A Look At Stoneham's 2012 MCAS Results

Students in Stoneham generally outperformed the state average in the multiple MCAS categories, according to MCAS data recently released by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Tenth grade students went from 47 to 56 percent in advanced mathematics, and from 60 to 61 percent in advanced English language arts. Science also showed slight improvement for the 10th graders, with 32 percent scoring in the "advanced" category compared to 31 percent last year. However, the number in the “needs improvement” category slightly increased in the past year from 17 to 18 percent among 10th graders.

Eighth grade students improved in the "proficient" category for English language arts, scoring 67 percent this year compared to 57 percent last year. However, in the "advanced" category there was a decreased from 28 to 19 percent.

While there was a slight increase from 34 to 35 percent in the "proficient" category for 8th graders in mathematics, there was a decrease in the "advanced" category (32 to 21 percent) and an increase from 20 to 29 percent in the "needs imporvement" area.

In science, 8th graders doubled their percent of students in the "advanced" category from 3 to 6 percent. However, there was a considerable decrease in the "proficient" category, going from 53 percent to 39 percent. There also was a bump up in students in the "needs improvement" category from 20 to 29 percent.

The state provides complete data showing how the various grades have done in these subjects between 2009 and 2012.

Looking at other grades’ results, the 7th grade saw an increase in both advanced English language arts and mathematics, going from 11 to 18 percent and 6 to 26 percent, respectively. While the "warning" category improved by dropping 25 to 10 percent in mathematics, it increased slightly from 4 to 5 percent in English language arts.

In other noteworthy changes, the third grade saw a jump in advanced math students from 14 to 30 percent over the last year, although the percentage in the “warning” category increased from 8 to 14 percent in that same time period. Meanwhile, grade 5 English language arts scores saw a bump up in the percentage of advanced students (18 to 24 percent), but also an increase in the “warning” category from 4 to 8 percent.

To compare the Stoneham school district against the state, check out this data table.

What do you make of Stoneham's MCAS test results? Let us know by posting a comment in the comments section below.