An accountability presenter identified in the meeting materials as "Common Emerald" delivered the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School district's accountability report on Nov. 10, describing declines in statewide assessment results and district-level student growth measures.

The presenter walked the committee through the five accountability buckets: MCAS achievement (60% of the accountability calculation), growth/Student Growth Percentile (20%), high school completion (graduation/cohort/dropout), additional indicators (chronic absenteeism and advanced coursework), and English learner progress (10%). The presenter said the district's achievement measure showed a roughly 18 percentage point gap in the share of students meeting or exceeding state expectations compared with statewide figures and noted statewide drops of 3 percentage points in math and 6 points in ELA.

On growth, the presenter reported the district's SGP fell from 47 to 37 for all students; subgroup declines were larger in some cases (for example, high needs and students with disabilities were below state SGP levels). The presenter said math SGP dropped to 43 overall and that some subgroups (African American/Black students and certain English learner groups) had differing patterns of performance. The presenter also noted strong results in advanced coursework completion (74% vs. the state's 68.8%) and that chronic absenteeism was down slightly.

Superintendent Watson and several committee members discussed possible causes. Watson and others raised the possibility that a change in statewide MCAS policy (removing MCAS as a graduation requirement) affected testing fidelity and student testing behavior, noting faster completion times and fewer overflow-room test administrations this year; one committee member summarized: "It may have removed the barrier of that angst that test anxiety" and the presenter agreed this could have affected scores. Committee members emphasized that one year of data does not necessarily indicate a long-term trend.

The presenter also noted the district's English learner population increased (from just over 90 last year to 144 this year) and described steps the district has taken, including adding an ESL strategies course and bilingual paraprofessionals assigned to CVTE programs.

The presenter offered links and the packet data for deeper subgroup analysis and said the data are public and available for committee review.

Provenance: Topic introduced at SEG 161 and discussed through SEG 518.