Some Middle School MCAS concerns arise
Published on October 5th, 2005
STONEHAM - While recently released MCAS scores show that the town's school system continues to outpace statewide trends, stagnant or dropping grades on some of the exams elicited some concern from school administrators.
For the first time since the federal government's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education bill was enacted in 2001, a Stoneham school has been placed on a federal watch list for failing to meet it's Adequate-Yearly-Progress (AYP) standard for a second consecutive year.
According to a press release sent to The Stoneham Independent by Assistant Superintendent Joseph Casey, the Stoneham Middle School has been labeled as a "Needs Improvement" school after it failed to meet it's AYP for special education students.
"While the Stoneham Middle School made Adequate Yearly Progress in the overall scores, the Special Education subgroup scores did not meet the DOE's targeted improvement goal for a second year in mathematics," Casey wrote, adding that 78 other middle schools statewide were also classified as "needs improvement".
Separated into four grading categories, MCAS test results are ranked in Advanced, Proficient, Needs Improvement, and Warning (or failing) scores.
According to the NCLB act, all Massachusetts' school districts much achieve a 100 percent level of proficient scores in English Language and Mathematics MCAS exams across all grade levels by the year 2014.
A school district's AYP is an expected improvement target that needs to be met annually for a municipality to meet the NCLB's 100 percent proficiency target by 2014.
If a school or school system fails to meet that goal for five consecutive years, a state-takeover of the district can be enacted.
Stoneham Middle School's classification as a "needs improvement" school is the least severe designation under the NCLB, meaning the school would have to fail to meet it's AYP standard for at least another three straight years before the state could step in.
While the district's current level of proficiency doesn't necessarily dictate whether it will meet its annual AYP - as other standards such as attendance are considered in the NCLB determination - Stoneham does consistently outperform state averages when it comes to the percentage of students within the district reaching a proficient or better determination.
In fact, Stoneham levels of proficiency or better were only lower than state averages in two instances this year, for the Grade 4 MCAS math exams at the Central and Colonial Park Schools.
In both cases, state averages were 2 to 4 percent higher than Stoneham's.
"We did achieve adequate yearly progress in those two schools," said Casey, emphasizing that the comparison does not mean the results place the two schools in non-compliance with NCLB standards.
"But you're right. That is an issue for us. What we're going to do is go back, see what prevented our students from making the next step in that level, and make [the necessary adjustments]," added the Stoneham Assistant Superintendent of Public Schools.
Broken down by each school, a comparison of how Stoneham's achievement of proficient or better results compared to state averages, according to statistics compiled by the Massachusetts' Department of Education, is as follows:
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