Attleboro Takes Steps to See that No Child is Left Behind

School cancellations due to our snowy winter has led several Massachusetts schools districts to request an extended time frame for Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) administration.

Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education, Mitchell D. Chester has responded with two extra days to complete testing.

Chester explained that he had few options due to cost and scheduling conflicts.

Costs involved in delaying the MCAS more than two days would total more than $1 million. The company responsible for scoring MCAS has already booked test scorers who will not be available at a later date, Chester said. And changing the time frame would require training new, inexperienced scorers, which could impact test scores, according to Chester.In addition, a new site for scoring would have to be found and booked. 

No Child Left Behind

The No Child Left Behind Act 2002 (NCLB) requires all public school students to demonstrate proficiency in English and math by the 2013-14 school year as demonstrated by state testing. This closing of the achievement gap between high and low performing students would guarantee, “no child is left behind.”

MCAS, although implemented in 1998 as part of state education reform, is the state’s testing program currently utilized to meet "No Child Left Behind" testing requirements.   

Data generated by MCAS is used by school districts across the state in several ways including identifying students who are having difficulty meeting curriculum expectations and then improvement of instruction for those students with appropriate interventions.

Using the 2010 MCAS data, Nancy Sprague, Director of Teaching and Learning Excellence for thes explained a few of the many measures that have been put in place to continue the district’s progress towards every students’ achievement of English and math proficiency.

During the initial stages of MCAS implementation, parents and students worried that some students may be denied high school diplomas since high school graduation now hinged on a student’s ability to pass the grade 10 MCAS tests.

“Each year, Attleboro High School has two or three students who are not able to graduate because they did not pass MCAS," Sprague said. "Last year there were three students (of 386).  These students earn a Certificate of Attainment indicating that they have successfully completed the high school course requirements to graduate but did not pass all three MCAS tests (Math, ELA, Science).” 

“Students who don’t pass MCAS are encouraged to come back to the high school for additional support, including tutoring, so that they can pass the exam. One of the three from last year has already passed MCAS and will graduate in June,” Sprague said. 

“We are very pleased with our 2010 MCAS test data which show students have made great progress in all areas across the board," she added. We’ve seen growth and improvement in general education students especially in those who have started their education in the Attleboro Public Schools and have stayed here.”

English Language Learners

The biggest challenge are those students who come into the system in ninth-, tenth, or eleventh grade grade from another country and who have had only limited educational opportunities and possess limited knowledge of the English language.”

Sprague explained that English Language Learners (ELL) have to work at a learning acquisition rate much faster than the regular education students in order to catch up and keep up with their classmates. This rate of learning is required in order to close the achievement gap as per NCLB.

Research shows that it takes nearly five years to learn English well enough to be able to understand academic content language, according to Sprague. The expectation, however, is that while the students are in Massachusetts they will learn the language and be able to take the MCAS after only one year of instruction in English.

“Imagine going to Spain and after going to school there for only one year taking a high school biology test in Spanish," Sprague said. "You may have attained conversational Spanish skills, but not enough of the academic content vocabulary necessary for this level of test."

Attleboro is endeavoring to help these students by increasing the number of regular education teachers to 250 who have been trained in Department of Education ELL Category Programs. These programs include training in instructional strategies in making curriculum instruction more accessible to the ELL.

In addition, Attleboro has hired more English as Second Language (ESL) teachers to meet the needs of the current 272 enrolled ELLs who speak a combined 22 different languages including Tagalog, Gujarati, Arabic, Creole, Simhala and Punjabi.

An ELL teacher/coordinator position has also been filled to help coordinate the ELL program and provide translators for the parents of those 272 students plus the parents of the many other students’ parents who do not speak English.

Sprague said that another group of students challenged by the MCAS is students with special needs. These students may learn at a slower pace than their classmates yet are at the same time are accountable for the same challenging content material. For example, they may not read at a sixth-grade level but they are responsible for sixth-grade science content learning.

“Our teachers must know these kids very well in order to provide them more analytical and more targeted instruction in order to meet their required grade level goals," Sprague said. Student achievement data is now being provided in new “growth model” which will assist teachers in creating a “snapshot” of their needs.”

Special education trained teachers are teaching side-by-side with regular classroom teachers in classrooms with mainstreamed special needs students. These classes called inclusion classrooms facilitate grade level content and skills being taught to all children. Modifications are continually being made for each and every student so that no child is left behind.

“I’ve never been in a school district where people work harder than they do in Attleboro,” Sprague said.

No More MCAS?

 It may not be long before Massachusetts’s students are no longer taking the MCAS. Presently Massachusetts is taking a leading role in developing the common core curriculum standards to be used in national math and English assessment.

Like the MCAS, passing this test would still be a graduation requirement. In fact, to earn their diploma, high school students will still have to pass the MCAS science and technology test in addition to the national test. This national test is likely to replace the math and English MCAS during the next three to five years.

The $35 million dollars spent yearly on the MCAS testing of 500,000 students in Massachusetts would be reduced if the national testing is adopted, according to The Boston Globe.

When asked how Attleboro students would do making the change to this test, Sprague smiled and said, “They will do just fine.”