Cecil County Public Schools officials presented the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program (MCAP) results for 2025 to the Board of Education on Oct. 8, saying most grade bands showed year-over-year growth but noting persistent gaps for students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students.

School system staff told the board the assessments, required under federal law, are designed to measure how students are meeting the Maryland College and Career Readiness Standards.

“The Elementary and Secondary Education Act ... was reauthorized in 2015 and it's called now this Every Student Succeeds Act,” Doctor Jenny Hammer said during the presentation, explaining the federal basis for statewide testing and accountability.

District officials emphasized the data are complex and require follow-up. Doctor Hammer said 11 of the 14 tested grade-content areas for English language arts and math showed growth from 2024 to 2025, and staff outlined several near-term steps to use assessments as one part of an instructional improvement plan.

Doctor Foy, who led the mathematics portion of the presentation, stressed how the current test format mixes advanced reading-comprehension demands with mathematics reasoning. “This is as much of a literacy exercise as it is math,” he said, illustrating that item types have changed over the past decade and now require students to interpret multi-step, digital tasks. He also noted that some higher-performing eighth graders take Algebra instead of the grade 8 test, which affects grade-8 averages.

District data cited during the meeting included:
- 5,480 students took both the math and reading assessments; 1,142 (about 20%) were proficient in both.
- Enrollment of students with individualized education programs (IEPs) rose to 2,925 students, up from about 2,576 in 2022. The district reported roughly 470 special-education staff, yielding an overall district ratio of about 6.2 students with disabilities per special-education staff member.
- Officials said CCPS has seven grade bands for math and language arts assessments; staff reported growth in five of seven math grade bands and improvements in several ELA grades compared with 2024.

The board heard teachers and administrators are adapting curriculum and instruction. The district said 13 of 17 elementary schools have moved to the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum this year; staff stressed that the curriculum is more project- and problem-based than some prior programs and requires adjustments for students and teachers.

To address literacy and early-reading targets, Doctor Johnson summarized planned and funded interventions: a five-year, roughly $5,000,000 grant to support strategic literacy interventions, including seven full-time literacy coaches, expanded foundations programs in pre-K–3, Wilson reading supports and an improved data-analysis system to track student progress.

Board members and staff also discussed the district's use of leading (midyear) assessments. Staff said the fall MAP (Measure of Academic Progress) window had recently closed and that midyear MAP data would be available in the next one to two weeks; they characterized MAP as a strong predictor of MCAP outcomes and said they would provide that information to the board.

School leaders described changes at the middle-school level to increase instructional time: all sixth through eighth graders will now receive 90 minutes per day in both math and language arts, a schedule change district leaders said is intended to deliver additional small-group and targeted instruction.

Board members asked for more comparative analysis with similar-size districts and for disaggregation of the overlap between students identified as both economically disadvantaged and students with disabilities. Staff said they would provide those comparisons and additional subgroup breakdowns upon request.

“Our goal is to try to impact that data for next year, and we're gonna do that through leading data,” Doctor Hammer said, stressing the district’s shift toward more frequent benchmarking and data-driven cycles of instruction.

District leaders cautioned that MCAP is lagging, statewide data and that the state’s assessment vendor is changing next year; the Maryland State Department of Education is putting a new vendor under RFP to redesign MCAP items and reporting.

Officials also warned the board that test changes since 2019 and COVID-era instructional interruptions have complicated multi-year comparisons and recovery. They described targeted supports — coaching, expanded middle-school time, curriculum alignment, and grant-funded literacy coaches — as the district’s central response to the results.

Board members did not take formal action on the MCAP report that evening; staff framed the presentation as the data review and a basis for follow-up work and future reporting to the board.

Ending note: Staff said they would circulate more detailed slides and follow-up materials to the board and provide midyear MAP data when available to help the board monitor progress between annual MCAP reports.