SWAMPSCOTT — Swampscott High School has been named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education for its “exemplary” efforts to close its achievement gap. Blue Ribbon Schools are honored in one of two performance categories. The other distinction is for “Exemplary High Performing School.”
Swampscott High, one of only three Massachusetts schools to earn the distinction, is among 349 schools, and 62 high schools, nationwide to be honored. The other two from the state are Abington High and Minuteman Regional High School.
“I feel like Swampscott High School is finally getting the recognition it deserves,” said Superintendent Pamela Angelakis. “We know we’re a fabulous district and we have fabulous schools and now, the nation knows that.”
The achievement gap refers to a disparity in academic performance between subgroups of students, which shows up in grades, standardized test scores and dropout rates.
Dennis Kohut, the high school’s assistant principal, said it’s the gap between students who are white and wealthier and minorities, who may be English Language Learners, special education students or economically disadvantaged students.
He said school officials and staff have worked toward closing the achievement gap. Swampscott High School saw improvement with its Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) scores over a five-year time period, along with the attendance and dropout rates with those traditionally lower performing subgroups.
Nineteen percent of Swampscott’s students are minorities, 7 percent don’t have English as a first language, 12 percent have disabilities and 13 percent are classified as economically disadvantaged.
Lytania Mackey Knowles, director of technology and digital learning, who served as one of the high school’s assistant principals last year, said one of the major efforts was to clean up their data. Last year, one of the school’s administrative assistant positions was converted to a data specialist.
An example of data cleanup, she said, could be that a student may have moved to another school district, but wasn’t claimed by that school in the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) system, which made it look as if that student was a dropout when he or she didn’t graduate Swampscott High School.
She said department chairs paid close attention to students not reaching benchmarks and making sure the school had the appropriate interventions in place, which helped the school make gains.
There’s been a lot of targeted intervention with MCAS over the past decade, she said, where the school looks at students who aren’t at the proficient level. School officials work with students on Educational Proficiency Plans, where students have a chance to test again and meet the benchmark for proficiency.
An effort was also made to intervene in earlier grades, so they can meet their benchmarks when they get to the high school level.
Angelakis said the distinction is also due to the school’s supports and its resources. She and Kohut highlighted the two mental health programs, Swampscott Integrated for Transition (SWIFT) and Harbor, which were introduced at the high school two years ago.
With those programs, staff, including a school psychologist, teacher and aide, works with students to transition them back to school after an extended absence, such as from a mental illness or injury, with a goal of having them graduate on time.
Angelakis said students are eased back into a typical school day, gradually transitioned back to a full caseload. As a result of the programs, she said the school has seen a significant decrease in rehospitalizations.
Angelakis credited much of the distinction to the efforts of Kohut and Mackey Knowles, who brought stability to Swampscott High School in the absence of a permanent principal for much of last year. She also noted the school’s history of extensive turnover in the principal position.
Lawrence Murphy has served as interim principal of the high school since last spring. He is the fourth principal to lead the high school in the past five years. Robert Murphy, the former high school principal, was on medical leave for much of last school year before informing the district last spring that he would not return.
Before Robert Murphy’s appointment, Frank Kowalski served as principal in an interim role. Kowalski replaced Edward Rozmiarek, who resigned in 2015 after a Beverly Police investigation revealed he had a series of graphic Internet chats with someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl, but who was actually a decoy from a nonprofit group called The Perverted Justice Foundation.
Despite the turnover at the helm of the school, Angelakis said the consistency in the last five years has been with the department leaders and educators in the classroom.
“(The distinction) is a combination of our MCAS scores, dropout data and attendance,” Mackey Knowles said. “Those are things we worked really hard to look at and paid attention to over the years with the teams we had in place.
“We had a stable faculty and leadership with the faculty with department chairs, guidance, special education and all of these people who have become one team that works together to make sure that no student is falling through the cracks.”
