WILMINGTON, MA — The Wilmington School Committee will be discussing the school district’s recently released 2015 MCAS results at its upcoming meeting on Wednesday, October 7 at 7pm at the High School, televised live on WCTV-E.
In the meantime, Superintendent DeLai has provided parents with a very thoughtful introduction to that discussion.
Superintendent DeLai posted the following on her blog yesterday:
On September 24th, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) released district and school-level scores from the Spring 2015 administration of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). Last week, DESE sent individual student reports to school districts including Wilmington and those reports will be mailed out to parents and guardians next week. On October 7th, the Wilmington School Committee will review our performance data at its regularly scheduled meeting which takes place at 7:00 p.m. in the Wilmington High School Large Group Instruction Room. Those interested in learning more about our state assessment results are welcome to attend this public meeting.
By way of background, the MCAS was designed to meet the requirements of the Education Reform Law of 1993 and was first administered in 1998. As published on the DESE’s website, this law specified that the testing program must:
- test all public school students in Massachusetts, including students with disabilities and English Language Learner students;
- measure performance based on the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework learning standards;
- report on the performance of individual students, schools, and districts.
As required by the Education Reform Law, students must pass the grade 10 tests in English Language Arts (ELA), Mathematics and one of the four high school Science and Technology Engineering (STE) tests as one condition of eligibility for a high school diploma (in addition to fulfilling local requirements). To learn more about the MCAS, click here to be redirected to the DESE website.
The MCAS results for Wilmington from Spring 2015 show that the district continues to perform at or above the state average in all grades and subjects. Overall, the district saw no change in the percent of students scoring advanced or proficient in ELA, slight gains (2%) in Mathematics, and a decrease (7%) in STE. In ELA, 78% of Wilmington students scored proficient or advanced as compared to the state average of 75%. In Math, 69% of our students scored proficient or advanced compared to the state average of 66%. In STE, 54% of Wilmington students scored proficient or advanced which is equal to the state average.
Between 2014 and 2015, we saw an increase in the percentage of students scoring advanced in ELA, from 20% to 23%, while the percent scoring in the needs improvement or warning/failing level remained the same. In Mathematics, the percent of students scoring advanced increased from 30% to 34% from 2014 to 2015. Additionally, the percentage of students scoring needs improvement or warning/failing decreased from 33% to 31%. Unfortunately, the percentage of students scoring advanced on the STE MCAS decreased from 18% to 12% while the percent scoring needs improvement increased from 33% to 39%. Clearly, the work that began last year to align our science curriculum to the soon to be released Next Generation Science Standards will continue to be a priority in the year ahead.
Results of the MCAS are further disaggregated to help us determine how students in eleven state-determined “subgroups” are performing. These subgroups are based on economic status, disability status, primary language, race / ethnicity, and gender. There is also a high needs subgroup, defined as “an unduplicated count of all students in a school or district belonging to at least one of the following individual subgroups: students with disabilities, English language learners (ELL) and former ELL students, or low income students (eligible for free/reduced price school lunch).”
In Wilmington, as is the case across Massachusetts and the nation, we see a persistent and concerning achievement gap between our students who fall into the high needs subgroup and those who do not. More specifically, we see that our students with disabilities are not performing as well on the MCAS as those without disabilities. The Spring 2015 MCAS results confirm that this gap still exists. While 88% of students without disabilities scored proficient or higher on the ELA MCAS, only 35% of students with disabilities achieved at this level. For Mathematics, 79% of students without disabilities scored proficient or advanced while only 21% of students with disabilities scored proficient or higher. A similar gap exists between students who are economically disadvantaged and those who are not, although the gap is not as pronounced. Mathematics and science are a pronounced area of struggle for students in the high needs subgroup.
We are working hard to strengthen our curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices to improve the performance of our students as performance on MCAS is an indication of whether students have mastered the standards and skills defined by the state’s Curriculum Frameworks. The Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks were revised in 2011 and districts across the state have been working hard to align their curriculum and assessments to these new frameworks. In 2014, the MCAS was fully aligned to the new frameworks with 2015 being the second year of full alignment.
