Once again, Harvard has done extraordinarily well on the statewide MCAS test given to schoolchildren statewide last spring. In fact, Harvard’s 10th-graders out-performed those in every other district, with all of its students scoring in the advanced or proficient category in both tests. Harvard had 89 percent of its students score in the advanced category for math in grade 10, which is eight points higher than the second-highest performing district. In English, 65 percent of Harvard’s 10th-graders scored in the advanced category, also the highest score of any district statewide. This was the first year that Harvard had all sophomores score in the top two categories; in 2006, both the math and the English MCAS had 1 percent of that age group in the failing category, while 8 percent scored in the needs improvement category for math, and 5 percent scored at the needs improvement level in English.
School Superintendent Tom Jefferson said that, while he is particularly proud of the 10th-grade scores, he is pleased with improvements in other grades as well. “A substantial gain was noted in English at the grade-seven level, where the percentage of students in the advanced category increased by 13 points, and the needs improvement/warning total dropped by nine points,” he wrote in a handout given to the school board at its meeting Tuesday night. He also highlighted the third-grade reading scores, which “showed significant improvement with a reduction in the needs improvement/warning categories of 14 percent.”
Harvard’s younger students generally also did quite well, though not as spectacularly as the older ones. While none of the seventh-graders failed either the English or math MCAS, 5 percent of them needed improvement in English, and 17 percent needed improvement in math. For students in grades three to six, the percentage of students getting a failing score varied from 1 to 11 percent, with 8 to 31 percent needing improvement. Most students in those grades fell in the proficient category, with another 15 to 38 percent scoring advanced.
Like the scores in Harvard, statewide results also show a pattern of steady improvement in MCAS scores from the younger to the older pupils. At Tuesday night’s School Committee meeting, Jefferson told the board that he believes the standardized test scores are much more valid for older pupils than for younger ones, who are less experienced at taking such tests, and do not take them as seriously as the 10th-graders, who must pass the tests to graduate.
Jefferson, along with Jim O’Shea, principal of the Bromfield School, Mary Beth Banios, head of the elementary school, and Special Education Director Charles Horn, went over the most recent MCAS results in detail with the school board. Several of the administrators noted that the high scores were the result of hard work on the part of many people, from the students to the teachers, tutors, special education aides, and other staff.
“These results are not attributable to any single individual teacher, department or grade level,” Jefferson had written the board. “Rather, they are the result of a concerted team effort over time. I would cite our Bromfield Writing Guide, developed by the English, social studies, and special education departments as an example of the collective responsibility that faculty and administration take for student achievement.”
At the meeting, School Committee member Will Verbits added two more groups of people he thought should take a bow for also being responsible for the high MCAS scores: past school board members, and the taxpayers of Harvard.
“Previous school boards have made a conscious effort to put resources in certain areas, and it’s paying off,” he said. “Those [proposition 2 ½] overrides are showing up here—there’s a direct cause and effect. We’re seeing a great return [for residents’ tax dollars].”
Schools use MCAS to improve teaching
The teachers and administrators have worked hard, studying the details of previous MCAS results to focus in on where certain students needed more help to learn better, Jefferson said. For example, two years ago, there was “a dip in the sixth-grade math scores, but now their eighth-grade scores are higher,” as staff has worked to get the students caught up, he added.
Also, the district has worked hard to align its curriculum with the state curriculum frameworks, the administrators noted. Several years ago, the schools increased the hours of curriculum coordinators to oversee this work. Banios told the school board that when she became principal three years ago, teachers did not use one consistent writing curriculum across the elementary grades, but they do now. Previous cuts in school programs also had resulted in the school laying off a reading specialist, who had helped the elementary students struggling in that subject. With more resources, the school has now put in place better intervention strategies to bolster the weaker students and make sure they don’t fall behind. In addition, there is a greater emphasis on teacher training to support teachers’ efforts, Banios said.
Bromfield has also worked hard to boost student achievement in a number of areas, O’Shea told the board. “We’ve fine-tuned the curriculum, and the programs, like math-plus, which has brought the program to this point,” he said.
In addition to MCAS scores, Bromfield has other internal assessments and external tests, such as the S.A.T. and the Advanced Placement scores, to help administrators gauge how well students are doing, O’Shea said.
For high-schoolers, a new MCAS test in social studies is being introduced, and, as a result, Bromfield’s social studies department is investigating whether it will change the grades that it teachers American history, according to O’Shea. Currently, American history is taught in eighth and ninth grades in Harvard. However, in most towns it is taught in ninth and 10th grades, and an American history MCAS test is to be given to 10th-graders, perhaps putting Harvard students at a disadvantage.
“We have to decide how we sequence our courses,” said O’Shea.
For its part, the school board had only a few questions for the administrators. Member Stu Sklar said some residents have asked if Harvard’s high results are due to teachers “teaching to the test.”
O’Shea replied that Harvard’s efforts to align its curriculum to the state learning frameworks is a good thing. “We’re teaching them [students] to show proficiency in the frameworks,” which has not precluded having a rich educational program.
Both O’Shea and Horn noted that being the number one district in the 10th-grade MCAS is something of a burden, and means “there is no place to go but down,” as O’Shea put it. As for Horn, he quipped, “as long as we’re ahead of Acton-Boxborough,” he’s happy.
Harvard’s complete MCAS results, broken down by grade level, are available at http://www.boston.com/news/special/education/mcas/scores07/results/harvard.htm#districtsummary.
