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Our Mission
To engage our community in fulfilling its responsibility to ensure that excellence in education is available to all public school students and that they are prepared for success in college, career, and life.
Once upon a time, when I was a classroom teacher, I would begin the school year with a discussion of the course. For me and for my students it was tenth grade English and we would talk about what we would be doing over the course of the months that we were together—yes, we would be working on vocabulary building, writing persuasive essays, delving into literary analysis, and grappling with those standards of the curriculum—the American Transcendentalists, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Alice Walker, the literature of the Bible. Eventually though, the conversation would drift to what else we would accomplish together as my students continued on their path to young adulthood and eventual independence. We talked about what expectations they had of themselves, that I had of them and that we had of each other. We would also consider what expectations others had of us, and what responsibilities we had to fulfill the best of those expectations.
The Elementary and Secondary Act, which governs the use of federal funds supporting K-12 education was revised by President George W. Bush as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Under the Act, schools must meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) as determined by several measures. Additionally, An Act relative to the Achievement Gap, adopted by the State of Massachusetts, classified schools according to performance using a framework with five levels. Top performing schools are classified as Level-1 Schools, while the lowest performing schools are classified as Level-5 schools. Only two schools in the State of Massachusetts were identified as Level-5 schools.
In the spring of 2010, the Worcester Public Schools were notified that two elementary schools were placed on Level 4 status for failing to meet expectations as determined several indicators including the previous 4-years of results from state testing (MCAS) and the State’s new growth model. As a result, the District was required by the State to take specified corrective actions and to develop a plan for improvement. The following post, written by Dr. Jeff Mulqueen, the Chief Academic Officer for our district, describes work that has been completed and that is currently in progress at Union Hill and Chandler Elementary Schools.
This summer there has been considerable discussion about Massachusetts’ decision to adopt the Common Core Standards advanced by the federal Depart of Education. According to the website, http://www.corestandards.org/, The Common Core State Standards were developed to “provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them” to do so.
Dr. Lorretta Holloway, Associate Professor of English at Framingham State College and a member of the Massachusetts team that reviewed and made recommendations on the Core offers her thoughts on the standard in this post.
What is the Real Core of the Common Core?
The public debate about whether the board of Elementary and Secondary Education made the right decision about replacing the Math and ELA Massachusetts Frameworks with the Common Core, a national curriculum standard initiated by the National Governors Association, has raised the concern that our state standards will somehow be cheapened by being aligned with national standards. A further concern has been raised that their adoption was an attempt to appease teachers’ unions by getting rid of the MCAS test. However, in a conversation with my neighbor he noted that something was missing in the news reports: a comparison between the two standards or any examples of differences between the two.
Jun 10
30
Community Briefing Series Launched
On Tuesday June 29th, along with the Colleges of Worcester Consortium and the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Worcester Education Collaborative hosted a Community Briefing to entitled Education Reform at Seventeen: Where We’ve Been, Where We Are, Where We’re Going. The over sixty people in attendance represented a broad spectrum of our community and heard from a distinguished panel of experts who considered the evolution of education reform, the challenges that we currently face, and the opportunities offered in new state and federal legislations and initiatives.
Participants and guests reflected upon the academic generation of reform and the new phase of work ahead of us.
Dr. Robert Antonucci, current president of Fitchburg State College and past Commissioner of Education spoke of the issues facing the Commonwealth that led to the passage of the 1993 Education Reform legislation including the need to equalize funding across districts by the creation of the foundation budget, to provide assessments of student learning, and to begin to lay the groundwork for the cultivation of a skilled workforce of the 21st century.
Kevin O’Sullivan, president of MassBiomed Initiatives and past member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives recalled the politics surrounding the bill’s passage. He also considered from his current vantage point the fruits that Education Reform yielded in the form of graduates prepared to make meaningful contributions in a knowledge and innovation based economy.