The Level 4 List: Henry Lord Middle School (Fall River)

The Henry Lord Middle School in Fall River, which serves grades 6 through 8, was named to the state's Level 4 school list in January 2010. Lord's student population is nearly two-thirds White; the low income population has ranged from 73.2 to 84.3% since 2007-08 while the Limited English proficiency population has ranged between 0 and 1.9%. In 2011-12, 26.4% of students spoke English as a second language and the special education population stood at 23.7% (Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education).

On the 2009 MCAS exam, 45% of students overall were proficient or advanced in English Language Arts (ELA) while 32% were proficient or better in math. Two years before that the percentage of students proficient or better in math at each grade level ranged between 14 and 22%; from 1998 - 2007, 8th math proficiency rates ranged from just 1 - 14%. Before Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) was phased out  due to the No Child Left Behind waiver granted to Massachusetts in 2012, Lord had not met AYP at the subgroup level in ELA since 2004. Additionally, in 2008-09 students missed an average of 11.4 days of school and the attendance rate was 93.2%.

See here for Lord's Level 4 Redesign Plan:  http://www.fallriverschools.org/Fall%20River%20Lord%20MS%20MSV%20Report%20FINAL%202012%2003%2012.pdf

Since being designated a Level 4 school, proficiency rates on the MCAS exams at Lord improved in 2010 only to fall back to pre-Level 4 designation levels in 2012. Below are the percentage of students who were proficient or better on each section of the exam from 2009 - 2012.

	2009	2010	2011	2012
ELA	45%	55%	53%	44%
Math	32%	40%	38%	29%

In 2012, the percentage of students in ELA receiving a 'Warning/Failing' grade increased 4 percentage points while the percentage of students receiving a score in this range in math decreased 5 percentage points. At the subgroup level, approximately half of all African American students failed the math MCAS exam while no students with disabilities were advanced in either math or ELA. There were also a considerable achievement gaps between low income and non-low income students on the 8th grade science/technology exam. On a positive note, Lord met its target for Hispanic/Latino students in ELA on the 2012 MCAS exam. Overall, the school was in the 18th percentile relative to schools serving common grades.


Test scores are not the only area in need of improvement at Lord. The attendance rate and average number of absences has actually worsened since 2008-09. The retention rate, however, has decreased 2.5 points over the past three years.

	08-09	09-10	10-11	11-12
Avg. # Absences	11.4	13.2	13.9	15.1
Attendance Rate	93.2%	92.3%	91.7%	91.2%

If the school meets all of the requirements, Lord can exit Level 4 status at the end of the 2012 - 13 school year.


Citation: www.doe.mass.edu

A Look at Fall River's Special Education Population

Next in the series regarding the special education populations Massachusetts' ten urban districts, we'll look at Fall River. In the Fall River public school system, special education students currently make up 20.8% of the student population; FRPS has an enrollment of 9,973 with 2,078 students identified as 'special education.'

Demographics

Below is how the special ed population breaks down in terms of demographics.

Asian	2.4%
Black/African American	7.3%
Hispanic	22.2%
Multiracial	3.8%
Native American	0.2%
White	64.1%

Female	31.4%
Male	68.6%

Low Income	85%
Limited English Proficiency	4.8%
First Lang. Not English	19.6%

The disabilities with the highest student counts in Fall River are:

• Specific Learning Disability (580)
• Developmental Delay (293)
• Emotional (267)
• Health (243)

The age with the highest student count is 13 (196students) followed by 11 (159).

MCAS

Special ed students in Fall River, a Level 4 district, were among the subgroups not making Adequate Yearly Progress at all grade levels in 2011. In 2011, students with disabilities had a 12% proficiency rate in English language arts  (ELA) exam and a 9% proficiency rate in math. The Composite Performance Indices (CPI) for special education students has decreased 2 points in ELA and  0.3 points in math since 2008. CPIs are a measure of the extent to which students are progressing toward proficiency in ELA and math; the goal is a CPI of 100.  More specifically, each student participating in the MCAS is given a score based on well they perform on the exam which is later averaged to determine the school or subgroup's CPI; possible scores are 0 (Warning/Failing - Low), 25 (Warning/Failing - High), 50 (Needs Improvement - Low), 75 (Needs Improvement - High), and 100 (Proficient or Advanced). In 2011, the ELA CPI for students with disabilities was 55 while the math CPI was 44.4.

Educational Outcomes

In terms of educational outcomes, special education students in Fall River tend to graduate at a much lower rate than 'general education' students. This is much in line with state trends as well as the trend seen in both Lynn and Worcester. However, the achievement gap between special education and general education students in Fall River is particularly alarming; in 2007, there was a nearly 44 point difference in graduation rates between these two subgroups. See below for the graduation rates from 2006 - 2010.

	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Special Ed	27.4%	18.6%	37.1%	36%	36.8%
General Ed	60.6%	62.1%	60.8%	66.9%	73.4%
All Students	54.2%	54.1%	56%	62.51%	66.2%

The graduation rate for this population decreased slightly to 36.1% in 2011 for Fall River as a district.  Fall River has two secondary schools - BMC Durfee High School and Resiliency Preparatory School, which is an alternative school At Resilience, just a quarter of special education students graduated in four years or less as of 2011; at Durfee, that number was 40.8%. Approximately 19% of special education students required more than four years to complete high school in 2011 while 12% were non-grad completers.

Special ed students also tend to dropout at a higher rate than the general ed population. Below is the annual dropout rate for the years 2006 - 2010.

	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Special Ed	16.5%	14.6%	12.8%	9.8%	7.7%
General Ed	10.5%	8.9%	12.5%	5.3%	4.3%
All Students	11.4%	9.8%	12.5%	6%	4.9%

The four year dropout rate for special ed students was 31.5% in 2011, down from 48.1%  in 2007. At the state level, special ed students had a 13.2% four year dropout rate.

In 2009-10, a little less than half of the special ed students were going to attend a college or university with 95.2% of this group attending a Massachusetts community college. Just four special ed students were reported to have taken the SAT in 2009-10; SAT performance information is not reported for students enrollments of fewer than 10 students. In terms of Advanced Placement participation and performance, there was no data reported for special education students in 2009-10.


*All Data Taken from: http://www.doe.mass.edu/