Marblehead outscores state MCAS average

MARBLEHEAD-Marblehead students outscored the state MCAS average across the board in the proficient, proficient plus and advanced categories, according to a report prepared by Curriculum Director Coordinator Michael Hanna.That statement led Hanna?s report to the School Committee Thursday evening.In fact, local students outscored the state average by at least 11 percent and in some cases as much as 28 percent.Hanna said that the town?s literacy and math (Everyday Math and Connected Math) programs contributed heavily to that success. Charting math scores, Hanna showed that on average 18 percent of Marblehead eighth graders had advanced scores from 1999-2004. Since 2005, the first year students from the town?s Everyday Math program began taking the exam, the number has doubled to at least 35 percent.Only 19 percent of Grade 10 students were in the advanced category. By 2006 the average number of advanced scores was 46 percent. In the past two years, since the Everyday Math students reached Grade 10, the average has been 66 percent.In a memo included in Hanna?s report, 32-year Marblehead High physics teacher Mark Greenman said the math program has students “thinking with mathematics as naturally as they think with language.”Hanna also commended the Coffin School Grade 3 students, whose reading scores were 13th in the state out of 1,002 schools; Grade 5 science students, whose advanced and proficient scores increased 6 percent over 2007, a year in which the state-wide average scores dipped 1 percent; Grade 8 English scores were the sixth highest in the state and all other test scores at the Marblehead Veterans Middle School were in the top 10 percent statewide.His recommendations to help elementary school students in the needs improvement and warning categories included precise analysis of each student?s answers and the hiring of a new Title I reading specialist, something the town has already done.School Committee member Jonathan Lederman said he would like to see Marblehead in the top 10 scores in every subject.?What we?re looking for is improvement,” Superintendent of Schools Paul Dulac said.