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High quality urban education is fundamental to Metro Boston’s future.  The current inequality in educational outcomes across the region disproportionately affects minority and low income students, and discourages middle class families of all races from living in urban communities.  Greater equity in education quality across the region means that fewer students would attend underperforming schools, more graduates would be ready to participate in the region’s high-skill economy, and families would have more choices about where to live.  Achieving this vision will require excellent teachers, capable administrators, supportive guidance, engaged families, and adequate funding.  

It is critical to build capacity within public schools through training and professional development for teachers and administrators.  The private sector has a critical role to play, through sustained partnerships that provide staff support and access to resources.  Schools also need a more graduated and responsive system of support, administrative flexibility, and state intervention that will help to reverse negative trends for schools before they are officially failing, and continuing to support them through their improvement.  Measuring student performance is necessary to document success, apply responsive curriculum, and ensure accountability, but the current system of testing fails to accomplish the objectives that a more integrated assessment method might.  

Parental engagement is a fundamental component of success, especially for low income students, students with special needs, or English language learners, all of whom face particular challenges in the classroom.  Strong parental engagement efforts can also benefit parents and families, building community fabric and increasing access to health and social services that are a precondition for educational attainment.  Finally, it is important to recognize the importance of school choice opportunities, so long as those opportunities are available to all, and do not exacerbate existing problems by drawing resources away from public school districts.  

The recommendations described here are not intended to be a comprehensive strategy for educational reform in Massachusetts.  Such efforts are already underway, both through the Governor’s Readiness Project and various private sector initiatives.  Most importantly, many urban school districts are already making strides toward improvement.  As a regional planning agency, MAPC does not possess the expertise to develop an exhaustive and definitive set of recommendations about public education.  However, MetroFuture would be deficient if it lacked some attention to the critical importance of education.  MAPC staff consulted with allied organizations, reviewed the recommendations of other recent efforts, and assessed the initial findings of the Readiness Project to identify approaches consistent with those elsewhere in the plan: develop capacity, strengthen partnerships, use data to guide policy, and address issues within a regional context.  

There are many issues that this section does not directly address: how to balance the need for assessment and monitoring in so called “core” subject like reading and math with the value of enrichment courses such as music, arts, physical education that are often eliminated or underfunded in favor of preparation for high-stakes testing; how to improve science, technology, engineering, and math performance critical to tomorrow’s economy; how to best support students with special education needs; and others.  These are critical challenges, and may benefit from regional solutions; MAPC will continue to work with allied organizations to evaluate potential solutions and advance those consistent with MetroFuture’s goals and objectives.  It should also be noted that while the recommendations focus on urban school districts, not all urban schools are underperforming, and not all suburban schools are trouble-free.  The application of these recommendations need not be limited to urban communities.

1)    Build teacher and school capacity through trainings and partnerships
Building high quality schools requires building capacity of skilled teachers and effective administrators.  Building this capacity will require investments from both the public and private sector in partnerships, training, and support.  

High quality teachers are a prerequisite for educational success, especially in urban schools where many students come from disadvantaged backgrounds.  Teacher recruitment, training, and ongoing professional development must be addressed in a comprehensive way.  Loan forgiveness, mentoring, and financial incentives can help attract skilled educators.  Teacher residency programs that include all three of these elements have demonstrated considerable success and should be expanded, perhaps on a regional level where they would benefit from economies of scale.  

Ongoing training and professional development are necessary for all staff to sustain and increase their effectiveness, particularly in subjects such as math, science, and technology and strategies for special education students and English language learners.  Such training can be provided through the modest expansion of pre-existing summer content institutes the Commonwealth already offers, and creation of additional state-funded opportunities for professional development.  For staff in underperforming schools, professional development plans should be coordinated with the school-wide improvement plan.  Performance pay can also help to retain the most effective teachers, and is addressed in the next recommendation.  

Leadership plays a crucial role in ensuring school performance, but underperforming schools have a great deal of trouble attracting and retaining qualified and talented administrators.  Leadership development programs and training are needed to build a strong corps of administrators; the greatest need for such programs will be with younger administrators, administrators in low-performing schools, and veteran administrators up for re-certification.  Defining the content of leadership training and breaking it into a small number of core components are critical steps toward improving the work of the next generation of school leaders. The Commonwealth School Leadership Project is one program designed to create high-quality alternatives to traditional administrative training programs and generate a pipeline of aspiring administrators.  

Partnerships with community members, nonprofits, and local businesses can provide deeper links to the community and additional resources to schools that need them.  These partnerships can take the form of internships, work study programs for students, or formal arrangements where the partner is integrated into the administration.  Metro Boston has a rich and underutilized supply of potential school partners such as colleges and universities that can provide expertise, professional development, and even instruction to students; or businesses who can be part of school-to-work experiences.  Examples of recent successes include the Longwood Medical Association’s partnership with the John D. O’Bryant High School to expose students to careers in health and science.  In the School Support Organization model, an external partner works alongside the school administration to identify key issues and collaboratively develop solutions.  An expansion of this approach creates social partnerships to provide additional social and counseling services to students and schools in need of extra support.

1.a    The Department of Education should establish regional or statewide teacher residency programs, focused in urban communities and underperforming schools

1.b    The Department of Education should expand pre-existing summer content institutes it already offers to teachers and offer similar programs during the school year

1.c    The Department of Education should establish a pilot program for School Support Organizations in underperforming districts

2)    Modernize school administration and intervention strategies
Achieving the goal of high-quality urban schools will require new models of administration and greater support for responsive solutions.  The recommendations here include increased administrative flexibility, greater use of assessment data to guide interventions, and a graduated and supportive intervention process in struggling schools.  

