School Panel Review Follow-up Report

Roosevelt Junior High School, New Bedford

October 30, 2000

Team Members: Dean Elson (Team Leader), Denise Delorey, Margaret Helgaard, Peter Manoogian

The Roosevelt Junior High School

The Roosevelt was one of eight urban middle schools referred for panel review in the Spring of 2000 as a result of critically low levels of student performance on State MCAS assessments in 1998 and 1999, and declining MCAS results from 1998 to 1999. The Panel Review was conducted in May 2000. Panel findings at the Roosevelt were mixed. Serious concerns identified were:

• little evidence of instructional and curriculum leadership and support for teachers;
• no evidence of analysis of student performance in mathematics to determine learning needs and formulate strategies to address them;
• lack of clear goals, objectives, and strategies to meet identified needs e.g., establishing support services for students who speak English as a Second Language.

On consideration of the Panel findings, the Commissioner deferred action on determination of under-performance for a period of 90 days to permit school and district officials an opportunity to address the concerns identified by the review panel. A $25,000 school improvement grant was provided to support school improvement planning and professional development initiatives over the summer months.

The school submitted a general plan and budget to use grant to provide building-based professional development for faculty to focus on increasing MCAS scores in mathematics, raising the reading levels of Roosevelt students, and using differentiated instruction to produce successful inclusion for bilingual and special education students. Eight workshops were offered for either a half-day or full-day during two weeks in August. The school reported a faculty participation rate of 95 percent, with 77 percent receiving 10 or more hours of professional development from these activities.

The Roosevelt submitted a progress report to the Department in September 2000. The school also submitted a revised School Improvement Plan that had been worked on over the summer by the principal and staff.

The Scope of the Panel Review Follow-up Process

The task of the Panel Review Follow-up Team was to determine whether actions taken by the school and district personnel over the past 90 days have remedied, to a significant extent, the deficiencies identified in the Panel Review Report, and highlighted in the Commissioner's letter of June 12, 2000.

The Follow-up Team consisted of four members: a practitioner who served on the original panel, and three members of the Department's Accountability and Targeted Assistance staff. The Follow-up Team used the same protocol for its site visit that was used for the Panel Review, but focused its inquiry on the main concerns identified during the onsite panel review.

The Follow-up Team reviewed the original Panel Review Report, the Commissioner's determination letter, the school and district response, the school's summer action plans and budget for use of the $25,000 Department of Elementary and Secondary Education grant, and the school's September 15, 2000 progress report to the Department. Following a preliminary meeting to analyze the materials to consider the actions reportedly taken by the school over the summer, the Team visited the school on October 5, 2000 for a day of meetings and interviews with school and district leaders and teachers, and classroom visits.

Follow-up on Areas of Concern Cited in the Panel Report

Instructional Leadership and Support

In documentation submitted to the Department on September 15, and corroborated in interviews and meetings with the principal and faculty, the school reported that they are receiving additional instructional support from the district this school year. The Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Education assigned the four district level Department Heads to the Roosevelt once a week, rather than the one day per month that they were visiting last year.

In interviews and meetings, teachers reported that the Department Heads have visited classrooms, reviewed lesson plans and homework assignments, and made themselves more available as resources for teachers. Teachers were positive about their increased availability this year. Staff reported that Department Heads visit their classroom upon request. There is no formal process in place for providing feedback on the instructional practice in the classrooms they do visit.

In September, the school reported the creation of a district funded position at the Roosevelt for a Title I Curriculum Supervisor. There appears to be some confusion, however, about the expectations for this position at both the school and district levels. According to a written job description, and an interview, the two year grant-funded Coordinator of the Middle School Transition's duties are focused on working with the seven newly formed sub-committees to plan and facilitate the transition to the middle school. Although she is looking at other middle school curricula, and visiting middle schools in the area, the school's new curriculum supervisor is not a curriculum specialist working with teachers on curriculum implementation. Her work does not include observing classroom practice or modeling best practices.

The district reportedly has also assigned a "liaison" to work with teachers in grades 4-8. The Principal identified this individual as another source of curriculum support. In an interview, the liaison reported that she is spending much of her time working with the district's fifth and sixth grade teachers not presently teaching at the Roosevelt School to help them and their students negotiate the transition process from an elementary school to a middle school developmental model. She is at the Roosevelt only one day per month, and her district responsibilities require her to provide academic support to 25 additional schools.

In the 14 classrooms that Follow-up Team members visited, the learning environment and instructional practice were similar to what the Panel recorded last year. The level of student engagement appeared high, and students were often on task and respectful, with no disruptions. However, classroom observers found that instruction remains primarily teacher centered.

In May, the Review Panel reported concern that while the school had a number of existing services and programs in operation, there did not appear to be any coordination of the programs to maximize resources, or any evaluation of the programs' effectiveness. When asked who would be coordinating the grants, programs and services already in place at the school, the Principal identified the transition coordinator as the person who would be responsible for this task. He explained that there is no current plan to evaluate programs and services because resources are not available for that purpose.

