This is the third in a three-part series about how Providence’s Hope High School redeemed itself from being an educational blight.

Last year at this time, when the state’s NECAP test results came out, Hope High’s scores were so unexpectedly dreary, teachers wept. For 2 ½ years, they’d knocked themselves out. They’d calmed an insanely chaotic school, taught a curriculum designed to deal with their students’ serious academic deficits and volunteered tons of time tutoring kids before and after school.

If you’ve been following this series, you already know that Hope’s story had a happy ending this year, with some of the biggest gains in the state — reading scores that nearly tripled and good bumps in all the other tests. But last year, after what they’d been through, the staff took the blow so personally, principals Arthur Petrosinelli and Scott Sutherland were in pain just telling me the story.

In the fall 2005, the state had intervened aggressively in the once-chaotic, ineffective “Hopeless” High. Three new administrators took charge of three academies within the old comprehensive high school. Many of the faculty were not only new, but many new to teaching. They had a laundry list of state demands, and a state-appointed special master to answer to, for a year and a half anyway. And generally, all but a handful of Hope’s students entered the ninth grade having scored zeros on the state’s eighth-grade math tests.

The staff credits Special Master Nicholas Donohue, New Hampshire’s ex-commissioner of education, as key to the school’s creativity. He made sure good people were in the right positions and he didn’t micromanage their work. Instead he ran interference for them, with the state and district, so they could concentrate on figuring out how to tailor the school to their tough population.

Donohue hired Kurt Wootton, an education consultant, to organize the curriculum work. In a phone conversation, Wooten explained that his goal was to help Hope “backmap.” The idea is to craft a vision of the end point — fabulous test scores, for example — and then work backwards, mapping all the steps needed to get the students to that end point.

In schools where only test scores matter, for example, educators might work backwards by cutting out any content not on the tests, and having kids practice bubbling in answers. But Rhode Island deemphasizes the tests, by requiring that all students demonstrate they can apply their learning to real-world projects, in six areas, to receive a diploma. Students had better learn to apply knowledge long before they’re high-school seniors, or they won’t be ready. So by the end point of their senior year, Hope’s students must have a portfolio proving to a panel of judges that they can solve a problem or research a big question with their math, science, computer, and other skills.

Wooten and a group of 20 “teacher leaders” began to envision what that portfolio would actually look like. What would be expected, specifically? Then the teacher leaders worked with their respective departments, in each of the academies, to design assignments, starting in ninth grade, that would prepare the students to acquire knowledge and then apply what they’d learned to projects.

Wooten said, “Every teacher had to help the kids create concrete products that would support the portfolios. We’d ask: what texts are you going to use? Not textbooks, but texts, primary texts. We were very goal-oriented. On Wednesdays teachers brought their own portfolios, with work their students had done, to show exactly how they’d mapped the texts onto the unit. The power of mutual learning can not be overstated.”

A history teacher might ask the kids to write a journal of a Civil War soldier using five source documents. A “map” or time line would plot those texts in context of all the texts of the child’s four years in high school, to show how the kids’ knowledge is building.

As to the state tests, and with that same back-mapping strategy, it was clear that if the tests require a solid foundation in Algebra I and geometry, every ninth grader would have to take Algebra I, every 10th grader geometry. If the kids aren’t exposed to the materials, the tests will be Greek to them. Language arts courses must be taught at grade level to meet the demands of the tests. The school couldn’t wait until the students were ready, because God knows when that would be.

As part of the strategy to calm the chaotic corridors, the school had adopted a 4 x 4 block schedule, meaning that eight periods of 90-minute classes are spread over two days. (It eliminates time wasted getting from class to class, and provides time for hands-on learning.)

At Hope, every child takes grade-level English and math every other day. But aside from the handful of kids who don’t need remedial help, students also have a second block of remedial math and English designed to address the gaps in their learning. Kids who are fully three to six years behind in English, mostly English Language Learners (ELL) and students with disabilities, have yet one more block of direct instruction in reading.

Hope has one-third ELL students and another third in special education. For the record, that’s a lot. They also have high mobility; about 40 percent of the students come and go during the year. And that’s a lot, too.

After last year’s bitter disappointment in the scores, the administrators conceded they hadn’t emphasized the importance of doing well on the tests. So before this year’s testing began, the administrators talked to each advisory.

Becky Coustan, a Hope staffer who took over Wooten’s work, said, “We told the kids that people won’t know how much Hope has improved until the scores go up. The good school climate, all your work, none of it matters to outsiders if the tests don’t improve. You’re representing our school. It’s on your shoulders to show what we’ve done.”

In all fairness, this fall’s test-takers, the juniors, were the first class to have the full three years of a calm, orderly building as well as the reinvented curriculum, including the double blocks of math and English. Only now is the massive ramp-up, catch-up strategy fully operational.

The administrators are sure they can keep making gains.

What this once-rough school has achieved, in three years, is truly remarkable.

Julia Steiny, a former member of the Providence School Board, consults for government agencies and schools; she is co-director of Information Works!, Rhode Island’s school-accountability project. She can be reached at juliasteiny@cox.net , or c/o EdWatch, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.