 |
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
||||||||
|
|
|
Whole School PaperLeading the Way: The Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School Middle School Model,
By Patricia G. Anthony and Paul Niles
The Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School
Massachusetts Charter School Association 2002
HISTORY Early Process The Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School, located in Orleans, Massachusetts, was one of the fifteen original charter schools created by the 1993 Education Reform Act. The "Chowdah School," as it is called by some of the locals, is a middle school serving students in grades six through eight. It opened its doors to students in September 1995 and is just completing the second year of its five-year renewal. The school was the dream of a group of teachers and parents, who either taught in the local schools or whose children attended school in the Nauset Regional School District. Prior to the passage of the Education Reform Act in 1993, this group had proposed to the Nauset Regional Middle School administration that a school-within-a-school be created at the middle school. Parents and teachers were troubled by the large size of the regional middle school and its impersonal school environment, which they felt did not help foster of a love of learning. Although the concept of a-school-within-a-school was discussed at length, ultimately the district decided against it, and the parent and teacher group applied for a charter. Their goal was to create the type of school that embraced their beliefs about learning. In a matter of months the process moved from the idea stage, to the establishment of a working team of teachers and parents discussing broad philosophical parameters, to a few individuals doing the nuts-and-bolts work of writing the charter, to the submission and acceptance of the application. Most of us involved in education have had the heady experience of gathering with colleagues in a reflective setting and musing about the notion of starting a school from scratch, of establishing a set of principles as kindling, setting the spark, and watching the fires of learning burn brightly. As fodder for conversation, this kind of stimulus is a healthy diversion, or perhaps a way to help us envision changes in existing school systems. But in this case the conversation had mushroomed into something considerably larger. Our wish had been granted, and we asked ourselves: How in the world would a diverse group of parents, teachers, and community leaders transform a set of broad principles, as much a rejection of the existing school system as an affirming blueprint for action, into the bricks and mortar of a working middle school? We knew the hardest work was yet to come--bridging the chasm separating the ideal from the real. From Charter to Schoolhouse--Early Process The founders envisioned a school that encouraged intellectual development and academic achievement; a school in which an interdisciplinary curriculum would be used to build bridges across traditional disciplines; where the classroom would be extended beyond the school's walls into the Cape community with its richness of natural and human resources. In this school, a community of learners would evolve, composed of students, teachers, and parents, all assisting each other on the path to becoming life-long learners. In this school, the values of personal responsibility, consideration for others, respect for the environment, academic integrity, and perseverance would be nurtured and become the inner core of the school's culture. But a wide range of logistical obstacles stood between the founders’ vision and the opening of the school’s doors. There was no site, nor was there a curriculum or a staff--just ideas, a small group of committed people, and a seemingly endless supply of energy. At this early stage in the school’s evolution, the founders made a key decision that has shaped the school’s philosophical and operational methodology at every turn: this would be a home- grown enterprise, relying on the expertise of the local community; the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School would not contract with outside management groups to conduct its business. The decision was partly due to an independent streak, consistent with the region’s geographic and philosophical isolation from the Commonwealth’s seats of power, and partly due to the great faith that the founders had in local resources. While not an official policy, this stance helped develop the tremendous sense of pride and ownership that CCLCS community members feel about "our school," created from scratch and nursed into adolescence with great care. Of course, the decision to rely on local expertise put a great burden on the school’s founders. Unlike current charter school start-ups, our group could not fall back on the wisdom of others’ experience. There was no clear educational blueprint to follow. But the founders were a very able group, with the right blend of skills to get the job done. A small band of successful, interested entrepreneurs formed the core group of original school trustees. Their interest originated, in most cases, from their desire to develop educational alternatives for their own children. Their experiences growing successful businesses had a profound impact on the operational structures that the school would adopt. The practice was to hire the right people, provide them with the proper resources, and to stand on the sidelines and watch the system work, making adjustments only when necessary. This methodology stands in stark contrast to the founding boards of some charter schools, where the charge is to ensure strict adherence to an imported educational program. Confronted with increasingly detailed tasks to accomplish in order to open the school, the founding board adopted a loose committee