by Dr. Thomas Jefferson, Superintendent of Schools

Since Sept. 24, when the Department of Education released the results of the 2008 MCAS, my phone has been ringing with calls from educators and town officials from across the commonwealth inquiring about what Harvard did to generate such exceptional results. Many of these communities, like Harvard, serve a highly educated populace, and most spend significantly more per pupil on education. While the MCAS tests are not specifically designed to rank districts, it could be argued among those who do construct ratings that we were the highest in the commonwealth. Some specific areas of note include the following:

• Our collective 10th and eighth-grade scores again stood atop public schools across the state in math, English, and science.
• Big jumps were seen in grade six composite scores, which were ranked third by the Boston Globe in both math and English. (The districts scoring ahead of Harvard had either fewer than 20 students at the grade or were small charter districts.)
• Grade four showed gains in English for the fourth consecutive year and now ranks among the top dozen districts.
• Grade five ranked among the top 10 in English and top five in science.

A strong part of our MCAS success can be easily traced to a talented student body and supportive families within our community. Beyond that, we have an excellent faculty of teachers and support staff. When we point to the results of our 10th-graders, we are seeing the cumulative efforts of staff in the entire district. Our department leaders and building administrators deserve special praise for their efforts in coordinating the overall program. Principal Mary Beth Banios and the elementary school faculty are to be commended for recent gains at the fourth-, fifth-, and even sixth-grade levels.

Some critics of MCAS argue that such high-stakes testing forces schools to teach to the test, resulting in a less-than-engaging-and-complete curriculum. This criticism would be true if it created a learning environment that exclusively simulated test-taking conditions. This is not the case in Harvard. While America does not have a national curriculum, we do have curriculum standards or frameworks which help guide what should be covered at various grades across different disciplines. Assessment of how well students have met these standards is one vehicle by which school districts are measured and educators are held accountable.

While we are proud of our MCAS performance, the tests also show us areas where additional efforts are needed for particular students or across certain strands of a discipline. We continually examine this data, coupled with other internal assessments, to determine how we can reach our goal of meeting the needs of all learners.