Brockton High School, the biggest in Massachusetts and one of the biggest in the U.S., transforms performance in its schools. Not long ago, students failed standardized tests at the highest rate in the state; now, the school outperforms 90 percent of all schools. Teachers, who once told each other that students can fail if they want, now celebrate awards with banners.
So what’s responsible for the turn-around? According to The New York Times, it’s the school size. More than 4,000 students attend the urban school. Most are minorities and immigrants. The school’s vastness creates a world that never gets boring.
“You meet a new person every day,” The Times quotes a student named Johanne Alexandre, the child of a Haitian. “Somebody with a new story, a new culture. I have Pakistani friends, Brazilians, Haitians, Asians, Cape Verdeans. There are Africans, Guatemalans.”
The headline reinforces the message: “4,100 Students Prove ‘Small is Better’ Rule Wrong.”
Actually, the success in Brockton proves no such thing. The vast trove of research proving the power of small learning communities is still right. At most, the Brockton story offers an exception that proves the rule that small is better.
The Times offers no evidence that big is better. A couple of quotes about diversity do not account for an education success story. If big were better, Brockton would not have needed a turnaround.
So what accounts for Brockton’s success? Simple: Writing.
Students at BHS write in every class. They write in English, naturally, but also in social studies and health and even in math and gym.
When you write, you think. When you think, you learn.
The writing assignments also focus on concrete rather than abstract subjects. A science teacher asked students to describe how to make a sandwich. Great assignment! Students needed to break the process down, step by step. They needed to pay attention to details that they usually take for granted.
In a math class, students solve the problem 3 + 72 – 6 x 3 – 11 — and then explain, in prose, how they did it.
The Times got its Brockton story from “How High School Become Exemplary,” a new report by Ron Ferguson of Harvard University’s Achievement Gap Intitiative.
Ferguson’s report notes that teachers get regular reminders of the primacy of writing. Posters in every classroom list the four major learning skills –reading, writing, speaking, and reasoning — along with the key elements for mastering each skill.
Here’s how Ferguson describes the charts’ value:
The writing chart stipulates that students should be able to compare and contrast, and to know how to take notes, among other elements. According to Ms. Copp, teachers might say: “Oh, yeah, my students know how to take notes.” But the chart reminds them to consider: Do the students really know how to take notes? Can they demonstrate to the teacher that they know how to take notes? Effective notes? The speaking chart might ask students in an art class to be able to explain why they like a piece of art, she explained.
Which, of course, is the best way to teach anything. Remind everyone, relentlessly, of the important of all the skills.
You can teach anything by teaching writing — even reading. Eons ago, I wrote an article for Education Week about a program designed to teach kids to write as early as kindergarten. Kids come to school full of stories and a burning desire to tell those stories. When you let them, they develop a host of other skills.
The real triumph of Brockton is really a triumph of writing to learn.
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