State-Wide Test Results (45 minutes)

Transcript (~1 h 22 min @ 28:32)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 28:14 Speaker 7: very much thank you and our numbers are very similar to many of the other teams in the Middlesex League there are every team in the Middlesex Freedom Division is out also requesting waivers from their committees as well so it's it's not something that's just with us it is it's the sport it's a lot of factors involved so it's relatively new to the scene great thank you thank you thank

▶ 28:39 Jessica Dugan: you very much next on our agenda is a presentation of our statewide test results much appreciation to the leadership of our district who are who

▶ 28:56 Jessica Dugan: are in the room tonight for this presentation and I do think as we as we prepared for this and began to look at this presentation we are really looking at the way our statewide test results inform our practice and what we can learn from them from the lens of deeper student engagement so we appreciate very much the school committee's goal and focus the district's focus towards that and we welcome the superintendent to introduce the presentation thank you as

▶ 29:29 Speaker 2: you know last year we began to see a second shift in the state testing requirement we went from MCAS to PAC to MCAS 2.0 with the exception of the high school which continues to take what is now referred to as the legacy MCAS and they will shift in 2019 the other shift that we had last year is the eighth grade was required to take the MCAS online we had applied for a waiver for the fourth grade which we received but the state would not grant a waiver for the eighth grade it was trying to say the least and we learned a lot from it but in essence it was a new experience for not only our students but our staff the the other grades continue to take paper and pencil a preview of this coming year the only grades taking paper and pencil this coming year I believe a three and six everybody else three six and ten everybody else will be required to do online so there's a bit of a learning curve there as well as you heard referenced it's a different exam and those of you who have elementary school children and you received your results you received the literature that the state provided us for parents

▶ 30:58 Speaker 2: similarly to PAC it is more of a performance based exam as opposed to a multiple-choice fill-in-the-blank objective exam when superintendents talk we talked about why we went to 2.0 and how different is it really from PAC and since we were heavily invested in PAC our late Commissioner was the chairman of the PAC coalition many of the questions that were transitioned into 2.0 came from PAC as well so the advantage for our students is we had done a decent job of preparing them for PAC in terms of what the PAC questions

▶ 31:47 Speaker 2: would be this is a little bit frustrating for everyone I appreciate the comments that this is one day in the life of our kids it's one data point when we need many more data points I think the frustration is many of us feel that the state artificially moves the goal post as my friend the superintendent in North Andover described it to the newspapers and we're left to

▶ 32:20 Speaker 2: reteach the game what I really want from Melrose is that we don't teach to the test I think that's a huge mistake on any districts part but I'm only concerned with Melrose what I really want for our kids is to have deep learning experiences instruction that meets their needs depending on where they start an opportunity to pursue their interests but as long as there is an accountability system make no mistake we have to comply so the trick the trick for us is to walk the line between what we would like for our children and our obligations as a public school system to comply with federal and state requirements the results are in my estimation a mixed I have colleagues that say to me oh gee Melrose did well I think probably the people sitting in this room would say we did okay because we always hold ourselves to a high standard I think that this is a year-by-year learning experience under this new system this new type of test-taking and it's a year-by-year learning experience watching what the state finally decides to use for accountability under every student succeeds Act fondly known as ESSA the The state was given an opportunity to include soft measures for accountability and the state chose not to deviate from their current soft measures. Missed opportunity in many people's opinions. They chose to stick with things like graduation rate, dropout rate, attendance rate when there may have been other soft measures we could have gone to.

▶ 34:32 Speaker 2: So again, I caution people about investing too much in these numbers either way. What I would tell you as your educators that we like about this exam, believe it or not, is for the first time in many years, we have item analysis again. park item analysis was blocked from us on a lot of questions because all the questions were being tested we finally have item analysis again and that is probably the most valuable piece to us where we can see where we're on target where we're missing the target the other thing that this exam finally gave us is data at the teacher level so we are able to talk to teachers individually about their results and help them figure out where are you feeling confident where do you think you need some assistance improving your instruction where do you think our curriculum is off so there are some good things that come out of this exam but again I think we're at a new stage of accountability and this will probably continue to unfold a new commissioner whenever he or she may be be chosen may have a whole new take on this and if he or she comes in and has a

▶ 35:54 Speaker 2: new take it's a new game so with that I will ask Dr. Adams Dr. Cobbs Mr. Conway and Ms. Singer to lead you through the results thank you so the

▶ 36:07 Speaker 3: presentation is organized by ELA a sort of a general kind of overview repeating some of what Mrs. Taymor already said an overview of ELA and math and science with some next steps there are obviously 55 slides here and with a lot of data we'll won't go through every single side but make some highlights and and then allow for questions as we have in the past we have some essential questions as the superintendent referred to you know we for the first time we have item analysis and we can use that to look at our curriculum our instruction and our learning and help that inform our achievement we have achievement gaps you'll see an ELA math and science and what are those and how do we support those particular groups of students and what can and what's different about MCAS 2.0 and how how are they assessing students some background as the superintendent said there are differences in the achievement levels we've been used to that advanced proficient and needs improvement and warning the wording has changed to exceeding expectations meeting expectations partially meeting expectations and not meeting expectations and those are the state's new definitions for those achievement levels this is just a glimpse into what parents received to indicate at which level there this is the student level report which level there's child was at in comparison to the district and the state as well as parents get a glimpse into how their students scored on particular reporting categories or strands or topics to give them some information more specific item analysis of how there's particular child in this was a slide from the state in this was their advice to districts that the expectations are more rigorous in order to meet expectations they hired the benchmark than what previous prof what proficiency look like on the previous MCAS it measured they could they say DOE says it measures learning in a different way and this is our base year you'll see that we don't do comparisons except at grade 10 to previous years in that this is a different assessment with different benchmarks so making comparisons to previous years doesn't really make sense the DOE will say also that Massachusetts educators set these standards in order for them to be more rigorous and to ensure that kids were college and career ready the last bullet comes from also from the state that in some grades and subjects grade 4 English language arts and grade 7 math it'll more mirror the previous MCAS proficiency and other grades and subjects like grade 8 English language arts the results were likely lower there's some resources for parents online with lots of descriptions about how to read those reports because it is a change from what parents have received

