How the Community Schools Concept Was Implemented in Holyoke, Mass- A Critique. Guest Post by Gus Morales

FSCSs in Holyoke: A Panacea for our Schools?

Prior to state receivership, the Holyoke Public Schools (HPS) implemented a large number of programs and worked with an assortment of contracted consultants and organizations on school turnaround efforts.  Commissioner Chester provided the most recent brief summary in December of 2014, listing America’s Choice and the District Management Council as the most recent partners, each with particular focus and approach (http://www.doe.mass.edu/boe/docs/2015-03/item7-Timeline.pdf).  We agree with the assessment that these programs and partners did not produce the intended results, even if these results were narrowly defined as improved standardized scores.  Significantly, teachers have been overwhelmed by the quick switches from one program and one partner to the next. Teachers have not been meaningfully consulted about the various approaches based on our expertise and knowledge of our students.  These new initiatives have garnered additional resources, often without a public accounting, and a general lack of rigorous outside evaluation.  It is in this context that we approach the topic of family and community engagement today, focusing on the Full Service Community School model (FSCS), the District strategy for family and community involvement being implemented at four of our schools so far.

Full Service Community Schools (FSCSs) developed as a strategy of service coordination intended to break down silos and allow for collaboration between agencies serving children at their schools, thus facilitating providing all of the support services children need in one location. Inspired by the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone, championed by the Coalition of Community Schools, and embraced by federal and state education leaders seeking to meet the needs of low-income children, the approach was an attractive one for reform-minded school administrators and their community partners in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

The Harlem Children’s Zone approach has been difficult to replicate in other locations around the country because it was an intensive one that involved working with children before they entered school.  The approach began by engaging the parents or caretakers in the home and obtaining support services for families very early in the children’s lives, and most distinctly, by delineating a specific concentrated geographic area for concentrated delivery of coordinated services.  Children 0-3 and their parents participated in Baby College; children from 3 to 5 years of age in the Path to Promise program, and only children winning lotteries participated in the charter school Promise Academies. There is debate in the literature about the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone as measured by children’s outcomes, but there is considerable agreement that the approach is very difficult to replicate.

The national FSCS advocacy organization known as The Coalition for Community Schools identifies the following five conditions for effective learning environments upon which full-service community schools are designed and built: “1. The academic program is characterized by high expectations, challenging courses, and qualified teachers; 2. Students are engaged in learning before, during, and after school – wherever they are; 3. The basic needs of young people and their families are met; 4. Parents, families, and school staff have relationships based on mutual respect; and 5. Communities and schools partner to ensure safe, supportive, and respectful learning environments for students and to connect students to a wider community.”  (Eccles, J. and Gootman, J.A., Eds. Community Programs to Promote Youth Development. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2002, p. 15).  Putting aside for a moment the question of whether the FSCS approach actually produces measurable academic and socio-emotional outcomes, one would be hard put to argue that these five conditions upon which FSCSs are to be built existed or exist in any of the four FSCSs  in Holyoke.

Even strong supporters of FSCSs contend that, “We believe that community schools should be seen as vehicles for education reform; therefore, improved learning and achievement must be a long-term measure of the effectiveness of this growing movement. In addition to test scores, learning and achievement related indicators include rates of attendance, promotion, graduation, suspension and expulsion for example. It is important to note that community schools are designed to affect not only educational outcomes but other outcomes as well. Such outcomes include improved social behavior and healthy youth development; better family functioning and parental involvement; enhanced school and community climate; and access to support services. These outcomes have value in and of themselves, in addition to affecting educational outcomes.” (Evaluation of Community Schools: findings to date, Joy G. Dryfoos, Hastings-on-Hudson New York, 10706. Downloaded from http://www.communityschools.org/assets/1/AssetManager/Evaluation%20of%20Community%20Schools_joy_dryfoos.pdf quotation from page 2).

While more analysis is required to determine all of these different outcomes for the four Holyoke Public Schools FSCSs, one place to begin is by tracking publicly reported MCAS data.