Administrators and teachers must have the flexibility and incentives necessary to improve student achievement.  In this age of accountability, administrators now have the incentive to apply innovative solutions, but their flexibility is often limited by bureaucratic obstacles and restrictive labor agreements.  Similarly, staff can benefit from leadership opportunities and salary structures that reward high performance.  Cooperation among administrators, labor, municipal officials, and state agencies can support polices that allow administrators to make personnel decisions based on merit, while still protecting teachers from arbitrary and capricious staffing decisions.  Differential pay structures help to attract and retain talented teachers and create incentives for high performance.  Options for differential pay might include incentives for teachers who:

• Work in underperforming schools,
• Demonstrate progress in student achievement,
• Take on additional responsibilities,
• Expand their knowledge through extra professional development, or
• Teach in high-need areas such as science and math.  

The Patrick Administration also favors incentive pay as a method for encouraging the best teachers to work with the students most in need of high-quality instruction.   Administrators should also have the authority to mandate professional development to improve deficiencies in underperforming teachers and administrators.

Administrative flexibility, financial resource, and state intervention can also be more effectively graduated to reverse negative trends for struggling schools, and support those schools that are improving.  Currently, administrators in struggling schools are given little extra support or flexibility until the school has been underperforming for multiple years, at which point the intervention and resources are dramatic.  This “all or nothing” approach does not provide school leaders with the support or resources they need to turn around a school on the wrong track until it is already failing.  Then, as performance improves, schools see those supports drop away, threatening the early successes and providing little incentive to improve.  

A graduated system of intervention, innovations, and support would do more to prevent school failure, and to encourage success.  The state could define this process through a menu of credible, clearly defined options from which districts would select those most appropriate to their needs. Such a program would recognize the different needs across schools and districts, while ensuring that schools are using innovations with a record of success.  Such a system might include increasing flexibility for administrators in struggling schools, access to technical assistance, support for implementation of a state-defined default curriculum, targeted funding to support specific improvements, and continued support for schools that have come “back from the brink.”  

Interventions, administrative decisions, and individual teaching strategies will be most effective when they are informed by useful data about student performance.  Teachers currently have the ability to analyze test scores of students they taught the prior year, but the existing diagnostic tools do little to identify at-risk students, assess student improvement over time, provide feedback the effectiveness of specific techniques, or provide details on students at either end of the performance spectrum.  MCAS data measures knowledge against curriculum frameworks, but not against progressive critical thinking and knowledge base.

“Formative assessment systems” involve multiple shorter, computer-adaptive tests that help teachers evaluate a student’s current progress; while “value added” testing provides data on how much one student’s (or a class of students’) achievement changes over time.  This is a more precise measure of student progress than the state’s current system, which compares the scores of one cohort of fourth graders to the next cohort of fourth graders.  Rather than providing a “snapshot in time” on a single test, value-added analysis reveals an academic growth trajectory.

2.a    The Department of Education should acquire formative assessment systems for a small number of urban districts and support their use

2.b    The Department of Education should offer planning grants and technical assistance to support the implementation of differential pay structures

3)    Support students and engage their parents and communities
Parental involvement is a critical ingredient for student success.  In schools that demonstrate more success, parents are involved and expectations are communicated when the child first enters the school and consistently reinforced throughout the school year.  The connections between parents and schools can be strengthened by integrating health and social service outreach into parental engagement programs.  Schools do not necessarily need to become health or socials service agencies, but coordination of efforts between school, health, and social service departments might yield greater effectiveness and economies of scale.  Efforts to engage parents must also recognize the barriers they face.  Lack of English language skills currently prevents many parents from helping their children with schoolwork.  Greater access to English language classes will help those parents to be stronger resources for their children as well as more economically successful.  

A model for building more effective parental engagement might be found in the Family and Community Outreach program, a pilot program of the Boston Public Schools.  Family and community outreach coordinators work to create welcoming school environments and enhance parents’ ability to participate in their children’s educations.  Coordinators accomplish this by building relationship with parents, advocating for them and helping them advocate for themselves, helping to bridge language and cultural barriers, and other related activities.  

Schools can also help support students through longer school days.  The Expanding Learning Time to Support Success Initiative involves a longer school day for students to take additional classes, receive tutoring, or participate in extracurricular activities.

Extra support for students who are struggling or at risk of dropping out is also critical.  High dropout rates in urban schools affect individual social and financial well-being, as well as the region’s economic competitiveness.  School systems need early intervention strategies to find and support students before they drop out.  These strategies may include the more effective use of data (tracking absences and other risk factors) and greater access to tutoring, alternative schools, and other social service programs. 

3.a    The Department of Education should expand the Family and Community Outreach Coordinator (FCOC) project

3.b    The Legislature should provide funding for the Massachusetts Expanding Learning Time to Support Success Initiative

4)    Increase school choice in underperforming districts
Even as the region moves to increase the quality of public education for all students in underperforming schools, there may be benefits to increased school choice in urban districts.  Parents who are concerned about poorly performing schools may choose to move to suburban communities, exacerbating the region’s racial and economic segregation.  Additional school choices will help to retain those families while also providing opportunity for students from low income families with less ability to move out of urban areas.  

While an expansion of school choice models may provide benefits for participating students, it must be implemented carefully to ensure equitable access to charter or pilot schools and a fair funding system that does not cripple the sending district’s ability to improve performance.  

The region also needs to take steps to improve the durability of the METCO program, which allows more than 3,000 Boston students of color to be educated in suburban school districts.  This program has demonstrated considerable success, with high educational outcomes for participating students and increased integration in receiving school districts.  However, this program may face legal challenges, as similar race-based desegregation programs in Seattle and Louisville have already been struck down by the courts.  Alternatives to a race-based assignment might include some combination of socio-economic status, academic skill levels, race and ethnicity, language background, and neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics.