Background Information

Massachusetts Ed Reform Act of 1993

The 1993 Massachusetts Ed Reform Act is broken down into 8 topics. These consist of State frameworks, Statewide Student Testing, Graduation Standards, Foundation Budgeting, Charter Schools, Time and Learning, Teacher Testing and District Performance. The new act calls for better funding to schools and student learning accountability. As well as statewide student, educator, school and district standards. The biggest changes in the reform act were centered around “a school council in every school, continuing education for educators, more authority for every principal, better defined roles for school committees, and clear, concise and measurable statewide standards for students and schools”. Under the state framework section, we learn that before the 1993 Massachusetts Ed Reform Act, the only requirements were around history and physical education. Now there is framework and learning standards around statewide curriculum. With the Act, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) was also instated. MCAS is a test that mirrors the standards in the curriculum framework. Students must also pass the 10^thgrade MCAS, in order to graduate and receive a Diploma. Along with having to pass the MCAS, the Act also states that, students who do pass the new 10^thgrade test will be able to receive a Certificate of Occupational Proficiency or a Certificate of Mastery later in the future. Under Foundation Budget, it was instated “that by the year 2000, all districts in the state will be at their foundation level” in terms of budget. Charter school also benefited from the act. Twenty-two more charter schools received permission to open around the state later on. Before the act, there was no clear requirements about how much time students had to spend learning. Now it is mandated that elementary students receive 900 hours of study of core academic subjects and 990 hours for secondary school. Teachers were also not mandated to take a test to show their knowledge before they became a teacher and now they must pass two Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure (MTELS) exams. One in their subject area and another in communication and literacy. The last big change, was that “if a district is found to be "under-performing," the state can take it into receivership”. (Goulet, n.d.)

Shrewsbury School District

The Shrewsbury School District is home to 6,207 students, with 1,835 students at Shrewsbury High School, as of the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year. However, in the Shrewsbury District, they regularly have students from other countries transferring in so that number fluctuates quite a bit. The district is made up of 9 schools ranging from K to 12th grade (Massachusetts DOE, 2019). Shrewsbury is a Title 1 School, that has made substantial progress toward their targets (68%). Therefore, they do not require assistance or intervention (Massachusetts DOE, 2019).

Shrewsbury High School follows a 7-period schedule which drops one period a day (meaning we only have 6 periods daily) that runs from 7:35 am to 2:00 pm every week day. This accounts for a 7-day cycle. Within the cycle, during day 1 and day 5, there is an extra homeroom period added into the day. Homeroom period are used for the teachers to connect to their homeroom students in a different way than they would have in their own class time. Shrewsbury also has what the call MVP’s during homeroom. MVP’s are junior and senior mentors that go into freshman homerooms to help them get acclimated to life at Shrewsbury High School.

Within Shrewsbury High School, the student body consists of approximately 50% male and 50% female. The school is not very racially diverse with 2.9% African American, 31.5% Asian, 8.2% Hispanic, 0.4% Native American, 53.3% White, 0.0% Native Hawaiian/ Non-Hispanic and 3.6% Multi-race (Massachusetts DOE, 2019). The students in Shrewsbury however, do have a lot of students where English is not their first language at 34.5% and 3% of the students are English Language Learners. As well, there are 28% of the students with high needs, 14% have disabilities and 10.5% are economically disadvantaged (Massachusetts DOE, 2019).

Shrewsbury High School has a very low dropout rate. Only 0.82% of students dropped out of Shrewsbury Public Schools. On the other end, 96.5% of students graduate within 4 years at Shrewsbury High School. Of those students, 81% planned to go to a 4-year public or private college after graduation (Massachusetts DOE, 2019).

At Shrewsbury High School, the kids are usually above average in terms of test grades. Their MCAS grades in the district are above the state average. 97% of the kids are proficient or higher in ELA, 90% are proficient or higher in Mathematics, and 88% are proficient or higher in science and Tech/Eng. (Massachusetts DOE, 2019).

Shrewsbury High School is also a 1-to-1 school. Each student is given an iPad at the beginning of their time at Shrewsbury to use in class. This is a huge advantage to how they learn in the classroom. I use iPads in my classroom at least 3 out of the 5 days of the week.

The classes I teach are Algebra Geometry 1 (AG1), Algebra Geometry 2 (AG2) and Pre-calculus (HPC). My classes are a mixture of Freshman, Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors. The standards that guide my class come from the Massachusetts Math Standards. The curriculum we follow is “Contemporary Mathematics in Context”, using the Core Plus books. The way math is taught at Shrewsbury is different than how math is taught in a lot of other schools. We are never lecturing at the kids. The classes are discussion based rather than lecture based. The point is to get the students to come up with the ideas themselves instead of being handed them. We also rarely do practice problems with the kids for the entire class. If there is a class with practice problems the students are working together to solve them and it is a harder problem in order for them to make connections with past topics. I feel as though coming from the WPI way of education where we collaborate all the time I have an advantage especially at Shrewsbury, since they also focus on collaboration in the classroom. I used my past experiences of in class projects to help come up with collaborative projects for my classroom.

Shrewsbury High School has 10 math classes, Algebra Geometry 1, Algebra Geometry 2, Advanced Math 1 (AM1), Advanced Math 2 Topics (AM2), Precalculus, Calculus, AP AB Calculus, AP BC Calculus, Functions and Trigonometry (Functions and Trig) and Advanced Quantitative Reasoning (AQR). The classes are also set up into different sections in order to level the students. The levels consist of essential math, B-level, A-level, Honors and AP classes.

While undergoing my practicum I learned from two separate teachers. The math department head at Shrewsbury High School is Jean-Marie Johnson and requires all student teachers at Shrewsbury High School to be advised by two teachers. I was lucky enough to work with Lori Blasioli who teaches Honors Advanced Math 1 and A-level Algebra Geometry 2. I took over two of her sections of Algebra Geometry 2 (Period 1 and Period 4). I also worked alongside Amy Prior. She teaches Algebra Geometry 1, Honors Pre-Calculus and AP BC Calculus. I took over one of her Algebra Geometry 1 classes and an Honors Precalculus class.