Where brawn meets brains
In hindsight, it almost seems predictable.
You build a cluster of huge, internationally renowned high-tech companies in the middle of some farmland. Hire the best and brightest engineers and computer scientists from around the world to work there. Wait a few years for the boy engineers to meet the girl engineers, then put their children in state-of-the-art schools with visionary leaders and top-shelf teachers. Steep those students in a competitive culture that reveres education. Incubate for a generation and voil! You've got yourself a village of hyper-achieving super children.
Welcome to Acton-Boxborough, a suburban school district where the football players are smart and academic standouts are also champion swimmers.
In this leafy region dotted with sprawling houses 45 minutes west of Boston, the Acton-Boxborough Regional High School academic decathlon team has won nine of the last 10 state championships; one quarter of the graduating seniors are enrolled in advanced placement calculus; and the school's football team just broke a half-century-old state high school football record for consecutive wins.
''Obviously I'm biased," said Bill Ryan, superintendent of the Acton Schools and Acton-Boxborough Regional School District. ''But I think it's is the best value-added school district in the Commonwealth."
Acton-Boxborough, which draws about 1,300 of its high school students from Acton and 400 from Boxborough, is not the most well-funded district in the state; its per-pupil cost is only about three-quarters of what Dover-Sherborn, Lincoln-Sudbury or Concord-Carlisle spends. But the culture of achievement here is so deeply embedded that it's turning out superstars at a rather remarkable rate.
One hundred and six of the 386 seniors are taking AP calculus, and another 61 are enrolled in AP physics. The high school's average MCAS and SAT scores are consistently among the top two or three in the state, the sports teams have won a whopping 49 state titles in 50 years, and along with the 5 percent of seniors who are typically accepted to Ivy League colleges and universities, 19 seniors applied to MIT last year.
All of which begs the question, what's going on out here?
Up through the 1960s, when the Route 128 belt was still a road and not a high-tech icon, Acton and Boxborough were sleepy little towns full of apple orchards and farms, but
Residents here say the majority of their neighbors weren't raised with the sort of money found in wealthier, neighboring towns with comparable school systems. The folks here are hungrier, the logic goes. They earned their opportunities by working hard and don't take their success for granted.
''Most of the scientists and professionals here credit their success to their own education and hard work," said Ryan. ''And I think those values permeate the school community. It's coming from the parents."
And that, in turn, has created a culture of high expectations -- particularly in the math and sciences. ''I can't tell you how many kids here have two parents who are both engineers," said high school principal Steve Donovan. ''And that's what we're known for. Concord-Carlisle is known for its humanities, we're known for math and science."
But since when do scientists raise great nose guards?
The secret to the football team's 41-game unbeaten streak, says Acton-Boxborough varsity football coach Bill Maver, is part and parcel of what has brought the school so much academic accomplishment: parental involvement, high expectations, a willingness to work hard, and more recently, a tradition of success breeding success.
The varsity team has five paid coaches and another five who volunteer. At the game last Friday night when the Colonials broke the state record, two dozen fathers were volunteering at the concession stand. The younger-age-group leagues are just as well coached and supported, Maver said.
''We have a good organization, good people volunteering, and they just kind of do it the right way," said Maver. ''These kids are willing to work hard, and in this day and age, everybody is looking for the easy way out."
Katie Ames, a 17-year-old senior, said students average two to four hours of homework a night. Most students consider the ''advanced enrichment level" -- a step above college prep classes -- to be the norm.
''The students here are just really motivated," said Ames. 'Some of them are pretty stressed out."
And when the football team plays, or the swim team swims or the academic decathlon team competes, the stands are typically full with A-B supporters and they are not all parents. Since both communities lack real downtowns, the high school campus is not only the spiritual and psychological center but the cultural center as well. Yes, the high school drama productions are good, but in Acton-Boxborough, they are also the only show in town.
That commitment translates into first-rate facilities. The final touches of a $54 million high school are being added this fall, and already Donovan is lobbying to add to the 60 computers in the library. In the last eight years alone, Acton and Boxborough residents have passed overrides of $130 million to invest almost entirely in school and libraries, said Town Manager Don Johnson, who has worked in the community for nearly four decades.
The result today is that the high school campus is as well equipped as most community colleges and the majority of students behave in school like college kids. Last week, students drawing in art class listened to Byzantine chants, while students not in class hung out in the common spaces playing guitars, reading, writing in notebooks, and socializing.
Top all this off with the fact that Acton is very economically homogenous. ''A place for mid-level high-tech executives,"' said John Whittaker, who was at the football game last Friday with his wife and who is himself a mid-level high-tech executive.
As of March, 2.3 percent of the housing in Acton and about 1 percent in Boxborough were considered affordable by state standards. The median price for a single-family home in Acton is $532,200, while it's $497,500 in Boxborough, according to real estate records.
Most families can afford private tutors. Indeed, the school district's website lists tutors with doctorates in science and math who typically charge $50 an hour.
One result of all this success is that ambitious people have flocked to the school district, including hundreds of Asian families. Donovan said 11 percent of his students are now Asian. As a group, he said, they tend to work exceptionally hard and excel academically, raising the bar even higher.
That's the good news. The bad news, say parents and teachers, is that all the success in the region breeds expectations so high many of students feel there is no way they can meet them.
This summer Donovan was approached by 35 students who asked if they could skip lunch and take eight classes during their eight-period school day.
''I had to tell them we literally, physically, didn't have any room in the classroom," he said. ''Some of them were really insistent."
To help students deal with stress, counselors run group therapy sessions that deal in large part with eating disorders and anxiety, Donovan said. It's far more common to have a student stressed out than one who acts out. There are just two chairs in the detention room.
Kay Steeves, the student-faculty support coordinator at the high school, tells the story of a girl who came to her complaining about the pressure.
''Between her and her three friends, seven of their eight parents were valedictorians," she said. ''It's a lot for some of these young kids to handle."
''What's normal here is advanced," said Alexandra King, a 15-year-old sophomore, ''but a lot of these kids are stressed."
Success at the school ''comes with a price," acknowledged Jean Whittaker, whose has two children in Acton schools. ''Sometimes you just have to tell them a C is OK if they did the best they could."
