Handbook Table of Contents - TNTP



The Collegiate Playbook

2012-2013

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Middle and High School Campus

11 Mayhew Street ∙ Dorchester, MA 02125

Tel. 617-265-1172 ∙ Fax 617-265-1176 ∙

Lower School Campus

215 Sydney Street ∙ Dorchester, MA 02125

Tel. 617-268-6710 ∙ Fax 617-268-6712 ∙

Table of Contents

I. Introduction to Boston Collegiate Charter School

o Our Three Pillars

o Our History

o Sharing Our Work with Others

o History of Charter Schools in Massachusetts

o Student Demographics

II. Inside the Classroom

o Teachers on the MAPP

o Overview of Collegiate Classrooms

o Curriculum Expectations: Building a Standards Driven Curriculum

o Daily Lesson Planning

o Instructional Expectations

o Assessment

III. Outside the Classroom

o Homework

o School-wide Assessments

o Advisory

o Family Contact

o After 3:00 PM: Tutoring and Enrichment

o Calendar, School Trips, and Events

o Faculty Meetings and Professional Development

o Hallways and Public Spaces

o Miscellaneous

IV. Discipline and Behavior Management

o Introduction

o Prevention and Positive Reinforcement

o Responding to Misbehavior

o What To Do If . . .

o Family Relations

o Documentation

o The BCCS Dress Code

o When Consistency is Most Important

V. Student Support

o Our Approach

o Response to Intervention

o Student Support Staff

o Special Education Services

o Planning Curriculum

VI. Professional Culture

o Staff Dress

o Absences, Substituting, and Coverage

o Office Life

o Email

o Technology Acceptable Use Policy

o Physical Contact Policy

VII. Technology

o E-Mail

o Shared Drives

o Your Computer

o Phones

o SMART Boards

o Laptop Carts

o Miscellaneous

o Other Technology

VIII. Nuts and Bolts

Appendices

INTRODUCTION TO BCCS

For years, BCCS has been developing successful strategies and policies inside and outside of the classroom. This book was created in an effort to record what we do. The three primary purposes of this document are to serve as 1) a resource for all staff, new and veteran alike; 2) a means of further establishing consistency in a growing school; and 3) an informal record of what we do best.

In a school that is always growing and changing, this book will undoubtedly evolve. It is certainly not meant to be exhaustive but we try to make it as comprehensive as we can in order to continue the school’s efforts to make BCCS a highly effective organization.

Our Three Pillars

Three pillars lie at the foundation of BCCS:

• We believe creativity flourishes within a structured academic environment.

Good work cannot occur unless there is a safe and orderly environment in and out of the classroom.

• We have high academic and behavioral expectations.

High expectations demand significant amounts of extra support before, during, and after school and on Saturdays.

• We know that without great teachers, nothing else matters.

Teachers must have the time and professional tools and resources to do their work effectively.

At Boston Collegiate Charter School, these pillars guide the work we do to close the achievement gap, the most pressing civil rights issue of our generation. We do not believe that there is a panacea that makes a school work to achieve this goal. Nor do we pretend that what we do is “rocket science” or necessarily innovative. We work hard and use common sense because elevating student achievement and transforming lives requires constant attention to hundreds of different elements – not one, magical 100% solution but rather one hundred, individual 1% solutions. We require students to stay for at least an hour after school if they don’t complete their homework or complete it poorly. We have students attend school on Saturday if they’re failing a class on any progress report or report card. Our teachers get class started on time, ensure students are on task, and constantly ask themselves if and how we know students are learning. Individually, any one of these solutions is not THE answer. However, collectively, each of our 1% solutions come together to achieve results.

Core elements of BCCS’s design include:

Make More Time

To ensure that every student masters each and every standard, BCCS provides more time on task. This means a longer school year and school day, mandatory homework help, mandatory after school tutoring, mandatory Saturday Learning Center for struggling students, and more time on English and math.

Emphasize College

For too many at-risk students, college only exists in the abstract. At BCCS, freshman year of college is a natural extension of graduating from high school.

Focus on Literacy

A majority of fifth grade students enter BCCS reading below grade level. If a school does not address this dramatic and central issue immediately, students will be at a huge disadvantage in all subjects in high school and college.

Curriculum Focused on Basic Skills

BCCS does not use an off-the-shelf curriculum. Like other high-performing urban charter schools, BCCS develops curriculum directly from the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks (and, now, the Common Core State Standards) that ensures students master a core set of basic academic skills before they can master higher-level, abstract material.

Assess Early and Often to Drive the Instructional Program

The most effective schools use assessment to diagnose student needs, measure instructional impact, and build a culture of continuous reflection and improvement.

Provide Structure and Order

Students need a safe and orderly environment to be productive. BCCS creates a calm, composed, and disciplined environment to maximize the amount of time on-task, including a strictly enforced school dress code, a merit and demerit system that defines clear expectations for and immediate responses to positive and negative behavior, a rubric system that provides constant feedback to classes, and a common Blackboard Configuration consisting of a Do Now, Aim, Agenda, and Homework.

Our History

In the fall of 1997, Brett Peiser and Susan Fortin imagined a safe, academically rigorous public school that would offer children from every Boston neighborhood the opportunity to receive an education that would prepare each of them for college.

In February of 1998, after submitting their plans to the Massachusetts Department of Education outlining what such a school would look like, a charter was granted and the process of building a school began. Armed with a PowerPoint presentation and an idealistic vision for higher quality public education options for Boston’s families, in only six weeks they recruited 240 applicants for the initial 120 open spots. They hired a staff of nine founding teachers and secured a space off Summer Street in South Boston that would become the school’s home for its first six years. Only four months after receiving the charter, South Boston Harbor Academy – now known as Boston Collegiate Charter School – opened for its first summer session. Two months later in September of 1998, BCCS opened to its inaugural fifth, sixth, and seventh grade classes.

In 2012-2013, our fifteenth year, BCCS will enroll over 600 students from across the city. The growth means that BCCS is now housed on two campuses: a Lower School campus for grades five and six at our new Sydney Street campus just a few blocks from our larger campus for grades seven through twelve at the Mayhew Street location. Long term, this expansion will allow Boston Collegiate to serve over 650 students while maintaining small, personal, and focused communities within the three, differentiated programs.

Today, BCCS has been recognized as one of the leading middle and high schools in the city of Boston. Boston Collegiate students have outperformed their peers in Boston and in Massachusetts year after year. In 2011, for the first time, 100% of BCCS tenth grade students scored Advanced or Proficient on both the math and ELA MCAS exams, marking a momentous time in our history and ranking us first in the state on both exams. We remain the only public, non-exam school in Massachusetts whose tenth grade students have all passed the math MCAS exam for nine consecutive years. Meanwhile, over 99% of our students have passed the English MCAS over the past nine years.

BCCS now maintains a waiting list of over 2,500 students for grades five through eight. In a visit by the Department of Education at the end of BCCS’s third year, an official commented that “the school looks like it’s been around for 10 years.” In January 2003, the state Board of Education unanimously approved BCCS’s charter renewal and awarded the school a second five-year charter through June 2008. In January 2008, the state Board of Education unanimously approved BCCS’s third five-year charter through June 2013.

Boston Collegiate’s first senior class graduated in 2004. Since then, 100% of Boston Collegiate’s nine graduating classes have been accepted to college. The majority of our graduates will be the first in their families to earn college degrees.

Sharing Our Work with Others

BCCS has become a leader and source of support to other schools in the state, throughout the region, across the nation, and even around the world. One of the key objectives highlighted in our 2007 and 2010 strategic plans is the goal of sharing our work with others. Charter schools were originally created to serve as labs of innovation, developing best practices and then sharing them widely to improve the work of all schools. Focusing on collaboration allows us to fulfill our charge as a charter school, and it feels to us like the right thing to do and the approach that is most consistent with who we are as a school. We also believe that it is how we can have the most significant impact, allowing our influence to extend far beyond the walls of our school.

Collaboration and Partnerships Task Team

BCCS has a standing Collaboration and Partnerships Task Team, which is made up of school leaders, teachers, and board members who coordinate school-wide dissemination efforts. For the past several years the team has focused its work on sharing our work through partnerships, school visits, presentations, and more. Members of the team have presented in the past few years at graduate schools of education and business, Schools That Can conferences, Achievement Network meetings and conferences, and the National Charter Schools Conference.

Partnerships

We have also established formal partnerships with schools in Boston and beyond and look forward to partnering with more and more schools. We recently received generous funding from the Lynch Foundation to support One Dorchester, a formal collaboration between BCCS, the Jeremiah E. Burke High School (a BPS school), and Cristo Rey Boston High School (a faith-based school) and are excited about the potential of that collaboration.

We typically partner with other schools to share our work around the following topics:

• College Readiness Programming

• Teacher Development

• Leadership Development

• College-Preparatory Curriculum

Partnerships typically include the sharing of materials, visits to BCCS from the partner school and visits to the partner school from BCCS, and ongoing coaching and support from BCCS teachers and leaders. We have now established formal partnerships with schools in Boston and beyond and look forward to partnering with more and more schools.

