Putting The MCAS Ranking in Perspective [with video]

The original NCLB [No Child Left Behind] legislation stipulated that all students score 'Proficient' or 'Advanced' on the MCAS test by the year 2014. But, educators soon realized that this goal was unattainable and needed to be revised. So, Massachusetts along with many other states, applied for a waiver to these rules, and a waiver was granted.

Out of this waiver, progress-focused goals were developed. These new goals evaluate school districts by their ability to reduce the so-called 'proficiency gap', this gap being the percentage of students scoring below the 'Proficient' or 'Advanced' categories on the MCAS. The stipulated goal is to reduce the proficiency gap by half in 2017.

So, under the revised law, each school district's challenge and goals are customized to its student population, the goal of improving performance being much more realistic and perhaps more important than inflexibly expecting all students in all schools to be scoring at high levels. For the time being, the main evaluation criteria for all school districts is whether they are improving over time, constant improvement being the focus.

So, although the Groton-Dunstable School system produces high 'raw' MCAS scores, perhaps the best way to judge the efficacy of the school district is whether test scores of all students, and especially those scoring less that proficient, are improving. These so-called 'SGP scores' or Student Growth Percentile show overall student improvement progress and are important because these scores are used to judge how Groton-Dunstable is being judged against other school districts.

By this standard, Groton-Dunstable is performing well. In the charts below, 2013 Student Growth Percentile, Groton showed moderate to high improvement in cutting the performance gap.

However, when examined school-by-school within the district [see chart] there is one school that is not achieving the improvement standard. Because the Special Needs Program at the Middle School fell in the 50th percentile, the ranking of the whole school system was pulled down one Level, to Level 2.

A System-wide Weakness

MCAS data pin-pointed one 'skills' area that needs improvement district wide. This is the so-called 'Open Response' skill, meaning the ability to link an argument or opinion to direct references in a text. According to school administrators, students read and understand a passage well but they do not provide direct textural evidence to support their answer. Apparently, this skill is lacking across all schools in the district but particularly at the Middle School. There is a system-wide effort in place to address this issue.

Excellent 'Raw' Scores

Groton Dunstable 'raw' MCAS scores and percentages achieving the 'Advanced' or Proficient ranking continues to be very good as the charts show in the graphics section above.