Wilmington MCAS Data: Reagan Updates School Committee

WILMINGTON, MA — Assistant Superintendent Brian Reagan summarized the district's MCAS results for the school committee at Wednesda's meeting. He laid out which schools in the district are meeting or exceeding state targets as well as achievement levels on individual tests. MCAS results were released by the state last month.

"In our all students category and our high needs subgroups all came out in ... making substation progress toward targets," Reagan said.

The district as a whole received a two-year cumulative rating of 65 percent for progress toward meeting targets, meaning it made "substantial progress toward targets" as well. On the tests, the number of Wilmington students meeting or exceeding expectations topped state averages in 18 of the 19 assessments. Only fifth graders taking the English exam lagged behind state averages.

The full meeting video is available from Wilmington Community Television.

Reagan did note a couple of areas for concern, particularly Shawsheen Elementary, which declined from last year in both achievement categories and chronic absenteeism.

"Shawsheen really is an outlier for us this year," said Reagan.

"We will watch this carefully," he said, though he noted, "This is not a trend. Shawsheen did not have this same makeup last year."

Additionally, 5th grade students performed below state averages in ELA, which marks the third consecutive year of underperforming in ELA for that cohort.

He also pointed to a couple of bright spots. "Our science scores were better than I expected, and this is the year before we implemented the new science curriculum," he said.

Compared to districts that they state suggested Wilmington be compared to, based on demographics and other similarities, Reagan noted that 3-8 students beat only one of 10 similar districts in ELA, while in math they were 4th from the top.

In response to questions from school committee members, Reagan said that while MCAS results are "an important data point," they're less useful day-to-day than internal assessments, like math benchmark assessments at the primary school level, because they're for completed school years.

"It's not living the way someone's math assessment might be in October," he said. A goal "this year is to figure out what those assessments are at the secondary level."

"There's a lot of good news in these results," said school committee member David Ragsdale.

The high needs students category for Wilmington schools is mostly students with disabilities, followed by low-income students.

Full Wilmington MCAS results by school are available here.