Dr. Susan F. Lusi testifies in favor of bills H.555 and H.3632

H.555 and H.3632 establish a process that allows school districts or the commissioner to create Partnership Zones and, through a fair and transparent process as proposed in the legislation with several checks and balances, for school districts or the commissioner to change the conditions that schools operate under.  Neither bill proposes a one size fits all solution to improve schools.  Rather the bills encourage, through a process of community engagement, including in H.3632 a so-called parent trigger, a process for developing the purpose and goals of a zone, working through a memorandum of understanding to establish the management and operation of the zone, and any changes to collective bargaining agreements that might be necessary to respond to local conditions, including a process for resolving disputes over amendments to the local CBA. 

Although certain conditions may make it necessary to grant an independent board of directors the authority to manage and operate a set of schools in a zone as is called for in these bills, our experience in other states is that school committees, working closely with the community, teachers, superintendent, and the state education agency, can operate and manage zones well, especially when the zone is able to get the conditions right for improvement.  In our opinion, it is less about the type of governance, and more about changing conditions that put students first.   

To share just one example from Mass Insight’s recent work, since 2015 we have partnered with the school district in Aurora, CO on the development and implementation of a district-led Transformation Zone to help turn around the lowest performing high school in Colorado and improve four neighborhood feeder schools.  By working closely with district leaders, teachers, members of the community, and state officials to create a zone under Colorado’s innovation school law, we were able to help Aurora to address the root causes of low performances in the five schools, change the conditions holding schools back, provide more targeted support from the district, and adopt greater local control.  Aurora’s Central High school has moved out of the state’s lowest accountability category and four of the five schools have seen gains in student achievement.  I have included a copy of our Aurora case study in my testimony for your review. 

Finally, I wanted to very briefly mention work we are doing here in Boston with the community-based Grove Hall Alliance (GHA) as an example of how school innovation can develop more organically.  Community and five school leaders in the Grove Hall neighborhood are developing a grass-roots strategy designed to provide neighborhood students with a K-12 pathway of high performing schools.  This is exciting work that is still in the incubation stage.  But it has great potential as a school improvement model and I have attached a recent Boston Globe editorial about this project to my testimony.   

Thank you for the opportunity to testify in favor of H.555 and H.3632.  I would be happy to answer any questions you may have and to work with the Committee and Secretary Peyser on advancing this legislation.