MCAS, fluency pressures build

Lawrence students make notable gains in test scores

Teacher Mary DeSimone with Joezer Guerra, 11, (left) and William Almanzar, 14, as they work together during a reading lesson. (Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)

Most of the students who are learning to speak English with teacher Mary DeSimone in Lawrence are motivated to be successful, with many of their parents working two jobs to open opportunities for them. But when it comes to MCAS, the pressure is high: It takes five to seven years on average to become fluent in a language, and eighth-graders have three years to pass 10th-grade MCAS exams in English to get a diploma, DeSimone said.

"We give them a lot of praise, but at the same time we keep telling them, 'You have to do better,' and we tell them what they do is great but we're not high enough yet," said DeSimone, a teacher of English Language Learners at the Edward F. Parthum Middle School.

But this year the students were excited, as they made notable gains in state MCAS scores.

Limited English Proficient, or LEP, students make up 23.5 percent of the population in the Lawrence Public School District in 2007-2008, with nearly 1,900 student participants.

As a subgroup they met three out of four Annual Measurable Achievement Objectives, or AMAOs, for 2008, said Gail Rosengard, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction for the Lawrence schools. In contrast, back in 2006 and 2007, Lawrence did not meet any of its AMAO objectives.

"We are very proud of our students' work," said Francis McLaughlin Jr., president of the Lawrence Teachers Union. "It's the result of dedicated teachers working diligently with the children."

For the first achievement objective, which measures student progress toward acquiring English language proficiency, students must advance a certain number of state-defined performance level steps, relative to their standing in the previous year. To meet the state requirement, 62 percent of Limited English Proficient students had to make progress toward acquiring English proficiency for 2007-08. In Lawrence, 63 percent achieved that goal.

For the second achievement objective, the state looks at attainment of English language proficiency, Rosengard said. Massachusetts' specific target for Lawrence was 34 percent attainment.

Lawrence LEP students also exceeded that standard with 39 percent attainment.

The third and fourth objectives are Annual Yearly Progress, or AYP, requirements, where a district must have 95 percent participation in MCAS and 92 percent average attendance, while meeting the state's 2008 MCAS performance target for each subject or the district's own 2008 improvement targets in English Language Arts and Math. Lawrence was one of three urban districts in Massachusetts where LEP students met this requirement for math. However, they did not meet the requirement for English Language Arts.

Sharman Sullivan, the principal of the Edward F. Parthum School, credits the success in part to Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, a program that began in Lawrence three years ago where English is taught during other academic classes, and teachers use strategies to make content accessible to English language learners.

DeSimone said the protocol makes a difference because students "understand what's going on and don't feel ostracized."

Rosengard said the success cannot be attributed to any one thing.

"We have been doing lots of professional development in strategies for our English language learners. It takes several years of consistent work with teachers to start to see the results," she said.

DeSimone said that while many students do not get extra help in English at home, the students engage in healthy competition with each other to improve their scores and correspond with teachers outside of the classroom to continually practice their English skills.

For the 2007 to 2008 school year, the percentage of students whose first language was not English was more than 80 percent. Rosengard said they have the same approach for LEP and non-LEP students, but often fine-tune what they're doing to meet the needs of LEP students.

ESL students at the Lawrence Family Development Charter School achieved even higher scores for the 2007 and 2008 MCAS, meeting all AYPs, and becoming one of only five districts in the state to do so.

Ralph Carrero, director and superintendent of the school, said in a statement that the success is in part a reflection of the school's aggressive dual-language program which makes sure all students graduate academically strong in English and Spanish.

At the Community Day Charter School in Lawrence, where 80 percent of students speak another language, primarily Spanish, in the home, students have consistently done well over the last several years on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System.

Their latest success included tying for second place in the seventh-grade English MCAS exam, said Sheila Balboni, executive director of the school.

"We're very proud of our teachers and our students. It all comes down to teaching in the classroom and we have some extraordinary teachers," Balboni said.

The kindergarten through eighth-grade school, which has an eight-hour school day, incorporated English immersion even before the state required it.

"Immersion at a young age in English helps with proficiency," Balboni said. She also partially attributed their success to a strong belief in assessment and looking at data.

"We have high expectations for all our kids and if [they're not met] we circle back and figure out why," she said. "We have a firm belief that children from an urban setting that are not from traditional English speaking families can be successful in schools and we've proven that over the years."

JC Considine, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said officials are interested in analyzing urban districts' performances data further, but have not done so yet beyond statewide data and performance gaps.

"Part of our new accountability system will involve the annual compilation of a series of indicators of district performance that will allow us to easily compare how students in one district compare to similar students in another district," he said. "This would allow districts, for instance, to compare how LEP students in one district are performing to similar students in like districts."

Kate Augusto can be reached at k.augusto11@gmail.com.