MA Ed Commissioner Approves Lawrence Turnaround Plan

On May 30, Massachusetts Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester approved Lawrence's Level 5 District Turnaround Plan. Part of the plan includes working with four outside partners (MATCH Foundation, Phoenix Foundation, the Community Group and Unlocking Potential) as well as providing over 1,300 hours of instruction annually by 2013 - 14. 

The full plan can be viewed here: http://www.doe.mass.edu/apa/sss/turnaround/level5/LawrencePlan.pdf


 Citation: http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=6863 

Highlands Cleaup 6/9/12

There will be a Highlands Cleanup this Saturday, June 9th from 10am - 2pm. Meeting location is the Ford School yard located at 49 Hollingsworth Street and cleaning supplies as well as refreshments will be provided.  Priority areas to clean are:

• Rockaway Street / Rock Avenue
• High Rock Street
• Hollingsworth Street
• Bayview Avenue
• Hamilton Avenue

Both children and adults are welcome to participate.

Lynn Tech Dropout Rate at a 10 Year Low

In 2010-11, Lynn Vocational Techical Institute's dropout rate was 4.6%, down 2.5 percentage points from the previous year. Tech's high school enrollment was 756 with a total dropout count of 35. Even better, Tech's current dropout rate puts it at a 10 year low for the school which has seen this statistic decline since 2007 - 08 when it was 8.8%.

Year	Dropout Rate
01 - 02	5.2%
02 - 03	4.8%
03 - 04	5.7%
04 - 05	7.7%
05 - 06	6.0%
06 - 07	7.7%
07 - 08	8.8%
08 - 09	7.5%
09 - 10	7.1%
10 - 11	4.6%

Citation: http://www.doe.mass.edu/infoservices/reports/dropout/

Lynn School Committee Meeting: 5/31/12

The next Lynn School Committee meeting  is scheduled for Thursday May 31, 2012 at 7pm (*open mike to be held after the Finance Sub-Committee meeting if time permits). SC meetings take place at 90 Commercial Street.

*To view the full agenda, see: http://www.ci.lynn.ma.us/clerk_meeting_notices_2012/10th%20Regular%20SC%20meeting%205-31-12.pdf

Salem Extended Day/Year School A Source of Contention

In the past month, the Saltonstall School in Salem, a Level 2 school that runs on both an extended day and year, has become a source of contention for the Salem School Committee. Saltonstall educates 358 Salem students in grades  K-8 for an extra hour on a 190-day calendar.  In 2011, 66% of students were proficient in English Language Arts while 50% were proficient in Math; the school outperformed state level proficiency rates on 7 out of 14 MCAS exams. Despite its success, some school committee members have proposed changing the extended year calendar from 190 days to 180 days,  a school calendar similar to that of the rest of the Salem public school district, and using the funds derived from this to support summer programs at other struggling Salem schools. At the May 21 Salem school committee meeting, it was decided that Saltonstall would run on an extended calendar for another year with the proposal that the school would not be the only one with this benefit after the 2012-13 school year.

http://z4m.cnhi.zope.net/debug/salemnews/local/x1968167102/Safe-for-a-year

Some MA Districts See High Percentage of Males Dropping Out

In 2010-11, Massachusetts had an overall annual dropout rate of 2.7%. The percentage of students dropping out, however, did vary at the district and individual school level as well as by subgroup. In particular, some districts/schools in the state are seeing a high percentage of male students dropping out each year. Below are the districts with a higher than 5% dropout rate for male students during school year 2010-11.

• Athol-Royalston: 6%
• Boston: 7.4%
• Boston Collegiate Charter: 8.2%
• Boston Day and Evening Charter: 43%
• Brockton: 6.6%
• Chelsea: 6.2%
• Chicopee: 5.6%
• Everett: 5.6%
• Fairhaven: 6.7%
• Fall River: 5.6%
• Fitchburg: 8.5%
• Gardner: 6.5%
• Gill-Montague: 9%
• Harwich: 10.5%
• Haverhill: 8.1%
• Holyoke: 10.2%
• Lawrence: 9.8%
• Littleton: 5.9%
• Lowell: 9.6%
• Lowell Middlesex Charter: 54.4%
• Lynn: 5.4%
• Martha's Vineyard Charter: 9.1%
• New Bedford: 9.1%
• North Adams: 6.7%
• Palmer: 8.4%
• Phoenix Charter: 38.2%
• Provincetown: 11.1%
• Ralph C Mahar: 7.4%
• Revere: 5.4%
• Saugus: 6.6%
• Southbridge: 5.4%
• Spirit of Knowledge Charter: 6.7%
• Springfield: 13.3%
• Taunton: 6.9%
• Waltham: 5.6%
• Ware: 6.5%
• Wareham: 6%
• Webster: 9.1%
• Westport: 5.8%
• West Springfield: 5.5%

