Mass. Using Grant Money to Motivate School Boards, Students
HIGH SCHOOL
Priyanka Dayal
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 15, 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 – The National Governors Association Thursday recognized Massachusetts for using a $2 million grant to raise high school graduation standards and to track how public high school graduates perform in college.
Massachusetts’s Department of Education applied for the grant in 2005 and implemented the new standards after winning the money in 2006. Nine other states also received grant money, which totaled about $20 million, from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Although all the states participating in the Redesigning High Schools program are working toward the same basic goals of improving student performance, raising the graduation rate and establishing an information database, Massachusetts is the only state setting incentives rather than requirements.
Stafford N. Peat, administrator for secondary and school support at the state Department of Education, said Massachusetts is trying to use data to hold schools accountable. One of the measures will be raising the bar for performance on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, a high school graduation requirement.
Mr. Peat joined education leaders from other states at a two-day conference to assess the progress of the two-year program that began last year. The meeting was hosted by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices.
High schools in urban areas – in Massachusetts and other states – tend to have lower graduation rates than schools in suburban areas, but compared to other urban areas, Worcester schools are ahead, Mr. Peat said.
“Worcester does better than other urban school districts. The graduation rate is higher,” he said.
He called Worcester “a bastion of innovation” that has increased the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses, strengthened its math and science programs and prepares graduates for careers. “They just need more money,” he said.
“We couldn’t tell how the students were doing,” Mr. Peat said, so improving state bookkeeping will help draw the links between how students’ high school education shapes their performance in college. Increasing data will help school boards improve alignment between high school and college curricula, Mr. Peat said.
A major portion of the grant money will go to a statewide awareness campaign called “Think Again,” including the Web site ReadySetGotoCollege.com, which is targeted at high school students in urban areas, Mr. Peat said.
The department is investing in this communications plan because setting standards in public education is largely a local rather than a state issue in Massachusetts. The only way to improve standards through this grant-sponsored program is to entice schools to raise the bar and encourage students to set higher personal goals.
Although the $2 million grant is only a small fraction of the state’s education budget, “this is driving what we’re doing at the department,” Mr. Peat said.
“These grants were meant to be catalytic,” said Sandra Licon of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We realize that our grants and philanthropic grants in general are only a drop in the bucket when you think about all the money that is spent on education,” Ms. Licon said, but she said she hoped the states would continue their programs after the grant money expired.
In high school graduation rate, the United States ranks 16th, behind countries like Denmark, Norway and Germany, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data from 2004.
“We’re competing globally,” Mr. Peat said. “There’s a sense of urgency. The former governor had that sense of urgency. Gov. [Deval L.] Patrick has that sense of urgency as well.”
Massachusetts has an 80 percent graduation rate, compared to a national rate of 71 percent, according to data provided by the National Governors Association.
“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Mr. Peat said. “We have a long way to go.”
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