structure around which to organize. The broadest tasks involved securing a site, recruiting staff, developing curriculum, and creating a set of operational policies for the school. Available real estate is a scarce commodity on Cape Cod. Realizing this, the CCLCS Board of Trustees acted quickly to identify a few potential sites before negotiating a five-year lease at a strip mall in Orleans. The board’s legal and business acumen were essential in securing both the lease and the bank loans necessary to renovate the site. The board’s first treasurer, a local business owner, effectively oversaw the school’s finances for the first three years, allowing us to pay off our initial loans two years early, a fact which has won us a solid reputation in the banking community. Concurrent with site acquisition, the board worked to recruit staff. Two key principles drove early staffing decisions: the administrative structure would be thin, and the instructional staff would be built with an even mix of experienced, middle level, and novice teachers. There would also be a concerted effort to recruit both people from within traditional school systems, those with clear ideas on how to make schools work, and people with specific expertise from outside of traditional educational systems. As ideals turned into policies, this mix of experienced pragmatists and wide-eyed idealists proved to be especially fruitful. Although the school did not yet have a budget to officially hire teachers, three senior teachers, two from the Nauset middle school and one from Western Massachusetts, agreed to serve as key players in formulating the operational structure of the school. By the winter of 1995, curriculum groups were researching basic educational structures, the site committee was working out specifications for renovation; senior teachers were working with the hiring committee to recruit staff; public meetings were being held to attract families; and the board was working with the senior teachers to develop a leadership structure. At this early stage, another key decision was made. As it turned out, more than one founding trustee was interested in working at the school. This was not totally unexpected, given the strong commitment of those involved and the excitement surrounding the movement, as it was about to coalesce into something tangible. After much soul searching and sometimes painful deliberation, the majority of the board thought it best to recruit a director from outside of the community. This decision went a long way toward establishing a grass roots educational community, in which teachers, board members, parents and students are all seen as valuable contributors to the governing process. By the summer of 1995, a director was hired from outside Cape Cod, and an administrative assistant was brought in to set up a temporary office in a storage room at one of the trustee’s businesses. Construction crews were hard at work renovating the site, and the teaching staff, which was taking shape, was meeting to work out the nuts and bolts of school policies and curriculum. School staff was meeting with organizational leaders from across Cape Cod in an effort to create as-yet-loosely defined resource partnerships. Students had been selected, and many of their parents were working on a wide range of committees, doing everything from writing grants, to scouring Cape Cod for surplus furniture, to hanging blackboards. The last board was hung at 2 a.m., and barely six hours later the first official students walked through the doors of the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School. VISION, GOALS, AND OBJECTIVES Putting Goals Into Action Through the School Culture The vision of the school, paraphrased in this section from the founders' original mission statement, which was included in the school’s charter application (1994), is to provide students with a school environment that connects traditional in-classroom learning with real, hands-on learning experiences. These learning experiences are embedded in an interdisciplinary curriculum, student projects that are inquiry-based, interactions with experts in specific fields, and actual in-the-field experiences. At CCLCS we feel that when students discover how to embrace these learning situations, they truly become members of a community of learners, and they come to realize that their teachers are facilitators and guides helping them discover their own intellectual strengths. The school's overall goal is to help students develop into self-motivated, intellectually curious, life-long learners. Underlying this goal is the belief that middle school age children have a capacity to learn that is frequently underestimated in many schools. At CCLCS, teachers employ a wide variety of active teaching methods in order to access the multiple paths to understanding that our students employ. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences is invoked in many of the teacher-designed lesson plans. Teachers model the excitement of being involved in an active community of learners, and adult understanding of the developmental needs of middle school students leads to high quality interactions. Many activities are designed or adapted as necessary to foster the emotional, social, and civic growth of the students, and close, caring relationships with adults assure that the whole student is attended to. At CCLCS we recognize that humans have big brains in order to learn and that stimulated students learn naturally. In our experience, students who are reaching their social, emotional, and intellectual potential are generally happy and tend to form a positive attachment to their school. Moreover, once students come to trust and enjoy the school, it becomes easier for them to look more critically at their relative weaknesses and buy into plans to work on these areas. Some schools ignore student