SCHOOL LEADERS IN Holyoke are no strangers to finger-wagging state reports on student achievement at the Lynch Middle School. It was eight years ago this month that the state education department first declared the Holyoke school, which has a student-poverty rate of 84 percent, “underperforming.” In the years since then, state officials have paid visit after visit to Holyoke, documenting shortcomings in written reports and recording the steps the school was taking to try to address them.
The Lynch was one of the first schools in Massachusetts to earn that unenviable distinction, which is part of the accountability system established by the landmark education reform bill passed in 1993. And today it is still among the 114 schools in the state – nearly all of them serving high-poverty populations – that are officially “underperforming.” Of all the schools that have made this list, only nine have been able to climb off of it. Lynch, and many other schools, land on the list and tend to stay there.
Fifteen years into education reform, a growing number of critics charge that the effort has hit a wall. With MCAS, the sometimes controversial achievement test, the state has become quite good at identifying schools where performance is lagging. But it has failed at the crucial next step: fixing the schools.