Newton+Street+School

Listed as one of eight successful turnarounds by Mass Insight http://www.massinsight.org/stg/research/turnaround-case-studies/

Reconstituted for 2007-2008 school year.

Mass Insight issued a report about the state of the turnaround in 2010 utilizing just the first year of results from the 2007-2008 school year. Now two more years of data are available. Their math is still lower than it was before for 7th grade.

For grade 7, the percent of proficient and advanced for 2006-2007 (before the 'turnaround') to 2009-2010: ELA -- 2007 (before turnaround): 36%, 2008: 25%, 2009: 15%, 2010: 38% Math -- 2007 (before turnaround): 29%, 2008: 14%, 2009: 22%, 2010: 24%

They admit in the report "when examining the data by performance categories, Newton Street seventh graders had yet to realize significant gains in Year 1 of Turnaround." Now, it can be seen that they didn't realize these gains in year 2 or 3 either.

They claim in the report that they did much better with elementary school in the first year of the turnaround, getting a 20 percent gain in ELA and a 7% in math. Now with 2 more years of data the numbers look like this: ELA 2007: 46%, 2008: 67%, 2009: 35% (uh oh!), 2010: 53%. So they lost most of that first year gain. Math 2007: 49%, 2008: 56%, 2009: 54%, 2010: 72%. So right now they are looking good in math, but as we saw in ELA between 2008 and 2009, it is possible for those 'gains' to go away very quickly.