Project Description: WestEd serves as the external evaluator for the New Bedford (MA) High School Smaller Learning Community (SLC) Project, which is completing its third year with funding from the U.S. Department of Education.
Formative and summative evaluation, including collaborative planning with project and school leaders, observations, interviews, focus groups, online questionnaires of teachers and students, incorporation of student graduation and achievement data, and facilitation of sharing of evaluation findings with stakeholders, has focused on this SLC’s development of a Freshman Academy designed to increase student achievement and graduation rates.
The multifacted Academy includes a ninth-grade orientation program, a house system for ninth graders, team teaching, common planning time for teams, instructional supervisors assigned to specific students, extended period Freshman seminars, after-school tutoring for struggling students, and special education resource teachers.
The SLC project leaders and other school leaders have used the formative evaluation from the first two years to inform substantial changes such as embedding an intensive literacy program within the Freshman seminar, increasing support for struggling students, improving services for students with special needs, and professional development for teachers. In addition, strengths of the program as identified in the evaluation have been sustained by district and other funding; for example, permanent instructional supervisor positions, expansion of true house system to the entire school, after-school tutoring.
WestEd staff involved with this project:
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