Performance on MCAS rises again

REVERE -- Four out of five Massachusetts high school sophomores passed both the MCAS English and math exams on their first try last spring, continuing a multiyear trend of improvement on the standardized test, state leaders announced yesterday.

The 80 percent passing rate for 10th graders was up from 75 percent in 2003 and 68 percent three years ago, when passing MCAS English and math became a graduation requirement. In English, 89 percent of the students passed, the same proportion as last year, while in math, 85 percent passed, an improvement of five percentage points. Scores also rose in lower grades, and in every racial group, though black and Hispanic students still lag behind Asians and non-Hispanic whites.

"Obviously, we are very pleased with the improved performance and the shrinking gap," a beaming Governor Mitt Romney said in front of Revere High School's junior class, which gathered in the school's auditorium for yesterday's announcement.

The class of 2006 is the fourth that must pass both English and math to graduate, and the first group of students that has lived with MCAS for their entire school careers. Students have multiple chances to pass the exam. So far, 95 percent of the class of 2003 and 96 percent of the class of 2004 have done so.

Romney, who was flanked by Senate President Robert E. Travaglini and Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll, described the latest scores as more evidence that the education reform effort Massachusetts launched in 1993 is reaping results.

MCAS critics, however, questioned whether the rising scores are proof that instruction is improving, or simply that students and teachers have become more test-savvy. They said scores on such tests typically rise as students and teachers get accustomed to them.

"We continue to feel that this kind of high-stakes testing encourages a narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test," said Lisa Guisbond of MassCARE, an antitesting group. "Those scores may go up, but it doesn't give us a good picture of what else is going on in schools, what else is being lost."

Despite the improving MCAS scores, Driscoll acknowledged yesterday that more Massachusetts schools are failing to meet federal standards set by the No Child Left Behind law. Driscoll said the number of schools not making the grade will "roughly double." Last year, out of the state's 1,860 schools, 208 didn't meet the standard; if the commissioner's prediction holds, nearly a fourth of the state's schools would end up on the list this year.

The commissioner attributes the increase to progressively tougher federal standards. The US Department of Education not only looks at overall test scores of schools, but studies how well schools do within each racial and ethnic subgroup. This is the first year schools could end up on the low-performing list because certain groups of students performed poorly.

Statewide, at many grade levels, the failure rates for blacks and Hispanics are dropping more rapidly than they are for Asians and non-Hispanic whites.

But Daria Hall, a policy analyst at the Washington-based Education Trust, said Massachusetts school officials need to delve deeper to determine whether the achievement gap is narrowing. Besides analyzing failure rates, Massachusetts also should see how many minority students score in the "advanced" or "proficient" levels compared with their white and Asian counterparts. Using that standard, the achievement gap is stagnant or growing in many subjects and grade levels, not shrinking.

For example, the number of black fourth-graders scoring in the "advanced" and "proficient" categories in mathematics increased by six percentage points between 2001 and 2004, and Hispanics gained seven points. But white students rose eight points during the same period, widening the gap.

Romney acknowledged the continuing gap yesterday, saying, "We should not have a difference based on race and where you live." He said that principals and superintendents should have greater power to hire and fire teachers, and that teachers' unions should have less influence.

Driscoll, for his part, pointed to parental involvement as a key factor.

"More and more children are coming to school less prepared," Driscoll said. "But you know what? Schools have to face up to it. We might be the one shot they have."

In previous years, Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System scores indicated that students were having far more trouble with math than with English. But higher math scores played a large role in this year's overall improvement. Among fourth-graders, for example, the English failure rate increased from 9 percent to 10 percent, while the math failure rate declined from 16 percent to 14 percent.

The difference was sharper at the 10th-grade level, where the English failure rate remained stable at 11 percent as the math failure rate dropped from 20 percent to 15 percent.

Driscoll, a former math teacher, said the rising math scores are no accident. He noted that the state recently tightened its math certification requirements for elementary school teachers, and many districts have beefed up teacher training and adopted innovative programs designed to boost math achievement.

"The truth is we got there not through drilling, although kids need to know facts, but because the knowledge base for a lot of teachers has improved," Driscoll said.

Andy Calkins, executive director of MassInsight Education, which has worked with Revere, New Bedford, Chicopee, and Lynn on improving math performance, said that many Massachusetts teachers are simply not qualified to teach the subject effectively.

"Everyone's first instinct, justifiably, is to help kids learn to read. So that's where a lot of districts started," Calkins said.

"The problems with math achievement are in some ways more deeply embedded in the system: We have a lot of teachers teaching at the elementary and middle-school levels who simply don't know enough math."

Worcester Superintendent James Caradonio said the MCAS isn't perfect, partly because its design makes it difficult to track the progress of the same students year to year.

But the state's testing system has given schools "direction and focus," he said.