▶ 39:42 Speaker 3: in the past so high needs subgroup is a particular subgroup that we've had an achievement gap it includes our students with disabilities our English language learners and our low-income students some of the things that we know that are

▶ 39:56 Speaker 3: impactful that have had an impact in our results we have an aligned ELA and math curriculum and you've heard us over the last couple years talk about how our curriculum is aligned we've aligned to the standards we're working on our alignment for science we've been in the process in the last two years and hope to be close to finish with that alignment starting at the beginning of next year we have shared with you in the past we have systematic tiered instruction in ELA and in mathematics there are structures and systems in the schools for teachers to look at data to think about data and to use the data to inform their instruction we've identified core instructional practices things that we know but from research have the highest impact on achievement we have instructional coaches that help support teachers in the classroom as well as support in professional development at the middle school in a high school the content facilitators are helping to support that role and I'm trying to also build more opportunities for teachers to take on leadership roles

▶ 41:13 Speaker 3: there are also opportunities for growth within the data and the achievement gap is is very clear for particular subgroups the data speaks to a gap with students with disabilities and our high needs students we need to make sure that those students have access to the general education curriculum as well as the tiered supports that they need in order to be successful are aligned for the first time we can look at that item at item and lat analysis and really help try to inform we haven't had that the past two years to really say are there any gaps in our curriculum or instruction in our alignment and in are there even gaps between grades in schools horizontally and vertically as well as looking at at the teacher level to say are there particular places where we need to provide some additional support around instruction or curriculum

▶ 42:13 Speaker 3: so for English language arts we give you a glimpse into the grade spans grades three through eight the first row there is in the similar across in math how many students are exceeding or meeting in the past we will put together advanced and proficient and then each of the categories exceeding meeting partially meeting and not meeting you'll also see with students with disabilities and our students with high needs that there's a difference in the amount of students with students with disabilities and I needs who are reaching the exceeding or meeting expectations you'll see results also by school as well as looking at places we've used this kind of chart in the past to sort of highlight again those achievement gaps that we have for particular subgroups in given that we have the an item item allow analysis for the first time we clearly could see by looking at this that writing was an area that we were lower in and I think that was also across the state one of the things that we found is that which is a little frustrating is the state in the past had moved more towards persuasive and informational writing and in this cycle of the assessment focused more on narrative writing which was a big shift

▶ 43:47 Speaker 3: in what they had assessed in the past and so the Mrs. Taymor's point is we're not teaching the test our kids are going to need persuasive and informational writing for college and career but the emphasis seems to be at least this past year was on narrative and perhaps this coming year is also on narrative so it's a little unclear about the direction of the state we also saw that our kids

▶ 44:13 Speaker 3: again on the essay in the lower grades we had some lower results and in the upper grades a little bit higher but that writing piece and giving kids experience with the type of question on the assessment so our next steps for the

▶ 44:32 Speaker 4: ELA at the elementary level are based on that item analysis one thing that we have committed to based on the question and item analysis is that we need to do more alignment with our response to text we notice that the essay prompts were when we looked at the writing were a bit lower that is just good writing skills for kids and they're going to need that regardless of if those questions never appeared again we've also begun to implement online assessments throughout the school year and grades four and five to provide students opportunities to practice this format online assessment is the way of the future we know this and we need to teach this just like we teach a genre of writing we need to teach a genre of test-taking so we're doing some explicit instruction around that and utilizing our Pearson programs to do that in addition to this our students are getting through our digital literacy program they're increasing their skills needed for the online testing so not just navigating the platforms but understanding the different tools that come along in those platforms and then we will continue to identify subgroup populations in need of additional support into yet instruction as dr. Adams reference and the data tells us the story that we still have an achievement gap between our high needs

▶ 45:56 Speaker 7: students in our aggregate at the middle school when we look at the English language arts I think dr. Adams referenced the the change in the writing style into more of an essay format from some of the work that our students had really been preparing for in years prior so I think some of our steps really will focus much on that and preparing students for that rewording our question types and the language in the questions so students are more prepared with that essay style format obviously for seventh and eighth graders are going to be doing this online we need them to have opportunities to to practice online utilizing those features it is a different testing experience it's not preparing them solely for the MCAS most assessments as they move ahead will also be online oriented and online platforms we have we're fortunate enough to have intervention classes that we utilize at the middle school and I think we have some work to do with those we already made a shift to break out instead of a generic ela intervention we broke it out into reading comprehension and writing work so we're grouping students in those based on trimester to focus on those those interventions and how those structure beyond that one thing we also added was increased common planning time between the content teachers and special education teachers and in particular when we think about our subgroups and our special education students to really work on the collaboration and utilization of our inclusive practices that our sped teachers can can really work in conjunction with the general education teachers to support the needs of students and we see that writing really is something that can be done across the curriculum areas science and social studies as well working in in those classrooms to change the manner in which those questions are posed to students so that they're having experience writing again in relation to the language where you expect them to use for the MCAS too so at the high

▶ 48:04 Speaker 3: school we were 99% advanced and proficient so you're talking about a very handful of students who were not meeting proficient or advanced so the gaps there aren't gaps because you're talking about a real just a handful of

▶ 48:30 Speaker 1: particular students so next steps next steps in the high school are a little bit different because we're going to experience a change in the exam in the tenth grade next year so our current ninth graders we're adapting our questions on all of our common assessments and our mid-year and final exams to reflect the phrasing that's used on the new MCAS test. Part of this, you know, we're a little bit navigating in the dark because the state has made so many changes in the last couple of years, but we're restyling our ninth grade assessments to correspond with what's been expected in grades six through eight. I think that's the most reasonable course for us to use moving

▶ 49:19 Speaker 1: forward as far as our 10th grade students for this year we're looking to maintain our performance on last year's test students were very successful we were we were able to bridge a gap that we existed last year with special needs with students with disabilities and we were able to target particular interventions with individual students last year and we had great success with that so we're continuing that strategy this year so in math I actually want to

