Education Benchmarks

The McDuffy Towns Belchertown improved in English score rank and fell in Math score rank. Rockland moved up dramatically in both Math and English between 1992 and 1999. Carver stayed about the same. Some districts moved up and some moved down. There was no clear pattern in performance pre- and post-reform.

The McDuffy Cities Looking at the cities that were plaintiffs in McDuffy yields a different result. The ranks stayed pretty much where they were. Holyoke moved up from last in the state in the 1992 MEAP Reading test to 9th from last on the 1999 MCAS and moved up from last to 6th from last in Math between 1992 and 1999. Springfield moved up 7 ranks in English between 1992 and 1999. Other cities stayed where they had been in 1992 or dropped in rank. Even Springfield and Holyoke despite moving up in rank, still had 40% to 50% of their 4th grade students failing Math.

The McDuffy Towns Rockland and Carver moved up dramatically between 1992 and 1999 in both Math and English/Reading. The other towns stayed about where they had been or dropped in rank. Again, there is no clear performance pattern pre- and post-reform in the middle class towns.

The McDuffy Cities No city moved up more than three ranks (Holyoke in Reading/English). Some dropped in rank. Again, as was the case for Grade 4, there is no pattern of improvement evident.

Observation This examination of rank movement is not proof of anything but it is interesting in that the communities that moved up after being given the additional reform funding were middle-class towns. The cities stayed where they were. (It may be that the cities have gotten better in terms of student performance although the ranks stayed about the same. Because of the differences in the tests, we cannot measure that. Future MCAS administrations will give us this information.)

3.) Making the grade: "Passing" the state assessment test in 1992 and 1999 The following moves beyond the McDuffy plaintiffs and looks at the state generally. Another way to look at pre- and post-reform performance is to see how districts did in terms of "passing" performance in 1992 and 1999. Now in one sense there were no standards in 1992 but there was a definition of passing with the MEAP tests.

In 1992 passing was defined as scoring in the top two categories, proficient or advanced. MCAS had that same standard a year ago. Since then, passing MCAS has been defined as scoring Needs Improvement or better. If we include the equivalent 1992 MEAP category (Level 3) as passing MEAP, we bring these tests a bit closer together for comparisons. Under this definition, a student had to score in one of the top three categories to pass the tests.

Demography and achievement Students in districts that are demographically advantaged perform at much higher levels on academic achievement tests than do students from less advantaged communities. If the success of education reform is defined by having the overwhelming majority of students score at Needs Improvement or better, then education reform is already a success in many communities, particularly the Newtons and Needhams, and Hinghams of the Commonwealth where positive demography and high test scores go hand-in-hand.

Our challenge is to improve schools in those communities where the students do not now pass MCAS. This includes some of Middle Massachusetts and the Challenged and Very Challenged districts of the state.

Middle Massachusetts Middle Massachusetts includes the 140 or so towns that are in the middle of the state's demography. These are Everytowns where many of our citizens live - places like Norwood, East Bridgewater, Agawam, Beverly, East Longmeadow, and Woburn.

(The following looks at Grade 8 student performance for both the 1992 MEAP and the 1999 MCAS. Grade 8 is used here because students in the class of Grade 8 in 1999 will be members of the class of 2003, the first class that has to pass Math and English MCAS to graduate, Math is used here because passing Math is the choke point for most students - they find it more difficult to pass Math than English.)

This chart illustrates the Grade 8 Math Fail rates for the communities that are in the middle of the state's demography. Results are given for the 1992 MEAP, the 1999 MCAS (regular education students), and the difference in Fail rates between 1992 (pre-reform) and 1999 seven years post-reform). In both cases, students who did not score at one of the top three categories are deemed to have failed the test.

These Middle Massachusetts school district improved an average of 21 percent between 1992 and 1999 on these statewide assessments. This means that, on average 21% fewer students failed the 1999 Math MCAS than failed the 1992 Math MEAP. These districts received an average of $855 in per-pupil state education reform funding in FY 99.