4 failing schools may become pilots to fix themselves

The new chairman of the state Board of Education will call today for turning four of the state's most troubled schools into pilot schools, giving them extraordinary freedom and a mandate: Fix yourselves.

Christopher R. Anderson, who is president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council and chairman of the Board of Education, is proposing a shift that would avoid having the state dictate how the schools, including Boston's English High, should improve after failing to significantly boost state test scores for as long as four years.

Anderson's proposal would take the Boston system's pilot schools experiment statewide, but on a limited basis. Boston established pilot schools as an innovative response to charter schools, not as a way to reform failing schools.

But Anderson said that giving teachers and administrators power to design their own solutions could work in schools with high failure rates, as long as there is state oversight.

At John J. Duggan Middle School in Springfield, the lowest-scoring of the four schools, more than 70 percent of the sixth-graders have flunked the math portion of the MCAS test every year since 2001. At English High, 40 percent of 10th-graders failed the math test last school year, and 27 percent flunked English, more than three times the state average.

The four low-performing schools, like existing pilot schools in Boston, would have more power to set their budgets and the length of the school day. But if the schools don't improve their scores, they could still face state intervention.

"We would be watching very closely," Anderson said yesterday in a telephone interview. "You can either have a turnaround imposed on you, which I don't think is collaborative . . . or we can achieve a collaborative approach that delivers."

The proposal, which Anderson will present to board members today, adds another layer to years of debate about how best to turn around failing schools in Massachusetts. State officials have intervened in some failing schools, with mixed results, but some school officials have said that the state lacks the staff and resources to be effective on a wider scale.

Anderson said he will offer the proposal as an alternative to the recommendation of education Commissioner David P. Driscoll that the four schools be declared "chronically underperforming." The label is the harshest under state law and requires the school to follow a state-approved plan to improve. The principal must follow the improvement plan, but has greater power to assign teachers and set budgets.

Under Anderson's proposal, English High, Academy Middle School in Fitchburg, and Duggan Middle and Putnam Vocational Technical High School, both in Springfield, would have a month to decide whether to voluntarily become pilot schools in the fall or face state intervention. Anderson said he would call for extra state funding for those schools, but he did not specify how much. Teachers, whose support would be key, should be able to vote on such a change, he said.

Two of the nine board members reached yesterday, Roberta R. Schaefer and Patricia F. Plummer, chancellor of the Board of Higher Education, said they were willing to listen to the plan. Driscoll, who has announced he will retire in August, said through a spokeswoman that he was open to the idea.

Pilot schools were launched in Boston as an alternative to charter schools, the independent public schools free from union contracts authorized as part of a statewide education reform in 1993.

Dan French, executive director of the Boston-based Center for Collaborative Education, said that Boston's pilot schools generally perform better than regular schools on several measures, including daily attendance, college-going rates, and MCAS scores.

But the 20 pilot schools have also been a source of contention with the teachers union, which blocked expanding the schools for months over issues such as overtime pay.

Michael Contompasis, interim superintendent of Boston schools, said he would listen to all options for English High, which has had a rich history in Boston since the school became the nation's first public high school in 1821.

"I don't want to see it in any way, shape, or form listed as a chronically underperforming school by virtue of the fact that it has made a tremendous difference in the lives of many, many of the graduates of that school," he said. "It happens to be an integral part of this city."

English High has pushed to improve in recent years by hiring more teachers and bringing in specialists to coach staff members in teaching English and math, officials said. Most of the 1,300 students are black or Hispanic and come from low-income families.

The Boston Teachers Union president, Richard Stutman, said the union would support English High teachers if they voted in favor of English High becoming a pilot school. Under Boston's union contract, two-thirds of teachers must agree to the plan, and dissenters have the right to transfer.

But Stutman cautioned that pilot schools tend not to reform low-performing schools. "I would be skeptical of this," he said. "Pilot schools were designed to be laboratories of innovation, not forced upon people as a last resort."

School superintendents in Fitchburg and Springfield praised Anderson's idea yesterday.

"It's as close to closing down the school and starting it over as possible," said Superintendent Andre Ravenelle of Fitchburg, whose district opened the city's first pilot school, an arts academy, this fall. "And it puts a lot of the onus on the staff themselves to say, who are we and where do we want to go?"

Maria Sacchetti can be reached at msacchetti@globe.com.