▶ 49:54 Jessica Dugan: take a pause for a second and if we all can focus our questions and comments on ela first just to break it up a little bit I'd love to welcome questions from the committee right now on that piece knowing that for more global questions on state tests we can kind of come back to that at the end but if there's anything ELA specific please hit miss McAllister grant so thank you for all

▶ 50:25 Speaker 3: your work preparing this I have a question about what you were just talking about my singer with regard to the targeted interventions that you were able to do could you describe those a little bit so I have a sense of what

▶ 50:37 Speaker 1: they looked like certainly we took the results from last year's test and we actually drilled down to individual students and we followed them by cohort through each year of study and we kind of identified them I borrow a term from Dr. Talbot who identifies certain students as starfish so once we we isolated individual students and their progress through our curriculum we tailored our instruction to bridge those gaps for those individual students in ELA we've always well I would say for the last five or six years we've been talking about a very small subgroup of students numerically I think fewer than 25 certainly so we've been able to focus on individual students with individual teachers we also had the opportunity last year it was the first year that we had a real active partnership between some of the special education teachers and some of the regular education teachers and although we've had some changes in personnel we're going to continue that cooperative model at the middle school and certainly at the high school we've also had at the high school we've had for many years we've had a real focus of regular education ELA teachers taking the lead with the ELA instruction including with special education students and we're going to continue that model so at the high

▶ 52:06 Speaker 3: school how did you achieve that partnership between the special ed and the general ed teachers was it the common planning time it was common

▶ 52:12 Speaker 1: planning time and working on the model of we have a model that allows special educators to be in classes on an every other day model so we've been working also with strategizing the use of the special education teachers in those classes on alternate days especially regarding writing instruction okay thank you

▶ 52:38 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: mr school um thank you for all your work on this i just want to note that i think every middle school struggles with one test on one day every district in the state and i think you're working really hard and i think you're doing a great job at the middle school so i appreciate that because it's just not easy um and certainly applaud the outstanding results at the high school I think your folks have worked very hard and I know it's a team effort and I know your students have worked hard too so thank you

▶ 53:06 Jessica Dugan: ELA questions I do you have an ELA comment no I don't I have a question I'm writing is

▶ 53:16 Jessica Dugan: something that keeps coming up and I know writing also affects our scores in math and science and everywhere so I am thinking a lot about student engagement

▶ 53:32 Jessica Dugan: I'm thinking a lot about how I personally feel about writing worried that it's becoming the new math like I'm not a writer right so my question is around enjoyment in writing from these scores we can do a lot of analysis on what was hard and how the question was narrative based instead of persuasive et cetera, et cetera, but writing's a tool for communication. We work really hard to teach a lot of strategies, and I'm wondering if there's any thinking from you all around how to support our young people to enjoy writing a little bit more and engage a little bit more deeply and intentionally in it, because they all want to be good communicators with text, with everything they do. I'm just wondering if there's any reflection where we can kind of take this beyond. They are learning to write to formula, and I know 60 percent, all the different schools, many of them are meeting the formula. Many are struggling. But how can we take all of them to a place where this is something that is an enjoyable practice and not a dread, and is there some thinking around that?

▶ 54:47 Speaker 1: Well if we look back over the last 10 to 15 years in Melrose, ELA instruction around writing has changed considerably and we're not so much writing teaching students to write to a formula as we're teaching students to write more effectively. I think for for some years we've followed the lead nationally as Dr. Adams described in concentrating on persuasive writing and informational writing and I think that's really the writing in the future of the writing of the future we are certainly kind of circling back to some narrative writing kind of like not I guess leaving that out as the orphan of the writing family but I think that we've had a steady increase in the number of opportunities students have to write both in writing that comes to a formal conclusion and is a formal draft and is assessed by the teacher and other writing experiences that are and that students engage in on a daily basis journal writing note taking etc so I think you know statistics show that the more opportunities students have to write across the curriculum in every discipline and the number of opportunities they have to write in ELA with the increase in those writing opportunities students improve in their writing skills so I think we've seen that improvement over the last 10 to 15 years and I think we're kind of on that road and our elementary students every

▶ 56:30 Speaker 3: day are doing are working on a writer's workshop which allows for a lot of choice and focus on different genres I think the use of technology and allowing kids to use technology to publish and share their work beyond Google slides or Docs is a way that we can engage kids miss Acevedo with the fifth graders is working on creation of digital portfolios with our fifth graders so that they can create document their own learning and reflect upon it and take more ownership of it so I think in our hope is that the fifth graders can carry that work into sixth grade and see themselves continue to grow as writers and have more voice in their writing and use of technology I think is one way the Chromebooks are in their second year teachers have more faith and that the wireless network is going to work and that the stuff works and so I think that's an opportunity especially with our grade three to five group of students and as we develop their digital literacy skills as well as teachers

▶ 57:52 Christine Casatelli: skills great miss Casatelli thank you very much how much professional development is there among to help teachers with their own writing so it's

▶ 58:01 Speaker 3: we focused several years ago around the teaching of writing and part of that is the teacher serving as a model for their own writing and using authors and mentors as mentors to writing and bringing in other pieces of writing to show authors as teachers of writing we can learn so much from what other authors have done our focus has been on new teachers and making sure that they're working to share that format of a writers workshop where it's really like a workshop where teachers kids are working on all different types of writing and trying to give voice so that's been our focus the focus of having teachers serve as writers and feel what it's like writing the writing process at the elementary level hasn't been something that we have focused on to see themselves and develop their skills as writers it's not been

▶ 58:58 Christine Casatelli: something yeah so and so I would suggest that if teachers are going to model the writing if that's an area of professional development that maybe we should pay a little bit more attention to and of course the English teachers

▶ 59:18 Christine Casatelli: that's what they do but you know maybe math teachers or science teachers who are not don't use the writing skills as much as someone in the ELA everybody can use a little little help with the writing so just just a focus for professional development attention thank you very much are there any other ela

▶ 59:52 Jessica Dugan: specific comments or questions fantastic we welcome I step into mathematics so

