Assessment/Accountability
School and District Accountability and Assistance

Urban and Commissioner's Districts

The Department has designated ten Massachusetts school districts as Commissioner's Districts for the purpose of organizing support and assistance through its Center for Targeted Assistance. These ten districts- Boston, Brockton, Fall River, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, New Bedford, Springfield, and Worcester -share commonalities of size, demographics, and level of infrastructure. All ten districts also face similar challenges. They serve among the highest percentages of students living in poverty statewide and contain more than 80 percent of the schools currently designated as Commonwealth Priority Schools.

Because the Commissioner's Districts face significant challenges in helping all of their students reach proficiency, the Department considers assistance to these districts as a priority; as such, they currently consume a large share of the Department's staff, time, and resources (e.g., available state and federal school improvement funding).

The Department uses a customized approach to support each district based on the expectation that they possess the necessary resources to improve teaching and learning across their schools. In collaboration with the Commissioner's Districts, educational consultants, and other partners, the Department develops tools, methods, protocols, and processes to help each district address its own needs. This assistance includes the following:

• Providing or supporting the delivery of guidance, training, and specific data collection tools that serve to inform instructional leadership, classroom practice, and teacher collaboration;
• Conducting and modeling structured school site visits and facilitating the resulting data analysis; and
• Conducting evidence-based problem solving sessions with district leaders to identify or design the technical and adaptive solutions necessary to improve teaching and learning at scale.

The Office of Urban and Commissioner's Districts partners with other ESE offices including (but not limited to) the Center for Curriculum and Instruction, the Center for Leadership and School Redesign, and the Center for Special Programs to enhance districts' practices in Literacy; Mathematics, Science, Technology and Engineering; Leadership; Special Education, Planning and Policy; and English Language Acquisition.