More districts aim for the top on MCAS

HOPKINTON -- This booming high-tech community west of Boston is urging more students to aim for the highest possible score on the MCAS test, even though the state doesn't require that level to graduate.

In recent years, state officials and business leaders have begun promoting the goal, saying the state's economy hinges on producing workers with higher skills than the state requires. The advanced level, which requires the most sophisticated responses on the tests, is the highest of the four grading categories on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System.

The other three categories are proficient, needs improvement, and failing. Tenth-graders have to score a ``needs improvement" or better in English and math to graduate from high school. This year's results have been released during the last few weeks, and the state unveiled grade 3-8 results for schools and districts yesterday.

Lists of the state's highest- and lowest-performing schools, B11.

Getting significant numbers of students to the top level was unthinkable eight years ago when testing began and failure rates were high. In the past, the state's scrutiny has been primarily on low-income cities and towns, which have had the worst scores. Now, with communities leading the push, the spotlight has shifted somewhat to suburban towns.

Last year, about 70 suburban school systems, some 20 percent of the state's school districts, set a goal to double the number of students scoring advanced in math and science over the next five years, according to Mass Insight Education, a nonprofit organization coordinating the effort.

Hopkinton, one of the districts setting the goal, had as many as 61 percent of its 10th-graders score advanced in math, and wants to catch up to towns such as Weston, where as many as 76 percent of 10th-graders are advanced in math. Statewide, 40 percent of 10th-graders have hit that mark.

``We like to compare ourselves to the W districts: the Waylands, the Westons, the Wellesleys," said Rebecca Robak, a parent and School Committee chairwoman in Hopkinton. ``We are trying to aspire to that."

In Hopkinton, parents and a school consultant said they believed that the brightest children weren't being challenged enough, school officials said. They set out to deepen students' understanding of math, English, and other subjects, in hope of raising scores.

To better prepare elementary students, Hopkinton gave all of them an hour of math a day, which had not previously been routine, said Charles Caliri, director of math, science, and technology in grades 6-12, who also works on districtwide initiatives. In 2004, Hopkinton Middle School began an accelerated math class exclusively for the top sixth-graders. The classes have since expanded to seventh and eighth grade.

In Cathy Anusauskas's advanced pre-algebra class, the 16 seventh-graders move at a faster pace, get more homework, and tackle tougher problems than students in the regular pre-algebra classes.

``The discussion is much richer," she said. ``I would say that really sets them apart. . . . I expect more out of them."

Working in small groups this week, the students tackled a word problem about how many bunnies could be born over time. They sketched charts and erased furiously as they debated the correct answer.

When one boy was stumped, Joey McNulty shrugged and suggested: ``Just do the Fibonacci Sequence." The sequence is a mathematical pattern in which each number is the sum of the two numbers before it.

A group of girls sighed as they tried to come up with an answer. ``This is really, really, really confusing," said Sarah Greizer, 12, as she put down her pencil and reached for a bigger eraser.

But before class ended, her group was the first to volunteer to present the answer to the rest of the students. They had drawn charts, laying out the various sums of the numbers, to figure out the answer.

Students say they like the challenge, and they don't feel pressured by teachers or their parents to score high on the MCAS. But, they said, they scrutinize their scores, which their parents should receive next week. ``I want to score the best I can," said Olivia Turner.

In the town of Harvard, which is also trying to raise scores, educators said the push to get students into the advanced category has exposed flaws in instruction .

Mihran Keoseian, the retired superintendent who started Harvard's effort four years ago to get more students to score advanced in all grades and subjects, said he found that some elementary school teachers were struggling with math instruction. Some couldn't devise their own math problems and relied too heavily on textbooks. One elementary teacher confessed that she was only about as good at math as her students, said Keoseian, now an educational consultant.

One teacher quit because of what she saw as the undue focus on test scores, but Keoseian said the effort was much broader: to train teachers better and challenge students more.

``We took it to a much higher level than MCAS," said Keoseian. ``We used it to improve the system."

In Weston and Wayland, the districts that Hopkinton judges itself against, school officials say they have not set specific goals to urge students to score advanced.

But a report on Weston's website showed that the district scrutinized scores in other cities and towns, including how many students scored advanced in 2005. They said it was impressive that 16 percent of Weston's high school sophomores scored at the highest levels of the advanced category. But they said they were concerned that only 9 percent of Weston's eighth-graders scored advanced in science, compared with 24 percent in Wayland.

Weston school officials said they pay attention to the MCAS and other measures, such as the SAT. But they say they don't want the state's test to dominate what they teach.

``We want them to do their best," said Assistant Superintendent Cheryl Maloney. ``But we're trying not to stress them out over it. They're third-graders, they're fourth-graders."

Wendy Spector, Weston's School Committee chairwoman, said the school system has no plans to get more students to advanced, noting that the district's standards are already higher than the state's.

But state Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll said he believes that even the best systems should set higher goals for the MCAS.

The state, through the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship program, started offering free tuition at public colleges and universities in 2005 to students who scored advanced on one 10th-grade MCAS test and met other criteria.

``With the economy the way it is, the competition for college and so forth . . . it's inevitable that people are going to be looking more and more at advanced," Driscoll said.

James Vaznis of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Maria Sacchetti can be reached at msacchetti@globe.com.