weaknesses in an attempt to falsely prop up self-esteem. Other schools focus disproportionately on student weaknesses, continually picking at them as small children pick at a scab. The operative methodology at CCLCS, designed to promote optimal student development, centers around the creation of programs that allow students to express their areas of strength as loudly as possible, and to subsequently use the "emotional capital" gained through these successes to learn about and remedy areas of relative weakness. Keeping the School’s Mission and Values Alive in Our Consciousness It takes more than passion to create and operate a school. With this in mind, during the school’s second year of operation (1996-1997), a team of teachers, board members, and the school’s administrator developed an accountability plan outlining eleven broad objectives for CCLCS. Since that time, specific benchmarks, directly related to student learning outcomes, have been added. The eleven broad school objectives are:
In the fall of 1998, as we looked toward our charter renewal process, CCLCS conducted an internal school review. As part of that review, a committee of parents, teachers, board members, and an administrator worked to edit the school’s original mission statement. They pulled critical elements from the original mission statement (in the school’s charter application) and developed a distilled version, which appears below and which is now referred to as the school’s mission statement:
Of course, it is one task to write a mission, another to bring it alive in the climate of new-school revolutionary zeal, and still quite another to keep it from getting stale after seven years of success. The poet’s lament that "he not busy being born is busy dying" is as true of institutions as it can be of some people. While we do not have a set of standardized procedures specifically designed to maintain the school’s original vision and spirit, we manage to keep it alive in several ways. Most simply, but perhaps most profoundly, our methods seem to work. Success breeds success. Our cultural practices continue to be in place. We have experienced minimal staff turnover, and new staff and students are able to learn by example. Curriculum initiatives, field trips, staff meetings, and any number of other practices, some of which are described in the "success" section of this paper, keep the school’s mission and values alive. Of course, without robust elements of assessment and self-reflection, it might be difficult to recognize a slow slide into mediocrity. Fortunately, the charter school laws do not allow this to occur. State mandated program audits and the regulatory mechanisms involved in the processes of re-chartering, these and the reflection embedded in our governance systems (retreats, evaluations, staff meetings), help us pursue an aggressive set of practices that has kept our mission in the forefront of our community consciousness. The work we did in preparation for our charter renewal application, for example, helped keep us on track. While we felt that we were living up to the ideals expressed in our mission statement quite well, we weren’t sure that our curriculum and assessment records showed this clearly enough. Our staff reviewed the school’s mission and condensed it into a series of "mission strands": interdisciplinary, multicultural, environmental, aesthetic, and civic. This has allowed us to easily examine our school’s curriculum and the school’s cultural practices, making certain these adhere to the school’s mission. Each curricular unit is now entered into an electronic database, where the unit is described in detail and cross-referenced to our mission strands and to the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. Students produce power point presentations to accompany work portfolios. The power points are guided by questions designed to provoke reflection on how students have grown with respect to the school’s key mission strands. Although school climate and adherence to mission lie at the heart of a charter school’s success, there are many other school-wide functions that need to work effectively in order to ensure a healthy school system. These provide infrastructure and support systems, without which a complex entity like a school could not function. SUCCESS Defining the Key Elements to Success
What makes our school work? This is an important question to ask any institution at any time, but it’s especially important to ask at CCLCS now, after seven years of successful operation. Our school performance has been measured in many ways, ranging from internal informal indices like inquiries into family satisfaction (through person to person interactions with families and evaluations sent to all families), to standardized high stakes tests (MCAS, CAT), to formal programmatic audits (Coordinated Program Review and Site Visits, most recently our Year 7 Site Visit from the Massachusetts Department of Education). To date, all metrics have shown consistently high performance levels; our school is clearly more than just a "flash in the pan." Something profound is at work here, and we have a responsibility, both to ourselves and to the wider educational community (as mandated by charter school law), to figure out what that is and to communicate it. Defining the key elements to success is no simple matter at a school like ours, given the high level of autonomy present in our operational culture. Our charter describes a broad spectrum of educational principles, but it does not mandate the steps to realizing these. Our teacher-produced curriculum is informed by the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks, but does not slavishly follow along. Our disciplinary systems describe the kind of environment we want to produce but do not obsess with minutia. We have created a school culture that lays out the broad brushstrokes, but