Salem Schools Making Progress On State DESE Report Card

SALEM, MA — Salem Superintendent Steve Zrike told Patch he believes the district is making progress in multiple metrics where city schools trail state averages in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education 2020-21 school year report card released this week.

Zrike said that while the COVID-19 pandemic may have slowed that progress, he is encouraged with indications that the current school year will show further advances in the areas of ninth-grade proficiency and advanced-credit coursework where the district is looking to make up ground.

"We're still not where we want to be but we are trending better," Zrike said. "There were a lot of challenges with the pandemic but the truth is that with the present data we have from this year we are seeing very promising trends."

Because of the pandemic year, DESE did not make accountability determinations for the 2020-2021 school year.

The report card said the percentage of Salem ninth-grade students who passed all of their courses was 39.6 percent — well below the state average of 75.8 percent, though Zrike said this year's numbers are closer to 50 percent. The percentage of students taking part in advanced-credit coursework of 39.9 percent is also below the state average of 62.2.

Over the past two years, however, the district has begun a partnership with Salem State University to present more credit-course opportunities for juniors and seniors and is expanding that program to include North Shore Community College.

"There's this new alliance that's been launched across Massachusetts with more than 80 organizations and we're part of it," Zrike said. "That's really pushing for college options for young people and we've had a lot of success with it. We think it's important for our young people to have the college experience, to earn credits while they are in high school, so they leave us with more than just a diploma."

The DESE report card said 38.8 percent of students from the 2020-21 school year went on to a four-year college (state average: 52 percent) and 11.4 percent went on to a two-year college (state average 11.9 percent).

The report card said Salem is doing better than the state average in having students take arts, music and theater classes with Salem at 79.6 percent to the 77.2 state average. Salem's percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations on the MCAS exam of 75 percent is virtually the same as the state's 76 percent.

The 99.2 percent of Salem students completing the MassCore program of studies of four years of English, four years of math, three years of lab-based science, three years of history, two years of the same foreign language, one year of arts program and five additional "core" courses is well above the state average of 83.2 percent.

The district's dropout rate of 3.4 percent was down from 4.5 percent in 2019.

The district's four-year graduation rate took a big hit in 2020-21 — dropping from 80.5 percent to 73.9 percent.

"We're back on track toward exceeding historical data," Zrike said overall. "The last two years with the pandemic have been really rough. We haven't had a full school year for two years until this one."

Salem spends an average of $20,220 per student —about 25 percent above the state average of $16,377.

Zrike said individual school report cards will be sent to families at 9 a.m. on Feb. 28.

The full DESE district and individual school report cards can be found here.

(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.)