State reports local schools in need of improvement
Published on October 1st, 2008
STONEHAM, MA - "Teaching to the test" has become a catch phrase in the world of Massachusetts education over the past 15 years, and school districts like Stoneham face a daily challenge of keeping curriculum fresh, exciting, and inspiring, while making sure students score high on the all-important MCAS standardized test each year.
At last week's School Committee meeting, school superintendent Dr. Les Olson advised that the state has designated a few aspects of the Stoneham public school system as in need of improvement or worse.
"The Middle School has been designated as a school in need of restructuring in mathematics," by the state, Olson said. In addition, the Central School math program and Middle School, Central School and Colonial Park English/Language Arts programs have been deemed as in need of improvement, a higher ranking than the restructuring designation.
"It's not anything we didn't know," he said about the Middle School math curriculum, which had been deemed in need of improvement for the past couple of years, and assured committee members that work is ongoing to raise the current status.
Such designations do not mean that Stoneham is not doing a good job teaching math and English/language arts to Stoneham students. However, the state and federal governments measure progress on a very narrow basis, such as performance on one standardized test each year.
"It's almost becoming a de facto nature of the state and federal laws that pretty soon every school will be designated as not meeting state and federal standards."
In order to categorize districts, the government uses a yardstick called adequate yearly progress, which means that improvement is always sought. Even if all students in a district score in the proficient area on MCAS, which is the goal, a district could still be found lacking if there has been no higher climb in categories in two years.
"Standing still is not adequate."
A full action plan to resolve the areas that the state believes are in need of improvement has not yet been developed, however, an initial meeting between Olson, principals and program supervisors yielded one major change in curriculum.
"To provide better coverage of curriculum standards, we realize we need to change our focus," Olson explained. Instead of focusing on what and how teachers are teaching, as done in the past when looking at areas to improve for aligning curriculum to government standards, Stoneham will now concentrate on the flip side of the equation: how are students understanding the concept of what is being taught and how are they demonstrating mastery of it, particularly on the MCAS exam.
"It's a subtle change, perhaps, but we think a key one," Olson said.
How to do this without losing the richness of the curriculum in Stoneham schools is the hurdle administrators and teachers face. Teachers want to avoid 'teaching to the test', but at the same time cannot ignore the standards, and therefore must find a balance between the two.
"If the standards are there, and they are good, sound curriculum standards, and students are being expected to master them, we have to make everyone aware of what those standards are."
Exactly how the schools will examine how well students are mastering subjects prior to taking MCAS still must be worked out.
Committee member Marc Grimaldi suggested keeping a rich curriculum in place, but setting aside separate pockets of time to teach students how to take the MCAS test, and about the types, quantity and expectations of questions asked.
Olson reiterated that overall Stoneham students do perform well on MCAS, but the fact that its status has not continued to rise, i.e. that improvement has been stagnant, (even if it is already in good shape) has caught the attention of the state.
MCAS testing is just one ranking of student performance, Olson said. "Unfortunately, it's the one that gets the most publicity...It's the one we have to pay attention to."
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