From the Desk of Milton Public Schools Superintendent Mary Gormley:

In 2015, Milton Public Schools students participated in the Science MCAS in grades 5, 8, and 9. The MCAS was also given to grade 10 students in ELA and Math, which is a high school graduation requirement.  Additionally, in grades 3 to 8, students took the computer-based PARCC tests in ELA and Math. Grade 9 and grade 11 students also took one computer-based Math PARCC test and one computer-based ELA PARCC test respectively.

PARCC is the new standardized assessment that Massachusetts is piloting alongside other states transitioning to using Common Core standards. Although Milton participated in PARCC last year during the trial period to give our students more practice with this new computer-based test, this is the first year that PARCC scores will actually be released. The State Board of Education is expected to vote in November whether to adopt PARCC fully to replace MCAS going forward.

On September 24th 2015, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released official scores from the MCAS to the public. Parent reports for the MCAS are forthcoming from the state. The district expects to send reports home to parents on October 7th, when we will also be sharing a fuller analysis of district results with the School Committee. We are pleased to see that overall, science scores in the district have improved since last year; however, we still have a lot of work to do to close the achievement gap among subgroups (the economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities, and African American students).

Read more in the full e-blast: blog.miltonps.org/?p=1868