Notes on Brooke East Boston Part I

These are modified notes from my son Michael, who visited Brooke East Boston, a charter school in that city.   The school has received considerable notice because it produces remarkably good test score results. Often, when we engage on the topic of school reform, we engage on whether charters, or traditional publics, or some other organizational structure is best  Too little attention, I think, is paid to what actually goes on in side the school.  How much time do students spend learning?  What do teachers actually do?   How intellectually demanding are the lessons, and what does the school expect its students to be able to do? 

One way to attack these important issues is to consider actual descriptions of what goes on in these schools of excellence.  Then, we might begin by asking of the approach is worth replicating, and if so, how we would go about changing the overall system of education to make that possible?   Do we fail to use these successful approaches, because only a few leaders and teachers can execute them? Or, because they cost more?  Or, because our schools of education simply don't know about them, or don't believe in them?   Or, do we secretly believe that the students in these successful schools are special, and somehow the deck is stacked in favor of the school's success?

With thanks to Michael Von Korff, here is his report on a visit to Brooke East Boston, with a few modifications and interpolations. Michael works in the field of math education, hence the emphasis here.

What is Brooke? What is this report?

Brooke East Boston is an elementary and middle school charter, part of the tiny Brooke Charter Schools network. It’s arguably the highest-performing school in the state on the math PARCC (especially in elementary grades). The school is 91% black and Latino, and 75% of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch.

The school permits and even encourages visitors. I visited in late August 2018, several weeks into the Brooke school year, and observed classes for a full day. I’ve tried to summarize what I observed about Brooke’s model.

Resources on Brooke

Brooke shares a variety of resources for visitors on its website, outlining the charter network’s values and its approach to school leadership and instruction.

Brooke also shares a variety of math instructional resources, including:

●     A high-level overview of Brooke’s approach

●     Scope and sequence information for each grade and “unit plans” for each math unit

●     Videos showing instruction at Brooke, with teacher commentary

Features of the Brooke System

More class time

The Brooke school year runs from August 10th to June 20th, with 32 school vacation days.

The Brooke school day runs from 7:45am to 4pm, ending at 12:15pm every Wednesday to give time for teacher PD. Students at Brooke have up to three math classes per day:

●     50 minutes for the central math lesson

●     35 minutes for a practice-focused “slate” class

●     35 minutes two days a week for mental math.

In total, Brooke students spend about 80 minutes a day on math, over about 197 instructional days.

Focus on teaching quality

Brooke heavily emphasizes teacher professional development. This emphasis manifests in several ways:

●     Training and support for new teachers. Brooke’s support for new teachers includes a one-month training program for all new teachers before school begins, as well as a yearlong “associate teacher program” (essentially an intensive student teacher program) for first-time teachers.

●     Time for PD. Brooke ends school early every Wednesday so that teachers can devote 3 hours to collaboration and professional development.

●     Observation and communication. Teachers and administrators constantly observe the classrooms of others. Instructional leaders regularly observe classrooms together in a process called “rounds,” to align their views on quality instruction.

Let's talk about More time Learning

I'm going to interrupt Michael's report, now, to ask whether more time learning is important, and if so what we need to do about that.   It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if students are coming to school far behind, if they have experienced educational deficits, that they are likely to need more time to catch up and thrive.   What makes us think that a student who is a year or more behind, or a grade or more behind, will somehow accelerate his learning and catch up with his advantaged peer in the same amount of time and in the same classroom with the same teacher.

Aren't we fooling ourselves to avoid the fact that it likely will take more money, substantially more money, to catch this student up, because he needs more time in school.   If he merely stays in school the same number of days, while he is moving forward, his advantaged student is moving forward at the same rate, or even faster, using his advantages to achieve even more.   One of the things that Brooke East Boston is doing is to give its students a chance to beat the odds by giving them an extra time boost.  They aren't in the money wasting business, they must believe that the extra time makes a difference. 
I'll have more of Michael's Brooke East Boston report in my next post