Principal Catalina Montes of the Thomas Gardner Elementary School is reluctant to attach much significance to the modest improvement shown so far in her fourth-grade students' MCAS scores. In 1999, her school in the gritty Allston section of Boston won notice for being the eighth most improved in the state on the fourth-grade English test. The average Gardner score rose from 222 -- just three points above failing -- to 231, putting Gardner in the middle of the Needs Improvement category. But the following year, most of this gain was erased. Math scores, too, have fluctuated, barely squeaking into Needs Improvement at 223 last year.

For the past three years, coinciding, as it happens, with the launch of the high-stakes MCAS tests, the Gardner School has been the center of a grant-supported $1.2 million pilot project that grew out of discussions among faculty and staff at Boston College. The project is called the Gardner Extended Services School (GESS), and it has turned Montes's facility into a year-round, full-service school, what Montes calls a "seamless learning environment." It is designed to address stubborn barriers to academic achievement -- poor health care, uncertain housing, family unemployment -- in a school population where 80 percent of the student body lives in poverty. GESS is not a quick fix for low MCAS scores, but the project has fostered changes that, while hard to measure, fortify students for academic learning.

GESS had its genesis at informal weekly lunches among BC faculty begun in 1991 by Education Professor Mary E. Walsh. As the director of BC's Center for Child, Family, and Community Partnerships (a separate entity under the CSTEEP umbrella), Walsh was already doing research at the Gardner, which is located four miles from the BC campus. She began gathering colleagues from the schools of nursing, management, social work, law, and arts and sciences to explore an interdisciplinary approach. Some 35 faculty members have since become involved, largely on a volunteer basis. BC and the Gardner went on to forge partnerships in GESS with the Allston-Brighton Healthy Boston Coalition and the YMCA. Critical start-up support came from the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds, with additional grants provided by state, federal, and other private sources.

Today, the Gardner is open from 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Breakfast, lunch, and after-school snacks are served. The school houses a medical clinic -- the first comprehensive school clinic in the city -- and arranges for dental care at a nearby health center. After school, programs ranging from tutoring to swimming lessons occupy about a hundred youngsters a day. The afternoon also brings nearly 90 BC students to the Gardner -- some doing their practicums as part of their academic training, others simply volunteering their time as mentors and tutors. At 6:30 p.m., programs for parents begin, with free child care provided. There are GED classes and English classes (a third of Gardner parents speak little or no English). Business and career counseling are offered, as well as guidance on nutrition and housing. BC law students help with immigration questions.

"GESS is not just about raising MCAS scores," says Mary Walsh. "Raising good citizens is the broader goal." Walsh has no objection to state academic standards, she says, but where poverty exists it is "not just up to schools" to increase student performance. And even with costly, comprehensive programs like GESS in place, she says, "it's going to take years and years to see real improvement."

Gardner students have already shown some academic gains: Last year's third graders did better than previous classes on the Stanford 9 Achievement Test. But Catalina Montes prefers to judge success by other factors. Since the introduction of GESS, she says, disruptive behavior has diminished. Attendance is up and there is a new enthusiasm in the building: "The kids don't want to go home."

Joan Millman

Joan Millman is a writer in Brookline, Massachusetts.

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