[Burke]: present, seven present, none absent, all please rise and salute our flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Approval of the minutes of the March 6, 2019 meeting. Motion to approve by Mr. Russo, seconded by Ms. Kreatz. All those in favor? Ms. DiBenedetto.
[cflR-3VqII8_SPEAKER_20]: On the back of our agenda, there's a... We didn't suppose we'd put that up.
[Burke]: We tabled it. So we added 12 listings, we see that. Is the motion that that be put on reports due? the health policy. On the motion to approve the minutes as amended, all those in favor? All those opposed? Motion carries. Approval of bills, transfer of funds. Motion to approve by Mr. Benedetto. Is there a second on the floor? Mr. Russo has a question. There's an echo happening in here.
[Ruseau]: The $400 to Eastern Bus three different times for Brooks, what is that for? So these are not like PTO events?
[Patterson]: No, student activities.
[Ruseau]: Okay. From their separate accounts. Also on page five, universal screening is under athletic services.
[Patterson]: That is part of the pool account, I believe, the 361. So that would be the screening that they would need for STL, but I can get further clarification for all totals. Thank you.
[DiBenedetto]: Can I waive that report being read and take item number two, report on upcoming MBTA role closures as priority? Motion on the floor for suspension of the rules. Second.
[Ruseau]: Hi.
[Burke]: All those opposed, suspension is granted. Item number two, report on upcoming MBTA road closures. We have Mr. Terry McCarthy with us of the team, who has been the main point person for the GLX project in the city of Medford. You notice he's wearing green. He's a reason. And I'm not the president of the team.
[DiBenedetto]: I'm not doing mine.
[Unidentified]: You didn't. you
[SPEAKER_10]: Well, thank you, Mayor Burke, Superintendent, committee members. Basically, I'm gonna try and keep an abbreviated version. I know you have a lot of items on tonight, but I'll quickly go through a little scope of the project. And a very quick status of the project, and then I'll get right into the maintenance of traffic around the Broadway Bridge. So the MBTA is building seven light rail stations. It's a project about $2.3 billion and we've also purchased 24 new light rail cars as part of the project. has many benefits of bringing public transit to the area. They're expecting it to be able to grow to about 45,000 riders from this area. So this is the project map. This is the existing Lechmere Station. And there's two branches of the Green Line extension, one short branch to Union Square, And then this is the Medford Line, which runs within the low-lying commuter rail. And this is the College Ave Station that is right outside of Tufts University. And then Ball Square, where the traffic detours are coming up for the closure of the Broadway Bridge. That's just kind of the status of where we are in design. Basically, we have about 60 to 70% of the project design work completed and less than 10% on the construction at this juncture. This is a slide of begin with the end in mind. When the green line extension is complete, the commuter rail, the low line, will be running in this corridor. And the new light rail transit system will be there, and this is the cut through to where the community path is down the line. This is the original configuration of the corridor. This past summer, we removed this rail and excavated out this side of the alignment. which allowed us to move the commuter rail over so we could complete the excavation and install this wall. And then 2020, 2021, we'll be excavating on this side to install the light rail transit and the remaining retaining walls. So this comes into the issues of bridge closures. The Broadway Bridge in Ball Square will be closing this Friday and will be closed for a year. So it's a pretty long duration closure. There are also other bridges, but this is the main one that affects the city of Medford So the reason we haven't closed the bridge for a year, this is the red outline is the existing bridge. It only has room for the two commuter rail lines that run through it presently. We're tearing that entire, let me just go back one. We're removing in its entirety this bridge. and installing a brand new bridge with new abutment foundations. And actually the length is going from about 54 feet to 89 feet long. With that, we've had to install a center pier to account for the increased length of the bridge. So this is Broadway Bridge. This is the dialysis center. This is where the bowling alley was. This is Ball Square, Kelly's Diner. And this is the main reason for coming today. The bridge will be shut down this Friday. essentially traffic coming up Broadway would come down Cedar, Highland Ave, the Davis Square area, then College Ave, to Powder House, Circle, and then going up to Warren and Harvard, and then down Main Street to go back around. It The Harvard Street