Amid the bleak data on high school seniors’ college readiness (or lack thereof) is a bright spot: more than 70 high schools across Massachusetts are closing the college success achievement gap among underserved and low-income students through a STEM/College Success partnership with Mass Insight Education. The program is designed to dramatically increase student participation and…
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The Jefferson Parish Public School System in Louisiana has made dramatic improvements over the last two to three years on nearly every metric analyzed, with students and schools demonstrating significantly higher performance than three years ago, according to a new report prepared by GCR Inc. for the Jefferson Community Foundation and the Jefferson Business Council.…
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We have to think more creatively about school turnaround. As described in the Center for School Turnaround’s new handbook, a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t always the best support model, and many State Education Agencies (SEA’s) are starting to develop a less traditional support structure for low-performing schools. One such strategy is a statewide turnaround network, ranging…
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“You’re getting a taste of what’s to come – the work, what teachers expect of you, and the amount of dedication and study you have to put into your work.” That’s how Yolanda Bueso, a sophomore at Grace King High School in Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish Public School System (JPPSS), described her experience this year in…
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After our last 6+ inch snowfall, I saw a neighbor of mine cleaning off her car with her jacket sleeves. I offered her my car ice scraper, and she declined, saying she had one somewhere in her car but didn’t know where, and she was fine just continuing on the way she was. This past…
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“I have yet to find any schools making more progress by challenging their students less.” That’s the closing line on Jay Mathews’ piece last week that challenges schools to in turn challenge their average and below-average students. Encourage all students to enroll in an AP course and show them that someone believes they are capable of…
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Earlier this month, College Board released the 10th Annual AP Report to the Nation. Overall, it was good news: the total number of students taking an AP exam almost doubled over the past decade, and the number of low-income students taking the exams almost quadrupled in the same time period. By the numbers, this sounds…
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In this post, Alison Segal and Larry Stanton (Senior Field Consultant at Mass Insight Education) reflect on the past two years of Mass Insight’s State Development Network. ——- Mass Insight began working with state education agencies (SEAs) on school turnaround in 2011, hosting occasional conference calls with interested SEA turnaround leaders. In 2012, we formalized…
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As we close out the year, it seems timely to introduce our latest publication out of the State Development Network (SDN), Setting the Bar for School Turnaround: How ambitious, public goals can drive school turnaround. As you may remember from our Bold and the Bureaucrat report, we identified ten “power levers” that many state education agencies (SEAs)…
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Five years ago, a Mass Insight Education publication entitled The Turnaround Challenge inspired a group of educators in DC to come together to better support their schools and students in an initiative dubbed DC Collaborative for Change (DC3). Today, nine DC public schools are engaged in the group, which is essentially a professional learning community, focusing on…
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In light of the elections that took place across the country last week, former Boston superintendent Michael Contompasis penned an op-ed to the Boston Globe, advising the new mayor that the way to “fix what’s broken is not to apply a Band-Aid to a system that’s not working for all students. It is to reimagine the system itself.” We…
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Almost three years ago to the day, former New York City Chancellor of Education Joel Klein said of his tenure, “We should have been bolder.” This past weekend, in anticipation of today’s election for a new mayor of Boston (the first new mayor in two decades), former Boston Public Schools Superintendent Michael Contompasis, currently a…
read moreOur blog features commentary and insights from our staff and, from time-to-time, special guest bloggers about school improvement practices and policies that are changing student lives and changing schools. Contact jschneider@massinsight.org for more information.