Massachusetts

Established in 1647, Boston Public Schools (BPS) is the oldest public school system in the United States. Winner of the Broad Prize for Urban Education in 2006, BPS continues to set the standard in urban public education. Walch Education was honored to work with the district in the summer of 2006 to design and pilot the Massachusetts Academic Support Program for English Language Arts. The successful partnership led to the refinement of the current product that was used in the district as part of its SES offering as well as the continued implementation in summer school 2007.

Among BPS's challenges for a summer school curriculum was to compress 180 days of instruction into a 24-day course. Another: not knowing how many kids would attend (in 2006 roughly 4,600 students were pre-registered, and 950 enrolled). Finally: a limited budget. BPS was not interested in the traditional approach of basal textbooks.

Walch Education partnered with the Senior Program Director for English Language Arts and nearly a dozen teachers to create targeted materials for 9th- and 10th-grade students. Walch provided pretests for placement, on-level curriculum, lots of practice exercises, and assessments - all at a grade 4-5 reading level. Pacing guides, graphic organizers, and a correlations guide (showing how the materials align with Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks) were all included. To account for the unknown enrollment BPS asked that the material be modular and reproducible. In short, the final product is a highly flexible tool, from which the classroom teacher can pull out just what's appropriate to fit the needs of each student to address BPS objectives as well as those of all Massachusetts high school students.

Boston Public Schools, MA