The Follow-up Team continues to have serious concerns about what appears to be a lack of leadership, communication, and coordination to plan for and implement strategies to achieve academic learning standards and specific instructional goals.

Specific Strategies to Improve Instruction

The school has made some revisions to the school improvement plan to include more clearly defined, broad goals in literacy, mathematics, and improving regular education teachers' differentiated instruction skills. The Team was encouraged by the active participation of faculty members in the plan revision process. Teachers interviewed by the Team appeared to be familiar with the school improvement plan. The principal and teachers reported that all faculty members had received a copy of the plan in a folder of materials distributed at the beginning of this school year. The plan, however, is still lacking important elements. such as specific strategies for improving instruction, measurable instructional goals, and lines of responsibility.

A significant concern of the original Review Panel was the fact that the school had not analyzed its students' results on MCAS tests and other standardized assessments to determine the specific learning needs of its students in mathematics, where failure rates where extremely high. In interviews and meetings with the Follow-up Team, the Principal and faculty members reported that to their knowledge, no analysis of the MCAS results had yet been done. During the Follow-up Team's visit, the district's Mathematics Department Head produced a document dated January 2000, analyzing the 1999 MCAS Mathematics results for Roosevelt students. However, this document had not been reviewed and used by the school's principal and faculty to determine student learning needs and decide on professional development offerings. The Team learned in an interview with the Department Head in Mathematics that he was not involved in the review and revision of the School Improvement Plan this summer, and he had not yet seen the revised plan.

This points to a lack of adequate communication between the Department Head and the Roosevelt math faculty, the Principal, and the district office which constitutes a significant obstacle to any chance of clear and consistent instructional leadership, particularly in the area of math.

In the absence of any review and analysis of student assessment data, decisions about what professional development to offer over the summer were based on the results of a teacher survey. The faculty did identify math as a general area of need. The school-based offerings developed subsequently included three math workshops: Demystifying MCAS Language, Approach and Connect Workshop, and PALMS: How Big is Big. A packet of 50 open-response questions derived from MCAS tests and the Kentucky standards-based assessment will be distributed at the department meeting in October. The questions were developed by a team of three middle school teachers, one of whom teaches at Roosevelt. Plans have been made to have some staff attend a New England League of Middle Schools (NELMS) Conference on Math & Science in December. This conference appears to be focused on teaching math and science in the middle school model. It is not designed to address the specific learning needs of the Roosevelt's students or specific professional development needs of the staff.

In a break with standard protocol, the district is allowing the school to determine how it uses its three in-service days this year. According to responses from teachers and school and district administrators, the plan for those days have not been set yet. At the time of the Follow-up Team's visit, Literacy, Learning to Learn, and portfolio assessment were under consideration as topics.

The Panel Review Report cited concern about coordination and evaluation of bilingual transitional services. During a meeting with staff and school leaders, the Follow-up Team asked about progress on a proposed class for 6-30 former bilingual students mentioned in Panel Review Report. Although the professional development documentation submitted to the Department listed a workshop on transitioning bilingual students to mainstream classrooms, there was no evidence that the school is moving forward on this with a formal, articulated plan. One bilingual teacher reported that there was insufficient support for the students transitioned out of the bilingual program who were having trouble making the adjustment to the mainstream classroom.

In an interview, an ESL teacher reported that she had provided a list to the faculty of the English language learners currently in bilingual classrooms, grouped by the students' level of English understanding. She expected to produce another list in approximately a few days of former bilingual students. The team learned that Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking faculty have translated the instructions for writing a five paragraph composition used in bilingual classrooms, and that the LINKS writing program is being made available in Spanish and Portuguese. However, the Team found that the school's mission statement and fire drill instructions had not been translated in bilingual classrooms.

The Superintendent reports that the district has contracted with the Education Alliance at Brown University to conduct an evaluation of the system-wide bilingual program, including the structure and operation of bilingual education in every school, intake criteria, student placement, and exit processes.

The faculty's recognition of the need for training and support to improve math results is encouraging. However, the Follow-up Team was concerned that in discussions and interviews during the on-site visit, neither the principal, Math Department Head, or faculty members articulated any instructional priority for the Roosevelt over the next few months, or for the rest of the school year. Nor were any timelines, benchmarks or goals advanced for preparing Roosevelt students instructionally for the move to a particular middle school model.

Conclusion

The Roosevelt faculty has demonstrated their caring and concern for their students, both in the high rate of participation in the work this summer, and in hours of committee work after school this year. Teachers expressed a general sense of optimism for an improved school year, and many mentioned a new sense of empowerment and a new model for increased collaboration, based on the school-based professional development and school planning activities this summer. This is an important first step toward a unified school-wide effort to improve instructional practice.