DESE Votes to Put Lawrence Public Schools Under State Receivership

On November 29, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) voted 10-1 to designate the Lawrence Public schools a Level 5, or chronically under-performing, district. This vote allows DESE Commissioner Mitchell Chester to appoint a receiver who would have all of the powers of both the superintendent and the school committee and would report directly to the commissioner. The receiver can be either an individual or a non-profit group with a proven record of success in improving the academic achievement of schools or districts deemed to be low-performing and/or in improving educational outcomes for disadvantaged students.The receiver is expected to be named within the next two weeks and will assume authority over the Lawrence Public Schools beginning in January 2012 with a Level 5 Plan to be implemented during the 2012-13 school year.

This decision comes after many years of poor performance in Lawrence, a district with five Level 4 schools, on ed-related indicators like  attendance rates, MCAS exam results and the dropout and graduation rates. In 2009-10, the dropout rate in Lawrence was 9.4% which translated into approximately 311 dropouts that year; the graduation rate for the same school year was 46.7% which is the lowest among any non-charter district in Massachusetts. The graduation rate at some Lawrence high schools is far worse than the average at the district level; the graduation rate for the High School Learning Center is 2009-10 was 2.5%. Below is a table listing the dropout rates for Lawrence from 2004-05 through 2008-09.

04-05	05-06	06-07	07-08	08-09
14.5	10.3	14.8	12.9	10.2

Another contributing factor to the poor academic performance in Lawrence may include attendance. Health and Human Services High School, for instance, has an average daily attendance rate of just 87.9% (compared to 92.8% for the district and 94.6% for the state). Students at the Humanities and Leadership Development High School averaged an astonishing 17.2 school absences in 2009-10 (the average for the state of Massachusetts was 9.3). Performance on standardized tests (MCAS) were also salient in the state's decision to intervene in Lawrence. At Arlington Middle School, for example, only 2% of 8th grade students achieved proficient or higher on the 2011 math MCAS while 68% received a "Warning/Failing" mark.

Below is a table listing the percentage of students achieving proficient or above on the 2011 MCAS results by grade for the Lawrence Public Schools.

	English	Math
3	36	45
4	35	30
5	37	30
6	36	25
7	47	19
8	50	21
10	48	31
All	41	28

Lawrence was voted into receivership not only based on this year's test results, but also based on the school district's test results (among other factors) over time.

Here are the percentage of students achieving proficiency or better on the math portion of the MCAS from 2008-2011.

	2008	2009	2010	2011
3	44	37	49	45
4	33	29	34	30
5	16	25	24	30
6	21	19	29	25
7	13	15	22	19
8	19	14	20	21
10	30	30	36	31

Below are the same results for Reading/English Language Arts portion of the exam.

	2008	2009	2010	2011
3	25	34	40	36
4	24	27	34	35
5	22	32	32	37
6	32	33	42	36
7	38	36	46	47
8	47	49	50	50
10	37	46	48	48

See here for student and teacher reaction to the state takeover of Lawrence schools.


*All Data Taken From: www.doe.mass.edu