District/School Administration Administration
The Massachusetts Board of Education

Progress Reports on Winchendon Public Schools

The Winchendon Public Schools are currently in underperforming district status. The district was so designated by the Board in November 2003 as a result of inadequate leadership for needed improvements in curriculum and instruction in the district's schools, and lack of community support to improve the quality of the district's educational programs and services.

The Turn-Around Plan for the district accepted by the Board in 2004 identified three priorities to be addressed by local educators and the district's state-supported Turn-Around Partner: curriculum alignment, implementation of data-driven instructional practices, and the building of community cohesion in support of high quality teaching, learning, and student support services in the district's three schools. Over the past four years, progress has been achieved on all three of these fronts.

Before the Board, for discussion this month and a potential vote at the April meeting, is the question of whether the Winchendon Public Schools should remain in, or be removed from, underperforming district status. Although there remains much work to be done to improve educational outcomes for Winchendon students, the same can be said of many of the Commonwealth's school districts. In recognition of the progress that has been achieved in aligning Winchendon's curricula to state standards, putting in place leadership for curriculum and instruction in the district's schools, and beginning to use data systematically to inform instructional decision-making, and in light of the need to allocate available resources to districts with a high priority for targeted state assistance, I plan to recommend in April that the Board vote to remove Winchendon from underperforming district status.

Since November 2003 when the Board voted to designate Winchendon as an underperforming school district, the Department has provided the Winchendon Public Schools with a variety of state-supported assistance, including:

• provision of interim superintendent coverage
• Performance Improvement Mapping (PIM) training and consultant assistance to district and school teams working to define the root causes of performance gaps and formulate plans to achieve needed improvements
• engagement of a Turn-Around Partner to support implementation of the Turn-Around Plan developed by the district and approved by the Board in April 2005
• participation of Winchendon school and district leaders in the two-year National Institute for School Leadership (NISL) training program.

This month's Board packet includes two reports describing improvement initiatives undertaken by and in support of the Winchendon Public Schools in the period from 2004 - 2007. The first is a district progress report prepared by Dr. Peter Azar, who has served as Winchendon's superintendent of schools since 2004. Superintendent Azar will be leaving the district at the end of the current school year. He was asked to submit a report on the district's progress to date and a plan to ensure that improvements implemented to date are sustained.

The second report was prepared by Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) of Newton, Massachusetts. EDC has served as the state-appointed Turn-Around Partner for the Winchendon Public Schools. The EDC report provides an overview of the improvement initiatives that have been undertaken during the three-year duration of the EDC/Winchendon/state partnership. The average annual cost of this partnership has been $130,000. Partnership work has focused primarily on building leadership capacity to improve instructional systems.

Also included in the Board materials are a student performance and enrollment data summary for Winchendon, and copies of the Winchendon Public Schools' 2007 Adequate Yearly Progress ("AYP") reports. As indicated on the attached Performance and Enrollment report, the Winchendon Public Schools, as a district, currently has no NCLB accountability status. However, as the 2007 AYP reports demonstrate, student performance in the district is below state standards at certain grade levels and for various categories of students.

Superintendent Peter Azar and Associate Commissioner Lynda Foisy will join us at the Board meeting to respond to Board members' questions about the efforts that have been made to date to improve educational outcomes for Winchendon students.

Attachments:

	District Progress Report, submitted by Superintendent Peter Azar
	Turn-Around Partner Report, submitted by EDC, Inc.
	Winchendon Student Performance and Enrollment Data Summary
	Winchendon Public Schools 2007 Adequate Yearly Progress Reports