The latest round of MCAS results show Chelsea public schools falling in line with recent state trends.
At last week’s School Committee meeting, Deputy Superintendent of Schools Adam Deleidi gave an update on the MCAS scores locally as well as the big picture across the state as schools pull out of the days of the Covid pandemic.
“The 2023 ELA (English Language Arts) and math data indicate that the achievement slide from 2019 seems to have halted and recovery is underway,” said Deleidi. “That doesn’t mean that we are back to pre-pandemic levels by any means, but the drop has sort of dropped (across the state), and you can see that it is similar with us in Chelsea.”
There are concerns across the state with the grade 3 scores, with Deleidi noting that last year’s third grade students missed kindergarten and pre-kindergarten due to school closings during the pandemic.
“Grade 3 is not reading at grade level across the state and it is a pretty big concern,” said Deleidi. “We are on top of it here in Chelsea.”
The deputy superintendent also pointed out a number of changes that have taken place with the district’s demographics from 2021 to 2023.
The biggest change is the number of English Language Learner (ELL) students in the district, which increased by 52 percent over the two years.
Currently, 2,844 out of roughly 6,200 students in the district are ELL students, increasing from 30 percent to 46 percent of the total school population over that time.
There was a 50 percent increase in foundational ELL students, or students who are very new to the language, and often the country, DeLeidi said.
“Those students are just as capable as anyone else, but you need to provide different kinds of support,” said Deleidi.
All but two schools in the district had substantial increases in the number of foundational ELL students, he said.
“We know that MCAS is a language-based assessment, which makes it challenging for English Language Learners to access the test and truly show what they know.”
But Deleidi said those students are performing well on the ACCESS test, which measures language growth and development.
Deleidi noted that three schools in the district – the Berkowitz, the Wright Science and Technology Academy, and the Sokolowsi – all saw their percentile rankings improve over the past year. Those rankings show how the schools rank against every other school in the state on MCAS scores.
Overall, Deleidi said the district held fairly steady in its ELA scores for the past year, dropping less than a point, while math scores were up by 1 percent and science scores were up by 2 percent.
While the testing data is important, Deleidi said the ultimate goal of the district is to meet the needs of its students.
“The needs of our students have changed and we need to build relationships with our students,” he said. “Students need to be tethered to the adults in our building. We are being called upon to have more inclusive and more belonging practices and we are being called upon to teach to standards.
“Students need to be tethered to the adults in our buildings, and we need to know our students by name, strength, and story.”