▶ 1:00:02 Speaker 3: for math it has the same sort of format you'll see in our math data as the grades progress as our students get in the older grades on the MCAS next generation MCAS our numbers a meeting and exceeding go down from third grade to eighth grade the eighth graders are also the ones who took the online assessment so the state does say they accounted for that piece in their setting of benchmarks but that that is a factor and that you know taking it's an assessment online is a different experience for many of our students that said we also in math have the same sort of gap with our students with disabilities and our high needs students and you'll see results by a school for

▶ 1:01:00 Speaker 3: the elementary grades grades 3 4 & 5 as well as this chart that looks at the achievement gap between specific subgroups our high needs groups students with disabilities are low-income in our african-american as was said before we can now look at item analysis for grades 3 great for the MCAS in grades 3 through and we we don't really see a big difference between some of the strands fractions has always been something even in previous years in previous MCAS has always been something that can that is a challenge as you shift from the base 10 system in the younger grades to fractional thinking and grade 5 I'll show some areas of concern around the measurement and data especially and in grade six through eight you see some areas of of concern around geometry and ratios and proportional relationships at the middle school you'll see as well as

▶ 1:02:06 Speaker 3: that in the question types the constructed responses that asked kids to sort of respond longer were ones that students had more difficulty with so not

▶ 1:02:25 Speaker 4: unlike the ELA we have some of the same next steps as our model for improvement we will continue to practice the online assessment format and mathematics as well as ELA and continue to focus on on those subgroup populations in need of additional support again that item analysis is essential because it allows us to not just become more familiar with the question type but to also really drill down further to successes by teachers by class by cohort and we can and we can capitalize that and really help out hope to help out those subgroups something that's new this year is we've implemented Pearson 2.0 and kindergarten first and second grade which is just that it's the updated Pearson curriculum it is certainly different our teachers have done a fabulous job trying to create a hybrid if you will of past practice in this past materials and the new material and create a stronger solid foundation particularly in the base 10 to prepare the kids for the more fractional

▶ 1:03:32 Speaker 7: thinking and at the middle school I think what one of our biggest steps that we need to we are taking in sixth through eighth grade is using the envision 2.0 we've used envision at sixth grade the older the first version but at seventh and eighth grade we really have not utilized an updated text or curriculum sort of foundational materials for us that really is that the sort of the cornerstone of a lot of the work that we need to do it definitely presents the students with the information and the performance tasks in a manner which we consistently weren't able to do in previous years and it is absolutely sort of critical particularly when we break down the the data that we see and how the students performed the assessments that are part of envision that we're utilizing multiple times per unit students are initially struggling with even this year and we're and we're seeing that way and that corresponds it correlates with what we saw in MCAS performance so we know we have some adjustments with our own instruction to prepare and the teachers are very quickly realizing we've got to change a few things in order to to ensure students are prepared for our own assessments never mind the MCAS so and that that really is the critical piece we're going to do some professional development in particular around math vocabulary and language in performance tasks and constructed responses that language often is in mathematics it sort of is sort of an entry point for students with a lot of the concepts and that they may understand a concept but without the language or keywords are not able to communicate it effectively or necessarily select the proper choice even on a multiple choice question so that really is the the biggest piece again though consistent with the LA the comp the increase common planning time again between special education teachers in general general education teachers is really a critical point for us to to implement a lot of this too there are a

▶ 1:05:43 Speaker 3: couple of slides to sort of give a general overview of grade 10 which is again the legacy MCAS we had 86% of our students at the high school and grade 10 advanced and proficient we do have more of a gap around the subgroups in math in comparison different from ELA with our students with disabilities and high needs when we do compare with last year there was a we had more students proficient or advanced in those subgroups so there was an improvement and at the high school just like in ELA there was a particular focus last year on particular students we really targeted those students with disabilities and targeted on those high need students and because they're not a lot of kids you know we could target those particular kids and make sure that

▶ 1:06:42 Speaker 8: they're that their needs were being met so at the high school for the math teachers are continuing to use open response questions regularly that's one of the areas that the students struggle with the most are the open response questions and in the ninth grade we're transitioning to the new constructed response format so they are rewording and redoing their open response questions to be similar to that format they have some resources to help them with that their current text has performance tasks in it and we also have samples of the envision program that they can use an algebra one that have the constructive response type questions that they can transition we've been giving online assessments and we're increasing that so that the students especially in ninth grade are getting used to that format we are collecting data particularly by subgroups so that we can target intervention for students that need it and we're analyzing MCAS data previous years looking at particularly the students that were partially meeting or not meeting expectations the ninth grade or needs improvement and warning for the 10th

▶ 1:07:53 Jessica Dugan: grade students stop great yeah so any math specific questions mr. O'Connell

▶ 1:08:00 Speaker 5: thank you and thank you for this work it's very well put together a good level of detail well organized it's useful for us so thank you for that and thanks for the time involved with it envision math 2.0 we're using this because it's great

▶ 1:08:23 Speaker 5: we're using this because we're married to it and you know the next iteration is what it is you talk a little bit about that please so we had we've had great

▶ 1:08:32 Speaker 3: success in the elementary schools with the envision the materials it models and integrates the math practices it tries it all it gets at the conceptual level it's a different way of thinking about math and it's not about the calculation it really is around problem solving in real life application lots of opportunities for students to talk about math to do math and work collaboratively both as a whole class and small groups and with partners so that it's a real active engaging opportunity to do math and not just sitting and doing problem solving the the book is like a core but it's not what what we do the teachers are the ones who are teaching math so it's a tool of which they use pieces of it to meet the needs of the individual students so looking at the students before them deciding which of the tools best meets the students needs and sometimes envision isn't the tool and they bring some other things into the classroom like a real a game that best might teach that concept that's really engaging for kids and provides or a different type of problem because it might better engage students. So it's a tool, but not the only tool. It does allow us to pace out curriculum. I think at the middle school, some of those 43s percents that we saw really begged the question, did we cover it enough? Did we cover it with enough depth? Did we give students enough experience with those particular topics? By having a core kind of text to sort of guide the teachers, we can ensure that we are covering to the same depth and then make decisions. Do we need to pull more things in or do a little less of this? But by seeing some of those pieces, we can say, did students get enough depth? Certainly teachers taught it, but did they get enough depth into those content areas?

