MCAS Data Summary 2023 

Rebecca asks how we talk to our high school staff about MCAS results?

Amy says when we saw the amount of students meeting the graduation requirement for the Bio MCAS we were initially excited but we also realize that this is not the bar. We need to increase the number of students meeting or exceeding in this area. 

Lisa asks how will we know if the meeting and exceeding percentage goes up if the students who already met the graduation requirement won't take it again?

Amy says we won't, we will only be able to get this number up with the next class' results. 

MCAS Bright Spots

Amy shares MCAS bright spots with the committee. We were still hoping for better. We also know that writing in ELA was a struggle across all grades and all student demographics. 

Rebecca asks if we have programmatic changes in mind based on the writing?

Amy says we are piloting a new program from Great Minds (Rebecca can make a connection here). We recognize that students need more writing experience as well as they need to receive feedback on that writing.

Ann asks will the teachers need additional training?

Amy says we are still in the information collection stage but it is possible we will need to train our teachers in some new methods. 

Lisa asks if we get other schools information at the domain level?

Jonathan says we do. 

Lisa says it would be good to see a school who has done really well in writing and what they are doing to get those scores. 

Rebecca says there is a danger in focusing too much on writing in isolation.  

Amy says that's true and we have experienced that and now writing has been over scaffolded and too methodical. We have to adjust this. It would be nice to see growth in each domain to see if we have made any progress in reading and writing over the last three years. 

Middle School and High School Priorities, Goals & Metrics 

Amy says we are working on communicating our priorities, goals, and metrics better throughout the entire year. 

The committee takes 10 minutes to review the attached PowerPoint. 

Feedback:

Amy says this is still a rough draft so we welcome any feedback and we would like to share this with the Board this month. 

Lisa thinks its busy and dry - missing heart and passion. She would structure it a bit differently. She would do one priority, one goal and one metric at a time. There is also an opportunity to add ideas of how folks are going to do things, shout outs to folks doing these things, or use data to show improvements over time. She thinks it should be personalized. 

Rebecca thinks there's a lot on every slide. Maybe spread it out even at the risk of having many slides. 

Amy clarifies that this will initially go out as an email. 

Rachel says our state of the school presentation was more personalized. We want to celebrate successes but we also want them to understand the reality of where we are and how far we have to go. 

Lisa says that's fair and we should include the data that shows how far off target we are. It is important to add what we are going to do to get where we want to go. 

Amy suggests some way we might be able to accomplish this (i.e. student vision statements, student/family voice). 

Rebecca adds that the "how" is stated but the middle school "how's" are more clear in how they will impact our data and the high school ones are more process oriented. 

Ann asks if teachers know where we are starting from in terms of the data?

Amy says MCAS is a piece of that but she is going to add that information to each slide so teachers can have that information right in front of them at each stage.

How to present to the Board?

Rachel thinks that we should share with the Board exactly what the staff will see. She can lift up certain highlights without presenting the whole thing.

Rebecca says we could map out what's happening in the the school and how that translates to Board and committee meetings. 

Ann suggests including a key for the Board that defines certain acronyms. 

Lisa asks about a timeline that incudes more than just measuring progress?

Amy, Jonathan, and Rachel discuss including some upcoming PD highlights and data cycles. 

Lisa suggests breaking it into two: middle school and high school. 

Next Month: Debrief Board Meeting & Data Update (Share Open Architects)