Indicators of School Success

Published in The Gardner News: September 24, 2010


A little more than a week ago the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education publicly released MCAS scores from the Spring 2010 for the Commonwealth’s public schools. Increasingly since the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act, these scores have been used by the media, parents, and school officials as an indicator of how effective each school is at teaching students how to read, write, and do arithmetic. Score summaries and other data pertinent to school effectiveness such as drop out rates and suspension rates are available for any public school. You can view these “School and District Profiles” by visiting: http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/

For the faculty and staff in the Ralph C. Mahar Regional School the release of MCAS data provided a feeling that the school is on the right path with regard to curriculum and instruction. At the beginning of the 2009 – 2010 academic year, programmatic changes at the middle school to add direct instructional time in the areas of mathematics and language arts paid off. In grade seven in particular, there were a total of 69 scores of “proficient” and “advanced” on the 2009 combined Mathematics and Language Arts MCAS examinations. In 2010 the number of grade seven “proficient” and “advanced” rose to 105. So, the number of students scoring “proficient” and “advanced” in grade 7 went up by more than 50% in one school year!

Sadly though, many schools use MCAS data as the sole source for measuring their effectiveness. At Mahar however, this is not the case. In a recent school committee report, I was proud to point out that in the 2006 – 2007 school year our administrative offices handled nearly 2,000 disciplinary referrals. In the 2009 – 2010 school year the administrative offices processed only slightly more than 900 disciplinary referrals. A reduction of more than 1,000 referrals per year over a three year period equates to more time in class for our students. Also, our faculty and staff have noted how our student body increasingly displays behaviors associated with respecting themselves, their school, and their peers.

Last week our varsity football season opened in Holyoke, MA. While we are proud that our team won its first game of the season and fourteenth straight, we are more proud of the correspondence that our Athletic Director and Head Football Coach, Jim Woodward received from the Athletic Director at Holyoke. He wrote, “Your players also showed a great deal of sportsmanship on and off the field.” An unsolicited comment such as this from a colleague who is miles and miles away is yet another indicator of the school success that is characterized in the Mahar Regional School District.

While test scores are a fine indicator of school success, I have always believed that the success of a school community is not only displayed with numbers on a website. The success of a school community is felt in the hearts and minds of the students, parents, faculty, administrators, and staff. We take school climate and school culture very seriously at Mahar. It is our constant hope that the successes we continue to have in our classrooms become conversations in our families’ living rooms.

To learn more about the Ralph C. Mahar Regional School, please visit www.rcmahar.org. The Ralph C. Mahar Regional School accepts students from towns outside of our member towns of Orange, Wendell, New Salem, and Petersham under the Commonwealth’s School Choice Law. If you are interested in choosing Mahar, please feel free to contact me in my office at 978-544-2920 or E-mail me at mbaldassarre@rcmahar.org.