke.

“I think it’s imperative on myself and my team, to really engage our families,”Zrike says.  He says it helps that he speaks Spanish and can communicate with families, “but it’s got to be more than that. It’s got to be a concerted effort and a strategy to get our families and our community to be part of this turn around process in Holyoke.”

Zrike offers no details yet on his plan, and when asked if an outside company could still be hired to assist in his efforts, he didn’t completely rule out the possibility.

Zrike’s appointment was kept well under wraps. Many of those stakeholders didn’t even know a decision has been made until an hour before Zrike held his first press conference, including Holyoke School Committee member John Brunelle, who was opposed to state receivership. Over the last almost couple of years, Brunelle says Superintendent  Paez had been blunt about the drastic changes needed, to avoid receivership, and the district under Paez was was on the right track.

“The reality is we should have started those changes 12 years ago. But here we are and we have to deal with it,” Brunelle says. And he added, “So we’re going to invite them in, but want to do whatever we can to get them out as soon as possible. ”

Zrike’s job as receiver was announced just a day after almost 280 students graduated from Holyoke High School, and Brunelle eagerly pointed out, about 25 percent of them earned high honors and that numerous students were going on to college, and some to ivy league schools.

 

Finding Evidence of Tampering, Mass. Invalidates Test Scores At A Springfield Elementary School

Some Springfield parents learned this week that the state invalidated three years of their kids’ elementary school test results. This comes after an investigation that found test booklets were tampered with to improve scores.

In October of last year, a Springfield TV station reported on what it called “extraordinary” test scores at Dryden School, which the principal at the time called “unbelievable.”

They were tops or near tops in Massachusetts. Dryden’s test scores caught the attention of Massachusetts officials, who found large increases in student achievement from one year to the next.

In a letter to Springfield Superintendent Daniel Warwick in June, Massachusetts education commissioner Mitchell Chester said the state found evidence of tampering, including that Dryden test booklets contained “widespread” eraser marks, with incorrect answers changed to correct ones. Chester said there’s no evidence students cheated, and called the investigation “ongoing.”

In a statement, Superintendent Warwick says he has “little information” about that investigation. But he says he’s “always concerned with ensuring [the district’s] strict testing protocols are observed.”

According to the state, this is the ninth time since 2002 that it’s invalidated test scores.

Evaluations Deem Most Massachusetts Teachers ‘Proficient,’ but Boston Union Alleges Racial Bias

The majority of Massachusetts teachers are capable in their jobs, according to the first results of the state’s new educator evaluation system. The results – released today – show 85 percent of state elementary and secondary teachers are “proficient,” and another 7 percent “exemplary.” The rest were found unsatisfactory or in need of improvement.  Springfield superintendent Dan Warwick says school districts will work with teachers who receive low marks.

“This is not intended to be a ‘gotcha,’ it’s intended to be a system to improve the performance so we have better outcomes for kids,” says Warwick. “So we’re trying to approach it in a positive, instructive manner to allay those fears.”

Starting next year, student achievement results will be part of teacher evaluations. Tim Collins is the President of the Springfield teachers’ union. He says schools haven’t been given sufficient time and resources to implement the new evaluation system.

In Boston, the teachers’ union says the state’s new evaluation system is racially biased. 

Boston union officials say black teachers in Boston are 5 times more likely than white teachers to get an unsatisfactory evaluation – which could eventually lead to termination, and Hispanic teachers are more than twice as likely to get a poor rating.

Richard Stutman, the president of the union, says school officials and policy makers should be very concerned.

“There is no trust or confidence in the evaluations,” says Stutman, “but I think the larger issue is why would the school department rely on a system that is race biased.”

“I think the evaluation we’ve set up in and of itself has no bias in it,” says Mitchell Chester, Massachusetts’ Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education.

“The evaluation is set up on standards of practice that have been widely endorsed by educators across the commonwealth as well as across the nation,” Chester says.

The evaluations are conducted by principals and other administrators.

This has been a controversial issue in Massachusetts. Boston schools adopted the new evaluation system last school year after tense negotiations with the union that almost had to be settled by a state mediator.

 

 

New England Public Radio’s Sarah Birnbaum and Henry Epp contributed to this story.