A View from the Bottom: What Happens When Your School System Ranks Last?

Abstract

When the superintendent of the Lawrence Public Schools decreed that test scores must be raised, the district added two time-consuming test- preparation programs to the curriculum. Mr. Vogler and Mr. Kennedy recall the difficult choices that their school had to make in order to accommodate the additions to an already-crowded schedule. WITH FEAR, apprehension, and foreboding, we opened our morning papers. Were they in there? Sure enough, the test results were right on the front page. As we quickly scanned the results for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) for 2000, our fears were confirmed. Once again, our school system was ranked last in the state, the third year in a row. Today, one of the most controversial issues in public education is the use of standardized tests as the focal point of state accountability programs, specifically, the use of state-mandated, high-stakes tests. The most vocal opposition to such testing programs has focused not so much on the tests themselves but on the attached to the outcomes. These high stakes sometimes involve incentives, such as cash awards to schools or individual teachers whose students demonstrate high levels of performance. But they have also taken the form of the public reporting of test results, the prevention of grade-to-grade promotion and high school graduation, and the possible takeover of schools that continue to demonstrate low levels of student performance. Although the debate surrounding high-stakes testing programs continues, the reality for most public school administrators, teachers, parents, and students is that the tests are here, they do count, in some cases students must pass them to graduate, and in almost all cases the quality of a school system will be judged by how well students perform on the tests. In public school systems where students perform well, the results will be taken as proof that the schools are providing a high- quality education. But what happens to a public school system in which the students don't perform well on these tests? Are these schools not providing a high-quality education? What is a poor-performing school system to do? As a teacher and a former teacher in the Lawrence (Mass.) Public Schools, we have the dubious distinction of having been part of a school system that ranked either last or second to last in terms of student performance on the MCAS in every year since the test scores were reported to the public. But before we discuss the programs implemented to improve the students' MCAS scores, we'd like to offer some background on the community, the student population, and the Lawrence public school system. * Although there is a strong regional economy, Lawrence is the 23rd- poorest community in the country with a population of more than 50,000. Its unemployment rate in 2001 was 8.8%. * The most recent waves of immigrants to the city are from the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Southeast Asia. * Forty-three percent of adults in Lawrence did not finish high school. * Eighty percent of parents in Lawrence identify a language other than English as the primary language used in their homes. * The pre-K-12 student population of 12,562 is 86% minority (primarily Latino); the district has the highest percentage of Latino students in the state. * Seventy-seven percent of the students enrolled in the Lawrence Public Schools live below the federal poverty level. * About one-third of the students receive some form of federal assistance. * Almost one-third of the students drop out. * The Lawrence Public Schools have had five superintendents in the last eight years (two were interim). * Lawrence has the only nonaccredited public high school in Massachusetts. Our current superinten-dent, a former administrator in the New York City schools, is quite familiar with high-stakes testing programs (the Regents Examinations). …