▶ 1:10:40 Speaker 5: Great, thank you. That's very helpful. A follow-up, please. A more general question about next steps. critics will say look at these scores we've got to do more other critics will say we'll look at the next steps where we say what more we're gonna do and they're gonna say we're teaching the test and I know you spoke to this a little bit and I'm not suggesting that it's the critic who counts but what's our collective answer to that charge that we're always going to hear about teaching to the test particularly when people hear this presentation and see the next step spelled out because people are gonna look at this and say this is all they're doing so I think part of the answer is this is just one small piece of what you all do every day but could you speak to that a little bit please

▶ 1:11:33 Speaker 7: I'd like to I and I think even just thinking in terms of envision and the classrooms that I've seen recently using it in an eighth grade math class today working on determining rate and I think you know previously what what we would ask students to do is is given a set of information ask them to calculate the rate and then that's their answer but really what we want students to be able to do regardless of what the MCAS says is we want students to be able to calculate rate and then be able to potentially graph two rates and figure out a comparison between the two of them and develop another question which might lead them to further questions about rate and about the information in the scenario so that is a very similar type of question that they would face on the MCAS tests and and yet that mirrors what we want them to be able to do functionally with math in the real world so envision allows our students to do that and that's the exact example I saw the students working on today you know in a math class I don't think that's preparing them for the test I think that's preparing them for what our standards are what we expect of them the tests then assess that the previous MCAS test didn't really assess it that way so

▶ 1:12:59 Speaker 5: great thank you for that thank you for the questions discussion go ahead

▶ 1:13:13 Jessica Dugan: are we on to general question we're not I do have another math question around engagement a lot of the math we see and that we see an envision is related to real-world situations so you're not just working on equations you're working on word problems is there any time or ability for us to so say at the middle school for our math and science teachers to plan together so that their units are reinforcing each other's content like we do with writing can you tell us a little

▶ 1:13:46 Speaker 8: bit about that effort so we actually one of the things that we're working on six or twelve in math and science are cross curricular units and thus far several high school classes and I believe eighth grade is doing it right now as we speak and sixth grade already did a unit where they performed an experiment in science they took their data over to math they did some analysis of that in math class and then took it back science again so we are currently working on quite if we're trying to develop some cross-curricular units easier at the middle school because all the kids are taking the same courses but we're working on that at the high school as well we had and I know we're not on to no we did high school yeah the we had a chemistry class and an algebra class kind of team up on mole day to put together an assignment where they were doing some calculations in chem and they were able to take it to their algebra class as well it's a little harder because not all the kids are taking the same classes but that is a focus for this year really making those connections between the math and the science and we're also extending it to tech especially in the high school getting the tech teachers involved in

▶ 1:14:56 Jessica Dugan: some of that as well I think that's fantastic does the structure that we have and this I'm sure it can come up later in budget conversations and in program of studies and all those types of things but does the time we have a structure we have support our teachers to honestly have the time in this space to create those types of learning opportunities is that something that we should be looking for over the next few months to kind of think a little bit

▶ 1:15:22 Speaker 8: more intentionally about I think it's a little easier at the middle school where they have their team time at the high school we're using department nine department meeting time to do that it's probably nearly impossible to align science and math prep periods as we're trying to keep the math has the common block science is common block to get them both is probably nearly impossible so easier at the middle school for them to get together and work on these assignments during the day but we've dedicated some department time to that

▶ 1:15:56 Speaker 2: to develop and talk about that so great the one thing I would say as much as we are reduced in capacity by having gone from seven directors to four directors there is a strength in having a stem director and a humanities director because it helps to emphasize the commonalities of those fields great

▶ 1:16:16 Jessica Dugan: thank you I appreciate that mathematics questions anymore okay we shall move on

▶ 1:16:28 Speaker 3: to science so for science these are not new assessments these are the legacies MCAS pre there has not been a redesigning of the science MCAS you'll see some results for grade 5 85% advanced and proficient at grade 10 which should probably be grade 9 because the students are taking grade 9 they're taking biology in grade 9 and 50 in an eighth in fifth grade it's almost an even split between advanced and proficient 50% and approximately 40% at that needs improvement level and then you'll see some data because this is the legacy MCAS we did some we looked across the eight the grades the years for the number of students reaching advanced and proficient and then you'll see a look at our subgroups we have an achievement gap with our subgroups in grades five through eight and less pronounced in grade ten because there are fewer students you'll see results by our schools for grade five for the

▶ 1:17:43 Speaker 3: elementary you'll see some results by the topic area that show for the most part pretty even results given the topic in science and grades five and then in grade eight across question types it's that open response and that's been consistent that the open response is more challenging and has students are getting less questions less points on those open and responses so probably one

▶ 1:18:11 Speaker 4: of the most effective next steps that we've already implemented is targeting those fifth grade teachers specifically with individualized professional development support the data allows us to see where the highest proportions of students in the need improvement range are and then we can utilize our coaches we can utilize ourselves as building principals to go in and to support these teachers with just as we tear our instruction for our kids with the most appropriate professional development in science content and science practices. The other thing that we're very proud of in Melrose is we've implemented a new physical and earth science units that are aligned to the national science curriculum and the new science framework, and we will continue that process through the lifecycle science unit. We continue also to strengthen and implement our science practices in inquiry-based instruction. we celebrated that with our first kids inquiry conference and teaching new approaches of learning and asking questions and increasing student engagement and developing ideas in using science practices in inquiry we're going