Unfortunately, the curriculum alignment process in many districts, including Wilmington, has lagged behind the pace of change in the state assessment. That said, a great deal of work has been done over the past few years to align the math and ELA curriculum to the new frameworks. This year, our elementary schools are implementing a new standards-aligned math curriculum called EnVisions. This program was piloted by teachers at each elementary grade level last year with great success. Work is progressing quickly on the alignment of our ELA curriculum and this year we have implemented a new early literacy program at Grade 1 called Fundations. Fundations is a research-based program designed to comprehensively address reading, spelling, and handwriting. Last year, educators in our district began the work of aligning our science curriculum to the proposed Next Generation Science Standards which are being used as the basis for the state’s new STE curriculum frameworks. The DESE expects to release the newly revised STE standards for public comment later this month with formal adoption planned for late January of 2016. Unfortunately, districts in Massachusetts have been in a holding pattern as the state’s progress in revising the STE frameworks has been slow.
In addition, we are working to strengthen our behavioral health and our inclusion practices. Last year, we formed a new Behavioral Health Task Force and this team has developed a detailed three year plan to better address the social, emotional, and behavioral health needs of our students. We also examined our inclusion practices for students with disabilities and, this year, formed an Inclusion Task Force to research and evaluate models of inclusion, make recommendations, and develop a plan for implementing a true inclusion model in our schools. Our hope is that addressing these priorities will help to close the gaps we see between struggling learners and high achievers while still holding all students to high standards and expectations.
As many families know, this year is a pivotal year for the MCAS as the state Board of Education wrestles with the decision as to whether to adopt the new “PARCC” exam which stands for Partnership for Readiness of College and Careers. The debate over this decision has been rather heated to say the least. The PARCC exam was field tested in Massachusetts in 2014 and in 2015 districts were given the option of administering either MCAS or PARCC. While Wilmington elected to administer MCAS, 54% of districts chose to administer PARCC.
The Board of Education is scheduled to take its vote on November 17th. The DESE has advised all districts in Massachusetts to plan for both MCAS and PARCC which means unnecessarily reserving weeks worth of test dates between February and June. Traditionally the ELA MCAS is administered in March and the Math and Science MCAS in May and June. The guidance offered to us with respect to PARCC administration – reserve as the testing window April 25–June 6. Clearly, adjusting to what may be a significant change that we won’t have clarity around until late November will be both challenging and disruptive. That said, we have no choice but to prepare for both, although we may not be able to administer the computer-based version in all of our schools and may have to administer the paper-based version at some grade levels, particularly the lower grade levels where students are not accustomed to taking computer-based assessments.
One of the selling features of the PARCC exam was that results would be available to districts more quickly than MCAS results. Unfortunately, this is not the case this year here in Massachusetts. This past week, DESE published its PARCC and Accountability Data Review and Release Schedule. The Department anticipates it will publicly announce school and district PARCC results during the second week of November, followed by accountability determinations for all schools and districts in early December. Typically, districts have received accountability determinations in September. While accountability determinations are of limited value to districts from a curriculum and instruction standpoint, an adverse designation can result in harsh consequences to districts.
Wilmington Public Schools will continue to do what it need to do to comply with state mandates and regulatory requirements. However, we will not allow ourselves to be defined by the state’s performance assessment results or accountability determinations. We will continue to utilize the summative assessment data that MCAS provides to fine tune our curriculum and instruction. However, the focus of our work will be on using more authentic evidence of academic and social-emotional learning and educator-developed common formative assessments to evaluate student success in our district. Wilmington is fortunate to have very dedicated staff who work hard to ensure the success of our students despite the many challenges we face. Finally, I ask that both parents and staff join me in giving our school leaders a special thanks as we begin October which is National Principals Month.
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