relies upon the individuals within the community to fill in the details. As our students could recite at the drop of a hat, with freedom comes responsibility. Teachers, students, administrators, trustees, and parents all work to understand the school culture and then find ways to uphold their civic responsibility, a charge that varies with one’s role, time, and place. The Role of Governance At the heart of our school's success is a governance system that absolutely relies upon participatory leadership and consensus decision-making. Teachers, board members, parents, and students (when appropriate) actively participate in the governance process, and that participation takes many forms. Teachers, along with the director, hire new faculty, continually revise the curriculum in each subject area to fit emerging academic needs, assist in deciding school-wide issues (such as expanding the school into neighboring facilities or increasing enrollment) and take the lead in developing the school’s programs. Students feel comfortable enough in the school environment to challenge school regulations that appear counterintuitive to school culture and goals. Student interest and activism, for example led to the development of an interscholastic sports program at CCLCS. Students also take on leadership roles to help develop programs that relate to the school's missions (holding a conference for the public on water quality, for example, advocating a position at their town’s annual meeting, or inviting community experts in to speak to classes on specific topics). Parents with expertise serve on the CCLCS Board of Trustees and assist in making informed decisions concerning the finances of the school. They are helping to define the future physical site of the school, and they ask the difficult questions about issues related to student achievement, exemplary teaching, and academic success. Parents also volunteer to serve on committees that directly or indirectly relate to student success; they serve as members of a grants committee, for example, searching for funds that will help support and enhance the academic program. The CCLCS Board of Trustees includes teachers, the school’s director, and a number of parents and parents of alumni, and it has seven standing committees (finance, executive, facilities, personnel policies, executive, grants and foundation/fundraising liaisons, nominating). The board meets monthly. The executive committee (school director included) meets in advance to set the agenda, and there is a public commentary portion at the beginning of every meeting during which non-board members can add to the agenda. Decision making at both the board and staff levels is by consensus, reflecting a commitment to robust discussion and the school’s mission, rather than a legislated mandate. Board bylaws dictate a majority rule policy, but in practice votes are nearly always unanimous, as disagreements tend to yield to the spirit of consensus building. Staff decisions are also made through consensus building discussions. The "cost" of this method is that it can take a long time to make some decisions, especially at the staff level. However, the benefit of making decisions by consensus is heightened "buy in" once a decision is made and improved understanding of one another and the multiple aspects of a given issue. To help the process function smoothly, the majority of the current board received formal training in consensus decision-making (1999-2001) though a "Board-Strengthening Project" sponsored by the Charter School Resource Center. Without this bottom-up type of participatory leadership and consensus decision-making, our school could not achieve the level of academic success it has attained, nor could it provide an environment in which students are nurtured as learners. Due to this form of governance, each community member, particularly each teacher, is a stakeholder in the school, and therefore wants to continually strengthen the school and its learning environment. The View From the Inside: Interviews with Community Members In May of 2002, in preparation for writing this document, Patricia Anthony interviewed eight faculty members (teachers, the school nurse, and the interim director) and sixteen students (members of Student Government, which consists of representatives from each of the nine homerooms and includes students from all three grades). Additionally, six board members responded to written interview questions (see Appendix) similar to those answered by faculty and students. Excerpts of their responses form the bulk of this section; they document the support CCLCS community members have for their school. Specifically, respondents attest to the critical role of participatory governance at CCLCS, stating that it provides the grounding and structure for the success of the school. When asked if CCLCS has participatory governance, specifically if the CCLCS is a "teacher driven" school, five out of the six board members agreed. The sixth board member, while disagreeing with the label "teacher driven" did say that although "the Board and Director govern the school with input from teachers … teachers have a voice and participate fully in the school mission." Other board members made the following observations regarding the faculty's role and governance of the school:
