Cambridge School District MCAS Scores Underscore Achievement Gap

While the Cambridge Public School District achieved “high” and “moderate” aggregate Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System scores, for another year many subgroups at multiple grade levels have failed to meet the No Child Left Behind Act’s standards.

Despite the fact that the district spends $25,000 on each student, more than almost any other district in Mass., Cambridge test scores continue to show an achievement gap between white and minority students. Minority students make up 63.6 percent of the district’s enrollment.

At Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, the district’s high school, only one subgroup in each of the two subjects—Hispanic/Latino for English Language Arts and Special Education for Mathematics—did not make Adequate Yearly Progress according to the standards set by NCLB.

But MCAS results showed that at every grade span at least one subgroup—Asian and Pacific Islander, African-American/Black, Formerly/Limited English Proficient, Hispanic/Latino, Low Income, Special Education, or White—did not make AYP for both English Language Arts and Mathematics.

While the district achieved a “high” composite performance index—a measure of aggregate student scores—for English Language Arts, it still did not meet improvement expectations for all subgroups. For the second year in a row, some failed to make AYP in the subject.

Similarly, while the district scored a “moderate” composite performance index for Mathematics, it did not make AYP for all subgroups for the third year in a row.

“The gaps are persistent and pernicious, and we have not over the last several years made as much progress as we need to and as we intend to,” said Cambridge Public Schools Superintendent Jeffrey M. Young.

The district plans to implement a professional development program that will “provide teachers with the support they need to expand their repertoire of teaching strategies so they can be useful to all of the diverse learners in their classrooms,” Young said. Cambridge Public School Committee members said that there is no silver bullet to solve the complex problems associated with the achievement gap.

Committee member Marc C. McGovern, who described closing the achievement gap as “an ongoing process,” said that he and Cambridge City Councillor Marjorie C. Decker plan to collaborate on another committee that will examine early child education and care in Cambridge.

“All of the research is clear that children who receive quality early childhood education, wherever it comes from, those students do better in school,” McGovern said, adding that a child who enters school with a vocabulary of 1,000 words fewer than another student will already have a problem catching up. But McGovern cautioned that the MCAS scores do not provide a comprehensive picture of education in the district.

“The consequences of not doing well on the MCAS are so great for students and schools that it forces districts to teach to the test more than they should,” he said, adding that the district works to strike a balance between improving MCAS scores and keeping the curriculum engaging.

—Staff writer Sofia E. Groopman can be reached at segroopm@fas.harvard.edu.