What Happened to the Best Blue Collar School System? The 2005 MCAS Rankings

This post was inspired by an Everett educator who recently posted several comments about our broken school system. This is the post, in its entirety:

While I honestly do understand that most of the people who rant on this site and others like it do so because they sincerely care about the city and the people in it, I think that sometimes many of us get caught up in partisan political “gotcha” games and lose sight of the larger picture.I know that many, many people are aware that the Everett Public Schools are in shockingly bad shape and getting worse every year. I know that a great many people have some ideas about who to blame for our woes, and I’m not saying that blame or even criminal prosecution would be inappropriate in some cases. However, I also know that most of the people who spend tremendous amounts of time and treasure fighting these battles would get far more accomplished if they turned their attention toward the schools themselves. Several of our schools have descended over the last few years to the level of unmitigated disaster. If you doubt this, please examine the MCAS scores from the last few years. The numbers are humiliating. It is time for all of us to stop the usual partisan business as usual and focus on improving the actual day-to-day condition of our schools. We need to demand that the city government put an outright stop to the violence in our schools, the shameful practice of promoting students who cannot do basic grade level work, and the utter waste of our tax money on patronage-style cronies masquerading as educators.If we don’t do something drastic ourselves right now, the state of Massachusetts will be running these schools sooner than we might think, and Everett’s status as a statewide educational laughingstock will be cemented for years to come.

Everett Educator 02.24.06 - 4:04 pm #

We were shocked by the allegations, and decided to take a look at those MCAS scores, as suggested by Everett Educator. It was, after all, school committee member, Lester MacLaughlin who coined the title, "best blue collar school system" in the Commonwealth. It was a cute turn of phrase for an embattled school department, beset by indictments, overspending and an audit that revealed wide-spread mismanagement. It was Robert Alconada, the current Chairman of the School Committee, who stated that as an educator, Mr. Foresteire is A+, a quote that was reported in the Boston press.

MCAS rankings, though, are where the rubber meets the proverbial road.

2005 MCAS rankings on Boston.com reveal that Everett is listed as a "declining district," having dropped its tenth grade passing rate in English by 7%, from 89% to 82% - and dropping even further in Math by 11%, from 87% to 76%. Click the link for the details:
2005 MCAS Results:

Far from the "best blue collar district," the very communities that we use to handily outperform on MCAS....are now out performing us. Out of a possible 278, our tenth grade high school students are ranked 245 for English, and 243 in Math. We're in the bottom 15% in the Commonwealth, along with such notables as Lynn, Lawrence, Boston and Fall River.

Who's outperforming Everett now? In 10th grade English, it's Somerville, Chicopee, Brockton, Revere and Malden. Chicopee! Chicopee use to be the worst performing school district in the state! In 10th grade Math, it's Lowell, Chicopee, Malden, Revere and Somerville. It's hard to understand why, given these communities are very similar demographically or worse off than Everett. For example, in English, Revere has a higher number of students in the advanced and proficient categories(54%) vs. Everett (47%). Same for Brockton...which is interesting, because they have more than twice the students taking the test, and more students (63.7%) considered low income than Everett (47.2%). Even looking at Limited English Proficient students, Somerville has more LEP students (14.2%) than Everett (10.6%) and more low income students (61.8%) Lowell has its challenges too, with twice as many LEP students (23.1%), and more low income students (65.1%) Granted; some of the differences between Everett and these other communities are small...but we are declining. Slipping 7% and 11% in a single year should be a wakeup call.

What happened to the "best blue collar school district in the Commonwealth?" Communities with more low income students and more Limited English Proficient students are outperforming us. Is this the work of an A+ Superintendent of Schools? Is this the work of well-managed, tightly run, morale boosting school system? Not when we're being outperformed by Revere and Brockton, friends. It was reported in the Indendent last week that the MCAS scores were one of the reasons cited for the creation of a new charter school in the Everett-Revere-Chelsea area.

Thank you, Everett Educator, for educating us about the realities at Everett High. I hope it's not too late to turn the ship around.

As for the school committee? Let's make a bet that they give Freddy another big, fat raise for his "A+" efforts as an educator.