Lynn MCAS is on the rise

LYNN – Five days after the Department of Education (DOE) officially released MCAS scores for all city schools, Superintendent Nicholas Kostan broke down the results for the School Committee and outlined some areas of improvement.Overall, the district performed well on the annual standardized test, keeping on target with improvement on both English/ language arts (ELA) and mathematics exams.Kostan highlighted the Aborn, Brickett, Breed, Callahan, Connery and Sisson schools some of the most improved in the city, along with the Fallon Elementary, which surged ahead of marks achieved in past years and exceeded expectations in every category. That school’s achievement was highlighted even further when Kostan told the committee that third graders had shown a higher improvement on math scores, 43 percent, than any other class in the state.”Overall I am very pleased, especially in math where scores in the last several years really have not been good, they have been low,” he said. “This year we really started to break that trend, and all teachers K-12 are doing a fantastic job implementing a strong new math curriculum that is both standards based and being taught the way it is supposed to be taught.”With scores up across the board, Kostan warned that it was “not all a rosy picture” as middle school students continued to struggle in both test categories, despite a spike in scores at the Breed. Scores were especially poor at the Marshall, where Kostan vowed the department would work hard to improve this year, but the superintendent expressed optimism in new principal Richard Cowdell and the students at the school.”We are going to spend a lot of time at the Marshall, but let me say that the new principal, Rich Cowdell is doing a fabulous job implementing new programs,” he said. “I am not worried about the Marshall school. The scores are low right now, but I have all the confidence in the world that they will improve in the coming years.”While scores tended to fluctuate between individual classes and schools, Kostan provided documentation that Lynn is out performing other urban schools in the state.Having already been upgraded to a “Priority 2″ district by the DOE, the only large urban district in the state to achieve that mark, Kostan showed a further divide between Lynn and other urban areas in MCAS scoring.In ELA, Lynn topped all other large urban districts in comprehensive performance index (CPI), scoring a 77.1, tied with Everett, and finished amongst the best in that category in math.”For Lynn to be grouped with schools (such as other priority 2 schools, Peabody, Medford, Cambridge and Gloucester) that are not facing the same challenges that our teachers face every day is the most important thing in all of this,” Kostan said. “Give credit to all of the hard-working classroom teachers that are there every day working hard. But we know that have a long way to go, there is still improvement in a lot of areas that needs to be made.”Along with middle school test scores, Kostan said he hopes to continue working to improve math scores and follow a similar pattern in bringing the ELA up to standards.