by Dr. Thomas Jefferson, Superintendent of Schools
Across the country, a spirited debate continues on the value and role of standardized testing and its place in the measurement of individual students and schools. No doubt, we’re operating at a time when public school accountability and the role of high-stakes testing have been accentuated through both the No Child Left Behind legislation and the fierce competition students face for entrance into elite colleges. In Harvard, our performance remains extremely strong on those measurements that have the greatest public profile.
It is the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) that is most commonly used as the yardstick to measure school success both across the country and over time. In recent years, Harvard’s performance against this measure has remained quite strong. In 2009 scores increased 45 points over those from 2008. The greatest gain was seen in writing, where Harvard’s average score of 627 ranked as the highest in public school districts across the commonwealth. While congratulations go to our English teachers, praise is due as well to those in the Social Studies and Special Education departments who’ve worked closely with their colleagues in the English Department to develop a consistent, unified approach to the teaching of writing. Further, the standards and efforts of all teachers at both schools have contributed greatly to this success.
The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) remains a standard-bearer for measuring school district progress in the commonwealth. Again, Harvard’s overall performance has remained quite strong and shown positive trends over the past five years. Specifically, the number of 10th-grade students who have reached the advanced level again places Bromfield in the highest echelon of public school districts. Harvard’s advanced rankings in comparison to other public districts are second in mathematics and seventh in English, respectively. In science at the eighth-grade level Harvard was identified as the highest scoring public school district in the state.
This fall the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is releasing a new MCAS metric that will provide us with additional data with which to evaluate our performance. The “growth model” provides a measurement of how a student progressed in relation to other students who had similar performance in the previous year’s MCAS. For example, one student had a scaled score of 254 in grade 4 and increased to 270 in grade 5. That gain represented a growth index score of 93, or growth greater than 93 percent of the student’s academic peers (those students across the state who scored 254 the previous year).
The “growth model” data, by school and grade level, will be released publicly later this month. Within the school system we have already begun to use this data to examine how students at all levels are progressing in relation to their academic peers. This information is especially valuable in evaluating our current intervention and enrichment programs. I’ll be presenting a brief overview of this model at the School Committee meeting on Oct. 26 and will continue to welcome any questions residents might have on any related topic.