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

A Look at Fall River's Special Education Population

Next in the series regarding the special education populations Massachusetts' ten urban districts, we'll look at Fall River. In the Fall River public school system, special education students currently make up 20.8% of the student population; FRPS has an enrollment of 9,973 with 2,078 students identified as 'special education.'

Demographics

Below is how the special ed population breaks down in terms of demographics.

Asian	2.4%
Black/African American	7.3%
Hispanic	22.2%
Multiracial	3.8%
Native American	0.2%
White	64.1%

Female	31.4%
Male	68.6%

Low Income	85%
Limited English Proficiency	4.8%
First Lang. Not English	19.6%

The disabilities with the highest student counts in Fall River are:

• Specific Learning Disability (580)
• Developmental Delay (293)
• Emotional (267)
• Health (243)

The age with the highest student count is 13 (196students) followed by 11 (159).

MCAS

Special ed students in Fall River, a Level 4 district, were among the subgroups not making Adequate Yearly Progress at all grade levels in 2011. In 2011, students with disabilities had a 12% proficiency rate in English language arts  (ELA) exam and a 9% proficiency rate in math. The Composite Performance Indices (CPI) for special education students has decreased 2 points in ELA and  0.3 points in math since 2008. CPIs are a measure of the extent to which students are progressing toward proficiency in ELA and math; the goal is a CPI of 100.  More specifically, each student participating in the MCAS is given a score based on well they perform on the exam which is later averaged to determine the school or subgroup's CPI; possible scores are 0 (Warning/Failing - Low), 25 (Warning/Failing - High), 50 (Needs Improvement - Low), 75 (Needs Improvement - High), and 100 (Proficient or Advanced). In 2011, the ELA CPI for students with disabilities was 55 while the math CPI was 44.4.

Educational Outcomes

In terms of educational outcomes, special education students in Fall River tend to graduate at a much lower rate than 'general education' students. This is much in line with state trends as well as the trend seen in both Lynn and Worcester. However, the achievement gap between special education and general education students in Fall River is particularly alarming; in 2007, there was a nearly 44 point difference in graduation rates between these two subgroups. See below for the graduation rates from 2006 - 2010.

	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Special Ed	27.4%	18.6%	37.1%	36%	36.8%
General Ed	60.6%	62.1%	60.8%	66.9%	73.4%
All Students	54.2%	54.1%	56%	62.51%	66.2%

The graduation rate for this population decreased slightly to 36.1% in 2011 for Fall River as a district.  Fall River has two secondary schools - BMC Durfee High School and Resiliency Preparatory School, which is an alternative school At Resilience, just a quarter of special education students graduated in four years or less as of 2011; at Durfee, that number was 40.8%. Approximately 19% of special education students required more than four years to complete high school in 2011 while 12% were non-grad completers.

Special ed students also tend to dropout at a higher rate than the general ed population. Below is the annual dropout rate for the years 2006 - 2010.

	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Special Ed	16.5%	14.6%	12.8%	9.8%	7.7%
General Ed	10.5%	8.9%	12.5%	5.3%	4.3%
All Students	11.4%	9.8%	12.5%	6%	4.9%

The four year dropout rate for special ed students was 31.5% in 2011, down from 48.1%  in 2007. At the state level, special ed students had a 13.2% four year dropout rate.

In 2009-10, a little less than half of the special ed students were going to attend a college or university with 95.2% of this group attending a Massachusetts community college. Just four special ed students were reported to have taken the SAT in 2009-10; SAT performance information is not reported for students enrollments of fewer than 10 students. In terms of Advanced Placement participation and performance, there was no data reported for special education students in 2009-10.


*All Data Taken from: http://www.doe.mass.edu/