(Note: The board member who made the last comment above continued by reviewing the board's responsibilities, such as setting policy, ensuring that the school fulfills its mission, and is fiscally responsible.) The teachers interviewed all agreed that the school was teacher driven. A sixth grade teacher in her fourth year at the school--and fourth year teaching–stated, "The Board is excellent in asking for ideas and likes to back the teachers in making decisions." She also observed that having teachers fully participate in the school's governance is "good for the Board, too--to hear from staff and to know that they have a qualified and knowledgeable staff." A seventh grade teacher and veteran of thirteen years, described how teachers are fully invested in the school and feel that they are an "important part of it." She stated that teachers are "willing to make decisions that call for personal sacrifice for the betterment of the school." She related that this was better than "having it come down from on high." A veteran math teacher, who just completed her second year at the school, contrasted her fifteen-year experience at a traditional public school with her two years at CCLCS: "As a staff, we are very involved in the decision-making and the running of the school; and that is very important to me. Where I came from, it was--this is the way you are going to do it, and they didn't want to hear from you. Very defeating...very frustrating." When asked for any additional comments, this teacher said she wanted people to know "how great it is to work here!" In most schools, the school nurse is considered ancillary staff. Due to the participatory governance model used at CCLCS, our school nurse views her role differently. "I don't know any other school where the school nurse has the power like I get around here...(like) everyone does," she said. She further noted that she has worked many years as a school nurse, in many schools on the Cape and finds something unique at CCLCS. As she puts it, "The staff are given a part of governance; (they) work harder because they are part of it." Students, also, concurred about the importance of participatory governance. When asked if they had a voice, the students unanimously agreed that they did. "Yes, we are representing students-- we get to voice their stands," an eighth grader observed. In response to the question: What is different about your school from the schools you attended before? A seventh grade student interestingly pointed out, "(At CCLCS) teachers like what they do. They get to decide things." Another student agreed, saying, "(Here) teachers can do their own thing. Usually in regular public schools, all the teachers have to do the same thing." The message conveyed in all these different voices is this: involvement in governance matters. Faculty members become invested in the school because their opinions matter. Because their opinions matter, decisions are made using a consensus model. Faculty members know that by participating, they directly influence school matters, from curriculum decisions to personnel issues, to all-school policies. Because they are directly involved in decision-making, individual faculty members feel included; they have ownership in the school and its mission. Staff ownership of a school dramatically alters the school's climate. CCLCS staff members are energized because of participatory governance and because an interesting, vital curriculum lies at the heart of the school’s educational mission, a curriculum teachers help create. At CCLCS teachers have been free to write their own curriculum, with broad collaborative oversight by their teams and the director, and within parameters defined first by the school mission and secondarily by the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. This allows teachers to explore subject matter deeply and develop units about which they are passionate, rather than teaching units dictated from "on high." This freedom, with responsibility, leads to a great investment in the school. One of the school's special education teachers, who spends the majority of her time in the regular classrooms, stated that at CCLCS teachers "invest themselves in curriculum enhancement. Their job is not just a job, it's a passion." She observed that teachers are constantly "personalizing their lesson plans, adding different dimensions, bringing in from the community." She also noted that at CCLCS the teachers "get to know the whole student, the families. They get to know the community and are visible in the community. They are committed to the mission of the school." Students notice this passion for teaching and learning and the resulting effect. When asked if they thought that CCLCS was a successful school for middle school-aged students, students unanimously agreed that it was. They provided the following reasons:
Many factors contribute to the climate of respect amongst teachers, students, and their families, some explicitly built into the school program (like participatory governance) and some implicit in the kinds of teachers we hire and the atmosphere we strive to create. Built into the program is fact that students and their teachers spend a lot of time together, including non-academic time. Teachers and students eat lunch together, family-style in homerooms. We do have a rulebook and a code of conduct, but these are not stressed right at the start of a student’s experience at the school. Behavior management is handled largely through healthy relationships with the students. Teachers model appropriate behavior and take a genuine interest in the life of each student. Each student has each teacher's home phone and can get access to the teacher at any time. At CCLCS teachers are not "friendly peers"; they are caring adults who understand the value of their roles as mentors and standard-bearers for civil, social behaviors. At CCLCS there is a culture of kindness and inclusion. In the students' own words, when asked what makes CCLCS different from the schools they attended previously, students had this to say:
