Nashoba presents 2025 MCAS results; district outlines targeted literacy, math and science steps

Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Laura Friend reviewed Nashoba Regional School District’s 2025 MCAS results at the Oct. 22 school committee meeting and said the data will inform district improvement work.

"We look to MCAS to really help, support our continual improvement efforts," Friend said, opening a presentation the district described as a macro view of results with a detailed appendix for school-level analysis. She said Nashoba was classified by the state accountability system as "making moderate progress towards targets and not requiring assistance." The district outpaced statewide performance in grades 3–8 in English language arts and math and by "at least 15%" in those grades, she said; grade 10 performance declined for both the district and the state.

Friend told the committee the district saw notable cohort gains in upper middle grades and that grade 5 science and grade 10 results declined. She said the decline in science was concentrated in fifth grade while eighth grade showed some improvement. Friend flagged constructed-response writing as a cross-cutting weakness: "our students perform better on multiple choice types of questions than selected or constructed response questions," and she said the district will emphasize explicit instruction and practice in explaining reasoning and using evidence across content areas.

Friend summarized subgroup performance: closing achievement gaps in many groups but persistent needs for English learners and declines for Hispanic students. On special-education outcomes she deferred to student services staff, noting the district’s approach to tiered supports and access to core instruction.

A student-services representative on the panel said one focus is "creating a clearer through line from the access to the general ed environment to very clear, tiered instruction with the appropriate data collection," and described ongoing collaboration between teaching-and-learning and student-services staff to align specialized instruction with classroom core instruction.

Friend laid out next steps in literacy, math, science and civics: strengthen K–2 foundational literacy through consistent evidence-based materials and screening; expand writing instruction (Patterns of Power) in grades 3–6 and continue 6–12 vertical work for analytical writing; maintain math coherence K–12, support Bridges and Illustrative Math implementations with coaches and targeted interventions; ensure consistent K–5 science time, complete middle-school rollout of OpenSciEd, and align high-school courses with NGSS practices; and monitor implementation of the new eighth-grade civics assessment. She said school-based teams and principals are already drilling into the data and that more detailed school-level reports are in the meeting appendix.

Committee members said they were watching subgroup trends closely and raised concerns about the state’s recent ballot change removing MCAS as a graduation requirement, asking how that may affect future data collection and its usefulness for tracking subgroup progress. Friend and the student-services representative said the district will continue multiple measures (screeners, classroom data, IEP goals) to monitor student growth.

The district will supply the committee and school councils with school-level breakdowns and continue using the MCAS data as one indicator among many to guide instruction.