A Look At Wakefield's 2012 MCAS Results

Students in Wakefield generally outperformed the state average in the various MCAS categories, and they also largely showed improvement over last year’s performance.

For example, 10th grade students went from 50 to 63% advanced in mathematics, and from 26 to 39% advanced in English Language Arts. Science also showed improvement for the 10th graders, with 27% scoring in the advanced category compared to 18% last year. However, the number in the “needs improvement” category rose in the past year from 13 to 16% among 10th graders.

The 8th grade actually saw a slight drop from advanced into proficient in both the math and English categories. Science was a mixed bag for the 8th graders – 37% of them need improvement in the category but that’s down from 47% last year. 44% of those students now rank as proficient in science, but the number in the “warning” category also rose from 9 to 13%.

The state provides a full look at this link at how the various grades have done in these subjects between 2009 and 2012.

Looking at other grades’ results, the 7th grade had 30% in the “needs improvement” category this year, compared to 21% last year. And during that same time period, the number of advanced 7th grade math students fell to 23 from 30%.

In other noteworthy changes, the third grade saw a jump in advanced math students from 17 to 28% over the last year, although the percentage in the “warning” category jumped from 3 to 9% in that same time period. Elsewhere, grade 5 science scores saw a significant jump in the percentage of advanced students (12 to 23%) as well as a decline in the “warning” category from 11 to 4%.

Along with the previously discussed data, this link on the state’s Department of Education website offers a look at how Wakefield did in all of the grades and subjects compared to the state average.