▶ 1:19:25 Speaker 7: to continue to expand that at the middle school we we haven't always had intervention classes for science our science classes have been challenge classes sort of as additional support classes we're structuring a little bit differently in particular for eighth grade in the second and third trimester we're able to separate them out by topic and we're going to reorganize the students in second and third trimester based on their topic performance partially on MCAS but more on our own internal assessments to get an idea of which students belong under in which groupings they'll still be using current topics but they'll be focused more in a particular domain be it earth and space science be it life science and so forth we definitely have some work to do around the open response and using rubrics in more of a constructed response manner so that's been a focus already and the content vocabulary the the the amount of content vocabulary and scientific vocabulary that we're asking students in grades six through eight to learn understand and then utilize correctly is an incredible amount and it's an it's an eighth grade test but it is a test of three years of scientific concept knowledge and vocabulary the interesting thing is we made a shift in our curriculum over the past year to change to the the newer sign to science and technology and engineering standards the test is still the old test we're still another year away and my example of that is for years now we've been talking about shifting our technology and engineering education away from woodshop and moving into more modernized understanding of engineering principles engineering design we have kids coding with kids making robots do it they want them to do all those things and wouldn't you know the very first open response question the eighth graders were faced with last year was how do you build a birdhouse and and the joke was that word-for-word was superintendent a mores thing we need to move away from teaching kids how to build birdhouses and what do you know that was the question how do you build a birdhouse the test will change

▶ 1:21:59 Speaker 7: woodworking and furniture making instead there there is not a bird housing crisis that we know of however so that that's sort of the dilemma in the testing we face we made the choice very purposely to shift our curriculum and yet the test is is another year or two away another year away before that shifts to where

▶ 1:22:20 Speaker 8: we're at and at the high school as previously been mentioned the open response questions are really the what's getting our students and so the biology teachers have a very concerted effort and they take care and pride in doing the open response questions they make sure to do practice over response questions and they include them on assessments they do self review peer review teacher review they really focus on the open response questions they track mistakes provide remediation and they're using previous MCAS data even though it's not exactly relatable because the biology MCAS is on one year of material so they're really learning everything that's on the MCAS in that year for the most part so the biology teachers do a great job of getting that content covered and covering the vocabulary and getting a good amount of our students to be proficient and advanced fantastic thank you science

▶ 1:23:22 Jessica Dugan: related questions mr. O'Connell thanks very much you know I'm sitting here

▶ 1:23:27 Speaker 5: listening to this and and feeling that this is a great presentation so thanks again you're clearly very very well prepared and it's much appreciated mr. Conway I'm a dad I'm sitting at home got these MCAS results my kid tanked on science I'm hearing you talk about intervention classes what does that mean from a parent or a student perspective how does

▶ 1:23:57 Speaker 7: it work yeah for for science so we're still not really calling them intervention classes we're just structuring the challenge classes a little bit differently we've we've run eighth grade science challenge classes that have basically been current events and it gives students an opportunity to engage in sort of project-based learning based on our current event all three science teachers running them at the same time now each science teacher is going to take up a particular content area and we'll be placing students in there and there'll be students in there who perform perfectly fine but this is their challenge class but it gives an opportunity for us to give content boost and reinforcement on particular content areas topics within science that we know some students may have struggled and yet other students will do perfectly well and the structure of that class won't change all that much it'll be top current topics current events using project-based learning opportunity but making sure that if a student didn't do well in the life science based on our internal assessments that they're in that classroom where that teachers having the opportunity to have them delve into it gives them an opportunity to get back to the key science vocabulary and language around biology and utilize that language and that's really what the key sort of access point that we're finding for a lot of the kids whether it's an open response question or an actual multiple-choice question if you don't know the science vocabulary you may understand the concept you're gonna have a very difficult time identifying which answer is correct or communicating your answer thank you

▶ 1:25:48 Speaker 3: Mr. McAllister-Grant I'm curious to hear at the elementary level and the middle school level how what opportunities the science teachers have to teach their preferred subject area or are they responsible for doing the whole general

▶ 1:26:01 Speaker 7: shebang so at the middle school in the structure we have all three science teachers teach all the domains and we have it mapped out and we've had to change it based on the new standards and that's what I was referring to of how the the teachers have changed to that recently and they the people we hire generally their certification is a general middle school science it's not a although they may have a secondary science certification it's a topic we have discussed previously we've discussed in this forum before of whether or not that is our next step the science standards still are are broad by grade level it's it's not like there are some school districts who teach geology and earth science in an entire grade level and then they'll teach life science in eighth grade and yet when they take that test in eighth grade it covers all domains it doesn't make a lot of sense to have students do topic by topic grade by grade however it doesn't mean that we can't think about the structure of the way the teachers teach the content areas and yet the students simply have three different science teachers throughout the year so that's something I think really for us to look at potentially for next year piloting it at a grade level possibly not eighth grade where the stakes are a little bit higher but maybe at one of the other grade levels and see what impact it has particularly on our our own district benchmark assessments at the elementary

▶ 1:27:37 Speaker 4: level there is some variation between buildings but in many cases you have teachers who are departmentalized social studies and science which affords two members of the team three members in a three-strand school to work with their principal to kind of make some determination about what's their strongest area of expertise in order to do that I will say though particularly in fifth grade where there is it is a more high stakes year truly is is that pressure of K through five science now needs a boost we have implemented a practice where the partner teacher who may typically only teach social studies may pick up an engineering unit in order to support that but we really do try to capitalize on the individual talents of the teacher which often are their passion not always but really capitalize on their talents and their expertise in that way we've had some flexibility around that thank you science questions

▶ 1:28:39 Jessica Dugan: I'm super concerned about science not because I'm particularly worried about a test that doesn't really even test what we're trying to teach anymore but because this is something we've been struggling with for a very long time and there's not a pretty book like envision to put in front of our teachers this takes a tremendous investment of our of your time as a district so I appreciate the work that we're doing I feel impatient for more and I I guess I I would encourage us to not make decisions based on performing well on a test like what's right for eighth grade because the stakes are higher these stakes matter but what matters most is the progression of science learning across

▶ 1:29:36 Jessica Dugan: many grade levels at a time so you know with that I just I appreciate the work we're doing it's important to note that we are just beginning with new leadership a science coordinated review of the science program a two-year process and I know those are super valuable for for our educators as they reflect on their practice and i think that we'll learn a lot from that and i think the timing is right so thank you for your work on it and i hope that we can um do what we can to continue to to support the need here because um i this is of all of this presentation tonight this is where my

▶ 1:30:16 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: biggest concern is mr school i just have um an overarching question please um so the horseman two years ago now began with the accelerated improvement plan in your in your school and my understanding is that that's worked very well to the point

