state refines how it tracks mcas scores - laser measuring tool

Hugh Roy O'Donnell Elementary School in East Boston is usually not prominent as a Macas superstar.
In this school, nearly 90% of students have low scores in English and math.
Income and 26% of people who are not fluent in English tend to fall in the middle of their backpacks.
But, using a new measurement tool announced yesterday, a measurement tool based on the speed of student progress, O'Donnell is out of date
Lit up many wealthy schools across the state.
This new approach is called an important milestone in the history of MCAS and has a clear breakthrough with tradition.
For more than a decade, the state has judged the success of a school's MCAS by comparing each grade to the previous grade;
For example, this year's fourth grade will be compared with last year's fourth grade.
This approach will continue to exist, but beyond that, it will also be a new analysis to measure whether individual students have gained something in the MIT Comprehensive Assessment System tests they have taken over for several years.
In turn, schools will be assessed whether their students have exceeded expectations or deficiencies over time.
The national education leader said that the new system should provide educators with a large amount of new information about what may be effective or ineffective in classroom teaching, which is the greatest role for teachers, which students did not reach their potential.
According to the data released yesterday, the new system has cast some schools from different angles, revealingand low-
Performance School showing high rate of improvement and high rate of improvement
Rate schools that do not push students forward as quickly as possible.
On the contrary, in many cases, the new data emphasizes the previous findings, some of which are high.
Achieve some of the fastest revenue posted by the school and some of the lowest-
The school seems to be further behind.
Professional associations representing principals, school boards and teachers praised the new approach yesterday and they said it injected some
School Accountability in the country requires fairness.
They have been complaining that simply comparing students to their predecessors in a certain grade is too much of an "apple-to-orange" approach.
They say that students' academic skills are significantly different year by year, resulting in some school leaders firing bad MCAS scores for a group of less talented students than for any teaching defect. “I think the [new system]
More accurately reflects what is happening in a region, "said Thomas Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts school principals association.
"We have been working on this for six years.
This year, the state only provided data to schools.
In the future, once the school is used to the new system, the state plans to send this information to parents as part of their child's annual MCAS report.
While the method of calculating score growth is very complex, the country is presenting some information in a format that many parents are familiar.
It will map the improvement rate of their child's MCAS scores on a chart similar to what pediatricians use to tell parents about their child's height and weight compared to other children.
The system compares student progress levels on MCAS with other MIT students who performed at similar levels in previous years.
The results were reported as percentages, showing the percentage of students with faster progress and the percentage of students with poor performance.
In turn, the school is measured by looking at the percentile number posted by the student and then taking the median, which is used to generate the full picture.
The potential of the new system can be seen in some school districts that started accepting new scores last year as part of the pilot program.
For example, in Winchendon, the area noticed that the progress of students in the fourth grade was not as good as that in the other grades.
This allows leaders to reconsider their school structure and allow students to change schools between grade 3 and grade 4.
"It's really positive for us what our internal assessment shows," said Brooke Clenchy, director of Winchendon . ".
The new system is different from another metric set out under the federal law not to leave one child behind, which also seeks to measure the progress of a school in improving student test scores.
However, under this system, the state examines the success of schools in improving the proportion of students in the first two categories of grades-advanced and skilled-before the exam.
At O'Donnell School in East Boston, the state's focus on the positive growth of student MCAS scores is after years of intense work by its employees, about 260 students and their parents.
The school has improved the teaching methods of reading and writing and adopted a mathematical program that strongly emphasizes the use of geometric blocks and other tools to solve problems --
Provide an alternative way for students who are not fluent in English to show their teachers their understanding of concepts.
Students also use special software to answer math questions according to national standards, allowing them to track progress more closely.
On MCAS this year, half of the students had a statewide increase in math scores by more than 92%.
In English, the median growth percentage is 85.
These results add more context to the school's overall score in both subjects.
In mathematics and English, about half of the students have achieved advanced or skilled results.
"We focus our laser on the performance of our students," said Robert Martin, principal of the school . ".
"We have a school that is small enough that the scores of each student are statistically significant.
This puts a lot of pressure on us.
Matthew Carroll, a global employee, contributed to the report.