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Date: 11/3/2021
LUDLOW- For much of the Ludlow School Committee’s meeting on Oct. 19, the committee received and discussed a presentation from Acting Superintendent Lisa Nemeth about the district’s results from the 2021 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment (MCAS) test.
Before jumping into her MCAS presentation, Nemeth said it was important to note that students across the state did not do as well as years prior.
“Statewide it is very important to recognize that everyone did not do as well as the previous year in any way, shape or form. What we are really concerned about is how many students met or exceeded expectations for their scoring on the MCAS,” she said.
When looking at the English Language Arts (ELA) results for grades 3 through 8, Nemeth said the scores were lower than the state average with room for improvement.
“We are kind of on par with the state for ELA, a little bit more behind than I would like to see us, but we do have plans to address that,” she said. “We are in a lower growth and lower achievement area with our ELA for Grades 3 through 8 so you can tell we are not up to par with the state’s growth.”
While the math scores were closer to the state average, Nemeth said overall the state numbers are low across the board.
“If we look at math for Grades 3 through 8, we are a little bit better and closer to the state is, but the state is in low growth and low achievement, so nobody knocked it out of the park in 2021 but we are closer in math to the state average,” she said.
For the high school MCAS, Nemeth said students were above the state average for both ELA and math.
“If we look at Grade 10, we are above the state and in high growth and high achievement, so we did very well in Grade 10 with ELA achievement and growth. In math we are right in the middle, so we are growing toward higher growth and higher achievement, and we are better than the state average,” she said.
Across the board Nemeth said there is room for improvement in MCAS scores.
“We are doing good at the high school, but we can obviously do better. For Grades 3 through 8 we have some work to do to surpass what the state is doing this year and to get better,” she said.
For the next step Nemeth said the district will look at the MCAS scores along with the results from other tests to determine the best approach to help catch the students up to where they need to be.
“We are looking at our MCAS scores, our math scores, our PSAT, our SAT, basically all the data and putting it together to see what all the scores show. Once we have that data, we start our tiered interventions. This is kind of what we do every year, but this year we are putting most of our focus on helping these students accelerate and fill in those gaps,” she said.
After Nemeth’s presentation, the committee discussed their thoughts on the result, including Vice Chair James Harrington, who said he was against standardized testing in the first place.
“I have never been a fan of MCAS or standardized testing and quite frankly I think the state should have put a delay on MCAS for a couple years, that would have been the fair thing to do. I think MCAS is a measurement tool, but this is a wash, we will see what happens going forward. But I firmly believe standardized tests like this takes some of the creativity away from a teacher,” he said.
Committee Chair Michael Kelliher said while the MCAS can be a useful tool he said it was “insane” to use part of the limited time the district had for in-person learning on a standardized test.
“I think that was an awful decision. We had so little time with our kids in person last year we spent some of it giving a test where we knew the data coming out of it was suspect at best,” he said.
Committee Secretary Jeffrey Laing said he was not putting too much stock into the MCAS scores because of the jobs teachers did while school was still remote.
“I was home, and I could hear what was happening with my children upstairs and those teachers were amazing. I am not going to put too much stock into these scores or where we are at right now because we went through a lot, and I anticipate those scores will get better. During that time, it was impressive what the teachers were doing, and I am proud of them,” he said.
Committee member Sarah Bowler said that as the district addresses gaps in learning it is important to make sure the special education students are not left behind.
“My concern as always is the Special Ed level and making sure those kids get what they need to continue to grow. I appreciate moving forward and filling in the gaps, but I know that is a struggle for a lot of the kids who have the Ed plan, so I was to make sure they do not get lost in the gaps,” she said.
During the meeting, the committee also appointed a 15-person search committee for a new superintendent which includes one member at large, one member of town government, three district staff members, three parents, two student representatives, one central office representative, two administrators and two School Committee members.
The Ludlow School Committee next met on Nov. 2 and coverage of that meeting will appear in the Nov. 11 edition of The Reminder.