By Paul Tuthill
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Springfield, MA – Efforts are underway to try and fix the worst public schools in Massachusetts. The focus of this ambitious education reform effort is 35 schools where the students' scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams put them in bottom four percent statewide..WAMC's Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill reports .
Massachusetts has struggled as most states have to turn around chronically failing schools..but Massachusetts Education Secretary Paul Reville says he is encouraged that this latest reform effort will succeed...
The turnaround plans include longer days at some of the schools. There are tutoring and mentoring programs. Several of the schools have received multi-million dollar grants from the state. The state's latest education reform law, passed last year, gave superintendents new powers over personnel. As a result, there have been staff shake ups, with new principals hired and teachers replaced.
Reville says the first concrete sight of whether the schools are on the right course will be the results from the MCAS exams that were given two weeks ago
All 35 schools are under a deadline to produce dramatic improvements in student test scores..in two years or face a potential state takeover .
Rather than a one size fits all approach, each of the 35 schools was permitted to develop an individual turn around plan..In Springfield, which has ten of the under performing schools, the public school department's communications director, Azell Cavaan, says the reform plans were put together by committees that included educators, parents and community members.. Each of the ten schools has taken slightly different approaches, but each plan has similiarities
At Springfield's Kiley Middle School, the school day was extended by 45 minutes
Cavaan says Springfield's school leadership is optimistic the failing schools can be saved..
An expedited arbitration process was used in several of the districts to settle how teachers would be compensated for the additional time they would need to put in under the reform plans
The head of the Springfield teachers union, Tim Collins says teachers need to be part of the education reform planning from the outset .
There was concern that enrollment would drop at the underperforming schools after they were tagged as such last year, but state education department officials say the opposite has occurred.