Three years after the pandemic upended established learning curriculums, Martha’s Vineyard public school students have turned in a solid performance on statewide testing, generally outperforming their peers across the commonwealth in math, science and English language arts, according to MCAS results released Thursday.
The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment is the statewide standardized test administered to students in third, eighth and tenth grades.
This marks the first full year of assessment since 2019 — there was no testing in 2020 and only partial testing last year because of the pandemic. And Vineyard schools superintendent Richie Smith said Thursday he was highly encouraged by the results.
“I would be very pleased with the scores if this was a normal year, and what we have been seeing for the past two years has not been normal, disrupted by the pandemic,” Mr. Smith told the Gazette by phone, hours after the 2022 test results were released to the general public.
“The results this year essentially serve as a new baseline for us,” he added.
School-by-school test results are a dense maze of numbers and charts, but brief summaries follow.
The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School did especially well, with 10th graders outperforming their peers across the state in language arts, math and science, and showing gains since 2019. Seventy three per cent of those tested met or exceeded standards for language arts, 52 per cent for math and 54 per cent for science and technology.
Scores of students at the Oak Bluffs, Tisbury and West Tisbury schools exceeded the state average in all categories. The Edgartown School lagged the state average in scores for language arts and math, but exceeded the state average for science and technology.
Scores for all elementary schools showed slight declines in most categories from 2019, and scores showed a significant drop in English language proficiency among non-native speakers. However, there was some improvement in growth scores measuring improvement over time, especially in Tisbury and West Tisbury.
At the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School, students in grades three through eight outperformed their state peers in language arts and matched statewide performance in math. Fifth and eighth graders also outpaced the state average in science and technology. Charter School students in the upper grades performed less well, lagging the state average in all three subject areas.
Mr. Smith said school leaders are only just beginning to analyze the numbers and will drill down deeply on them in the coming weeks. But in the short term he focused on student growth percentiles, which he said climbed significantly in all areas of learning and among all learners — including low-income students and non-English-speaking students.
“Across the board with every school, I’m very encouraged,” the superintendent said. “We see strong signs of student growth. It’s exciting and surprising, frankly. There has been a lot of concern among educators about learning loss — I call it learning lag — in the last two years, with less access to instruction, more absenteeism and what a profound impact that has had. And across the board we are outperforming the state.”
