Peabody Students See MCAS Gains, Much Room For Improvement

PEABODY, MA — As Peabody students saw gains in Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System scores year-over-year in math and English, they remain well below 2019 levels, as the district followed state trends in continuing to look to make up ground from pre-COVID-19 disruptions.

"As we think about the testing we always want to focus on the recovery," Peabody Superintendent Josh Vadala told the School Committee on Tuesday night. "So we know what the last three years have been like in our schools. We're very happy we had a smooth opening (this year) and that things are going very well. A lot of the money we have spent has gone to teaching and learning and supporting that recovery."

While the 2023 scores are largely up from 2022, Peabody students remain mostly at about one-third of reaching the threshold of meeting or exceeding expectations across the board.

"Sixty or 70 percent is the goal, not 37, or 42, or 39," said Vadala, noting Peabody students averaged 37 percent meeting or exceeding expectations in 2019. "This is a step. This is a step that we're going to take right now. We think of it sort of as a checkmark. Where we were in 2019, we know that we dipped, but we're going to exceed that and have a giant checkmark, and that number is going to go up.

"By the time these third-, fourth- and fifth-graders get to high school we are going to see massive gains."

Peabody students were even or showed gains in all grade levels between fourth grade and 10th grade in English, with fifth grade and eighth grade showing 6 and 7-point gains, respectively, but those scores are still between 2 and 16 percentage points off 2019 levels.

It was a similar story in math where students improved in all but one grade level yet were mostly 5 to 13 points off 2019.

Science scores continued to go down across the board, mirroring state averages, while Vadala allowed that the district's 86 percent four-year graduation rate remains a big concern.

"Our goal is to get that back into the 90s where we were three or four years ago," he said, attributing the four-year graduation deadline to chronic absenteeism during the pandemic that led to another year of schooling necessary to meet graduation requirements.

Vadala credited the district's early return from remote and hybrid learning as one key to the recovery that has been made.

"When our teachers have them over time it really makes a difference," he said. "We have a lot of work to do. Our principals are working hard. Our teachers are working hard and our families are working hard to ensure our students are getting what they need. But when I see these big numbers - plus-4, plus-6, plus-7 — that is really exceeding what the state is doing.

"Our kids came back early. Our kids were fully in high school before any other high school of its size full-time. It's really a credit to the work that has been done here and the work we have done with our teachers' union to make sure the kids have access to their teachers."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)