Hadley students excel at MCAS

HADLEY - Students in grades three through eight and 10 performed at levels well above the state average in the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests administered last spring.

By one measure, Hadley's performance in the MCAS tests equaled Amherst's.

Grateful town mourns beloved teacher, musician

BELCHERTOWN - Black and orange are the colors normally worn by the Belchertown High School Band. Wednesday night they wore only black.

Board opts for 'Map 5' to balance Amherst schools

AMHERST - The Amherst School Committee voted Tuesday to create a new map for determining which elementary school children will attend next fall, closing a rancorous debate about ethnicity, poverty and achievement. The redistricting, necessitated by the closure of Mark's Meadow School next year, will equalize the percentages of children from low-income families at the three remaining schools and the percentage of children who are "struggling," as determined by test scores and teachers.

The future of one small school: Pelham Elementary among many with larger choice levels

PELHAM - On a recent afternoon, Rena Moore sat in her office looking through her papers for the enrollment figures that told the story of her school. After a bit of shuffling, the Pelham Elementary School principal produced a graph that illustrated the predicament: in 1999 the elementary school had 143 students who lived in the town, while today it has only 76, with the number of school choice students growing every year. And Pelham Elementary is not alone: Schools across the state have seen their enrollment numbers drop over the past 10 years.

Push for school mergers 'fizzles'

Choose your own path to school regionalization, or we'll choose it for you.

That was the message from the state over the past couple of years, and it was enough to keep small Hampshire County schools scrambling.

Flu still sweeping through Valley schools

NORTHAMPTON - When Cindy Mahoney's eldest daughter came down with a fever last Thursday, she assumed the fever was a result of a rapidly spreading H1N1 virus. Increasingly, that has been the case throughout Pioneer Valley towns, where the flu is contributing greatly to a wave of student absences from schools at all levels.

State unveils new MCAS analysis method

MALDEN, Mass. (AP) - Massachusetts education officials have unveiled a new way of measuring the long-term performance of individual students, schools and entire districts on the MCAS exam.