The 2008 – 2009 School Improvement Plan has been developed in consultation with the High School Curriculum Cabinet, the High School Faculty, and the Lexington High School Council. My thanks and the gratitude of the school community should be extended to all who assisted in its development.

The theme that emerges from, and that synthesizes, the High School goals for the year centers on collaboration and a focus on learning. Every major initiative of the year should serve to enhance collaboration for the purpose of learning.  And nearly every initiative will require a multi-year implementation period.

Lexington High School would appear to have reached the pinnacle of success in learning. It is a high achieving high school that, by most standards, has arrived at the top.  Over ninety members of the class of 2008 were designated either as National Merit Scholarship finalists or as recipients of commendations. The combined SAT scores of the class of 2008 are the highest of any public high school in Massachusetts, other than one or two examination schools. MCAS scores indicate continual yearly progress, a very small and shrinking number of failures, and a combined “proficient” and “advanced” score of around ninety percent in both ELA and Mathematics.

Still, the success of Lexington students has masked some real, persistent, and challenging problems that the High School must, and can, address, providing that goals are clarified and that a concerted, organized and collaborative effort is sustained over the course of years. Moreover, in addressing the immediate challenges addressed in this plan, the High School is likely to experience growth in its effectiveness in teaching all students.

Among the issues addressed by the 2008 – 2009 School Improvement Plan are the need to improve teacher collaboration in order to promote the consistency, quality, and effectiveness of instruction and assessment; the need to utilize more effectively the potential of electronic communications media in communicating academic information with students at home; the need to make community service more meaningful as a learning experience and more connected to the social and civic expectations of the school; the need to address the perceived decline in the quality of educational engagement among seniors; the need to continue improving the process for the academic and social transition from middle school through the freshman year; and the need, finally, to reexamine the master schedule for the school in light of the many program changes the High School has implemented over the past five years.

The immediate challenges facing Lexington High School include a now-documented achievement gap between African-American students, especially those in the METCO program, and the predominantly white and Asian population of the High School.  The documentation, in the recently released report authored by Vito LaMura, indicates a full grade-point difference between the GPA of METCO students and that of the rest of the student body. This difference is mirrored in MCAS scores and in placement data that indicates a disproportionately low representation of METCO students in honors and advanced placement courses. Despite the fact that Lexington has been in the forefront among school districts in celebrating diversity, supporting the METCO program, promoting EMI training, and providing opportunities to students for extra help, the achievement gap is a fact that the High School must address.

Second under consideration is the well documented stress associated with the High School’s, and the community’s, high expectations of students. In order to compete, students sometimes compromise their own health with long study hours, and parents incur the expense of paying for tutors and for summer programs to help their children better position themselves in this highly competitive institution.  Studying hard and seeking enrichment outside of the school are, of course, important avenues to growth.  But in its extreme form, the varied and complicated pressures to achieve and to gain acceptance in this culture result in about forty to fifty hospitalizations per year among students suffering from emotional or psychological health problems. Again, masked under the astonishing array of academic awards, high profile programs, and spectacular test scores are the struggles of perfectly capable students “in the middle” to compete with the most distinguished students—and the price that is sometimes paid in terms of drug and alcohol abuse, self medication, and various forms of sometimes unhealthy detachment from the pressures of this environment. 

The Mission of Lexington High School is explicitly designed to support that which is successful at Lexington High School: its challenging and varied curriculum, its diversity and emphasis upon individual achievement, its almost unequaled success in educating students to acquire the skills and habits of mind characteristic of an academic education. But the Mission adds several other elements that the High School has struggled with and no doubt will continue to struggle with: reducing unhealthy stress and unproductive competition and pursuing balanced lives.

Hence, part of the reason for collaboration and a focus on learning is to promote a community effort on behalf of all students: to promote the “equity of achievement” by clarifying standards and providing tiered levels of academic support; to diminish the need for parents and students to seek private tutors to maintain a competitive edge; to identify and assist students who are struggling academically or emotionally; to encourage the best thinking of professional teams in maintaining the currency of the curriculum and the versatility of instructional methods.

The 2008 – 2009 Lexington High School Improvement Plan is backed by several years of new initiatives: the school’s development of a new statement of Mission and Expectations; the movement away from weighted grade point averages and towards standards-based assessment; the improved means of formative assessment used by studying student data and looking closely at student work; the efforts to enhance communications with the faculty and between the faculty and the home; and above all, the evolution of the academic community within the High School from “islands of excellence” to excellence as a standard for all.

These are lofty goals, and complicated ones, and they are not anything that can be achieved in the school improvement plan for one year.  But they are goals worthy of the high standards of Lexington High School and the final phrase of its Mission, which promises to “…make our campus a microcosm of the world we hope to create.”