▶ 1:30:32 Speaker 4: where you've expanded the model for other elementary schools shifting away from the school improvement model to the accelerated improvement model and I'm wondering if you would be willing to speak dr. Cobbs or anyone to any impact that you see that kind of improvement plan model having on the teaching and learning that's happening and particularly you know the one test on the on one day yes certainly and I would say you know the one test on one day but also the measures that we look at from day to day to see where child is in September into June I think the biggest impact that I have seen personally on that particular process is that the plan is very active and live and what I mean by that is a lot of opportunities within that model for teachers to take on instructional leadership roles and for support personnel to take on instructional leadership roles and really solidify systems that are sustainable you know long after any one principal hits lottery and moves to Maui you know what I'm saying so I think that the biggest impact has been it's a very active document I have found that the parents are more understanding of the document in the processes there's more interests in it the site council work i can speak for my own site council the members are very well versed in it and with that just brings healthy conversations around budget decisions and community events and things that will help our kids be successful academically so in short i guess the longest the the greatest impact has has been ownership active engagement from more stakeholders and I think a more solid base for stronger systems that could sustain changes in personnel or leadership I think those are the I mean I'm sold I've written improvement plans for 22 years and this is the model I have found the best I credit the people involved in it as well of course but I think it's it's more friendly and people can talk more about it it's not just something that's in the binder on

▶ 1:32:42 Christine Casatelli: the on the shelf thank you miss castelli through the chair to the superintendent what what's the

▶ 1:32:47 Speaker 2: plan to share these results with the parents the same plan we have every year they'll i think they've begun to share them with their school site councils they'll share them with their pto my preference is always that they share it with you first and then they can roll it out to their

▶ 1:33:01 Christine Casatelli: PTO's so in is that school by school or at school by school thank you

▶ 1:33:08 Jessica Dugan: mr. O'Connell we have moved into the general question thank you for that

▶ 1:33:16 Speaker 5: alert madam chair if I if I may are we giving you the resources you need to do

▶ 1:33:25 Speaker 5: this work or are we and don't look at the superintendent and or are we otherwise hamstring you in any way do you feel supported on this do you have

▶ 1:33:37 Speaker 3: what you need in science as we've we've already said this before in previous meetings we're creating our own units instead of buying something that's made there are positives in that and that you sort of create the sort of learning experiences that you feel best meet the needs of students the and there are some negative sides it's a very time-consuming process it also means that teachers are working really hard to supplement some things so including you know trying to gather you know the the materials that you may need so that was choice that we made one because the materials at that point when we started this process were not that of quality unlike some of the other and like ELA and math there wasn't this wide adoption across the nation of the National Science Standards so publishing companies weren't running to create new programs that were aligned because they didn't know if there was that national market for the materials the market may be better and we haven't gone out to look again to see if there's anything better now on the market because we've been really focused on creating which has its positives and it does has its its downsides it's time-consuming for teachers and the positive is we can create some learning experiences that best meet our time our structure and our

▶ 1:35:24 Speaker 5: what we have available to us thank you may ask a follow-up question of a general nature through the chair of the superintendent let me ask you the headline question if I may madam superintendent MCAS 2.0 more rigorous a different way of measuring learning uh do we in melrose remain aimed at college and career

▶ 1:35:48 Speaker 2: readiness and does this reflect that so what um the commissioner's office will tell you is part of the reason this came about is because um even under the old system which in its original inception expected by 2014 a hundred percent of our kids to be a hundred percent proficient probably one of the most unrealistic goals in the history of education considering what a human endeavor were involved in even under the

▶ 1:36:18 Speaker 2: old system they were finding that at least in Massachusetts public public colleges 33% had of our students needed remediation so they really did have to step back and say where are we missing the mark and are we missing the mark in the assessment piece is the assessment piece reporting too much success and that yet when the kids get to college that success is not transferable is the problem in the curriculum as my staff will tell you i think we have a new iteration of the frameworks once again

▶ 1:37:02 Speaker 2: Ms. Singer is very much involved with that at the state level, is the problem in the structure of the test. So what I think you see happening versus typical fill in the blank, multiple choice answers versus performance tasks. So I think what you see in 2.0 is an attempt by the state to answer all those questions

▶ 1:37:28 Speaker 2: with the new exam whether it will prove our kids to be college and career ready remains to be seen I think for the most part our kids in Melrose when there are some statistics we can look at only for state colleges we're doing okay we're not in the situation that some other cities and towns are so I think that the test will serve its purpose one of the other things they claim about this test is is it's no longer about the end game each grade is about the next year to me that's a little bit redundant since we have standards and our people know that their job is to get every child ready for the next year in accordance with the standards and you know my question is does the mcast if it's a grade based test and we're giving our own common assessments which which of those two assessments gives us better data for our kids that we'll have to figure out

▶ 1:38:34 Speaker 2: probably the two things that now get me the most is you have to remember all this conversation is about a state aggregate it's not even about a local aggregate it's about a state aggregate so you're comparing Melrose to Lexington on one hand and Melrose to Chelsea on another hand and when you look at that comparison yeah we're right on target when you look at that internally again my opening question is that what we want so it's that sort of dilemma the other dilemma that is coming our way and actually I believe I am about to say this in public but Secretary of Education DeVos made this point today and I happen to agree with her don't give me that look mr. Zia that there is an overemphasis on college as the answer to all our children's futures and we really need to think about that so again when you dig into data the way we dig into data when you look at that the college completion rate in Massachusetts for four-year colleges in four years is something like 35 percent and then in six years is something like 57 percent just off the top of my head trying to remember facts and these are for public colleges you know the question arises should all of those children have been in a college setting or would they have been better served in our economy and society better served if they were in technical training programs of some sort or unions of some sort um i think those are the questions we're faced with so i think that you need to think about the career piece of that just as much as you need to think about the college piece of that great thank you very much further questions

▶ 1:40:36 Speaker 3: miss mccauster grant so i know some of the work that the district has been doing has been around inclusive practices using bringing together general education and special education teachers to do common planning and utilizing approaches that benefit special ed students because often they benefit all students well so with that in mind i struggle with we talked about that there's a gap with our high need students and i'm wondering how much is performance on the test and how much is the tool like how much how adequate is this tool at measuring

