Massachusetts

Massachusetts Affiliate

Through the support and leadership of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and the cooperation of the Massachusetts Department of Education and the Office of Educational Quality and Assessment, hundreds of thousands of student records that represent Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Test achievement results since 2001 are being used in a productive way to drive school improvement across the state. Leadership and funding for Just for the Kids Massachusetts comes from Verizon and other business supporters, including Abt Associates, Comcast, IBM, and Intel, helping make this resource a reality.

Contact:
Linda Noonan
Managing Director, MBAE

For additional information on becoming a Just for the Kids state affiliate, click here.

About the Organizational Levels

Recognition, Intervention, and Adjustment
Recognize, intervene, or adjust based on school performance
Recognize, intervene, or adjust based on teacher performance
Recognize, intervene, or adjust based on student performance
Monitoring: Compilation, Analysis, and Use of Data
Develop student assessment and data monitoring systems to monitor school performance
Monitor teacher performance and student learning
Monitor student learning
Instructional Programs, Practices, and Arrangements
Provide evidence-based instructional programs
Ensure the use of evidence-based programs, practices, and arrangements in every classroom
Use evidence-based programs, practices, and arrangements
Staff Selection, Leadership, and Capacity Building
Provide strong leaders, highly qualified teachers, and aligned professional development
Select, develop, and allocate staff based on student learning
Collaborate in grade level/subject teams focused on student learning
Student Learning: Expectations and Goals
Provide clear, prioritized academic objectives by grade and subject that all students are expected to master
Implement the district's written curriculum and ensure that all students achieve specific academic goals
Ensure the district's written curriculum is taught to and mastered by all students

In addition to Organizing Themes, the three levels of every school system--district, school, and classroom--provide a second organizational dimension to The Framework. Within each of the five themes, each Organizational Level plays a particular role in Consistently Higher Performing Schools. Different levels of the school system must be involved, to differing degrees, in order to reach maximum effectiveness in the specific theme area. The assignment of practices to a specific school level may be as important as the practices themselves (in other words, "who" is as important as "what").

All activities in The Framework must be performed, if student achievement is to be sustained over time. Certainly, an individual school or class of students may succeed without the involvement of a particular school level, but that success is less likely to be sustained over time than success deriving from a well-balanced effort by an entire system. For example, if a task, such as developing a detailed and coherent curriculum, were not assumed by the district as recommended in The Framework, effective school-based educators would create their own. (By contrast, ineffective schools would likely do without a cohesive curriculum, and thus would contribute significantly to their students' level of performance.) When schools or classroom teachers take on tasks that are most effectively assumed by another level of the system, in addition to the activities they should be addressing at their level, the entire system becomes strained. Both teachers and students perform less effectively, and grow more likely to burn out.