Latest MCAS Scores Show Improvement, Point to a Long Road Ahead

New Superintendent of Schools John Macero said this week that the recent release of MCAS scores by the state, showing improvement across the board for the Winthrop School District was welcome news, “but there is still a long way to go to get where we want to be as a school district.”

Among the best news in the MCAS results, Winthrop has been moved from a level three performing school district to a level two district by the state, based on the improvements across the district.

“We’ve improved enough in those areas to move up to a level two, so that is good news,” explained Macero. “I sent a letter this week to the staff congratulating them on their hard work and reminding them that there is still more to do. The Cummings School for instance made it annual yearly progress (AYP) goals in Math, but did not make it in ELA (English Language Arts). At the Middle School it was reversed, where we made AYP in ELA, but not in math.”

The Winthrop high school continued to score as a level 1 performing school, according to Macero.

“Now we have to make the targeted improvement goals, which are set by the state and also address our sub-group scores, which are still an issue, but overall I’m pleased,” he said. “Really, this is all a credit to Dr. Lisi, and the principals and staff for the hard work they put in last year. They had a plan for how to improve our test scores and they did a great job.”

According to Macero, there were 22 Winthrop students district-wide who recorded perfect scores on their MCAS tests and they will all be honored at the next School Committee meeting on October 13.

For a complete list of how Winthrop students performed on the MCAS by grade and subject, see the list below. Schools must show that they are moving students from the Needs Improvement and Warning categories to the Proficient and Advanced categories to show that they are making improvement as a district.

The 2011 MCAS scores result for Winthrop are as follows: