Many strong MCAS results
The Boston Globe, Article by Peter Schworm, September 8, 2010

REVERE — Public school students across the state posted strong gains in the latest round of the MCAS tests at most grade levels, building on steady improvement over the past decade and chipping away at persistent disparities between urban and suburban children.

For the first time ever, more than half of the state’s seventh- and eighth-graders scored proficient or higher in math, and scores in most subjects and grade levels climbed, in some cases considerably.

But at the high school level, where students must pass all three sections of the exam to receive a diploma, English and math scores showed no improvement, while 35 percent of students scored below proficient in science. Proficiency is the second highest of the four MCAS scores and one notch above what the state considers a passing grade.

Education officials and Governor Deval Patrick trumpeted the results as evidence that his administration’s aggressive efforts to improve schools are paying off.

“We are totally confident that if we do right by you, you’ll do right by the Commonwealth,’’ Patrick told a group of grade schoolers at a morning press conference to announce the scores.

Results for school systems and individual schools are scheduled to be released next week.

Officials said yesterday that the gains made by third-graders, the youngest students who take the annual standardized tests, were especially promising. They indicate that more students are grasping the basics early on, putting them in a good position to handle more advanced work later on.

“It’s very, very encouraging,’’ said Margaret Blood, the president of Strategies for Children, a Boston group that advocates for early education. “The results had been pretty stagnant, so this shows the state is doing something right.’’

Mitchell Chester, the state’s education commissioner, said the improvement over last year’s scores was striking, and that higher math scores in grades seven and eight were a welcome change. “These are among the strong gains we’ve seen from one year to the next,’’ Chester said.

Tenth-graders also posted a better passing grade, with 86 percent passing all three tests required for graduation on the first try, up from 83 percent last year and 80 percent the year before.

Despite the overall gains, many students are failing to learn what they need to under state standards.

One-quarter of high school sophomores failed to gain proficiency in math, and 22 percent did not reach the mark in English. Only 54 percent of fourth-graders are proficient in English, and just 48 percent in math.

The state defines proficiency as “a solid understanding of challenging subject matter.’’

At four grade levels, only one-third of low-income students are proficient in math. And Blood cautioned that more than one-third of third-graders, and over half of those from low-income families, are not proficient readers. Students who struggle with reading at an early age often continue to have a hard time in school, she said.

Coming on the day of the first televised gubernatorial debate, the results immediately took on political overtones. Patrick traveled to an elementary school in Revere to announce the results, thronged by fourth- and fifth-graders.

His Republican opponent, Charles Baker, said the results underscored the importance of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System in improving education, and renewed his criticism of Patrick for swapping the state’s standards for national benchmarks this summer.

Critics say that move will ultimately lead the state to scrap the MCAS for a national exam that they believe will be less rigorous.

“The MCAS is a national model and for good reason,’’ Baker’s spokesman, Rick Gorka, said in an e-mail. “After 17 years of steady progress it’s a shame that Governor Patrick wants to roll back the clock on these bipartisan reforms and turn over control of Massachusetts’ nationally recognized standards to Washington, D.C.’’

The MCAS standards are widely regarded as among the most rigorous in the country. State education officials say they are constantly fine-tuning the MCAS and will not adopt an inferior testing system.

Apart from the political back and forth, the rise in test scores showed promising improvements among poor and minority students. English scores of African-American and Hispanic/Latino third-graders climbed sharply, and both groups showed across-the-board improvement in math.

Math scores among low-income students were also up at nearly every grade level, and English scores climbed in the lower grades.

“We’re pleased we’ve made some progress, but there’s a long way to go,’’ said Paul Reville, the state’s education secretary.

As has been true in the past, African-American and Hispanic students lagged behind white students, who are far more likely to attend higher-scoring suburban schools.

For example, 40 percent of African-American fifth-graders scored proficient or above in English, compared to 70 percent of whites. Similarly, 56 percent of Hispanic 10th-graders achieved proficiency in English, versus 84 percent of whites.

The results marked the latest in a series of achievements for the state’s schools. Last month, the state won $250 million in a national education competition. In March, its fourth-and eighth-graders received the nation’s highest reading scores in a key assessment test.

In Revere, Patrick visited a third-grade classroom, where students were writing a summary of a chapter in a book they had read. When the teacher asked what a summary should include, Oumaima Bahjy’s hand shot up.

“The important parts,’’ she said.

In the back corner, Dante Raffa diligently wrote his summary, his legs dangling just above the floor. Head in his journal, he didn’t seem to be listening. But when the teacher asked what a prediction was, he hurled his hand upward, half springing from his seat.

“When you take a good guess about what’s going to happen next,’’ he said.

Patrick was impressed.

“Very good,’’ he said with a chuckle.

Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com.