area is a truck exclusion area, which your traffic engineers and Mayor Burke was very much supportive of and advocated for. I'll get back to the truck detour. My slides are out of line. I apologize. This is the local pedestrian detour. So folks and bicyclists would walk and go around. There is going to be a shuttle service. The city of Somerville is going to have a shuttle service, and they're going to open it up to all. Anyone will be able to get on board and take a shuttle basically around here for anybody who needs to utilize the shuttle. This is the Washington Street Bridge, which... I have another slide. Hmm, okay. These are other bridges that will not cause great effect to the city of Medford, but I'd like to quickly go through them just to show that we're closing the Broadway Bridge in... March, and then we'll be closing the Washington Street Bridge in April. Then in June or July, we'll be closing the Medford Street Bridge. So basically, in working with the city and delegation, we're creating three loops of detoured traffic. It shouldn't affect Medford as much, but as you'll see, there's other projects in the area that are going to be going on. So we all have to kind of prepare for very different traffic patterns, almost regionally. And this is the pedestrian. bike detour. This is the Medford Bridge, which is almost dead center between Washington and Broadway Bridge. This is the Somerville High School area, and the bridge is here. This detour in itself is not that disruptive. There's no busing or alternate route work there. It's just that it ties in with the other detours. And I'll show you where this connection, Pearl Street ties into McGrath Highway. And if I go back to the Washington Street, the Pearl Street area which ties in, and at McGrath Highway they kind of circle in. So there's a detour here, and then the Medford Bridge detour is located here. That's the pedestrian and bike path. This is all available online, and I also, if anybody wants this particular presentation, I can certainly email it to you. The other disruption that's occurring with all this is the bus routes. Bus route 80 and 89, that service ball square, and it's just easier to see the map. The 80 bus normally would travel this path, and here's where the bridge is closed, and along and then up Boston Ave. We're diverting it up Main Street. With the support of the city council, we've added, actually, temporary bus stops, temporary being they'll be there for a year. The 80 bus will also stop at the seven other stops along Main Street. So the folks in Medford who live approximately in this area, they will get on the 80 bus by going to Main Street. And a lot of the Ball Square residents we've talked to are talking about either using this set at Magoon Square or at this location we have two bus stops. It will serve as Tufts University and the residents like at the end of Frederick Street and Stanley and alike. The 89 that goes to Clarendon Hill, it has no temporary bus stops. It's utilizing existing bus stops to tie in. The main area it affects with Medford would be along these neighborhoods here, which are very similar. We're predicting that we're going to see people switching from the 80 or 89 and making possibly some other transfer at one of the stations. And then the Sullivan to Davis Square is a shortened route, but it will basically follow along the detours that were put in place for traffic. These are the detours for the Washington Street Bridge. No bus stops are being eliminated. They're just being relocated for the 86, 91, and the Crosstown to bus. So it's still, for example, underneath the Washington Street Bridge, there are stops here, but they're just moving to either side. One thing I wanted to quickly talk about, we've done a significant amount of outreach for the project and this is just a quick view of the public meetings and the flyering effort, robocalls. Clemente has been just phenomenal with helping us out. And we've, South Medford, we took a heavy leafleting and had a lot of conversations with business owners along Main Street and alike. We have a community working group that has just been outstanding helping the project and getting information out to the community. They were here last Tuesday advocating for bus stops and the like, and they're really good. Jim Silver and Laura Wimmel have been just phenomenal, as well as Fred Doerzel. So we've been utilizing social media. We have 6,500 members on our email blast list. The MBTA uses Twitter for service announcements and the like. And we did also regional outreach. One thing that was expressed to us is the cut through traffic is the biggest issue in this area. And that's why I mentioned about the three bridges. looping into us. Our whole goal with what we call our Reboot the Commute campaign was to eliminate as much cut-through traffic as we can. And if anyone's driven down I-93 today, there's big signs that say Somerville backslash Bedford bridges closing