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Date: 11/16/2022
EAST LONGMEADOW – East Longmeadow Public Schools (ELPS) Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Heather Brown reported the results of the spring 2022 MCAS, iReady exams and demographic data to the School Committee. The data show gains and losses in areas that vary from academic to social emotional.
The school climate surveys are given in the fall and again in the spring. The student assessments start in grades K-2, with teachers marking students based on observations of their emotional self-regulation, social awareness, classroom effort, engagement, self-management and social perspectives. Brown said 80 percent of students were reported to have favorable emotional regulation. On the low end of the questionnaire only 52 percent of students were marked with favorable social perspectives.
The results of each of the criteria for this age group were five to 15 percent lower than the results from spring 2022. Superintendent Gordon Smith said districts expect the scores to drop slightly between the spring of one school year and the fall of the next year.
Students in grades 3-5 answer the survey for themselves. For most of the categories, several questions are asked to gauge the level of favorability students feel. A total of 91 percent of students said they had supportive relationships, the most favorable category measured. The students also rated their school climate, school safety, positive feelings, lack of challenging feelings, rigorous expectations and engagement. Of these, only engagement was rated below 65 percent, with just 38 percent of students feeling engaged at school.
Smith praised the school climate and safety results – 86 and 82 percent, respectively – but said he would like to see feelings of safety at school increase.
Grades 6-12 were asked about diversity and inclusion in addition to the categories about which younger students answered questions. Students rated this metric with a 91 percent favorability, the highest percentage of any of their categories. School safety experienced a five-point bump over the spring survey, while the other categories stayed even or increased slightly over last year. Engagement was once again rated poorly, with only 28 percent of students reporting they feel engaged, while at least 55 percent of students rated the other categories favorably.
School Committee Vice Chair Antonella Raschilla-Manzi asked to see the difference between middle school responses and those from high schoolers. Brown said she would filter the data with that distinction for review.
MCAS and iReady
The MCAS is a set of mandatory assessments of English language arts, math and science, technology and engineering content for students in grades 3-8 and grade 10 across the state. High school graduation is dependent on a student passing the MCAS with a proficient score in the 10th grade. The test was not run in 2020, when schools statewide were closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Smith reported that, “literacy is not bouncing back” to 2019 levels, but that “math and science seem to still be somewhat of our strengths.”
School Committee member Sarah Truoiolo asked if the MCAS data for individual children was shared with their parents. She said it is important for families to know how children are faring in school. Smith told her that the school-level data has been shared with principals, but “maybe we can break it down even further.”
Another diagnostic test administered to students is the iReady, which compares a district’s data with nationals and state averages and scores them at whether they are proficient for the beginning or middle of their current grade level year, or one year- two years- or three years behind.
Nearly all grade levels outperformed state and national averages, except grade 5, in which the state average was 32 percent of students meeting the beginning or middle grade level proficiency, while 23 percent of ELPS fifth graders were similarly proficient. The grade level proficiency for the other grades is as follows: grade 3 – 20 percent, grade 4 – 32 percent, grade 6 – 40 percent, grade 7 – 33 percent, grade 8 - 39 percent.
Brown pointed out that students in grades three, four and five experienced learning loss due to the school shutdown at the critical early childhood stage of kindergarten, first and second grades. Because of this, she thinks the students are struggling more to catch up than those in grades six, seven and eight.
Demographics
Based on state data, Brown reviewed how the ELPS’s demographics compares to other districts.
Enrollment is continuing an upward trend. The district’s 2,588 students in the school year ending in 2020, dropped to 2,404 the next year, but has largely rebounded to 2,544 in the current school year.
The district’s ethnic makeup has shifted slightly since 2020. The district has changed from 79 percent white and 9 percent Hispanic/Latinx in 2020 to 76 percent white and 11 percent Hispanic/Latinx. The percentages of people who identify as Asian or multi-race have also increased by 1 percent each. Smith said Hispanic and Latinx students are the fastest-growing ethnicities in the district.
High needs is a category that consists of students with disabilities, English language learners (ELL) and low-income families. The category increased from 34 percent of the student body in 2020 to 40 percent in 2022. Students with disabilities have stayed steady at 19 percent and ELL students has fallen from 2 percent to 1 percent. The state recently changed the criteria it uses to identify low-income families, which make up 28 percent of the district this year. Brown explained that the households making less than 185 percent of the federal poverty level are now considered low income.