MALDEN — In these times where educational choices seem to be increasing and evolving, Malden Superintendent of Schools John Oteri is quite clear on the primary goal for the school system he oversees.
“Here’s what success looks like,” Superintendent Oteri told the members of the Malden School Committee at its regular monthly meeting. “(It’s) when every Malden student’s parent sends their child to the Malden Public Schools.”
Oteri voiced this sentiment during his preamble to an overview of the latest Malden MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Test) results, part of which were achieved under the new Next Generation MCAS, for the grades 3-8 students.
Overall, Oteri said, Malden’s MCAS results were positive, when measured against the Massachusetts state average, from top to bottom. He explained the high school MCAS test takers participated in the “old” system, the so-called traditional MCAS test which is a different format and has a different expected result from the Next Generation MCAS test.
At the high school level, the numbers were close to or exceeded the state average in most categories. “Overall we turned in a pretty good performance. Our students’ average scores were right there with the state average and of course a lot of them were were above others at the state average,” Oteri said.
Oteri said the results from the 3-8 Next Generation MCAS were also “not terribly behind the state average,” but again stressed that “the results are not factored into accountability, it’s our baseline. This is the set we will use to evaluate our progress moving forward.”
The English Language Arts was near the state average within a percentage point or two at four of the five Malden K-8 schools and a bit further behind in Mathematics. All five Malden K-8s had considerable gaps below the state average in the Science portion of the test. “Our schools with the highest percentage of English Language Learners (ELL) had the biggest gaps from the state, which was expected,” Oteri said.
Oteri said that moving forward, the grade 3-8 students will again be on the Next Generation MCAS for the 2017-18 school year and high school students will be on the “old” MCAS test path for this academic year before joining the younger students on Next Generation MCAS in 2018-19.
As he had done in a previous meeting, Oteri reiterated the 2017 Next Generation results from grades 3-8 in 2017 “are the new baseline.”
He said that the objective of Next Generation MCAS is more geared toward “finding out where students are at” in relation to the subject matter of the grade level, as opposed to sheer performance results.
The superintendent said that despite any reasons for any level of scores, the schools were moving forward with the same message. “The days of excuses are over,” Oteri said, “We are educating all of our students and we are educating the whole child, academically, socially and emotionally.
“Whether they are Special Education, whether they are just learning the English language and no English is spoken outside the school for them, or whether the student is living in poverty,” Oteri said. “They are entitled to an education regardless of their situation in life and the Malden Public Schools will provide one for them. That is our mission and primary purpose.”
When asked by School Committee members Catherine Bordonaro and Leonard Iovino what next steps could be taken to improve results and what tools the school department needed, Oteri assured them that “we have identified where we have to go next and how our students need to assisted.” He also said that programs are already in place to assist with preparing students for higher challenges and addressing ones they are facing now.
“We are trying to meet students where they are, that is the key,” Oteri said. “We have strategies in place for all subject areas and all grade levels. It’s an ongoing process.”
