MCAS Mystery Deepens

Ken O’Brien

An article in today’s Worcester Telegram by Brian Lee only adds to the confusion surrounding recent MCAS results at Southbridge Middle/High School.

Those who have followed this saga will recall that initially there were reports to this site that some 38 current seniors had failed to be given the opportunity to retake the MCAS during all of 2013-14  school year following their failure as sophomores in Spring 2013.

That suspicion was apparently confirmed at last Tuesday’s School Committee meeting in a presentation by Superintendent Patricia Gardner.

In the article, titled “Southbridge MCAS fallout still being remedied”, it is made clear that we were not alone in drawing that conclusion.

At least two other members of the committee drew the same inference from Ms. Gardner’s comments. 

Earlier this week, School Committee member Brent Abrahamson said in an interview his initial impression from that meeting was that the retests weren't given to juniors at all last year.

"We need to understand precisely what happened in terms of MCAS testing so that if the system broke down somewhere, we have to make sure it doesn't happen again. And we need to understand what happened to make it break down," he said.

Fellow committee member Ray Page said he had the same impression about the missed retest opportunities, and he suggested that the administration present numbers in writing, to avoid miscommunication.

However, shortly after her presentation comments appeared on this site challenging Mrs. Gardner’s assertions. One of the more precise formulations of these observations was put forth in our article “More Confusion”.

During her presentation Ms. Gardner asserted that  "a principal working in our schools" had signed off that everything had been done properly. It was widely understood that she was referring to Amy Allen-Magnan who was Principal of SMHS at the time.

Mrs. Allen-Magnan responded to these claims in a two page letter appended to Mr. Lee’s article. In that letter she accounts for the students in question as follows:

All of that being said, here are the facts of the MCAS mystery about the current seniors who supposedly “were not afforded their right to twice retake the MCAS last year” under my leadership. On the 2013 MCAS test, when that cohort of students first took MCAS in tenth grade, 32 failed the math MCAS, and eight failed ELA. They received these results in the mail in September, 2013. In November, 2013, SMHS conducted the MCAS re-tests (yes, we did order the tests and conduct the testing, and yes, I did sign off on the order forms and the test return forms). We retested 28 students on the MCAS math, and nine students on the MCAS ELA retests. (All of this information has been confirmed by the DESE). The reason for the discrepancy between the number of students who failed as sophomores and the number retaking is due to students who left the district (for several different reasons), and the additional retake in ELA was for a student who had recently enrolled into the district. Therefore, all eligible students, who were enrolled at SMHS, were given the November MCAS retakes.

For the March retake, which also did occur, 21 students took the math MCAS, and four students took the ELA MCAS. This discrepancy between the November numbers and the March numbers is due to the fact that seven students passed the November math retake, and five students passed the November ELA retake. Hence all students eligible to retake the MCAS in March were afforded the opportunity to do so.

This portion of Mrs. Allen-Magnan’s exposition adds up and accounts for those students in question.

However, she then adds, “The results of the March retakes indicate that, yes, 38 seniors need to take one or more of the MCAS tests this year,….” This last sentence does not square with the rest of her presentation. If 21 retook math and four retook ELA in March, how did we go from those 25 students to the current 38? Even assuming that all 25 who retook the test failed, we would still need an influx of 13 students to reach the total of 38. I consider this highly doubtful.

Ms. Gardner provides no such clear-cut analysis of the data. Contrary to her initial presentation that said 38 students had not been retested, she now says "One 11th-grade (current senior) student last year missed retest opportunities in ELA, five missed math retests, and six missed biology".

 Rather, she talks about the number of students needing Educational Proficiency Plans (EPP’s). “Ms. Gardner said 19 EPPs had not been completed for last year's juniors in English, and 28 had not been created in math. The superintendent said this year's new administrative team had to sort through last year's scores to figure that out.”

She is adamant, however, about one thing; "We stand by what we said about the MCAS not being done right." 

In the meantime, current School Committee Chairman Lauren McLoughlin appears content to invoke a newly-adopted “hands-off” policy. "District administration identified a problem" [with MCAS], "sought to investigate the problem, addressed the problem, and the main focus and priority is the students who are currently in front of us and deserve our attention and deserve to have their needs met."