Medford School Officials Talk MCAS Results

School officials criticized the way Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test results are analyzed during a public hearing to review the district's scores Monday night.

"We have a society that’s crazy about rankings…," Superintendent Roy Belson said. "Because they rank people, they’ve created this craze that somehow you can score this (standardized scores) like a baseball game.”

Scores for the MCAS, state-wide standardized testing, were released last week. During the hearing Monday night at Medford High School, administrators summarized score results in Medford, which they said showed postives, negatives and some things in between.

"There’s some good news and there’s some news we need to further analyze, and there’s some bad news,” Belson said.

Part of the "good news" is scores at the high school, Humanities Director Bernadette Ricciardelli said. A total of 40 percent of Medford Tenth graders scored advanced, leading the state average by 7 percent. And a total of 87 percent of Medford High Students scored either advanced or proficient, 3 points higher than the state average.

Another piece of good news comes from Brooks Elementary School, which was recognized by Governor Deval Patrick as a "commendation school" for its MCAS scores, Ricciardelli said. A total of 74 percent of Brooks School fifth graders scored proficient or better on the english/language arts test, seven points higher than the state.

Particularly troubling are scores at the fourth grade level, Ricciardelli said. A total of 65 percent of fourth graders district-wide scored "needs improvement" or at the "warning" level in math.

"Clearly you can see the grade 4 scores are not what we had envisoned reporting to you," Ricciardelli said. "They are not as positive aas they should be."

Administrators have started a review of those scores and will work with principals to implement strategies to improve them, she said.

Criticism of Analysis

The MCAS the Massachusetts version of standardized testing to satisfy the Federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Established in 2001, the No Child Left Behind Calls for all students, nation wide, to score proficient or better on the standardized tests by 2014. The tests score students in four tiers: Advanced, Proficient, Needs Improvement and Warning.

The tests aim to ensure that students are prepared for college and careers, Belson said, but they are often used to compare schools and communities against eachother.

Belson levelled his criticism at the Boston Globe's analysis of the results, which rank districts state-wide. He called it "pop journalism."

That ranking system doesn't take into account factors like the number of students with disabilities in a class or socio-economic factors, Belson said.

"I think you would find socio-economic status would have a lot to do with it (results)," Belson said. 

In looking for ways to make sense of the results, school committee member John Falco said he didn't think comparing results in a particular grade to that same grade in a previous year was efficient because the students are different.

"It seems to me in some ways it doesn’t give me a lot of information," he said. "It’s almost like apples to oranges”

Medford's results also include special needs students who have been sent out of district because Medford Public Schools can't accommodate their needs. Administrators in Medford have no control over what those students are taught, Assistant Superintendent Beverly Nelson said.

“This is particularly frustrating as the district has no control over the curriculum, nor the testing environment" she said.

Monday's hearing was supposed to be a committee of the whole meeting, but only three school committee members attended - Falco, Paulette Van der Klook and Sharon Guzik - so they held a hearing instead. The committee cannot take formal votes in a hearing.

For data on Medford's MCAS results:

• From the State
• From the Globe