WESTFIELD – Last night more of the district’s results from this year’s Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam results were presented.
In keeping with the theme of the past few School Committee meetings, principals from three of the city’s schools presented their institution’s performance to the board, and yesterday’s findings proved positive once again.
For Paper Mill Elementary’s new principal Chris Manfredi, the school is performing better thanks to initiatives spurred on by the district.
“This is our third year with the Envision math program, and we’re starting to see an upward trend,” he said of the school’s scores on the math section of the exam. “I’m excited and pleased.”
Manfredi attributed much of his third, fourth and fifth grader’s success to the presence of a math coach who has helped students with their open response math questions.
“Open response (questions) are the ‘big ticket’ questions,” Manfredi added, before also listing English Language Arts (ELS) as another area that his school is both doing well in. ELA will also benefit from the continued open response work.
The first year principal, who was mentored by Highland Principal Jim Kane, is looking to continue utilizing the Bay State Reading Initiative (BSRI) program, along with morning reading programs, to continue to raise the bar at Paper Mill.
“Our second year with BSRI, and we’re encouraged by the growth of the data,” Manfredi said. “We have a great staff and we’re going to bring our students to the next level.”
Following the Manfredi report, Southampton Road School Principal Cathy O’Donnell highlighted almost identical key aspects of her school’s MCAS performance to the board.
“The city’s hiring a math supervisor and with math coaches coming into the schools, the teachers are eating it up,” O’Donnell said of the outside assistance in helping students. “And with the focus on open response questions, kids are digging much deeper into finding complete answers.”
She added that literacy programs such as Read 180 and System 44 are helping her third, fourth and fifth graders achieve improvement in the ELA testing on the MCAS.
“For 20 minutes each day, students will work at three different stations in groups of six,” she said. “Reading at their level for 20 minutes, working with a teacher for 20, and working on a computer reading program for 20. In an hour, we can serve eighteen students.”
O’Donnell praised the work of her teachers, who she says are “looking at the whole student.”
“Teachers wear many hats, (supporting students) academically, socially, and emotionally, because of situations at home,” she said. “The old saying is ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, and we are often their support system.”
North Middle School was the only non-elementary school to present yesterday evening, but Principal Chris Rodgers made sure the North presentation was more than enough, bombarding the committee with an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from the test.
“Over the past four years, our enrollment is down 70 students, but we have remained a level two school,” he said, adding that the school is boasting a cumulative performance index of over 90 percent for it’s sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.
He also praised the work being done with ELA, saying “as they (students) are growing, they’re moving up in ELA and reading, and we’re thrilled with the results.”
Rodgers also alluded to a decrease in students in the warning category of the MCAS math section, which he said is down to six percent, which he sees as a direct result of the school aligning itself with state standards.
“For the first time, we have a math program in Big Ideas that is aligned with the state,” he said. “My teachers have what they need.”
Rodgers thanked the committee for it’s continued support, a several members expressed their admiration of the efforts at North.
“It’s so nice to hear ‘we have, we have’ than ‘we need, we need’,” said board member Cindy Sullivan.
Regarding new initiatives being implemented district-wide, board member Bill Duval commended the open-mindedness of the district’s educators.
“Hats off to the teachers for being willing to try new things.” he said.
“Third through fifth grade made great gains,” Westfield Superintendent Dr. Suzanne Scallion said on results in reading. “We’ve made increases in advanced and proficient, and decreases in the needs improvement category.”
Scallion said she was happy with the alignment of the materials at North, a school she said has made strong gains in ELA, and is looking to make similar gains in math.
“Alignment is key for our teachers,” she said. “To have the right materials is a step in the right direction.”
