Rising to the challenge Bridge Street leaders respond to poor MCAS performance

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NORTHAMPTON – On a recent weekday afternoon, the 18 students in Fran Cooper’s fourth-grade class at Bridge Street School were bent over a math assignment. But this one involved words instead of numbers.

Students were working on entries in their math journals, something they do twice a week in Cooper’s class. Using a sentence prompt on the blackboard, they wrote about two things they’d learned in math and one thing they wished to know more about.

“I can add double digits,” wrote Jalen Silva, 9, in an entry in the first category.

“I wish to learn how to do factors more easily,” his classmate, Colby Moore, also 9, penned in his journal.

Cooper said the math journals are a way to help teachers track how well students are absorbing their lessons and also give youngsters a better grasp of math vocabulary.

“This is pretty new,” said Cooper, who is in her 19th year at Bridge Street. “We have the kids write about what they’re learning and it gives them a focus. What we’re really asking them to do is some critical thinking.”

The journals are just one of the strategies Bridge Street’s new principal, Beth Choquette, and district school leaders have launched to address a lingering problem at the school: poor performance by students on statewide MCAS tests.

Others include the creation of a school-based data team to study achievement gaps, more teacher training and greater support for special education students at the elementary school.

Analyzing the data

Bridge Street has been under a state microscope since 2008 for failing to make “adequate yearly progress” toward having all students learning at grade level.

Based on the latest scores released last month and a new statewide ranking system, Bridge Street has been named a Level 3 school, placing it among the lowest-performing 20 percent of public schools in Massachusetts.

The most recent scores show Bridge Street students were far below statewide MCAS averages in math, English and science. For example, only 21 percent of students in all grades at the school tested proficient last spring in math, compared to a statewide average of 32 percent.

In fourth grade, the gap was even wider. Only 14 percent of students in that grade tested proficient in math, compared to 35 percent statewide.

Such numbers are a source of disappointment for teachers and parents at Bridge Street, including many who say the state ranking doesn’t reflect their daily experience at the elementary school.

“It’s frustrating,” said school council member Mark Watts, a Holyoke resident whose two children attend Bridge Street through school choice. “As a parent, I know my children are doing just fine.”

Jed Dion, a fifth-grade teacher and member of the school’s new data committee, described a similar disconnect.

“Teachers here are very engaged by the work they’re doing and the projects they have going on in the classrooms,” said Dion, a seven-year veteran at Bridge Street. “So when the MCAS scores come around every year, people feel like, ‘How can this be so?’”

Answering that question is the mission of the new data team, said Choquette, who was hired this summer to replace longtime Bridge Street principal Johanna McKenna, now interim director of academic effectiveness for the Northampton schools.

Choquette said it’s important for teachers and parents to approach annual test scores as just one indicator of learning at Bridge Street.

“It’s so easy to see the scores and say we have a bad school and bad teachers,” she said. “That is not the case.”

The data team, made up of teachers from all grade levels at Bridge Street, will dig down into the figures to analyze which students in what grades are not hitting achievement targets in particular subjects, Choquette said.

“Already we’re seeing in the scores that our kids are struggling with number blocks and computation,” she noted. “And we see the greatest gaps among low-income students and students with disabilities.”

The scores also show that many children who are not testing proficient in math, English or science are missing the mark by only a few points, Choquette said.

“So we need to look at what’s the little boost they need to get there,” she added.

Demographic factors

Bridge Street has a higher proportion of students the state has classified as “high needs” — including low-income and special education students — than the district as a whole, according to a profile on the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s website, www.profiles.doe.mass.edu .

Thirty-five percent of Bridge Street students are low-income, for example, compared to 29.6 percent for the district.

Still, other city elementary schools share many of those same demographics. Jackson Street School, for example, has an even higher proportion of low-income students, at 44.3 percent, and more children with limited English skills than Bridge Street. The state has ranked Jackson Street a Level 2 school, meaning achievement is mostly on target but gap-narrowing goals have yet to be met.

Choquette said Bridge Street’s scores have led to a review of curriculum because “something we’re doing is not working.”

She has also formed a study group for teachers, reassigned support staff to reach more students and is holding weekly all-school assemblies for students and parents to generate excitement about classroom work.

“We’re really trying to get kids to put the effort in,” Choquette said. “And we’re looking at ways to support our advanced students.”

Bridge Street’s ranking is the reason Northampton is ranked a Level 3 district — a policy city schools Superintendent Brian Salzer said he agrees with.

“It’s the district’s responsibility to support its students,” Salzer said. “Funding and professional development should be put in place where the needs are greatest.”

One of the silver linings of being ranked at Level 3 is that Bridge Street is in line for nearly $26,000 in state assistance this year, Salzer said. Funds will be used to boost math and reading instruction at the school and to add more classroom supports for special education students.

“We want to see students in special education in regular classes the majority of the time,” Salzer said. “We need to raise the academic level of challenge for our kids with disabilities. That’s something I’m working on with Beth.”

A state waiver from some of the stricter requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law means that schools ranked Level 3 no longer have to notify parents of their school choice options.

Still, Bridge Street supporters worry about what the ranking will do to public perceptions of their school.

“It’s always a surprise to me when I meet people who live a block away from the school and aren’t attending,” said Sarah Hougen, president of Bridge Street’s PTO. “We’re considered the problem school in Northampton.”

On the other hand, Hougen pointed to the record turnout at the first PTO meeting of the school year and Bridge Street’s Open House as signs of community support.

“People have concerns but they do feel like we’re moving in the right direction,” she said.

Jennifer Towler, Northampton’s school choice program coordinator, said a review of data over the last few years shows the number of families requesting to leave Bridge Street is no greater than at any other city elementary school.

Mandy Gerry, another active school parent, said she hopes MCAS scores don’t become the overriding focus at Bridge Street. “Our kids are really proud of their school,” she said. “I’m feeling really hopeful.”

Dion, the fifth-grade teacher, agrees. “There’s no other area of my life where I use only one tool” to assess progress, he said. “MCAS is a piece of the whole. What’s more important are the projects and activities we’re doing every day.”

Test scores appeared far from the minds of the students in Cooper’s fourth-grade class who were working on their math journals.

Jalen Silva said he likes using the daily math vocabulary words and writing down “wishes” for skills he needs to master.

“It’s fun,” he said.

Madison Marney said the journals “are kind of helping to learn about what you’re learning about.”

“You know a lot of stuff if you know about math,” added classmate Katalyna Newsham.