Mentoring and School Visits

At BCCS, we mentor and support other school leaders from both new and established schools on an ongoing basis. Further, we frequently host other schools and school leaders for visits to our campus. We have welcomed nearly 400 visitors during the 2011-12 school year, including the Achievement Network (Boston, MA), Blackstone Valley Prep Middle School (Providence, RI), Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (Boston, MA), Boston Plan for Excellence (Boston, MA), Boston University (Boston, MA), Building Excellent Schools (Boston, MA), Cleveland School of Science and Medicine (Cleveland, OH), Community Charter School of Cambridge (Cambridge, MA), DC Prep (Washington, DC), Democracy Prep (New York, NY), Dever McCormack (Boston, MA), Emerson College (Boston, MA), Epiphany School (Boston, MA), Fall River Public Schools (Fall River, MA), Future Leaders (London, England), Harvard Business School (Cambridge, MA), Harvard Graduate School of Education (Cambridge, MA), Inwood Academy (New York, NY), Lighthouse Community Charter School (Oakland, CA), Making Waves Academy (San Francisco, CA), MATCH (Boston, MA), Mother Caroline Academy (Boston, MA), New Heights Academy Charter School (New York, NY), Oakland Public Schools (Oakland, CA), Salem Academy Charter School (Salem, MA), Teach For America (Boston, MA), Uncommon Schools (New York, NY), and UP Academy (Boston, MA).

Effective Practice Incentive Community

In 2012, BCCS received the EPIC Silver-Gain Award for the fourth time in five years for our high gains in student achievement in 2011. BCCS was one of only 14 charter schools from around the country selected as an award-winning school in the New Leaders for New Schools Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC). This honor allows us to identify best practices contributing to our high student achievement gains and to document those practices on the EPIC Knowledge System, a powerful web-based professional development resource documenting the real-life practices of urban schools driving significant achievement gains.

Schools That Can

In 2011, Boston Collegiate was named a member of Schools That Can, a national non-profit network of high-performing schools working in low-income communities. Through participation in the Schools That Can network, we have the opportunity to collaborate with district, private, and charter schools throughout Boston and around the country.

Achievement Network

In 2005, Boston Collegiate joined the Achievement Network as a founding member to support our goals of enhancing our use of data to drive instruction and sharing best practices with other public schools. The Achievement Network administers six interim assessments annually to students in grades five through eight and facilitates content-specific school leadership sessions over the course of the year.

Massachusetts Charter Public School Association

In the fall of 2006, BCCS was selected as one of five schools in Massachusetts to participate in a three-year, federally funded grant overseen by the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association. “Keeping the Promise: The Massachusetts Charter School Dissemination and Replication Project” involved BCCS in a large and far-reaching dissemination project, including:

• A published book, Inside Urban Charter Schools: Promising Practices and Strategies in High-Performing Schools, by Harvard professor Katherine Merseth. This book describes key components of our program.

• A documentary film, Beating the Odds: Inside Five Urban Charter Schools. This film brings to life the key practices of our school.

• Study tours, institutes, and conferences around the country. With a focus on teacher development, we engaged current and future school leaders on topics of classroom observations and school-based teacher professional development.

Boston Charter Compact

Finally, BCCS is an active member of the Boston Charter Compact, a group of leaders from charter, district, and faith-based schools across the city actively working to develop stronger collaborations and partnerships to ensure success for all of our city’s students. BCCS signed on to the Compact in 2011 and currently serves on two committees: Teaching and Learning and School Performance Partnerships.

History of Charter Schools in Massachusetts

Charter schools were introduced in Massachusetts via the 1993 Education Reform Act passed by the Legislature. Charter schools are independently managed public schools that operate under a five-year charter granted by the Massachusetts Board of Education. Parents, teachers, non-profit organizations, or community leaders, among others, may start them. They have the freedom to organize around a core mission, curriculum, theme, or teaching method and are allowed to control their own budgets and hire (and fire) teachers and staff. In return for this freedom, a charter school must demonstrate strong academic results within five years or the charter will be revoked. Families choose to send their children to charter schools; students are selected by lottery if, as in most cases, demand exceeds the number of seats available. Charter schools, in short, are public schools embodying freedom, choice, and accountability.

At the end of the 2011-12 school year, 64 charter schools are in operation across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with over 27,000 students enrolled statewide and seven more schools slated to open in the fall. Over 35,500 students remain on charter school waiting lists. Landmark legislation signed in January 2010 will allow for double the number of students who can attend charter public schools in the Commonwealth’s lowest-performing school districts. The legislation also encourages high quality charters to expand in underperforming school districts where the need is greatest and demand is substantial.

BCCS Demographics (as of June 2012)

Geography: The majority of our students reside in Dorchester (53%) and South Boston (18%). The rest of our students come from neighborhoods throughout the city, including Charlestown, East Boston, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, Mattapan, Roslindale, South End, and West Roxbury.

Life at Home: 45% of the student body lives at or below the poverty line. The majority of our graduates will be the first in their families to graduate from college.

Gender: Girls compose 54% of the student body and boys compose 46%.

Special Needs: 18% of our students are either on an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or 504 plan.

Race: 57% of our students are White Non-Hispanic, 26% are Black Non-Hispanic, and 14% are Hispanic, Asian, Native American, and Bi-Racial. As we have developed a strong reputation across the city, we have been able to attract students from diverse backgrounds and from all of Boston’s neighborhoods.

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