Braintree has test success systemIt was last period and Paul Campbell's second math class of the day, and the Braintree sophomore was still focused on mastering the parallelogram before the bell rang.
"I don't mind taking extra math because this helps me understand what's going on," Campbell said. "And I don't want to fail the MCAS." Classes like these and students like Campbell have helped Braintree High School solidly outperform peers in middle-class communities on the MCAS and even keep up with schools in the wealthiest areas of the state. For the past five years, Braintree High School has bucked the trend: that students from more-affluent and better-educated communities score better than those from less privileged places. Educators and researchers say Braintree High School is a case study for why low-performing schools cannot make the excuse that their students are destined to score poorly on the MCAS. This year, according to test scores released Thursday, 95 percent of Braintree sophomores passed math and 96 percent passed English, putting Braintree in the top third of the state's best-performing high schools. Ranked 75th, Braintree had a better passing rate than high schools in affluent Newton, at 85th, and Brookline, at 117th. Educators have taken note of Braintree's performance and recognized the district -- where 1 in 10 students come from low-income families and almost 1 in 5 require special education -- as a model for other schools. Even parents, a mix of blue-collar workers and professionals, who are skeptical of the MCAS, praise school leaders for getting their children to score better than expected. "Braintree shows that all children, irrespective of their background, can achieve the standards," said Paul Reville, executive director of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy at the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth or MassINC. In a district where resources are limited, Braintree administrators said they link every decision and every dollar spent with student achievement. It is expected that teachers and administrators use test results to see where students are struggling and then change their courses accordingly. Braintree wants to make sure each student has the right course materials; new books come before new Internet connections in the classroom. Unlike most high schools, Braintree, with about 1,450 students, has stuck to the old-fashioned model of separating students by ability for math and English classes. The high school gives equal priority to students of all skill levels. Instead of being programmed into "tracks," students can move up and down the system depending on their performance. Braintree students are also spending more time on math and English than many of their peers. A writing lab for freshmen and sophomores, in addition to their English classes, requires students to complete 50 writing assignments before taking the MCAS. "While a kid deep down inside may not like this, we have a responsibility to get him to pass, and we'll do what's necessary," said William Farrington, headmaster at Braintree High School. Weaker students are identified before they come to the high school and placed in "strategy" classes to help build skills for the MCAS during their freshman and sophomore years. These courses have less than 10 students in each classroom and usually do not require homework or quizzes. In Campbell's math strategies class, where he learned about parallelograms on Wednesday, teacher Heather Feener said she designs curriculum based on weaknesses shown on the middle-school MCAS tests. Her students learn more from doing than listening. During her geometry lesson, she brought all six students up to the blackboard three times to examine her parallelogram. The students cut out shapes from graph paper and counted together to calculate the area. Unlike many school systems, Braintree has two administrators who oversee the entire math and English curriculum for kindergarten through Grade 12 rather than individual schools. This makes the district more accountable and flexible to curriculum changes, according to Andrew Calkins, executive director of Mass Insight, a nonprofit organization focused on improving education. Last fall, the Mass Insight Education and Research Institute recognized Braintree as a "Vanguard" model that outperformed other schools with similar demographics on the math portion of the MCAS. Despite Braintree's success, some critics object to the school's emphasis on the tests. They say the district shortchanges students' education at the high school -- where electives are sometimes sacrificed for MCAS prep courses. "When a district like Braintree focuses so intensely on boosting MCAS scores, they get the scores up but at the price of a richer and deeper education that the students deserve," said Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, a Cambridge group that opposes standardized tests. School leaders, however, insist they must ensure that their students pass the tests and graduate. In Braintree, where less than a third of the population has a bachelor's degree, many parents are pushing their children to get a better education than they had. "We are very hard-working people that strive for education excellence and we think our kids can keep up with anybody," said Maureen Clark, chairwoman of the Braintree School Committee. Even with the demand for good schools, there are limits to what the community will give. Last year, Braintree voters rejected increasing their property taxes to make up for cuts in state funding, and the district had to lay off 50 teachers and 20 support staff. School leaders blame these losses, in part, for this year's slight dip in passing rates -- between 1 and 2 percentage points at the high school. Superintendent Peter Kurzberg is quick to note, though, the struggle of high-performing schools. "If you're a district that scores high like Braintree, to expect that progress is going to be shown in a straight line going up every year," Kurzberg said, "now that's not realistic."
Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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