TO:  STAFF

FROM: GREGG

DATE: 12.16.07

RE:  REPORT ON HIGH/LOW PERFORMING SCHOOLS IN MAINE

Linked is another 2007 report from the University of Southern Maine; this one on high and low performing schools in Maine. It's really interesting if you have the time to read it. I'm going to make eight points, here, that could be perceived as blaming or damning and in that sense controversial, but please don't read them that way. These are straights facts that can be gleaned by anyone reading this report. Beyond that, the personal opinion I've added in is labeled as such and is about why we are where we're at in this report, and in some sense that involves comparison, but I'm concerned with us not anyone else. If someone reads it otherwise, so be it, but my intent is to face hard facts so we can keep up our work, and facing hard facts will always be seen as a controversy, I suppose, and if that happens then it's controversy I can live with.

1. Out of the 118 high schools in the state of Maine, 14 are considered high performing according to the six criteria outlined in the report (and they are excellent criteria, as far as I'm concerned), and 24 are considered low performing. That leaves 80 schools somewhere in the middle, all trying to make up their minds on which way they're going to go.

2. If a school resides in Waldo County (and this is any K - 12 school) then the chances that it will be on the list of low performing schools skyrockets, though it is not true, in the report overall, that all high performing schools are from southern Maine. This conclusion is not elucidated in the report, though the lists and statistics clearly bear it out. And for the reason I put in #3 of this list, no one can say that this is because of economic disadvantage.

3. My favorite criteria to determine either high or low performing schools is that the USM researchers factored in school and community profile data (level of parent and community education; economic factors, etc.) and predicted scores on the MEA and/or the SAT then saw if the school met those predictions, exceeded them, or scored lower than expected. In this way, a school would not be seen as high performing if the students all came from an affluent community where most adults held college degrees, but the students scored well BUT lower than expected on the SAT, for instance. So, where Waldo county has a lower than average educational level for adults and a lower than average socioeconomic base, predictions on standardized tests would be lower, and those schools would have to perform even lower than those projections to be seen as low performing.

Having said that, there are 27 public schools in Waldo County, according to my own count -- and discounting WCTC and Isleboro (whose student numbers are, I believe, too low for the report to  consider). Fourteen are considered low performing. Waldo County is the only county -- again, according to my calculations -- that has over 50% of its schools listed as low performing. 

Let's consider that number for a moment before going on. How or why is it that so many Waldo County schools score below predictions, even when those predictions factor in the tough climate for educational success? Here are my few theories on this. First, remember that in the MYDAUS report, Waldo County is consistently the ONLY county in Maine where both adult and student data indicate that we are first or second in every negative, anti-social and substance abuse category and last or second to last in every pro-social category. This indicates there are more factors than just economics and educational level working against the academic success of public school students. However, what I personally believe is the biggest factor is a psychological one. I believe that if you check, almost none of the low performing schools have, for instance, an intervention system. Why would that be? If the tests tell these schools year after year that students are underperforming, why no interventions? What if, due to all the significant factors going against these Waldo County schools and the kids who attend there that slowly, over time, a sense of learned helplessness sets in? What if the unspoken logic goes like this:  why keep kids in extended day or during the day interventions when so much is going against us all? If some version of that were true, then schools would fall below their predicted levels of success in a downward spiral.

4. One Waldo County school -- Palermo Consolidated School -- was high performing. Congratulations to them. I'm going for a visit. I don't care what the grade level, I want to see a high performing school in action and learn from them. 

5. Twelve Waldo County schools are not listed in the report, meaning that they are in-between high and low performing.

6. In Waldo County, that underperformed compared to all other counties, was there one school district that could be said to have especially underperformed? Yes. And yes, it was MSAD 56. Of the five schools in MSAD 56 (three elementary, one middle, one high school), four of them were on the low performing schools lists. That's 80% of schools at low performance levels. 

7. Of the three high schools in Waldo County, two were considered low performing in the report.

8. Searsport District High School is not in the report, and thus falls in between low and high performing. 

Why, and is it cause for celebration or not? 

Interventions (including skill-based and effort-based interventions); a move to increase rigor on Bloom's, based on our recent Great Maine Schools end of year visit in 2006, connected with getting kids into the classroom and out of the halls, both of which were confirmed as being very successful efforts by the GMSPs return visit in 2007; reorganizing lesson plans based on departmental analysis of standards; a new awareness of cross-curricular skills (after completing common rubrics); an increase in AP and college courses in the past two years.

Combine this with information you're getting this week on PSAT results where sophomores, in the standards-based system, outperformed and/or equaled juniors, in the traditional system, on several categories indicating that the results from the report linked in this email are on an improvement curve for us.

Said another way, though we're still early on in all those and other efforts, we are not caught in the downward spiral of feeling like educational conditions are tough and so not seeing or believing, on a deep level, that we can do anything about it. Instead we're waging a considerable battle against those conditions and believe we can beat them back and thus turn around our students' futures.

I think it's officially cause to press forward and make our efforts permanent parts of the SDHS culture as we keep up the drumbeat of this work to improve every student's chances to have real options upon graduation.

We will, given a few years to work out what we've started, be a high performing school. I know that this is true as surely as I know I'm sitting here typing these words. I think we should celebrate. We're moving. It's working.

Edit this page (if you have permission) |

Google Docs -- Web word processing, presentations and spreadsheets.