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Date: 9/29/2021
NORTHAMPTON – During the Northampton School Committee’s Sept. 23 meeting, the committee received a presentation about the results for the 2021 MCAS and approved three memorandums of agreement (MOAs).
To start his presentation Superintendent of Schools John Provost said because of the coronavirus pandemic he felt a bit uncomfortable sharing the results of the 2021 MCAS.
“Last year there were so many factors at play and the timing of the MCAS I think was really problematic. I would say this is probably the first time in my whole career as an educator, certainly my career as a superintendent where I feel somewhat awkward that I have to give an MCAS report,” he said.
One group Provost said was hit the hardest by taking the MCAS were middle school students who had returned for in-person learning only to take the test immediately.
“Many schools were still closed when some of the MCAS tests were first scheduled to be administered we also had shortened versions of some of the tests and it seemed to me the timing was especially unfortunate for middle school students. The way the testing schedule fell we had middle school students faced with a test immediately upon starting in-person learning,” he said.
Before diving into the data, Provost said to take the middle school scores with a grain of salt because only 68 percent of students participated in the MCAS in the spring and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) defines under 80 percent of participation in the MCAS as unreliable.
“As a guide DESE advises that the reliability of school level information is compromised if fewer than 80 percent of students in a school participate. The participation rate for the middle school was 68 percent so we should take everything I am going to talk about tonight concerning the middle school with a grain of salt,” he said.
While students of all abilities saw declines in math scores from grade 3 through grade 8, Provost said students with disabilities at the high school saw significant improvement in their scores.
“In mathematics we saw declines for both disabled and non-disabled students across the entire grade 3 to 8 continuum, however, our students with disabilities did make notable gains at the high school where they met or exceeded expectations at almost twice the statewide average. There was a slight decline for non-disabled students,” he said. “I am really pleased to see the strong improvement gains students with disabilities were able to make on the grade 10 test.”
Another area of concern Provost mentioned was that only 7 percent of economically disadvantaged students were meeting or exceeding expectations for the math MCAS.
“After this COVID impact only 7 percent of economically disadvantaged students in the entire grade span from grades 3 through 8 were meeting or exceeding expectations in mathematics,” he said.
While the scores for math were a concern for the district, Provost said there were areas of success across the district worth celebrating, including in English Language Arts (ELA).
“We saw improved ELA achievement at Bridge Street and Leeds, which both showed their strongest performance ever, improved science and technology engineering performance at JFK, which also had a new personal best, improved ELA achievement and greater equity of achievement at the high school,” he said. “To think we were able to do that in spite of everything that COVID threw at us last year is grounds for major celebration.”
After Provost’s presentation, the committee entered a discussion and asked questions about the results of the MCAS.
Member Susan Voss started the questions by asking why the math scores decreased and Provost said while there is no definitive explanation, he said he thought it might have been harder to do tasks remotely for math than for ELA.
“We are seeing the same thing that is happening across the state and across the nation, I have not seen a definitive explanation of why math was impacted differently than ELA. We were able to maintain a lot of the same tasks remotely for ELA, but it was much harder in a remote environment to provide the same kinds of tasks we would do in a classroom for math,” he said.
When asked about the necessity of MCAS testing by member Emily Serafy-Cox, Provost said it was a different measure to identify students that may need help in addition to the measures the district already employs.
“I think the benefit is at the individual student level because what we are able to do is identify students who need help and try to get resources to them. We have our own district tests for that, but it is a different test that shows kids who are struggling in a different way,” he said.
After member Rebecca Busansky asked how the MCAS lined up with the district’s internal testing, Provost said students generally did worse on the math MCAS than the district’s internal testing, including Pearson’s aimsweb testing program.
“I think in ELA they lined up really well, in math in reality there was a lot of congruence as well. That sixth grade group that we identified through aimsweb also showed up strongly for having concerns with math. In general students did worse in math on MCAS than on our own internal assessing,” he said.
After a lengthy executive session, the committee returned to open session and approved three memorandums of agreement for the 504 Coordinator, high school meeting time and the staff vaccine mandate.