Representatives from Newton Public Schools (NPS) presented Newton’s MCAS scores at Monday’s school committee meeting, noting district-wide improvements across subjects.
According to Gina Flanagan, NPS assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, and Katy Hogue, NPS chief of data and research, overall student performance on the state standardized test is steady or improving across subjects.
But they added that there’s variability in English Language Arts (ELA) progress for middle school students. According to Flanagan, these discrepancies may point to a misalignment between the curricula across middle schools.
“So when we look at the progress of grades three through eight, we do see some stable progress in literacy,” Flanagan said. “However, we do continue to see variation in performance across grades six through eight, which signals the need for a more aligned curriculum and coherent middle school ELA curriculum.”
Curriculum realignment efforts are already underway in math, yielding better test scores, Hogue said. She discussed MCAS data showing that math scores have been on an upward trend, with work still needed in topics like expressions and equations and statistics and probability.
“After three years of relatively stable results, we’re starting to see a slight upward trend in math performance across grades three to eight,” said Flanagan. “This suggests that the early impact of some of the curriculum alignment work that we’ve done is scoring some success, but there is so much more work for us to do in this area.”
Data from the Science, Technology, and Engineering MCAS, administered to grades five and eight, showed that students performed well on the exam—and better than in years past. The increase can be attributed to a revised curriculum, according to Hogue.
“We saw growth in both grades, the percentage of students scoring meeting or exceeding expectations in both grades five and eight this year,” Hogue said. “So grade five, we had 70 percent of students meeting or exceeding expectations, up from 65 percent in the prior year, and we had seen that sort of stable over since spring of ’21, and in grade eight.”
In the first year of full administration of the civics MCAS, Newton students exceeded expectations. The exam was administered only to grade eight students, and according to Hogue, 72 percent of the students fell into the meeting or exceeding expectations categories.
“We had similar performance across all three categories that were assessed on this assessment, around 72 percent for each one, and those are government structures, foundations of government, and rights and responsibilities,” said Hogue. “Our students in eighth grade outperformed the state average on every item on the civics assessment.”
Although the district’s overall student performance is steady or improving across subjects, Flanagan noted that there is still work to be done.
“Ultimately, the goal is not just to collect data,” Flanagan said. “But it’s also to use this data strategically to inform decisions and refine instruction and eventually improve overall outcomes for our students.”
