Education Week - May 6, 2015 - 18

Lawrence, Mass., District Makes Steady Progress
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are making promising gains in English
and math achievement.
The school district is still considered
a Level 5-the lowest category
in Massachusetts' accountability
system-but its steady progress has
sparked interest well beyond the
state over whether the Lawrence approach
to district turnaround holds
promise for other urban school systems
with similarly daunting challenges.
U.S. Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan paid a visit last fall.
And an adviser to New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo has been looking
to Lawrence as a model for district
turnaround in that state.
Eighth grade English teacher
Trevor Munhall works one-on-one
with Lewy Baez-Troncoso at UP
Academy Leonard in Lawrence,
Mass.
By involving teachers and principals
in decisions about how to
improve achievement for the students
in their schools, Lawrence has
avoided the common roadblock of
imposing a one-size-fits-all strategy,
said Sarah Yatsko, a senior research
analyst at the Center on Reinventing
Public Education at the University
of Washington, Bothell. And the
district's non-dogmatic view of who
is best suited to run schools targeted
for turnaround-charter-management
organizations, the local teachers'
union, and the district itself are
all operating schools in Lawrence-
has also been a strength.
"[Lawrence is] looking deeply at
performance and data, and they
are targeting interventions at the
problems," Ms. Yatsko said. "They
are unleashing their professional
staff in the buildings by providing
them with autonomy and coupling
it with supports."
The guiding star was a comprehensive
turnaround plan focused on
"how the district is organized, and
how to empower our strongest staff,
teachers, and administrators," said
Massachusetts' education commissioner,
Mitchell D. Chester, who recommended
that the state board of
education approve a state takeover.
"I'd be the last one to say that we
have succeeded in Lawrence, but
we are succeeding," Mr. Chester
said. "It's a work in progress. I am
very pleased with the results in the
first couple of years."
Lawrence, a former industrial town
on the banks of the Merrimack River
about 30 miles north of Boston, faces
myriad challenges. Ninety percent of
the district's students are low-income;
about 30 percent are English-language
learners. The city has struggled
in recent years to combat high crime
rates, low employment rates, and pervasive
images of urban decay.
Mr. Chester chose Jeffrey C. Riley,
a former principal and former chief
innovation officer in the Boston public
schools, as Lawrence district's receiver
in 2012. In that role, Mr. Riley
has had all the powers of a superintendent
and a school board.
Deft Leadership
The deft way in which Mr. Riley
has exercised those powers may be
one of the reasons for the emerging
turnaround, according to a
report released last month by the
Watertown, Mass.-based Education
Research Strategies, a school
improvement consulting group. The
report examines the key strategies
Mr. Riley and his team put in action
in Lawrence. Among them: an
emphasis on creating and supporting
strong school leaders; attracting
and developing effective teachers;
aligning resources to student and
teacher needs; and providing both
the funding and flexibility to school
leaders to design programs that
meet their school's unique needs.
Mr. Riley and his team implemented
the changes in phases, focusing
on actions in the first year
that would yield quick results for
students, then later turning attention
to wider system changes. The
timeline had been laid out in the district's
detailed transformation plan.
The ERS report highlights the
collaboration between the district's
leadership team and the Lawrence
Teachers' Union as a key part of
the transformation. Though Mr.
Riley had the authority to unilaterally
change the teachers' union
contract, he worked with the union
to reach an accord.
The two sides did not always
agree-the union filed complaints
with the state claiming that Mr.
Riley had violated state labor
laws before the parties reached an
"
I'd be the last one to say that we have succeeded in Lawrence, but we are succeeding. It's a work in progress."
MITCHELL D. CHESTER Massachusetts Education Commissioner
18 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 6, 2015 | www.edweek.org
agreement. But the contract approved
a year later created career
ladders for teachers and gave them
opportunities to earn more money
based on their performance and
the leadership roles they embraced
in their schools. And Mr. Riley insisted
that all teachers, including
those in charter-run schools, be
members of the local union, an affiliate
of the American Federation
of Teachers.
Another reason the early results
appear promising, Mr. Chester
said, is that the turnaround team
approached the takeover with a
"strong dose" of respect for the
adults in the system.
"We did not start with the assumption
that the adults were the
problem," Mr. Chester said. "We
started with the assumption that
the system as a whole was broken
and needed to be restructured."
Mr. Riley has championed a
governance model he calls "open
architecture," in which the district
consists of a combination of
charter-run schools and regular
district schools. There is expanded
autonomy at the school level and
the central office's role is curtailed.
"The problems in urban education
are far too big for the civil war
that's going on out there today," Mr.
Riley said about the debate over
charter versus district-run schools.
"We've created a small community
where people have been willing
to put aside their differences,
work under this unified umbrella,
and get results for kids," he said.
An example of that "open architecture"
system is evident in
the district's approach to turning
around the low-performing Henry
K. Oliver School. The Lawrence
Teachers' Union took over grades
1-5 and launched the Oliver Partnership
School in August 2013,
while the Boston-based up Acad

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