and effective date. That's just In collecting regional outreach, we actually collected a list of over 1,000 different entities. And we made contact with 987 of them, predominantly through emails, but left voicemails and web formats and the like. And this one was important to bring to folks' attention in the area. DCR has their Foss Park project that's going on right in the middle of our large detours. We have the Union Square area that has infrastructure, sewer, water, and things being landscape and streetscape type elements. The US2 development is not going full bore now, but it has a potential to. Then MassDOT just announced that they are taking a lane on Route 1, Tobin Bridge renovations, and the Chelsea off-ramp. So that will affect the area regionally. Alfred Street Bridge, which is being worked on now, will be completed in May. And then the North Washington Street Bridge was originally closing completely. And when the state looked at all the closures, they decided a temporary bridge would be needed at North Washington Street. That's the bridge located right at Boston Garden. It's one of the main entry points into the city. And then the big elephant in the room, the Encore Casino, scheduled to open on June 23rd, which is a Sunday, and they expect a crowd as large as a Patriots Day parade type event, so they're prepping for that. They still have some approvals to go, but they're, you know. And that's pretty much it, in a nutshell. Right. And if, I mean we coordinate all the efforts if National Grid needs to work in some place and we have to do some contingency. We actually have been working with Chief Buckley extensively on Medford police details being in the area. I think we have 22 scheduled for when the bridge is closed. But one of the big points of that is community policing. And in speaking with Christine, you know, we've already discussed school buses will be getting through in the small school vans. The MBTA has their ride system that a lot of people use. So we've taken a lot of time to coordinate on what is going to happen and basically getting anybody where they need to be. Also, deliveries, anything in the area will be there to help.
[Van der Kloot]: No, I didn't have a question. I just appreciate the information.
[DiBenedetto]: I know we spoke the other night at the open house for the Green Line extension and all the road closures. My concern is with the rerouting of a lot of this traffic is on Main Street and the Columbus School I spoke to you about is a few blocks away from there. So I'm worried. First, we talked about the backup, and I'm glad that you addressed that with Kirstine the school buses and our parents being directed so that they can drop off their children in a safe, appropriate way and not get stuck in the commuter traffic. But my other concern is how many of our students walk to school. And I'm not so much concerned on Main Street, it's just those people that go into the back streets to get around the traffic and the frustration level of the drivers in that area. So I just want maybe an announcement made to our families from the Columbus School that this change is happening. There'll be a traffic change. Please advise your children to be more aware of cars in the neighborhood, as well as having our police force updated with that. I didn't get a chance to talk to the chief the other night regarding this issue, but some of our students do walk in those neighborhoods, especially our fifth graders that may walk by themselves. So I don't want them to come between two cars an aggravated driver going long way down the street.
[Burke]: If I could, the chief has been extremely involved in this process. I think pretty much weekly at this point they've been meeting with Todd Blake and Tim McGibbon, our engineer. A lot of the streets that might be cut through now will have postings on them, and there will be officers at the other end enforcing it. So a lot of the streets to the right of Main Street, I guess, if you were going to Somerville, a lot of them will be limited to just neighborhood traffic, so not cut-through traffic. And then the schools, I know we moved a bus stop up a little farther up, a new crosswalk we put in. So we can get a message out to the schools, but certainly the police are well informed.
[DiBenedetto]: Dr. Kaye to actually send an announcement to families just to be aware. So they're not, so there's a lot of people aren't really wondering what's going on in Somerville with bridge closures. So it's just a new awareness for those families. Thank you.
[Burke]: Thank you. Are there any other questions? Thank you so much for coming, Mr. McAuliffe, and we will see you soon. Thank you. Is he just here for the one thing? Okay, while we're under suspension, Ms. Mustone has asked us to take item 3, recommendation to approve donation to McGlynn Middle School by Medford Engineering and Survey, Mr. Tucci.
[Tucci]: Good evening, everyone.
[Burke]: Good evening.
