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Saco schools’ fall NWEA data show post‑COVID dip, signs of recovery; middle grades hardest hit
Summary
Meg Parkhurst, presenting NWEA/MAP fall results to the Saco School Board, said Saco’s pre‑COVID scores were above national norms, student performance dipped after pandemic disruptions (particularly in grades 4–6 and in math) and the district is on a recovering trajectory; parents will receive individual reports and the district plans a January reassessment.
Meg Parkhurst, who presented the district’s fall administration of the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Measure of Academic Progress (MAP), told the Saco School Board that schoolwide scores are showing recovery after a pandemic‑era dip but have not yet returned to pre‑COVID levels.
"Our pre‑COVID achievement was above national norms," Parkhurst said, noting that the district saw a marked decline in some grades after the disruptions of 2020 and that math performance showed a larger downturn than reading. She said the fall administration generally shows averages near the 50th national percentile with "some dips in math" in grades four through six.
Parkhurst explained that NWEA is an adaptive assessment given three times a year (fall, winter, spring) and that the fall results are one data point used with classroom assessments such as Eureka math benchmarks. She emphasized the tests compare students to a national norm data set drawn from 2015–2020 and therefore do not yet reflect pandemic‑era shifts in national norms.
Board members asked whether the district will administer another NWEA test in January and why the language usage assessment appeared for the first time. Parkhurst said the state of Maine has integrated NWEA into its accountability model and that the language usage component was added to meet that requirement; the district plans to send individual student reports to parents after each administration.
Parkhurst walked the board through cohort trends showing that younger cohorts (current third graders) were pacing above average and that middle grades showed a larger remaining gap; she said teachers and academic coaches will use the data to target instruction to individual students’ subskills. "The really important thing we can do with this data is help teachers to move individual student scores and really drill down to subgoal areas," she said.
The presentation included a reminder that the district will collect additional data points in January and spring 2022 to monitor progress. The board thanked Parkhurst and posed several procedural follow‑ups about historical testing patterns and parent access to reports.
The superintendent introduced the presentation and noted the district will continue to pair MAP results with classroom measures before drawing high‑stakes conclusions.