MCAS Data Kelly School, FSCS since 2012

Year	ELA Proficient	ELA NI/W	CPI	Math Proficient	Math NI/W	CPI
2010	19	81	56.3	13	85	48.4
2011	20	78	54.3	10	88	45.2
2012	18	82	51.9	11	87	43.2
2013	19	81	52.5	17	77	54.0
2014	14	85	49.7	19	77	51.8

MCAS Data Lawrence, opened as FSCS 2013

Year	ELA Proficient	ELA NI/W	CPI	Math Proficient	Math NI/W	CPI
2013	-	-	-	-	-	-
2014	10	90	46.6	17	83	47.1

MCAS Data Morgan School, FSCS since 2011

Year	ELA Proficient	ELA NI/W	CPI	Math Proficient	Math NI/W	CPI
2010	14	86	49.0	6	93	35.6
2011	22	78	56.9	12	88	45.3
2012	22	78	54.7	12	86	43.7
2013	20	80	52.2	13	85	44.0
2014	19	81	53.9	11	88	44.1

MCAS Data Peck School, FSCS since 2009

Year	ELA Proficient	ELA NI/W	CPI	Math Proficient	Math NI/W	CPI
2010	22	77	58.9	13	84	51.9
2011	26	74	63.9	19	76	58.5
2012	21	77	60.1	19	76	61.8
2013	20	79	61.8	22	71	60.4
2014	17	82	49.4	15	82	47.8

Source: MADESE profiles.doe.mass.edu

To provide a fuller picture, detailed data on the suspension, discipline referrals, attendance rates, and many other indicators at Peck/Lawrence, Kelly, and Morgan FSCSs over the past five years is needed.  A full accounting of all grant and local funds expended on the FSCS approach over the past five years would complement this analysis, along with interviews with students and parents not selected by FSCS staff and conducted without school-based nor central office personnel present, perhaps by ESE liaisons or by a bicultural bilingual researcher independent of current FSCS higher education partners.

Careful analysis of MCAS data, suspension and discipline data, attendance data, and an objective examination at the state of student and parent engagement in the FSCSs could help answer the mounting questions of community leaders not receiving sub-contracts under FSCSs, of parents, and of teachers not under the supervision of FSCS principals. Have the best intentions and very large investment in the FSCS model produced its desired outcomes in Holyoke? To ask this question is not in any way to discount the tremendously valuable work of community partners nor to discourage a system of cross-agency collaboration intended to wrap services around students at school. Nor is it to tarnish the individual work of teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors and other staff members at the four schools in question.  Rather, it is to highlight the urgent question of how the socio-emotional needs of students might be met to best support improved academic and life outcomes for Holyoke students.

There are many models for socio-emotional learning and support. The MA Model of Comprehensive School Counseling is a research-based K-12 guidance counseling approach endorsed by MADESE and by MASCA:

http://www.masca.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=116&Itemid=117

The MA Career Development Education Benchmarks Crosswalk with the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks is a useful tool for aligning guidance to Curriculum Frameworks:

http://masca.org/images/mamodel/final_ma_model.9.21.06.crosswalk.pdf

Much has been written on the importance of socio-emotional learning and the need to implement guidance in PK-12 education and much has been documented by experts on the subject of Comprehensive School Counseling in the Commonwealth.  Implementing comprehensive counseling was recognized as an urgent need in Holyoke.  However, it ended up taking a back seat and suffering from greatly reduced funding as Adjustment and Guidance Counselor caseloads continued to increase while the time scheduled to offer actual guidance decreased.  (From Cradle to Career: Educating our Students for Lifelong Success.  Recommendations from the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Task Force on Integrating College and Career Readiness. June 2012. http://www.doe.mass.edu/ccr/2012-06BESEReport.docx).

Even as non-experts, parents and educators with any background in child development will easily understand that In PK-3rd grade young children should be engaged in learning to name and express emotions as they develop emotional self-regulation. Once students are 4-5^th/6th graders they need support to develop the self-efficacy and self-advocacy needed to interact positively with others while becoming increasingly independent and responsible learners and citizens.  At the 6^th/7th-12th grade stage addressing adolescent issues and helping students plan for college and careers through readily available MAESE tools is a critical guidance moment. 

