For years, residents in the small, rural community of Pittsfield, New Hampshire, fretted over the state of Pittsfield Middle High School, their only middle and high school. Ranked the fifth-lowest-performing high school in New Hampshire, the 300-student school struggled with attendance, discipline, and general student disengagement. Problems deepened when the neighboring town of Barnstead stopped sending kids to the school, resulting in a 40 percent drop in enrollment and a funding cut from the state.
But moving the needle on deep-seated problems like attendance and school discipline requires buy-in from the community and a willingness to change the way things have been done in the past. The changes in the school system needed to be fundamental—and calibrated specifically to the needs of the local population.
The bottom-up plan that developed from that process focused on tangible, realistic goals that would confront widespread disengagement by giving students and community members more opportunities to express themselves and to take ownership of the school. These changes are now readily noticeable in the Site Council, a governing body that gives students and residents a say on the school’s rules and regulations, and the Justice Committee, where students help each other resolve conflicts to reduce suspensions and detentions. And students are now able to choose how they want to demonstrate mastery of learned material.
The school has replaced traditional letter grades for students with a competency-based grading system. Teachers identify five to seven core competencies for each course, and students select projects—such as a test, presentation, or paper—to show they understand the material.
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