Roxbury Prep state’s best in grade 8 math

Dan Devine

When city and state education officials gathered in Roxbury earlier this month to applaud students’ improved performance on the 2007 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests, much of the praise was directed at Orchard Gardens K-8 Pilot School, the struggling Albany Street school where a year of significant progress has administrators using words like “turnaround.”

But if they’d set up shop at 120 Fisher Avenue — about a 10-minute drive from Orchard Gardens, on the other side of Columbus, just past the Parker Hill Playground — they’d have seen what it looks like when the turnaround hits 180 degrees. At Roxbury Preparatory Charter School, they’d have seen just how much progress persistence can bring.

For the fourth straight year, Roxbury Prep — a middle school with an enrollment of just 200 students, all of whom are minorities, many from underprivileged backgrounds — stands as the highest-performing urban middle school in Massachusetts. On six of the seven 2007 MCAS tests, a higher percentage of Prep students earned “advanced” or “proficient” scores — the top two categories of MCAS grades — than the statewide average for white students.

But the feather in the cap is eighth-grade math, where Roxbury Prep stands alone with 94 percent of students scoring in the top two categories, the highest number of any school in the state.

Joshua J. Phillips, the school’s co-director, speaks of the students that accomplished that feat in glowing terms, calling them “learning sponges [that] will soak up every piece of information” they can.

“They’re essentially just looking for any type of formal education that they can get, and all we do is give it to them,” he said in an interview. “We give it to them in a way that school should be — just school. That’s it. Not trying to be too much of anything else. Just school.”

The concept is hardly revolutionary, but the results speak for themselves. State education officials say middle schoolers’ MCAS results have been flat for the last two years — but not at Roxbury Prep.

The share of Roxbury Prep sixth-graders earning advanced or proficient scores rose 11 percentage points in both English and math from 2006 to 2007, with similar increases for the school’s seventh-graders (9 percent in English, 14 percent in math).

To be fair, the gains did level off for Roxbury Prep’s eighth-graders, who saw only 1 percent bumps in English and science, and a 4 percent increase in math — meaning that 92 percent of Roxbury Prep’s eighth-graders netted top-tier scores in English, and 94 percent did so in math. And while Prep can’t be thrilled about just 49 percent of its students scoring advanced or proficient in science, that mark still keeps the school 16 percent above the statewide average. These are “flat” results that most schools would gladly accept.

Phillips attributes Roxbury Prep’s success partly to certain advantages charter schools have, like the ability to aggressively recruit a talented and energetic faculty and a commitment to preparation that has staff starting work nearly a month before school begins.

The third key, Phillips says, is an atmosphere that celebrates academic excellence.

“We’ve created a school learning environment where it’s okay — where it’s actually applauded — to do very well in school, where student achievement comes first,” said Phillips. “The goal for us, every day that we come here, is to make sure that 50 minutes of class is 50 minutes of dedicated teaching and learning, and that school is actually school — not some chaotic circus where learning happens only every so often.”

Phillips acknowledges that it wasn’t easy to establish that culture, but insists there’s no special secret to doing so — it all starts with getting the right teachers.

“The way we see it is that the culture is built from what’s going on inside the classroom — the high energy of the educators, the incredible commitment they show and the engaging lessons that they create,” he said. “The kids feed off that culture, and it spreads from the classroom out.”

No, there are no secrets — and no shortcuts, either.

Roxbury Prep expects a lot of its students, as evidenced by what the school calls “an intense focus” on an academic program that includes extended learning time before and after school, and even occasional sessions on Saturdays.

It’s a tough road, and Phillips admits he’s heard plenty of arguments for why it should be easier. As he sees it, the conflict stems from a difference in philosophies.

“You could run into many schools where it’s more lenient in terms of the code of conduct, where there’s not two-and-a-half to three hours of homework every night, where there’s not two periods of math and two periods of literacy every day, where there’s no uniform, where they’d never require you to come on Saturdays for extra help,” he said.

“But we have a mission — to prepare kids to enter, succeed in and graduate from college. And if you’re entering as a sixth-grade student at Roxbury Prep, and you have third- or fourth-grade reading or math skills, and your parents and you have decided that you want to accomplish Roxbury Prep’s mission, we have yet to find a way to do it differently than we are now … It’s going to take an incredible amount of effort from every person in that child’s life to accomplish that.”

Going hand-in-hand with that commitment is the realization that academic success is very much a competitive sport, and you have to play to win.

“If you live in this society and don’t think that it’s competitive around getting into great high schools and great colleges … you’re kidding yourself,” said Phillips. “Students and families in more affluent suburban areas are extremely competitive on those fronts. We want to be part of that competition, and we want to excel in that competition, and we’re not afraid to say that at all.”

That attitude is plain to see in the school’s announcement of its number one ranking in eighth-grade math, which makes special mention of the fact that its students beat out peers in affluent suburban areas like Wayland, Wellesley and Weston.

“Our students and families and people who live in [our] community hear over and over again that they are underperforming white, mainly affluent populations who live in the suburbs. It is a constant thing, the achievement gap, that term … it is pounded into them all the time,” he said. “When we talk to parents about our MCAS scores, our high school placement results and now our college placement results, we’re able to tell a different story.”

And a powerful story it is: No matter who you are or where you’re from, you can compete — and succeed.

“We want to make sure that [kids] know that not only can they get in the ballgame, but they can play, and they can play well, and with anybody else,” he said.