Local MCAS scores released; school officials to review

Revere High School Superintendent Paul Dakin is celebrating his first look at his high school’s MCAS scores that put students at or near the state average in both English Language Arts and Math.”We’re never going to get 95 percent of kids in proficient like Wellesley does but if we can get an urban school at the state level I’m hurrahing,” he said.The state school assessment test or MCAS scores for 2011 were released Wednesday. Dakin said he has given all the scores a surface study but admitted he tends to delve into the high school scores a little deeper first because they represent a culmination of student study.”We look at raw data, how many kids made it to advanced and proficient,” he said. “We’re only two points behind in ELA, that’s two points behind the state average and as an urban district I celebrate that.”As an urban school Dakin said his district, not unlike Lynn, faces language, transiency and diversity issues that suburban schools simply don’t face.The high school is also at the state average for math, and Dakin said he credits High School Principal Lourenço Garcia for instituting changes and the staff for embracing them for what he called a “blip” in the scores.Swampscott students also raised the bar with MCAS scores that beat the state average on almost every level. Superintendent Lynn Celli was not available for comment but the scores tell the story.Swampscott High School showed significant improvement but it was the Clarke School fourth graders who rocked MCAS scores this year.The high school saw a big leap in the number of students moving into the advanced category in ELA, from 46 in 2011 to 62 in 2012, and 10th graders specifically showed improvement across the board. In ELA the number of advanced students jumped by nearly 20 and in math by 10. Likewise the needs improvement category in ELA dropped from six to two and in math from 11 to six.At the Clarke School the number of students in the advanced category in both ELA and math rose but it is the significant drop in the needs improvement category that is more telling. In ELA the number of students needing improvement dropped from 41 to 18 and in math it dropped from 52 to 20.Third-grade math and ELA scores held fairly steady with no one failing and the needs improvement categories dropping slightly.Third-graders at the Hadley School saw some dramatic changes as well. The number of students in the advanced category in ELA jumped from 8 students to 23 but the number of students who need improvement in math also jumped from 10 in 2011 to 26 in 2012.Fourth-grade Hadley scores remained steady in ELA but math scores improved across the board. The most significant change showed in the needs improvement category which dropped from 35 students in 2011 to 11 in 2012.Stanley School took some hits with the number of students rising in the needs improvement category in third- and fourth- grade ELA and fourth-grade math, however, the number dropped slightly in third-grade math. The number of students also dropped across the board for third- and fourth-graders in the proficient category.Swampscott Middle School scores remained relatively flat. There were slight drops in the number of students in the warning category for both math and ELA and corresponding increases in the needs improvement category.Saugus scores also told a story that showed overall largely flat scores but with some significant highlights in particular grades.Students across all grades tested at 63 in proficient or higher in English compared to 69 for the state average while 55 tested proficient or higher in math compared to 59 for the state average, which was similar to 2011 scores.An increase in the number of students in warning category was more significant. Third grade saw an increase of three students to 11 in the warning category in math and four to 10 in English. Fourth-grade English doubled the number of students in warning from seven to 14 and fifth-grade math jumped from 10 to 18 in the warning