NECAP Results: EG Does Better Than Most, Worse Than Before

With the exception of their counterparts in Barrington, East Greenwich students fared better than any others in the state on the 2010 New England Common Assessment Program tests, according to data .

"As usual we are one of the top performing districts," said East Greenwich School Committee Chairwoman Deidre Gifford. "But we're not perfect, so we always want to look at what we can do to help our students become more proficient."

The NECAP assessments measure progress in reading and mathematics among students in grades 3 through 8 and in grade 11. They also measure proficiency in writing in fifth- and eighth-graders. Students took the standardized tests in October.

East Greenwich and Barrington students routinely rank as the top two in terms of the NECAP test scores, but rarely in that order. For the last three years, at least, according to the data released yesterday, Barrington has been the highest achieving school district in the state on the standardized tests.

In 2010, as in past years, Barrington students at the high school, middle school and elementary school level out-performed students from around the state, with East Greenwich a close second.  Portsmouth, South Kingstown and Narragansett  students rounded out the top five in each school level in 2010.

While East Greenwich students did better than most of the state, local public school students generally did slightly worse on the standardized test in 2010 than they did in 2009. Across the district, reading scores stayed flat with 90 percent of students rating proficient or better, while math scores dipped district-wide from 90-percent proficient in 2009 to 89 percent in 2010.

The drop in percentage of students being proficient or better could be seen most dramatically at the elementary school level, with each school faring worse on both the math and reading test except for Eldredge which held the line at 85-percent proficient on the math test. 

At the high school, reading scores went from 92-percent proficient or better in 2009, to 93-percent proficient or better in 2010. However, math scores dipped from 71 percent to 68.

At Cole Middle School, reading test scores dipped one percentage point from 92 percent of students grading proficient or better to 91. Math scores went up slightly from 80 to 81 pecent of students getting at least a proficient rating after falling four percentage points from 2008 to 2009.

Gifford said Superintendent Victor Mercurio would be giving the School Committee a presentation on the test scores at an upcoming meeting. She said it would not be the next meeting on February 15 because the agenda has already been set for that meeting.

Editor's note: Please see the accompanying charts to see how East Greenwich fared compared to other high-performing school districts in the state, as well as how local schools did compared to previous years.