MCAS Scores Show Steady Improvement For Some

Bianca Vázquez Toness is the Managing Editor and Correspondent for K-12 Education at WGBH Radio. She has covered everything from technology to immigration to presidential elections, but keeps coming back to stories about kids and schools. She's worked for Minnesota Public Radio, WBUR and Bloomberg News. She was a 2016-2017 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.

September 24, 2019

Updated August 09, 2023

Scores on the state’s more challenging “Next Generation” MCAS are improving since it was released three years ago, although unevenly.

Students are improving their scores on the English Language Arts portion faster than they are on math. Fifty-six percent of third-graders scored meeting expectations or higher on last year’s English Language Arts test, four percentage points higher than in 2017.

Math has given students more trouble. Only sixth-graders and 10th-graders this year broke the 50 percent rate for “meeting expectations” or above.

In the fall, the state would typically take action against schools not meeting growth targets. This year state officials plan to spend more time trying to “gather more information about district-level factors influencing school performance,” according to state materials, and may name more underperforming schools later.

Nearly 200 schools need “focused and targeted support,” according to the state. Nearly three dozen of those schools are in Boston.

Growth rates by racial-ethnic groups have also been inconsistent. Asian and white students’ scores are improving faster than scores for their Hispanic and black peers, exacerbating existent achievement gaps. Asian students in third through eighth grade collectively improved their scores on English Language Arts .8 percent since 2017. For white students, scores for the same cohort rose .49 percent. Meanwhile, scores for black and Hispanic students in those grade levels both improved by .36 percent.

State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Jeff Riley acknowledged that achievement gaps have remained stagnant.

“We at the department as well as the school districts are going to work in the next few years to try to figure out how to reduce the size of those achievement gaps,” Riley said during a conference call with reporters.

Our coverage of K through 12 education is made possible with support from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.

Correction: A previous version of this story mischaracterized the state’s plan for naming underperforming schools this year.