Rising to a Challenge

A vocational-technical school turns to data to help students succeed on high-stakes exams.

By Debra Viadero

Upton, Mass.

Eithne J. Smith, a remedial-mathematics teacher at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School, spent hours last year printing out old test questions from state-mandated exams and then cutting and pasting together items on the topics that gave her students trouble.

Say, for instance, that state-exam results showed that her 11th graders needed to dust off their probability skills. Smith would click on to the Massachusetts Department of Education Web site, print out old 10th grade math exams, cut out items on probability, and cobble them into mini-tests. Then, she indexed the handmade tests in a thick binder to share later with colleagues.

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