Spring 2009 MCAS data was released in mid-September and can be found on the Massachusetts DOE website. There is simply tons of information available to study. I’ve just spent an hour trying to draw some patterns and see if there are informative trends. I could spend three days and probably find some data to substantiate any point I wanted to argue.

But first things first – hats off to the 4th graders at Ward who scored #1 in the state in Math, followed by 7th ranked Zervas, and 8th ranked Lincoln-Eliot. Then Pierce 4th graders who were 9th in English. And Brown 8th graders who were 12th in Math.

Critics argue that MCAS drives teachers and school systems to “teach to the test”, while defenders say that standardized tests matter as they are meaningful ways to verify student achievement in core subject areas. Personally I am not strongly opposed to MCAS but I think it takes strong, independent-minded principals and teachers to keep them in their place, as a measure of how we do and not a target to try to hit.

What do these results mean, and how strongly should we react when we see raw rankings, or trends from year to year?

The Globe site with the 2009 rankings also had a link to 2008. Two year’s data is not as good as 4, or 8, but I thought I’d track our English and Math rankings for 8th and 10th grades, the last two testing grades. Here is what I found:

NSHS, 2008-2009 10th grade English, 46th to 75th;
NNHS, 2008-2009 10th grade English, 78th to 105th;
NSHS, 2008-2009 10th grade Math, 38th to 59th (tied);
NNHS, 2008-2009 10th grade Math, 46th to 59th (tied).

Bigelow, 2008-2009, 8th grade English, 101st to 128th;
Brown, 2008-2009, 8th grade English, 34th to 52nd;
Day, 2008-2009, 8th grade English, 101st to 91st;
Oak Hill, 2008-2009, 8th grade English, 70th to 178th.

Bigelow, 2008-2009, 8th grade Math, 34th to 33rd;
Brown, 2008-2009, 8th grade Math, 15th to 12th;
Day, 2008-2009, 8th grade Math, 48th to 56th;
Oak Hill, 2008-2009, 8th grade Math, 46th to 38th.

Here are my two-year summaries: Our high school English and Math rankings dropped significantly from 2008 to 2009, as did our middle school English. Our middle school Math rankings stayed flat. I wonder how much difference in student achievement and/or knowledge is reflected by a drop in rankings from 70th to 178th? Is this a trend to be alarmed by, or a one-year blip that evens out when looking at 5 or 10 year data? Are we looking at trends that should be cause for great self-analysis and remediation, or do they not matter because we should not make too much of MCAS anyway?

I hope our community can start to look at MCAS as simply another information source, and get past the love-hate duality that has characterized our relationship with MCAS since they were introduced.