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Date: 7/13/2022
HOLYOKE – The latest quarterly report for underperforming schools from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) shows the Morgan Full Service Community School is continuing its efforts to turn around past results and create a better school environment for all.
In the fall of 2013, Morgan School and three other schools were designated as chronically underperforming schools in response to their low performance and lack of improvement while in underperforming status. This led to state takeover of the school building, which happened before the district went into receivership.
“Morgan was identified as a lower performing school prior to receivership, so for the past six years or so, Morgan, for lack of a better term, has been on an island by itself,” said Executive Director of Holyoke School Leadership Jackie Glasheen. “They have their own turnaround plan, they have their own teacher compensation schedule, they have their own school day and school calendar, and they have a direct partnership with the Office of School Turnaround at DESE. Although the district is also in receivership, Morgan continues to function as a pretty much sole entity.”
Glasheen added that Morgan School Principal Steven Moguel works with DESE in establishing specific goals to be monitored quarterly which leads to the quarterly reports.
The most recent updates were focused on school activities from May and June 2022. The School Empowerment Network, a nonprofit organization comprising experienced educators with a track record of success, worked with DESE on the report and gave feedback in the report based on classroom observations.
In the report on Morgan School, their first area of strength listed is their teacher support and supervision. The report credits school administrators for efforts in observing and coaching teachers frequently through tangible actionable feedback.
“Teachers report that observation with coaching occurs once per week. They can provide concrete examples of meaningful feedback they have received for improving their practices,” the report reads.
The report also shines light on the Morgan School’s Instructional Leadership Team comprising administrators and coaches that meet regularly to review observational data. Administrators provide examples of adjustments they have made to their supervision and coaching supports to meet a specific teacher’s needs. The report adds that administrators also identify concrete examples of how they have used observational data to inform professional development planning aligned with instructional priority areas.
“Teachers express high levels of trust in and respect for Principal Moguel and the administrator team. They report that they feel highly supported by school administrators and that the feedback they receive does not feel threatening, but instead is helping them grow,” the report reads.
Moguel, who became Morgan School principal in 2018, said when he first arrived there was already strong core work being done with an instructional team working with staff. He quickly realized through his first year that the school needed a reset of cultural expectations.
Moguel further elaborated by saying some of the systems in place and how staff responded to students, as well as narrowing focus instructionally, were all areas if focus when resetting the school’s culture.
“What we found much more recently is focusing on one thing, one instructional sort of focus that is encompassing of many things, to help teachers lift their practices,” Moguel said. “With the leadership team, I inherited a lot of the leadership team, but one of the pieces of work I’ve done in the past couple of years with the support of Ms. Glasheen is to build the capacity of the leadership team.”
Moguel added it is a group effort in creating the change they want to see within Morgan School, and that building on the school’s staff “leadership capacity” has been integral to their work.
Morgan School has established a partnership with the district and created a program called Relay, to help codify and focus on instructional moves. Moguel added these were all moves he wanted to make after his first year at the school to establish a new culture.
Moguel said he can see improvements – for example, disengagement being “drastically” different than when he first arrived.
He added the narrative that is out about Morgan School is incorrect and is in need of changing.
“It’s racially laden. What I mean by that is, the narrative about Morgan is about South Holyoke,” Moguel said. “A counter narrative needs to be created and I think in our building we are doing that already. What you hear about Morgan is not what you see when you walk into the building.”
Glasheen added an example that in years past at Morgan School, the number of disciplinary referrals for incidents from as little as not following rules to more extreme disruptive behavior had been upwards of 1,500 to 2,000 referrals a year. With this past school year just completing, Moguel was happy to share they closed out with about 140 total disciplinary referrals.
“I refer to Mr. Moguel’s team and Morgan as the Williston of South Holyoke. It is a high-quality instruction, student-centered learning environment, where kids have equal access to grade level content and are provided the supports needed to be successful,” Glasheen added. “It’s not going to change overnight, but for sure we have preliminary data that’s saying to us, kids are learning, kids are in class, kids are happy and kids feel a sense of belonging.”
Glasheen said the school will see a growth in academics from this past school year, but they are focused on continuing a three-year trajectory of growth and improvement. She credited Moguel for making strategic moves and his use of distributive leadership across their campus to make sure there is equal learning across the board.
Moguel said one of the most strategic things he has brought was the establishment of a vision for the school. He said there was some vision for Morgan School before he joined, but it was recalibrated and expanded upon under his vision.
He added that as a leader he had to bring his vision through his leadership and began working with culturally responsive teaching work as his foundation. This was later codified so that the language of the school reflects the vision and goals of fixing the issues that have plagued the school.
Even with the work toward positive change, Moguel said it felt theoretical, as it was difficult to judge results with no one key indicator of success or failure in schools.
“What does that look like in the classroom? When we talk about students as independent learners, when we talk about teachers as creating conditions, like what does that actually look like?” Moguel said. “It means creating the conditions by doing academic modeling by giving independent work to kids.”
He added it was important to map out what they were looking for that would be an indicator for success in the classrooms to disrupt the opportunity gaps that have been presented to Morgan School students.
Glasheen also said it was a challenge for her early on working with Morgan as she would be working toward positive change but would have a difficult time identifying if they were doing so without a clear indicator or number to show. She came to the realization that the success of a school comes down to multiple data points and not just one number.
She added that factors such as student attendance, teacher attendance, teacher retention, student outcomes, a diverse teacher workforce, and increasing the number of teachers of color to support a school that is predominantly Hispanic were all data points to consider when establishing the health of a school.
“There’s no number that’s going to take the level 5 designation off Morgan School, but I am extremely hopeful that will happen soon and Morgan will fall in line with the rest of the other schools,” Glasheen said.
As the Morgan School administration hopes to continue its upward trend, other areas of strength listed in the most recent report were the school’s ability to leverage its resources and the establishment of goals and action plans. Both areas were credited for success, and that the Instructional Leadership Team was hands-on was also called an area of strength for the school.
Areas of focus listed in the report were pedagogy, high expectations and curriculum, three areas that are being addressed through the work by the Morgan School administration.
On the School Empowerment Network’s findings in the report, Moguel said that he was told information that he already knows to be true.
Moguel credited the impact of the school’s leadership team and the movement of teacher practice in giving students more time around planning.
“I also note to be true that there’s much more opportunities for our children to really work through grade level work. I think that is something that’s really been much more apparent and you see it in the report,” Moguel said. “I think the other thing that report names that is encouraging is that we’re on the right path. I think sometimes in my current experience now and living in this work, people think there’s a magic answer, like after year one you’re going to be off level five that quickly and it really isn’t.”
Moguel said it will be important to stay the course going forward as a school to continue the upward trend they are on and follow through with their three-year plan. He said the reports add on to what they know and have been working on, and encourage the school to dig deeper and be better.
“It didn’t really name, like, ‘drop everything you’re doing and do something aggressively.’ Which I think was really one of the first times this year we saw that nothing said to do something different, versus get better at what you’re doing,” Moguel said.
Glasheen and Moguel both know the work is far from over and there is still plenty of work to be done to continue the growth they have started to create. Glasheen credited Moguel and his team again for their ability to lay a strong foundation to be built on.
“We still have work to do, but the foundation has been laid. There are kids ready to learn and we have to make sure we’re providing that high quality instruction,” Glasheen said.
“Really, what we’re doing is just, I think, providing that counter-narrative to what the perception is of Morgan School in South Holyoke, and I think people hear about it, but when you come and see it, it’s not what people’s perception is and I think that’s really important to know,” Moguel said.