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Date: 1/3/2024
MONSON — Granite Valley School and Monson High School staff are changing the way they prepare students for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test, school administration announced at the Dec. 20 School Committee meeting.
After disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic, staff at Granite Valley and Monson High are working to provide students with more opportunities to practice testing skills and set test goals, Granite Valley Principal Joe Trivisonno said.
During the recent meeting, Trivisonno, Granite Valley Assistant Principal Myriah Hudak and Monson High Principal Arthur Murphy presented previous years’ MCAS data for their respective schools and highlighted each school’s programs to support students in future MCAS testing.
When comparing the test scores of Granite Valley’s grade three to six in the last three years of MCAS testing, Monson students fell below the state’s achievement score in English language arts, math and science, Trivisonno reported. He explained that this data was calculated by combining the number of students who exceeded or met expectations; the two highest scores a student can earn on the MCAS.
Granite Valley students scored lowest in mathematics with only 19% exceeding or meeting expectations compared to the state’s 40%. ELA and science scores were closer to the state’s performance with scores lower by 5% and 1% respectively.
“I’ll be really candid, we’ve got work to do,” Trivisonno emphasized. “We know we have a math problem.”
However, behind the data, Hudak highlighted that many students were close to reaching the exceeding or meeting expectation mark, often by only a few questions. She stated that this was a sign that students knew the information but struggled on the test itself. Furthermore, student’s individual scores showed that they were individually improving even though they were not yet meeting the state’s expectations, she said.
To better prepare students for the MCAS, Trivisonno and Hudak explained multiple new procedures at Granite Valley to emphasize student learning. One is by providing students with an extra 40 minutes of math lessons each week by moving ST Math, a visual learning program, to students’ technology and library blocks. Another is by increasing small group work to encourage students to become less dependent on teachers and more reliant on their own skills, Trivisonno and Hudak said.
In addition, the school is utilizing outside programs to support students, such as high dosage math tutoring from Carnegie Learning and the reading program Appleseeds, Trivisonno and Hudak stated.
“The truth is, this is going to take a couple years,” Trivisonno said. “I talk to parents all the time. Nobody wants their kid to struggle, but the reality is it [MCAS preparation] needs to continue to be a collaborative process. We have to work together and we have to support our students socially and emotionally in order for them to achieve.”
For Monson High, Murphy presented similar data with grades seven and eight also falling below the state’s expectations in both ELA and math.
More positive data was shown for grade 10 students, who need to pass the MCAS in order to graduate. Across ELA, math and science, grade 10 had higher rates of exceeding and meeting expectations than the state with 68% in ELA, 51% in math and 48% in science, Murphy reported. Likewise, he highlighted that Monson saw better tests results for grade 10 in all three tests and grade 7 in ELA as compared to similar districts in the region.
To boost test scores, Murphy emphasized the need to enhance students’ critical thinking, goal setting and test motivation as well as ensuring that the test was not too intimidating for students. “It’s something that you [students] should be proud to take,” he said.
From a teacher perspective, Murphy stated that the staff plans to use more curriculum mapping and rubrics to ensure that student education is consistent and understandable.
“We know our students know the content. We just need to push our students to that second level of thinking critically, which is what the standards ask you to do. So, I think that is the difference that we are really pushing this year,” Murphy stated.
Following the two presentations, School Committee members suggested additional ways that the district could support students in MCAS testing, discussing parent nights as a possible way to reduce student testing stress from home.