Many of those interviewed or surveyed commented on how inclusive the school is. Near the close of interviews, for example, when asked if they had any other comments, most faculty members smiled and said how they loved the people they worked with, crediting the school for providing a supportive environment. The nurse, when asked what is special about the school, said immediately, "The staff, people who work here have a real dedication." She also pointed out that unlike at other schools, kids want to be at CCLCS. "In other schools," she said, "kids line up to go home with "illnesses." The nurse also observed that although students at CCLCS face serious family and personal problems, as students do at other schools, discipline problems are fewer and less severe in nature at CCLCS than at other schools where she had worked. In her interview, the special education teacher stated that at CCLCS:
She went on to say that she loved working at the school. "I love the teachers. I love the feeling of friendship and support. There's always someone to help you figure out a solution." One parent described the school atmosphere in the following way: the school "fosters an excitement and enthusiasm for learning especially in innovative, hands-on ways. It creates an atmosphere of acceptance. While encouraging the group, it also acknowledges individuals." This same parent said the school was "relaxed and informal enough to allow for creative learning and teaching." Another parent said he felt that CCLCS is a successful school because the school has "an extremely dedicated staff " and is "a school that interacts and learns from our unique environment." He said he believed that the staff is comprised of teachers who enjoy coming to work, who want to be there. One parent described the school as being successful because it fosters three qualities that spell success for a middle school-aged child: "the ability to focus on academics in addition to fostering social life; developing study skills that involve foresight; and, (providing) realization through experience, that they (middle school aged children) can effect positive change in their futures through their actions now--academically and otherwise." A board member and parent of a seventh grader said she felt the school was a successful learning place for middle school-aged students because it is a school where students can "achieve their potential for learning; be truly interested and motivated in school; learn good study habits that will carry over to high school; have an interactive, open relationship with teachers; and be happy, well adjusted, confident, and well rounded." The View from the Outside Looking In Reports of the March 2002 Coordinated Program Review performed by the Massachusetts Department of Education, and the April 2002 Year 7 Site Visit conducted by SchoolWorks, both corroborate the views of CCLCS community members and attest to the success of CCLCS as a humanistic, achievement-oriented middle school. The Coordinated Program Review is required under federal law to ensure that a local school district (or charter school, in this case) is complying with all federal regulations related to special education and civil rights. In their report, the review team commended CCLCS on several areas directly linked to our emphasis on creating and supporting a culture of inclusiveness and a community of learners. Specifically, the review team found that for students with disabilities:
The Year 7 Site Visit Report, conducted by SchoolWorks in April of 2002 for the Massachusetts Department of Education, further substantiates the unique environment of our school in creating a highly humanistic, achievement-oriented place for middle school-aged students. The review team found:
Programmatic Elements to Success At CCLCS teacher-created, interdisciplinary long- term projects and the seminar program are two highly creative and wildly popular ways of engaging students in their own learning; they are at the heart of the academic success of our students and are a key part of what makes CCLCS different from other public schools. At each grade level, students are required to engage in several major research/writing projects (such as the Salmon Essay and Animal Research Project). Aside from being interdisciplinary in nature (for example, the Animal Research Project integrates geography, biology, and writing), these writing projects utilize the talents of the school's writer-in-residence, who works individually with each child on the creative, grammatical, and syntactical aspects of the research paper. There’s common recognition of shared experience. Seventh and eighth grade students, for example, knowingly glance at each other as they listen to sixth graders react to "The Salmon Essay." Each term every discipline incorporates a long-term project: In math students build "green" houses; they also construct parachutes and measure how far each child's parachute falls. In social studies students construct an Asian temple; they also reenact a major Civil War battle, which includes a horse for "General Grant" and strategic planning about where the various flanks of the army should be located. In science students construct individual telescopes and hold "star parties" on local beaches; they also make monthly site visits to examine the changes in a specifically assigned spot on a local salt marsh. Students and teachers alike approach such projects with enthusiasm and a buzz of activity. At the culmination of many of the projects there’s an "Open House" during which the doors of the school are thrown open, and parents and the public are invited to walk through all the rooms and listen to presentations, view exhibits, and ask questions of the young scholars. The Seminars Program began when the school first opened. For one and one-half hours, twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday afternoons), teachers and students examine in depth a subject that may or may not be curriculum-related, a subject about which they are passionate. Teachers are responsible for leading seminars three out of the four academic quarters. The subject explored can be an extension of their curriculum (the Asian Studies teacher leading a seminar on Japan, for