[Tucci]: The McGill Middle School has received a donation in the amount of $500 from Medford Engineering and Survey in support of the Mustang Way initiative that rolled out last year. The donation is going to be used to purchase prizes to incentivize students to enter into the Mustang Way essay competition and media contest. And the following is a description of this contest. It will take place in the spring of 2019. In Medford, we're all Mustangs. The Mustang Way is a philosophy or a way of mind that brings all students and staff together. In an essay, approximately about a page long, or a video production, or a voice recording. The students are going to be competing in order to share their own personal reflections. And this money will be used in order to incentivize their participation in this competition and contest. And we'd love to broadcast it to our school community to show how much our new philosophy and way of doing things at McGlynn is the way of the school system.
[Burke]: Very nice, Mr. Tucci. And is it Mr. Veneziano?
[Tucci]: Mr. Veneziano, I want to thank him and Medford Engineering and Survey for their generous donation. And I also want to thank Ms. Hong Lu, a retired teacher at the McGlynn, for helping to get this donation our way.
[Burke]: Very nice. Is there a motion for approval of the donation by Mr. Ruggiero, seconded by Ms. Mustone? Roll call vote, please. Yes, seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative, motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you. How about number four too? There's a recommendation to approve a scholarship. Mr. Toomey, Curtis Top School.
[Patterson]: Thank you. Mr. Toomey could not be here, so I am presenting on his behalf. This is regarding scholarship for a Curtis Tufts senior. And it was the intent is for a $500 scholarship for a trade school or technical program. Someone that the faculty feels has potential as a post high school student. So this scholarship would be, the intent would be to begin with the class of 2019. And they would like to continue into future years as an ongoing $500 scholarship. So it is requested to approve the scholarship for the Donna Palumbo program at the Curtis Tufts.
[Burke]: Wonderful. And Ernice Sauer graduated last year. Yes. Very nice. Is there a motion for approval by Ms. Vandekloot, seconded by Mr. Benedetto?
[cflR-3VqII8_SPEAKER_20]: Roll call vote, please.
[Burke]: Yes, seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. Motion passes. Oh, absolutely. Thank you, letter. To both of those. Item five, recommendation to approve commencement exercises at Tufts University. Mr. DeLava.
[D'Alleva]: Good evening committee and Mayor Burke and Superintendent Edouard-Vincent, asking for a recommendation to have our commencement exercises for Medford High School class of 2019 to be held Wednesday, June 5th at 6 p.m. at the Gantra Family and Convocation Center at Tufts University.
[Burke]: Motion for approval by Mr. Benedetto, seconded by Ms. Kreatz. Roll call vote. Yes, 7 in the affirmative, 0 in the negative. Motion passes. Should be. Should be.
[Burke]: Fingers crossed. It's only March. No. Yeah, no. Thank you. Thank you. The school year calendar, would you like to take that as well? Recommendation to approve 19-20 school year calendar. Ms. Caldwell.
[Caldwell]: Good evening. Good evening. In your package you should have our 2019-2020 school calendar. I have asked all the administrators to take a look at it to see if there are any mistakes made, and I'm hoping there are none. But I sent it to you as well. And interestingly enough, if all goes well next year, we'll get out on June 12th, I think, if we take away those seven snow days. But you do remember the April 1st snowstorm, right? Yes, we do. Do not remind us of that.
[DiBenedetto]: Ms. DiBenedetto. First of all, I would like to make a motion to approve the calendar. But also, I would like this calendar as well as the last day of school put up on the website so people are very clear as to how early our last day of school is. due to the fact that a lot of camps don't open that early. And I don't know what we have scheduled for our summer fun camp, but having such an early estimated last day of school, maybe we could talk to people about even services throughout the city, recreation programs. We need this communicated throughout so parents aren't left without care for their children in an unusual year like this. So those two motions.
[Burke]: All righty. Ms. Vander Ploot. Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Ruggiero, I think. Mr. Ruggiero. Thank you, Mayor.
[Ruggiero]: I just would like to also recommend that we put the lottery date for the middle school selection also on this calendar, if possible.