▶ 1:41:17 Speaker 4: all our students abilities just to clarify the MCAS your question is how adequate as is it in assessing that particular subgroups abilities is that

▶ 1:41:26 Speaker 3: the question well yeah how is it as a as a general tool to meet to measure all students at the same time like I don't think any one tool can do that so in someone's always gonna fall short so I guess what I'm looking and you have much more expertise over longevity around have there been times where we had a tiny achievement gap and we feel like oh it's a good enough tool that it's accessible to all of our learners or do we really feel like there might be being a new test some flaws in the tool that that are problematic which we can't do anything about I think the DOE's answer would say is the test measures the standards so that it's accessible to all and certainly our special education students have accommodations to make the test more accessible to them I think that would be the DOE's answer what's your I think that it is a I think we need to say it is a measure in time it gives us information some information we have other information and when we triangulate all that information we get a better picture of how our students are doing we our students with disabilities we need to make sure that we get at that achievement gap as early as possible so the sooner we do that in the earlier grades we're better off in the upper grades so as our gap grows especially in math it's harder to close that achievement gap when you're doing it over several years versus just in kindergarten or first grade which you're just doing it with a couple of months so it's a measure in time that we gives us information but you know we the students disabilities have specific needs right and we need to continue to strive to meet those and they're different needs because they're very individualized each child is individual and the IEP is drafted to help try to meet those particular needs right in most cases we will also want to make sure our students have access to the general education curriculum that we're meeting their needs and giving them remediation and intervention but also supporting them and getting as close access to those standards and getting them as close to those standards as soon as possible I guess I thank you for that I'd be interested to know based on the all the other data points that you collect whether you see as significant achievement gap as we're seeing here my guess is my guess would be no but I'd be interested to know in all your free time

▶ 1:44:21 Speaker 3: no just over you know over time whether you're seeing yeah and then we look at those assessments because we look at them just make sure that we see progress for students so we're benchmarking students to see yep that's where they are right now and are they making progress and is there a way that we can make sure they're making ambitious progress so that we can close the gaps in some cases we're successful and others where you know we're really the the children are stubborn and we're trying to do trying multiple ways to try to meet those individual needs and and teachers are trying to change their instruction and we're trying to draft interventions and remediation that needs those particular needs as well as trying to do it as fast as possible so that we close those achievement gaps so the one thing I would say is is going back to

▶ 1:45:11 Speaker 2: what Miss Singer said several years ago we made a real concentrated effort you all know I'm a firm believer that special ed children are regular ed children first and foremost and they have a right to a standards based education and then whether and you know and you could say the same about our English language learners some of our other disadvantaged learners they have a right to the same education as every other child sitting in that school and then it's our job to fill in the gaps and hacking back to what Miss Singer said we made a concentrated effort at the high school several years ago and you see the results among the things that we did at the secondary level at least at the high school level is we asked SPED teachers to become dual certified so that they had curriculum expertise I think it is and I say this as a former SPED director probably one of the well-intentioned but biggest

▶ 1:46:16 Speaker 2: mistakes that we ever made about special ed was thinking that special ed teachers could deliver the curriculum they are not curriculum experts they're experts in accommodations modifications remediation re-instruction specialized instruction they do not usually while they now have to have a second certificate in a general ed area they typically do not have the degree of expertise either through training or daily use that our general ed teachers have and we made a decision as a district to try to improve their understanding but also to give our children primary instruction by the most

▶ 1:47:06 Speaker 2: qualified person and I have you know in one of the things that I've said often and and I and I have some of my elementary teachers here and here in my elementary principles they've heard me say it we do a lot of small group work as you all know that's the model we will use we use the workshop model and an argument I will often have with the teacher is why is the SPED teacher teaching reading most pet teachers are not trained in reading most general ed primary teachers are trained in reading don't you want the person who has the best skill in that subject to be teaching the child so it is very hard to get away from that model and we push it and we push it and I don't think our parents entirely understand it and I don't think our teachers always understand it because everybody is very well intentioned and they want to protect our children but the truth of the matter is you're not protecting the child if you don't put the child in a situation where he has to have some

▶ 1:48:13 Speaker 2: intellectual struggle take some risks and push himself or herself because they need to grow so I know the instinct always is give my kid more services put them in a small group put them in a pullout but I think what you can see by looking at the scores is the disadvantage we have given those children with that model over time and well those places where we have remediated that model and we've created systems where our general ed and our special ed people can work more closely together you're seeing some better results for our

▶ 1:48:50 Speaker 5: children mr o'connell just very briefly to follow up on that it's hugely important for us to hear you say that uh with regard to special education um and i i i said this recently and and i will continue to say this i we really need to create a forum we're going to be talking about forums later on in the agenda whether it's an agenda item here or a standalone forum to talk along the lines that you just spoke to uh madam superintendent because there is an education piece here in terms of sharing this work with parents that I think we can do

▶ 1:49:36 Jessica Dugan: better at so thank you for that if it's okay with the committee I'll wrap us up on this what the cameras don't show are the pretty amazing people in the room with us tonight so I just wanted to say thank you to our content facilitators and educators and and principals and department heads everyone who is here play such a role supporting each other and working every day so I on behalf of all of us on the committee we have super super high expectations for you and of you and I hope that this community continues to raise our expectations actually and at the same time I hope that we as a committee and you can hold us to providing the support that you need to achieve that so we're here to do that we appreciate this kind of conversation we had tonight to inform our thinking so that we can make sure those things that are priority for you to meet those expectations are are available to you and we appreciate you very much so thank you okay that wraps up our MCAS state test conversation

▶ 1:50:49 Jessica Dugan: great job thank you and last on the EP MP agenda tonight is discussion around a school cancellation project proposal blizzard bags we will hear from the superintendent have an opportunity to ask questions have conversation this evening but we will not be voting on this until our next meeting which is two weeks from now the superintendent assures us that a vote at that time if we move forward will give us the time we need to or the time she needs to submit