Introduction

Brockton High School, located 30 miles south of Boston, is the home of championship sports teams and award-winning performing and fine arts programs. It is also a school where, in recent years, students have made rapid and significant gains in achievement in English/language arts, despite the challenges of widespread poverty.

The school is a central focus for the community, whose support is strong, and the student dropout rate is a relatively low 5 percent. Students work together with faculty members to present sports events, concerts, theater, and dance performances. Many of the 350 faculty members are proud graduates of Brockton High School themselves and feel a deep stake in how the school prepares its students.

Students in ESL classes are active participants in smaller learning communities.

There are, however, many challenges. Sixty-one percent of Brockton's high school students come from families who are below the poverty level. The city of Brockton, Massachusetts, is an urban center with about 94,300 residents. Economic upheaval is evident from the many empty warehouses and factories that no longer provide employment for the families who live here. While the mayor is working hard on economic recovery, run-down houses and apartments in some areas of the city reveal neighborhoods struggling to move out of poverty.

Brockton, the only public high school in the city, serves about 4,000 students, 30 percent of whom speak English as a second language. For the past three years the school has focused its efforts on literacy (reading, writing, speaking, and reasoning), and achievement has significantly improved for all students as measured by the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) achievement test. Brockton has demonstrated that when the whole school focuses on one strategy for all students, significant improvements occur.