example), or it can be some other activity that a teacher loves (such as sailing), or something a teacher wishes to learn and never had the opportunity to try (like quilting). Students are given approximately fifteen choices and are assured of getting one of their top five. Seminars have covered subjects such as: guitar, making your own instruments, history in the movies, Shakespeare, mock trial, crocheting, photography, designing Web pages, ultimate frisbee, plankton, astronomy, therapeutic horseback riding, art, art history, discovering organs, writing (for an issue of the Cape & Islands teen newspaper, The Write Connection, started by the school's writer-in-residence). At the conclusion of seminars, students are required to reflect upon their experiences, write about them, and include the writing in their portfolios (see also "Assessment"). In the seminars, students are grouped by interest rather than by grade. As a result, students become acquainted with teachers of different grades and students who are older and younger than they are. Varying with whom students and teachers work and study helps make both teachers and students aware of the broad range of intellectual abilities and maturation levels present across the whole student body. It helps foster patience and kindness, and it helps maintain high expectations, all areas that parents commended the school for inculcating. SCHOOL-WIDE ASSESSMENT But does it all work? Does our school encourage and achieve academic success within this humanistic, caring culture? The school's superior standardized test scores, attained consistently, speak for themselves. On the MCAS, 48% of the sixth grade students placed in "Advance" or "Proficient" as compared to 36% statewide. In seventh grade, 81% of the students were "Advanced" or "Proficient" compared to 55% statewide. In eighth grade, 96% of the students placed in "Advanced" or "Proficient" compared to 67% statewide. On the California Achievement Test, administered annually to all students, the results demonstrate that "over time, as groups of students move through the school, rankings on the CAT/5 increase...Overall, students show growth over time while at CCLCS." (Mass. DOE, 2002, p. 4) Aside from standardized testing, the school uses internal, teacher-developed methods to gauge student academic success. School-wide assessment takes two forms. First, each discipline has developed student performance objectives, standards for those objectives, and benchmarks for attainment of the objectives. These discipline-specific objectives, standards, and benchmarks have been developed over several years, with the assistance of professionals. For example, an exemplary high school teacher worked alongside the school's math teachers to develop a progressive curriculum and assessment process for the school's math program. This veteran teacher, from Brookline High School, observed the math teachers while teaching and met with them weekly for the period of one year to develop an appropriate math assessment system. Second, to ensure that students are succeeding (developing into self-motivated, intellectually curious, life-long learners), faculty members have developed, and are constantly refining a school-wide assessment program. The assessment system consists of:
The standards and benchmarks developed by the faculty in each discipline speak to the faculty's desire to make certain that all students succeed academically. Teachers in each of the four major subject areas worked together over the course of several years to develop the benchmarks. Annually, teachers convene to examine their subject's benchmarks and make adjustments as necessary. This regular review is particularly important given the revisions made to the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks and the MCAS. Because of the benchmarks, teachers are able to track every student's progress as they advance through the skills and knowledge base to be mastered within their grade. Rubrics are used across disciplines, and they are very useful in evaluating complex work such as extended projects and writing assignments. Rubrics help teachers and students evaluate student proficiency in the skills appropriate to each grade level. Often the use of rubrics leads to students doing considerable revision. This is especially true with respect to writing assignments, as teachers elicit multiple drafts from each student until both the student and the teacher are satisfied with the quality of the work. Our school’s Vocabulary Booklet was created to assist students in broadening their vocabulary in general, and to sharpen their comprehension skills when confronted with standardized tests questions. A committee of teachers, headed by the writer-in-residence, developed it in such a way that students can use it on their own, as a dictionary, and teachers can incorporate vocabulary from it into curriculum they develop. Vocabulary in the booklet is divided into the following categories:
CHARTER SCHOOL STATUS As part of the survey given and interviews conducted (see "A View from Inside") in May 2002, teachers, parents, and board members were asked: Does being a charter school help or hinder us in our work with middle school-aged students? The majority interviewed said that being a charter school helped rather than hindered. Most important to all respondents--whether they were teachers, parents, or board members--was the feeling of investment that came with being a truly site-based managed school, and the kind of school community that this investment helped develop. Our work at the school is made easier by being a charter school, because, unlike most regular public schools, we are able to have the kind of governance system that allows for and strongly encourages participation of all school community members. We do not have a union telling us what we can and cannot do regarding teachers