The PK-5^th/6^th grade socio-emotional learning is the foundation for secondary guidance work focused on preparing students for college and careers. While the Mass GRAD Initiative and other work by many sectors produced an uptick in the Holyoke high school graduation rates recently, any teacher can attest that HPS students’ socio-emotional issues tremendously affect their learning and can lead to disengagement and/or discipline problems that interfere with teaching while contributing to students dropping out even before they enter high school.

Careful study of the FSCSs conducted by objective outside evaluators selected by Dr. Zrike and MADESE staff, not by invested administrators, could help identify promising practices while freeing up funding to support the neglected Guidance Counselors, to implement the MA Model of Comprehensive School Counseling in all Holyoke Schools, and to support the socio-emotional learning increasingly linked to academic outcomes.

Extrapolating the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) approach via the community school movement into Holyoke’s FSCSs is extremely complicated due to the specific student profile of the Holyoke Public Schools and local conditions.  Even public schools neighboring the HCZ did not match the composition of the HCZ charter schools: “And comparing the student populations at Promise Academy with those in the nearby regular public schools is an apples-to-oranges matchup: The HCZ schools serve significantly fewer high-need learners, like special education students or kids who are learning English. For instance, only 6 percent of the third graders who look the 2007-08 English test at the Promise Academy had disabilities, while disabled kids made up 30, 40, even 60 percent of the test-taking pool in open-enrollment schools in the district. Only a handful of students at the Promise Academies are English-language learners, compared with 14 percent in schools citywide. And the students who attend HCZ are selected by lottery, which may in itself shape the schools’ population: Unlike open-enrollment neighborhood schools, the lottery requires a measure of parental initiative that benefits HCZ students in other ways” (Helen Zelon, “Is the Promise Real: The Harlem Children’s Zone Becomes a Template for National Change,” City Lights 34:1. March 2010. Download from http://www.phoenixworks.org/PLSC240/Zelon.pdf  quotation from page 14).

Finally, the process of decision-making, the leadership, hiring, and community representation in Holyoke’s FSCSs leaves much to be desired and has taken place mostly outside of the formal channels of decision-making.  Holyoke’s Latino residents have been largely excluded from paid positions in the FSCSs. All past and present FSCS Managers have been white and of European descent.  There is a growing feeling that an authentic parent voice is largely absent in these schools.

The Holyoke School Committee was not part of the decisions about which schools would be declared FSCSs.  The planning processes held up at each school as highly participatory were essentially designed by the principals with a paid consultant and with the participation of community agencies whose directors and employees, with a few exceptions, do not live in the City of Holyoke and who do not have children in the Holyoke Public Schools.  Finally, the FSCSs have become closed systems in which community partners are vetted by very few individuals. Expanding the partnerships to meet evolving student and family needs has proven very challenging and the process is not transparent.

We imagine that given the publicity and funding the FSCSs have received, Dr. Zrike and our MADESE liaisons may be surprised by the questions presented here. They do not know that a culture of fear exists around questioning any of these decisions or even evaluating the FSCS model. The favored position of FSCSs in our District and in our school administration, as well as in our City Hall, has cut off discussion and close examination.

The following pending questions for further research have been submitted by Holyoke residents and HPS employees:

1. Has the large amount of funding spent on FSCS had any impact on increasing achievement and/or closing the achievement gap? Where is the data to support any such gains?

2. How has the focus on allocating funds to the FSCSs impacted district instructional budgets with regard to class size, staffing, and support for needed instructional programs?

3. Exactly what amounts of federal, state, and private grant funds and local funds have been spent on FSCSs in Holyoke?

4. Were funds traditionally set aside for summer school, family literacy, and other enrichment programs diverted to FSCSs?

5. Is the FSCS model clearly identified as the District model? How was this decision made?

6. Of the people employed by the FSCS programs as managers, how many are Latinos? How many live in Holyoke?

7. How many Holyoke parents are involved and what benchmarks are used to measure their engagement?

8.  How many people of color are part of the decision making either as employees, parents, or community partners in the FSCSs? How many are Holyoke residents?

9. Of the FSCS sub-contracts, how many have gone to organizations based in Holyoke? Is there a list available?

10. How many of the college students placed in volunteer and internship positions in the FSCSs are graduates of Holyoke High School or Dean Technical Vocational High School? What percentage are enrolled at HCC? What percentage are Latinos/as?