“Education is what you get when you read the fine print."

"Experience is what you get when you don't."

--Pete Seeger

As we start to talk publicly about the proposed Worcester Public Schools strategic plan, let me tell you a few things that are in my mind:

• A recent analysis found that Worcester had the 20th largest increase in the country since 2010 in growing concentrations of poverty. We already knew that somewhere close to three-quarters of Worcester Public Schools' students live in poverty.
• In 2016, the Worcester Public Schools became a majority First Language other than English district, meaning that most kids come to the district first speaking something else. That number has been growing, year by year.
• The Worcester Public Schools has been a majority children of color district since 2003. The disparities around every aspect of education--from early childhood, to schooling achievement gaps, to gifted education, to access to advanced courses, to SAT scores, to not only college admission and attendance but completion--are stark. 
• The state is substantially changing its accountability system as part of the state's ESSA plan, eliminating levels, changing how schools are evaluated, and reworking the system. 
• The city of Worcester broke 1% over net school spending for the first time since 2009 last year, spending 1.7% over. The statewide average? 29.7%
• Due to the outdated foundation budget formula, the state undercalculates Worcester's foundation budget by tens of millions of dollars a year. 
• Per last year's Comprehensive District Review conducted by the state, the district has: "wide variation in the quality of instruction across the district" (p. 1) ;"K-12 curriculum documents...[that] are incomplete and not fully aligned" (p.3); "implementation of the district's educator evaluation system has been inconsistent and uneven" (p.3); "...not completed its initiative to develop and implement a more cohesive multi-tiered system of supports"; (p. 3) "many school buildings...old, outdated, and overcrowded...Planning and resources have been inadequate to keep up with needed renovations, repairs, and upgrades to the schools." (p. 3). There's more...at some point, its own post. 

This is where any strategic plan for Worcester starts, as that's the reality in which we live.

Since I've already posted at length on the issues around public process, access, and representation around this process, I won't repeat that here. The narrative of the report certainly rises to Shakespearean levels of protest, shall we say, when declaring how community-centered, -driven, -focused, etc. it is. 

Also, if you're a "lingo bingo" person, you're not going to make it more than five pages in: written in accessible vocabulary, it isn't!

Overall, the proposed plan is broken into five parts: innovation, academics, school climate, finance, and technology and operations. Rather than go page by page, though, I'm going to hit the highlights.

What you might miss if you're not reading closely is the comparison data being used as "comparison district" data. The data in Appendix A makes Worcester look not too great: 

You can click to make this bigger, or look at it in the report at the end

We'd naturally assume that the center column there is some sort of compilation--the average, the mean--of the urban districts listed, right? But in a paragraph on page 9, the report says those "reflect the top performing comparison district in each category." In other words, no such district exists, nor does that reflect actual performance by any combination of districts. I put some charts together on that, which I'll post farther down. Let's suffice for now to say that the stats presented that way are misleading.

It's great that the opening letter notes the finding of the Foundation Budget Review Commission, as that's the central issue when it comes to funding--and thus at heart, when it comes to anything--in the Worcester Public Schools right now. That's why it's incredibly puzzling that the recommendation made is for an eight percent increase to meet "the state average"...by which they mean the state per pupil average NOW.

I'm completely flummoxed as to why anyone in Worcester would be measuring spending by per pupil; we have so many presentations that talk about the progressive funding system the state operates under. Surely the strategic planning committee heard this, as well? We should not be measuring our spending compared to anyone on a per pupil basis unless they reflect us demographically; we should NEVER compare ourselves with the state!

What's interesting, as we're a bit less high need than some of the districts to which the plan compares us, is that you can even see it in the spending: 

Alphabetical order followed by the state, so Worcester is conveniently always the second column from the right.

Those districts are all spending right around foundation; their foundation budgets are reflective of the student need. Not true of that state average on the end, however: that's lower need districts spending well over foundation, like this: 

Quite a gap, isn't it? And growing every year.
In FY19, it's projected to be 1.1% right now. That will fall as the actual charter assessments come in.

As for the eight percent increase over the next five years, take a look at the last five:

This is general fund spending as reported to the state, FY13-FY17.

That change of $38M? It's a 10.6% increase.

That wasn't something we worked for; it happened due to demographic change and the inflation fact in the funding formula.

An eight percent increase not only won't give us the money we need to do anything further in the plan; it won't even keep up with current costs. 

There is a mention in the later section around advocacy around the foundation budget ("establish a committee and campaign to advocate for an increase in the foundation budget"), but this district should be talking lawsuits, not committee creation. And if we want to be doing anything at all more expensive, it's going to take more than eight percent.