and their roles within the school. Teachers can choose to take on additional responsibilities if they feel they have the expertise to assist in a particular area. Because we are an autonomous school we, as a school, determine our priorities, which in turn determine how we fund different school programs. With consensus decision-making, all faculty members are involved in budgetary decisions, as is the board. Everyone in the school community is invested in decisions made and feels responsible for seeing them through successfully. Parents, teachers, and board members interviewed cited some of the plusses about being a charter school as: less bureaucracy and more autonomy than other public schools; a higher degree of flexibility and less political animosity in decision-making; creative teaching enabled rather than stifled; and a more creative, exciting learning atmosphere. Interestingly, students cited the fact that our charter school draws students from all of Cape Cod as a positive factor. One student observed--to the vehement head nodding of the others--that, "kids come from all over the Cape. I get to know them and their friends and now I have more friends than ever!" The response speaks to the fact that on the Cape many students live in small towns and grow up attending school with the same group of students and families. The charter school broadens a student’s exposure to other students. But the truth is, our work is made more difficult by exactly what makes it easier! Due to the active participation of the faculty in governance, our priorities are with students, teachers, and academic programs. Hence, administration has been historically lean. This is scheduled to change somewhat in the coming year as two of our veteran teachers will reduce their teaching loads and become part-time administrators. The school's interim director will return to teaching eighth-grade science but will continue assisting with administrative tasks as associate director. He will have oversight of the curriculum, evaluation, assessment, and the dissemination of best practices. A seventh grade social studies teacher will assume responsibility for the professional development needs of the school, assuming the role of professional development coordinator. Aside from teaching a reduced load, she will be responsible for faculty professional development, mentoring, and evaluation. Certainly, the new administrative structure helps us carry out necessary curricular and professional development tasks, but it also helps us attend to the goals emerging as the school matures. We believe that we have built an exemplary educational program that should continue to prosper well into the future. In order to assure success, we hope to engage in some "higher level" planning. With teacher/administrators to help focus on key educational issues, the executive director will be freed up to spend time on heretofore underdeveloped tasks, such as developing a strategic plan, nurturing a fledgling educational foundation and investigating potential facilities options. Moreover, the combined positions should provide additional support to faculty, assisting them as they continually modify and improve teaching and learning practices. A difficult aspect of being a charter school, a factor cited universally by students, teachers, parents, and board members, is the bleak financial picture constantly in view, particularly in this current, fiscally constrained economy. The challenge of financing a building looms over the school, as well as continuing to be able to finance the quality of education all have come to expect of us. For example, the vans the school uses for all field trips, physical education classes, and other activities are now six and seven years old. Vital to the school's academic program, they will have to be replaced in the coming years. These and a number of other financial matters have to be addressed on a budget that is dependent upon the average per pupil expenditure of a district. Nonetheless, if given the choice whether to be a regular school with a central office, a union, and other bureaucratic measures in place, or to be a charter school with autonomy, site-based management, and consensus governance, we would choose the latter. For it is with this type of self-determination that our school can really succeed in becoming what it wants to be: a community of learners in which every child matters and in which every child receives the encouragement and tools to become a life-long lover of learning.
About the Authors Patricia Anthony is a Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Dr. Anthony served as Director of the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School from 1996 - 2001. Paul Niles is the eighth-grade science teacher and associate director at the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School. Mr. Niles served as interim director for the 2001-2002 school year.
Contact Information: Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School 225 Route 6A Bayberry Square Orleans, MA 02653 508-240-2800
Appendix
Exemplary Whole School Model Paper Research Questions/Data Collection Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School, May 13-25, 2002 Board Members Data
Please call me if you have any questions! Thanks very much for taking the time to respond! Pat Anthony (note: address and phone number were included in original)
Works Cited SchoolWorks. April 2002. Renewal Inspection Report for the Massachusetts Department of Education, Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School, Orleans, MA. Beverly, MA: Author. Massachusetts Department of Education (MA DOE) Coordinated Program Review Report of Findings, CCLCS. March 2002. Retrieved May 2002 from the MA DOE Web site: www.doe.mass.edu.
|
|
|
||
| © 2005 Massachusetts Charter Public School Association | design by SolsticeSun Design | |
