Rochester
Democrat & Chronicle
Op-Ed Contributor
Check out ‘Pilot’ schools that steer Boston pupils to achieve
By Mary Doyle
January 20, 2006
A new report by
the Center for Collaborative Education in Boston provides hope for school
districts, such as Rochester, that face low graduation rates, high poverty
levels and the departure from the district of families concerned about
the quality of urban education.
Adam Urbanski,
president of the Rochester Teachers Association, participated Wednesday
in a panel discussion in Boston on the report on the "Pilot"
schools in the Boston Public Schools system.
In Boston small
and autonomous Pilot schools have been turning the statistics around
and creating enthusiasm for the Boston Public Schools.
As a Rochester
city schools graduate, former teacher and educational researcher, I
find this report to be very good news.
In Rochester, the
graduation rate has hovered around 50 percent for several years.
Only 17 of 55 elementary
and secondary schools are high-performing, according to the Rochester
School District. Meanwhile, the RSD reports that about 12 percent of
Rochester school-age children do not attend district schools.
Private and parochial
schools are the biggest drain: 4,675 Rochester children are enrolled
in these schools rather than the RSD.
The Boston Public
School system has faced similar issues. In response, it has created
its own school choice option: Pilot schools were opened in 1995 as a
result of a unique partnership among the Boston mayor, school committee,
superintendent and teachers union. According to the Boston Teachers
Union contract, Pilot schools were created to be models of educational
excellence and reform within the district.
Pilot schools are
part of the Boston Public School system, but have autonomy over five
key areas: budget, staffing, governance, schedule and curriculum and
assessment.
For example, Pilot
schools receive a lump sum per-pupil budget, equal to other BPS schools,
to spend at their discretion. Pilot schools are also small: Only two
Pilot schools enroll more than 500 students.
While overall BPS
enrollment has been declining, Pilot school enrollment has increased
over the last decade from serving 1.5 percent of BPS enrollment in five
schools to serving 10 percent or 5,900 students, in 19 schools. Pilot
high school demographics are generally representative of BPS in terms
of economic status, race/ethnicity and mainstream special education
students.
The new report,
"Progress and Promise: Results from the Boston Pilot Schools,"
released Wednesday by the Center for Collaborative Education in Boston,
shows that Pilot school students are performing significantly better
than BPS averages across every indicator of student performance and
engagement.
Pilot school students
score substantially higher than the district average on the state standardized
test, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, and have higher
college matriculation rates.
In Massachusetts,
students must pass the 10th-grade MCAS in order to graduate high school.
Results show 80 percent of Pilot school students passing, in contrast
to 59 percent of other BPS students passing. (The comparisons do not
include results from the three BPS schools that are selective in admitting
students.) The proportion of Pilot school students scoring at the "advanced/proficient"
levels is twice that of other BPS students.
Pilot schools have
higher attendance rates, lower suspension rates and lower in-district
and out-of-district transfer rates compared with other BPS schools.
In Pilot high schools, for example, the attendance rate is 95 percent,
compared with 89 percent for other BPS schools.
Pilot schools are
able to use their five autonomies to improve school conditions and student
achievement. Pilot schools have low class sizes; long instructional
periods; significant collaborative faculty planning time; low overall
student-teacher loads in secondary schools; personalized school cultures;
and graduation by competency rather than test scores and course completion
alone. Control over resources has led to increased teacher, administrator,
family and student engagement in their schools.
The autonomy and
smallness found in Boston's Pilot schools are critical in improving
student achievement. These conditions can be replicated. Partnerships
between districts and teacher unions can lead to the creation of improved
urban public schools, as seen in the Pilot schools.
The success of
schools and students, and the success of cities such as Rochester, depend
on such innovative reforms.
Mary Doyle,
a 1999 graduate of East High School, now is a Pilot Schools Program
developer at the Center for Collaborative Education in Boston.
