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Schools

School Committee: Westwood Faring Well in MCAS, No Child Left Behind

Though the district is doing well, improvements are needed to meet the 2014 goal of district-wide proficiency.

Westwood Assistant Superintendent Emily Parks and Director of Student Services Abby Hanscom gave a presentation to the School Committee regarding Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams and No Child Left Behind in the first meeting of the 2011-2012 school year Wednesday night.

The Westwood School District, they said, is well ahead of the curve, but still has some work to do.

“In recent years,” Parks said, “We have gotten to good place and scores have plateaued. It is sort of like if you are trying to lose weight. The last two pounds, no matter what you do, it’s hard to reach that goal.”

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Parks noted that scores have generally hovered around the mid-to-90 percent, in regards to the percentage of students scoring proficient in the areas of English-Language Arts, Math and Science.

She used Grade 10 as a primary example, showing that for ELA, Westwood is currently at 98 percent, with the state at only 84 percent.

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In Math, Westwood is at 94 percent, with the state at 74 percent. In Science and Technology, Westwood has 93 percent of its 10th graders scoring proficient, with the state at only 67 percent.

Parks explained that the time to talk about the issue is now, because the goal of No Child Left Behind is to have universal proficiency by 2014.

Progress toward universal proficiency is tracked by Adequate Yearly Progress. AYP looks at whether or not the performance of a school’s students in total and individual student groups is improving at a rate that will bring everyone to proficient by 2014.

The whole is labeled “the aggregate,” while individual student groups are called “subgroups.” Subgroups include students with disabilities, limited English, racial minority and low income.

As a district, Westwood has made its AYP 2011 target, but Parks said that there are some areas that did not make AYP.

There are three main concerns, with one in the and two in . At Downey, in the area of ELA, students with disabilities have an "Improvement" status. At Thurston, in the area of math, an Improvement status was given to students with low income and a corrective action status was given to students with disabilities.

These statuses are given to those who do not make AYP for two or more consecutive years. However, when put in perspective, Westwood is faring well and lining up with other area middle schools.

Parks said that the school administrators are doing their best to bring every student to their top potential, while touching upon the main concerns at hand.

“We want to make sure we are supporting our students and maintaining a sense of community across the district,” said Parks.

School Committee member Josepha Jowdy was impressed by the work done by Parks and Hanscom, and commended them for their efforts.

“I think you have done an admirable job in analyzing this,” said Jowdy.

A district-wide analysis of the MCAS scores will be conducted in October.

For more details on Westwood's status with the MCAS exams, click here.

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