Mass Insight’s current initiatives grew out of research and analysis we conducted in 2003-5, as Massachusetts’ standards-based reform drive shifted from its first phase – getting all students to passing-level (eighth-grade) achievement on the state’s MCAS tests in Math and English/Language Arts – into its second, which is focused on bringing all students to college-level readiness. Our 2005 report, The Unfinished Agenda, outlined our findings and recommendations, which revolved around three primary goals. The goals were formulated for Massachusetts, but stand as guidelines for any state moving through the same transition in its work on school reform.

1. Raise the Ceiling of Achievement: achieve world-class standards for learning, particularly in math and science
2. Raise the Floor of Achievement: bring all students to proficiency and college readiness
3. No Excuses for Failing Schools: turn around the nation’s worst performing schools and create exemplars for reform in the process

The two initiatives that define our current work embody these goals. They are:

MASSACHUSETTS MATH & SCIENCE INITIATIVE

Following a highly competitive application process, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in partnership with Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, succeeded in securing one of the first-ever awarded grants from the National Math and Science Initiative, Inc (NMSI) for the Massachusetts Math & Science Initiative (MMSI), an Advanced Placement® training and incentive program. NMSI is an innovative non-profit organization created to facilitate the national scale-up of programs that have a demonstrated impact on math and science education in the United States . Initial funding for NMSI comes from ExxonMobil. Massachusetts was one of six states to receive the grant, which will provide $13.2 million through 2014 (to be matched by local funding) to help fund a state wide Advanced Placement® training and incentive program.

The goal of the initiative is to increase student enrollment in mathematics, science and English AP courses, and to improve student performance as reflected by a substantial increase in the number of qualifying scores (3, 4 or 5 on a 1 to 5 scale). The program will provide extensive training for AP and Pre-AP teachers, establish AP lead teachers, demand additional student preparation, and provide performance-based financial incentives for students and teachers. Under the leadership of Morton Orlov II, who is the President of the AP Training and Incentive Program in Massachusetts, cohorts of high schools are being selected annually to join the program, with the goal of implementing the initiative in 100 high schools by 2013 through the integration of Regional Development Centers.

SCHOOL TURNAROUND STRATEGIES

The Turnaround Challenge, Mass Insight’s 2007 Gates-funded report, reveals the urgent need in the education reform community for new strategies to turn around the nation’s poorest-performing schools. The report was downloaded more than 100,000 times in the year after its publication. The Turnaround Challenge has clearly struck a chord.

Our continued work will produce organizational strategies, work plans, and manuals for states, large urban districts, and outside funding partners to turn around low-performing schools through a new system of turnaround zones with improved operating conditions, lead turnaround partners, and other supports. The new system, an operationalization of the recommendations from The Turnaround Challenge report, will create models that use clusters of turnaround schools as an entry point for reinventing the way districts, states, and external partners organize their work. The initiative, which has received startup funding from the Carnegie Corporation with matching support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will establish “partnership zones” in three states in 2009-2013 to serve as proof-points for these school turnaround and district redesign strategies.

There is some urgency in this work – not only on behalf of struggling students in struggling schools, but because of the two-year window of opportunity in front of us to develop effective turnaround policies, implementation strategies, and new capacity before a reauthorized NCLB starts channeling significant federal funding into school intervention. The lessons from the experience of NCLB’s expansion of support for failing students (through Supplemental Educational Services) are clear. In the absence of good policy models, promising exemplars, and informed partners, federally-driven scale-up of support for failing schools will result in largely ineffective, marginal-impact reform.