LYNN – Lynn, along with neighboring communities Peabody, Salem and Gloucester have entered into a unique partnership this summer, using state-issued Title 1 grant money to improve the way that administrators and school leaders analyze student data.The funding for the $400,000 project is a direct result of Lynn’s recent success in improving student achievement, influencing the Department of Education to remove the district from its Priority I commissioner’s watch list last year.Lynn is now the only large, urban school district in the state classified as a Priority II community, which allowed administrators to group the district with smaller communities such as Salem, Peabody and Gloucester for this grant.Because of Lynn’s size and multitude of Title 1 schools – only the Shoemaker Elementary School does not qualify for Title 1 money at the elementary level – the Northeast region received the highest amount of funding from the DOE.The project brings administrators and teachers from the four communities together for a series of professional development seminars this summer that will help improve the way districts receive and analyze student data.School districts analyze mountains of paperwork at the end of each year when results from the MCAS test are released. Lynn Public School officials are hoping to work with other communities to develop a formative assessment plan where students can be analyzed as they progress through the school year, and match those students with others requiring the same specific needs.”We are all supposed to do standards-based instruction and we are all supposed to use data, mostly from the MCAS,” said Lynn Deputy Superintendent Catherine Latham. “We were worried that we don’t have enough data and at the classroom level that we may not be using it right.”Lynn is the organizing and financial arm of the project, which also provides state-of-the-art technology for each school involved.Latham, along with Deputy Superintendent Jaye Wary, Former Director of Curriculum Joanne Roy, new Director of Curriculum Susan Rowe, Peabody Deputy Superintendent Joseph Mastrocola, Peabody Title I Administrator Sarah Lacourciere, Salem Assistant Superintendent Alyce Davis, Salem Title I Coordinator Lynne Leonard and Gloucester Deputy Superintendent Shayne Trubisz all combined on the effort to put the program together.The professional development seminars, run by Research for Better Teachers, will instruct a principal and two teachers from each eligible school on new data collection, analysis and implementation in the classroom.Each school in the four communities will receive a new computer, color printer and LCD projector to use once the instruction is over, and will work closely with its staff to continue improving student achievement through data analysis and classification.While the grant only funds the seminars and equipment, Latham says she is hoping to continue to work closely with other communities in this partnership throughout the school year.”Fortunately, due to being a Priority II school, we are able to write in our own needs to the grant and not be dictated by the state,” Latham said.”Once we start there is so much expertise here, so why don’t we start to do our own form of assessment and have these principals get together and get to know each other as we go on. We are hoping for more funding going forward so we can have inter-district visits, because after all, we are all in this together.”Another helpful element of this program is with so many transfers between schools in this area, the formative assessment plan would allow for each district to have a standard list of data to look at when a student transfers schools.”If we can align the standards and do formative assessments it would be great in helping us evaluate students that come from other communities,” said Andrea Lapey, Lynn director of External Grants and Compliance.Faculty members embark on their first data training seminar July 28 at Gordon College.