LINK TO MCAS SCORES
Mixed grades on Cape MCAS scores
Third-grade English scores took a tumble statewide in the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System results released Friday.
The trend was also evident on the Cape, where nearly every district lost some ground on third-grade proficiency in the English language arts part of the MCAS.
MCAS
Massachusetts started the MCAS in public schools in an effort to meet standards required in the state's Education Reform Law of 1993.
- Scores used are advanced, proficient, needs improvement and warning/failing. A score of warning/failing is not considered a passing grade.
- Students are tested in English, math and science.
- The state requires 10th-graders to achieve at least needs improvement on all three tests to graduate from high school.
Search our online database for town-by-town MCAS results for the Cape and Islands: www.capecodonline.com/mcas
Orleans Elementary School and Barnstable-West Barnstable Elementary School, for example, saw the percent of students scoring in the advanced or proficient rate decline by 20 and 21 percent, respectively.
In Falmouth, the decline in third-grade English advanced and proficient scores ranged from 1 percent at East Falmouth Elementary School to 13 percent at Teaticket Elementary School.
However, Wellfleet Elementary School, Truro Central School and Oak Ridge School in Sandwich did see an increase in the percentage of advanced or proficient scores among third-graders in English.
At two schools, Ezra H. Baker Innovation School in West Dennis and Laurence C. MacArthur Elementary School in South Yarmouth — which shut its doors in June — fewer than half of the students scored high enough to be considered proficient readers.
The decline comes nearly one year after the state passed a law to improve third-grade reading.
Falmouth schools Superintendent Bonny Gifford said part of the decline in proficiency may be related to changing test standards. The MCAS tests administered during the last school year included questions from both the old Massachusetts curriculum and a new one adopted by the state known as Common Core, Gifford said.
"I kind of expected almost more of a dip," Gifford said. She said that any time there is a change in assessments, scores tend to drop and then recover as schools get accustomed to the new standards.
Common Core puts less emphasis on fiction and more attention to drawing conclusions from multiple texts, Gifford said.
It asks students to pull information from material presented to them at test time rather than writing a narrative based on personal experience, she said.
Gifford said she expects another drop in scores when MCAS tests in English language arts and math are eventually replaced by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of Colleges and Careers, or the PARCC, assessment.
"Grade 3 (English) is down across the state as well," Nauset Regional Schools Assistant Superintendent Keith Gauley said. "We haven't identified any of the causes."
Orleans Elementary School's third-grade rate of advanced and proficient scores in English is still among the highest on the Cape at 71 percent, he said.
"Orleans has outstanding results," Gauley said.
But the statewide snapshot is grim, said Carolyn Lyons, president and CEO of Strategies for Children, a nonprofit organization that advocates for early learning programs.
In Massachusetts, 43 percent of third-graders are not proficient readers, she said.
At Ezra Baker and Laurence MacArthur elementary schools, 54 and 55 percent of third-graders scored as "needs improvement" or "warning/failing."
"Third grade is really a critical prediction of future struggle," Lyons said. She said early elementary reading success correlates with timely high school graduation rates.
Lyons attributed part of the downturn to a drop in state support for preschool programs. Reading readiness starts early, she said, and the state has not made progress on third-grade reading abilities in a decade.
The Third Grade Reading Proficiency Act that was signed into law a year ago this month creates an early literacy expert panel, but the "panel has yet to be announced," Lyons said.
In other MCAS results, the percentage of Cape seventh-graders scoring as either advanced or proficient rose in many school districts.
But the state also cited two Cape schools, Mattacheese Middle School in West Yarmouth and Mashpee Middle School, for performing in the lower 20 percent of schools in the state.
Mashpee Middle School "had improvement," but it did not reach a target for student growth set by the state, Superintendent Brian Hyde said.
"Although we're disappointed, we have a brand new leadership team ready to come in and improve Mashpee schools," Hyde said.
Being named among the lower performing 20 percent of schools of their type makes Mashpee Middle School and Mattacheese Middle School Level 3 schools on a state scale of 1 to 5.
"It's not horrible. The state will help us a little bit more with that school this year," Dennis-Yarmouth Superintendent Carol Woodbury said about Mattacheese.
The state evaluates schools not just on scores but on how well they are narrowing the achievement gap for lower-income, special education and foreign language speaking students, among others, Woodbury said.
At Mattacheese, where 64.3 percent of the students are considered "high needs," improvements were made but they fell below target, Woodbury said. She said this year the school increased the number of reading teachers, social workers and counselors on staff.
Test results show the overwhelming majority of the Cape and Islands' 10th-graders should have no trouble graduating from high school.
Barnstable and Dennis-Yarmouth Regional high schools had the greatest number of students at risk of not getting a diploma.
At Barnstable High, 9 percent of 10th-graders received a warning/failing score for the math MCAS, as did 8 percent of D-Y 10th-graders.
The highest failure rate was actually at Chatham High School, which had 26 percent of 10th-graders do poorly on the math MCAS.
But Scott Carpenter, superintendent of the new Monomoy Regional School District to which Chatham and Harwich belong, said the small number of test takers — 22 — skewed the results.
State analyses that follow individual students as well as cohorts of students have good news for Monomoy, Carpenter said.
"One of the things that really stands out for Monomoy is we're seeing some of the highest growth around," Carpenter said.
Provincetown scores were not included in the state results because the number of students tested — 10 or fewer — was too low.
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