Haverhill MCAS results are particularly promising in some areas – see Grade 4 Math student growth

MCAS test scores for 2022 were greatly affected by pandemic related learning disruptions. We focus here on a few indicators for ELA and Math test results. The “Meets or Exceeds” percentages reflect overall achievement levels and are greatly affected by the characteristics of the student population (e.g. by income). In contrast the student growth  percentiles are intended to reflect the growth of individual student from one year to the next compared to the growth of others similarly situated. Here are some results from the Next generation MCAS for 2022.

In ELA, Haverhill meets-or-exceeds scores are similar to other Gateway Cities and a bit behind similar-income Gateway Cities which tend to have fewer English language learners (ELL).

In Math Haverhill meets or exceeds scores are similar to other Gateway Cities and the districts DESE has designated as comparable, but a bit behind similar-income Gateway Cities. Again this may be due to Haverhill having a more challenging student population.

Turning to Student Growth Percentiles, SGPs, Haverhill is again somewhat behind most of the benchmarks for ELA. Again this could be due in part to slower growth for some challenging student populations.

For Math Student Growth Percentiles we see Haverhill performing at or above key benchmarks in several grades (Grades 4, 7, 8, and 10) closer to the benchmarks for the upper grades.

We can look at MCAS student growth measures by school. We see several schools (Tilton Upper, Silver Hill, Pentucket Lake, and Bradford Elementary) producing Math SGP scores above 50 (the state median).  Less positive, ELA scores fell below 40 for Nettle and Golden Hill.

We also look at student growth scores for Grade 4. This provides a look a academic growth for a early grade. Looking by ethnic group allows us to see how well each group is improving year to year.  For ELA most groups in most school fell below the state average. We see Golden Hill falling behind in Grade 4 student growth in 2022 compared to the other Haverhill schools.

Finally, we see some very encouraging results for Grade 4 Math SGPs. Here all of the schools except Golden Hill showed student growth percentiles above the state average, and this was true in nearly all cases for Hispanic as well as white students.

These promising results shows that Haverhill is getting Grade 4 students back on track with Math and doing so better than other districts.