This Massachusetts school district is poised to be the first to exit state receivership

A school classroom in Holyoke. (Photo by Sarah Betancourt/CommonWealth Beacon)

Since it was enacted by the Legislature 14 years ago, a law allowing for the takeover of underperforming school districts in Massachusetts has looked like a one-way ticket to state control. Three districts have been put in state receivership under the law, but none of them have exited that status and been put back in local hands.

That is about to change, as state officials are laying the groundwork for ending their nine-year control of the Holyoke Public Schools.

“We are officially entering the transition process to return to local control,” acting state education commissioner Russell Johnston told the Holyoke School Committee on Monday night.

For a community that bristled at the takeover when it happened in 2015 and has repeatedly sought to regain control of its schools, the news is prompting nothing short of elation.

“I am beside myself with joy,” Ellie Wilson, a member of the Holyoke school committee said at Monday night’s meeting. Until the state laid out a plan to exit receivership, she said, it seemed like there was no end in sight.

Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia, in a statement, said he is “pleased and encouraged” that the school district is “now on a path designed to lead us out of receivership and back to local control.”

State officials plan to hold a series of meetings with Holyoke over the next five months, with the goal of having a plan in place by August that spells out the details and timeline of a return to local control. Johnston said at a Tuesday meeting of the state board of education that he was particularly gratified by the commitment of Holyoke school committee members to continuing to focus on improvement steps outlined in the existing state turnaround plan for the district.

Along with Holyoke, the Lawrence and Southbridge schools are in state receivership under the 2010 law, which allows the state education commissioner to take over districts deemed to be chronically underperforming.

It has been a controversial approach here and nationally to turning around low performing school districts. The premise of the law is that poor governance and local management of schools can be key obstacles to improvement. Under the takeover law, a state-appointed receiver has nearly unilateral authority over schools, including the power to sidestep provisions of union contracts with teachers and other personnel.

Research on takeovers finds no evidence of improving outcomes

A  2021 study that looked at state takeovers over a five-year period in 35 districts spanning 14 states offered a sobering assessment of the impact of the reform. “Overall, we find no evidence that state takeover improves academic achievement,” wrote Beth Schueler, an assistant professor of education and public policy at the University of Virginia, and Joshua Bleiberg, a researcher at the Annenberg Institute for Education Reform at Brown University. (Lawrence and Holyoke were among the districts included in their analysis; the Southbridge takeover had not yet taken place.)

In 2015, on the eve of putting the Holyoke schools into receivership, then-state education commissioner Mitchell Chester said he saw little sign of improvement taking place under local control. “Despite an awful lot of energy and effort to move things in a positive direction in Holyoke, I see no evidence that we are on an improvement trajectory there,” he said .

Nine years into state oversight, it’s hard to say that much has changed.

State officials have pointed to improvements in the district graduation rate and in its expansion of early education seats and participation in early college programs that let high school students gain college credits. But basic academic achievement levels remain among the lowest in the state. On the most recent MCAS, just 6% of students in grades 3-8 scored proficient in math and only 9% were proficient in English. Those rates had fallen by half from pre-pandemic levels, with no sign of a comeback.

“The state owns the outcomes at this point. It does raise questions about the efficacy of this tool,” Michael Moriarty, a member of the state board of education, said about the receivership model.

Moriarty, a Holyoke resident and one-time school committee member, emphasized that it is the state that bears a constitutional duty to ensure quality education for all students. He said he supports state intervention in districts when that seems warranted, as he has in Holyoke. He added, however, “I hope I’m open-minded enough and willing to look at the evidence in front of me to say, hey, this particular tool at this time needs reassessment.”

In the face of the quagmire in Vietnam, George Aiken, a Republican senator from Vermont, was famously paraphrased as declaring the U.S .should declare victory and go home. The state seems ready to make a similar move in Holyoke.

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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