MCAS scores hold steady
Published on September 29th, 2004
STONEHAM, MA - The Stoneham school system outperformed the state average in nearly 80 percent of all MCAS measures last spring, according to statistics posted on the Department of Education Website.
With tenth grade students boasting a 97 percent passing rate in the MCAS mathematics exam and a 96 percent passing rate in the MCAS English test, the town’s margin of failure was at least four percent lower than the state average in every grade level last year.
According to Stoneham Assistant Superintendent Joseph Casey, the results of the MCAS exams — posted earlier this month — mirror the school department’s philosophy that the longer students stay within the school system, the better they perform on the mandated testing.
“What we’re starting to see is students coming through the system who have learned the frameworks,” said Casey, referring to the MCAS driven curriculum that requires students master certain bodies of knowledge. “Think of this as a relay race, you want somebody who gets a good start. Then what you want is to get a great kicker to finish the race. And the 10th grade is definitely our kicker.”
Perhaps Stoneham’s greatest accomplishment over the past year, the overall student population dropped its failure rate in the Grade 10 math exam by six percent – posting a measure that’s 11 percent lower than the state average. In addition, 37 percent of the 10th grade population taking the math exam was classified as advanced, an eight percent jump from 2003.
And even greater strides were made by the town’s Grade 10 special education students, who dropped their failure rate on the MCAS math exam by 15 percent compared to 2003 — a success rate that’s 20 percent better than the state average.
Crediting much of the progress to the adoption of new mathematics textbooks that better compliment the evolving curriculum brought on by the mandatory MCAS exams and No Child Left Behind Act, Casey also pointed to the changing instruction style of teachers adjusting to the results of previous tests.
“[Mathematics department head] Mike Kennedy has been working over the past four to five years in the curriculum process in adopting new textbooks. What that really does is act as a lining in the Curriculum Frameworks. And as you go through math, there’s a lot of different things you need to master before you can move on. So you really need to stay with the kids to get them through,” Casey said.
Despite Stoneham’s continuing success in MCAS, Casey does see room for improvements. One area school administrators will be looking at is why this year’s scores tended to remain fairly static with previous years.
“The key indicator is how students are faring in the passing rates and we’re doing fine there. And while we’re above the state, and we continue to perform well as a district, we’re just not making the same progress as other districts,” Casey remarked.
With MCAS tests graded according to four categories — advanced, proficient, needs improvement, and failing — Stoneham did see an overall decline in the number of students ranking in the advanced category while the percentage of students classified as needing improvements increased compared to last year in four of the ten exams administered.
Commenting that that downward trend will draw additional analysis by school administrators, Casey believes the drop can be solved by focusing on students who straddle the line in-between classifications.
“We’ll go back, pull out all the individual test scores and say what didn’t these kids get? Because if we can move them up by having them answer just two questions, that’s [the whole point of] No Child Left Behind,” Casey explained, pointing to various data sheets that show dozens of students who just missed ranking into a higher classification.
The school administration will also plot the way in which students answered each individual question on the exams, attempting to find common errors that indicate a need to evolve the way certain subjects are taught. According to Casey, this approach will be utilized in addressing poor performances on the sixth grade math exam — Stoneham’s worst overall performance with a 21 percent failure rate.
“The two questions we ask are: 1) did we teach a subject and 2) if we did teach it, what do we need to change to make it better? Then by seeing where we start to answer questions right, we can start looking at whether we can back into other subjects to make students better earlier,” the Assistant Superintendent said.
“It’s not so much us changing our entire curriculum as it is giving it a different focus. For example, for a couple of years in the elementary school we focused on geometry. Then after a couple of years, the kids started to get it so we focused on something else,” Casey added.
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