State Raises MCAS Standards

The Massachusetts Department of Education voted yesterday to increase the passing score of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) examination to 240, raising the bar for graduation and mandating that students be “proficient” before receiving their diploma.

Under the old guidelines, students could receive their competency determination for graduation if they received 220 on the exam, a score that reflected a passing score and not necessarily a strong command of the course material.

The new guidelines, which the department approved 7-2, state that if a student does not earn a score of 240 or above—a score equivalent to being “proficient”—they must complete an “Educational Proficiency Plan” before they can qualify for a diploma.

Each district will be responsible for designing a plan for individual students, based on the subject area in which they did not receive a satisfactory score.

The changes come one month after the high school class of 2008 boasted average scores on the MCAS examination that outperformed all previous 10th graders on the test.

The new regulations will go into affect for the high school class of 2010.

Massachusetts Department of Education spokesman Nate Mackinnon said that the new regulations were a part of the department’s goal to get the state in compliance with the “No Child Left Behind” legislation, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002, which mandates that all students score at or above a determined level of proficiency by 2014.

“You can still pass with a 220, but 240 is the ultimate goal by 2014,” Mackinnon said. “Those students who would pass before can still pass, so long as they complete the educational proficiency plan.”

Last month, the Cambridge Public Schools district was recognized by the Massachusetts Department of Education as one of three districts that saw the most improvement in the increase in the number of students scoring either proficient or advanced on the exam.

Sixty-seven percent of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School students scored advanced or proficient on the English Language Arts test, a 20 percent point improvement from the previous year. Similarly, 61 percent received these marks on the mathematics exam, a 19 point increase.

Cambridge Public School Committee member Joseph G. Grassi said that he was disappointed with the Department of Education’s choice to increase the test’s benchmark score so early.

“The overall goal for everyone is to get students who are failing the test into the proficient category,” he said. “I just think we need some time of consistent standards to get there.”

The high school’s MCAS Tutoring Center Director Gail Stein said the addition of the proficiency plans would not, however, place additional burdens on the school because of the academic support that is already in place.

“It’s adding a piece of paper I believe that will reflect what we do anyway,” she said, highlighting the minimal amount of definitive changes necessary to get students who do not pass the exam up to speed.

Cambridge Public Schools Public Information Officer Justin T. Martin said that he was confident that the district would continue to exhibit the progress of recent years, despite the stricter regulations.

“I would say that with the success that we’ve had in the last couple of years on the MCAS test, particularly on the 10th grade level, that our students will be up to the challenge,” he said.

—Staff writer Laura A. Moore can be reached at lamoore@fas.harvard.edu.