I had to read this callout three times before I figured out what was happening with it: 

sidebar, page 20

So that's 51% of the WPS schools are Level 3 or below; 10 the schools in...what I am assuming is Revere...are Level 2 or 1; 69% of schools statewide are Level 2 or 1. 

Or rather, they were last school year. And that's where the accountability piece gets weird.

One of the specific goals in the plan is "100% of top performing schools maintain their performance level." That's listed as nine schools, Level 1 schools.

But there aren't nine Level 1 schools in Worcester now. There aren't any Level anything-other-than-4-or-5 schools below high school anywhere in the state right now. And there aren't going to be, since the Board's vote on this. 

Thus the first goal in this section--to echo that state percentage on learning targets and have 69% at target in five years--misses that we're starting from square one on targets in the overall system; we don't honestly know, given the new list of things for which we're accountable, where it is we are to start. We received new MCAS results this year, but the rest of the pieces of the accountability system don't kick in until (assuming Board approval) this fall.

This is a goal based on lack of information--and again, did no one present on this?--that thus we have no way of evaluating.

Not only is the accountability system going to change pretty radically; the testing system is, too (by the way; the footnote on page 11 is wrong, as the high school switches to next generation MCAS next year). And there is a lot in here on MCAS. 

I appreciate the attempt to make this in some way about student growth (that's SGP for student growth percentile); so let's look at how Worcester's doing this year on the new MCAS: 

as always, if you click, it will get bigger; Worcester is still second from the right.

And the goal is for the district to be "above average," or over fifty percent growth...

And for the performance, on this new test that the kids just took this past year for the first time, where we're still switching kids over to computers, to go up every year by at least five percentage points in ELA and by at least six percentage points a year in math: 

this is in Appendix B

It's not clear to me that this is statistically possible, probable, or worth what it would have to be sacrificed to get there, nor that the state would consider such results admissable (as they look askance on too much progress in a single year). It's not clear to me that this is based on anything real.

By the way, here's where we and others were in 2017, MCAS, meeting or exceeding expectations: 

Lower that some, higher than others. It's usually more meaningful if the comparisons are broken out by student demographic.

While demographics get mentioned in the welcoming schools section (and will implictly be included in state improvement targets), there aren't any academic, MCAS or otherwise, goals that are specifically set around the achievement and opportunity gaps faced by students of color, of different abilities, or with the first language other than English. Gaps aren't mentioned in the goals beyond a list within "social emotional development" and a passing mention as one reason for the push for an "innovation hub," which, it appears, is the push for an empowerment zone. 

That's an enormous thing not to feature in a plan for Worcester.

What I see instead, in the "city enrichment academy" is the latest iteration of the exam school, which has been rolling forward with what this administration is marketing as gifted programs, for high MCAS scoring kids.

Let's call this what it is, Worcester: this is the "how we keep white middle class parents in the city and their kids in the city schools" plan. Some of us have been straight enough to call that out before. There's plenty of research out there around the racial disparities in gifted programs. For Worcester, a majority student of color district, to keep simply adding these sorts of programs without ever acknowledge the systemic bias in the programming is wrong. It's really disappointing to see this focus.

While there's a push on computer learning, and more on career ed, and more on expanded opportunities in secondary, there's also a lack on the built-in advantages a district where most kids first speak a language other than English has. We had a major piece of legislation pass last year on language learners, which, among other things, celebrated this area of learning with both a seal of biliteracy and the expansion of opportunities for dual language learning. Worcester already has groundwork and a small program on this, but other than a mention of bilingual parent advisory council as required by the law, this isn't mentioned. 

There is a call out of the important disparities in student discipline at the bottom of page 17. This rates a subgoal ("monitor and take action to improve differences in outcomes among student groups") and there is a breakout (the only one I can find) demographically in Appendix B.

This is a start, but frankly, it's not the push this administration needs on something this important (also someone needs to check those stats, as they look off).

I could say more (lots more!), but the "community briefing" is tomorrow night, so perhaps there will be more. This is at 6 at what used to be Morgan Construction, across the street from the police station (or so I'm told). I stand corrected: per the Research Bureau's tweet this morning, it's at the old Crown Plaza (apparently that has a "Lincoln Square" address).

See you tonight at MCPHS' Ballroom at 10 Lincoln Square - the former Crowne Plaza Hotel! https://t.co/50IHM5i7NX

— The Research Bureau (@WRRBureau) May 7, 2018

It's not clear that there will be a chance for anyone of the public to say anything, but it is important to note:

1. this is a draft
2. the district hasn't taken action on it

...yet.