[Caldwell]: For next year, you're talking about? Yes, that's right. As soon as we know which date it will be.
[Burke]: This is broad, as opposed to high school. Yeah, I understand. I just want to put that. OK, there's a motion on the floor for approval by Mr. Benedetto, seconded by Mr. Russo. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Motion to revert to the regular order of business by Mr. Benedetto. Is there a second on the floor? All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Report of committee, special ed subcommittee, February 5, 2019. Mr. Benedetto.
[DiBenedetto]: First meeting for our community It was Diane Caldwell, Assistant Associate Superintendent. Kathy Medaglio, Director of Pupil Services. Neil Osbon, Director of Diversity and Inclusion for the City of Medford. Bernadette Riccidelli, Director of Curriculum and Instruction. Anthony Petrellis, Director of Summer Fund Program. Alec Luric, a parent. Toni Wray, Supervisor of Health Services. Megan Fidler-Carey, Director of Medford Before and After School Program. Kate Quinn, Method Recreational Department, Emily Lazzaro, Executive Assistant to the Superintendent, and thank you for taking the notes. Dr. Marice Edouard-Vincent, Superintendent of Schools, Tanya Sullivan, CPAC Co-Chair, Melanie McLaughlin, CPAC Co-Chair, Patricia Kane, Della Grace, that's Dr., from Lesley University, Beverly Evelance, Evans from Lesley University, Lauren Carlin, ETL from the Andrews Public School. Our committee had two focuses for this year. One is out-of-school time, and the second is disability awareness. At this meeting, we were focusing on out-of-school time planning and coordination for vacations and summer programs. We started by describing our current programs, our before and after school program, our summer fun camp, and the city recreational program. We discussed staffing and training for all staff and what types of accommodations are made for students with disabilities. Before and after school program has a wait list and suggestions were made to work with Lesley University to try to fill some staffing needs so we can move that wait list along. Also a great idea was to have CCSR and honor students from Medford High School to volunteer to help the program more often. The summer fund camp was discussed and the idea of an earlier registration for programs so we can meet the needs and numbers of the campers was also discussed. Three-tiered pricing for early registration, regular registration, and late registration was offered. A handbook is being created for the staff, one for staff and one for families, so everybody has all the information necessary. And it's clear how our summer fund clamp runs. We have an EMT on staff, a nurse distributing medications, but training for the staff has been minimal. We are working to increase that option. The camp does not ever turn anyone away. They do their best to accommodate all needs. Even if a parent needs last minute registration, no child has ever been turned away from the camp. Students with disability may qualify for ESL in order to maintain and not lose social emotional skills during the summer. IEPs of those students are shared with the camp administration by our special education department in early June. They're changing the registration form to encourage all participants' parents to provide IEPs and 504s for any student coming to the camp. So we're able to prepare for every student's need and make accommodations when necessary. Method Recreation is also present at the meeting and they have a staff member who has a long history of working with students with disabilities. They are open to attend any trainings offered. It felt like it was a very productive meeting. Many steps have been taken already to improve our programming and our communications with families. The meeting minutes have been attached to these notes as well. Any questions, please let us know.
[Burke]: Community participation.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Good evening, everyone. The Roberts School, I want to give an update. On Thursday, March 7th, the Roberts School experienced an unanticipated event that involved the Medford Police and the school being required to shelter in place. This was done in order to ensure the safety of all of the children and adults in the after-school program. I'd like to personally thank the after-school team, school administration, Medford Police parents and students for their cooperative spirit during such a serious time. At that time I released a statement stating that all families had been notified and in fact an attempt was made but not all families were contacted. For that I sincerely apologize for providing misinformation. I was greatly relieved when the serious issue was resolved by the Medford Police. I do not have any other information regarding the incident and I would ask families to reach out to the Medford Police for additional information regarding that. That situation was a learning experience for all of us and we have made immediate internal security changes to ensure rapid communication to all families. Additionally, last Monday at the high school, we had our Black History Month assembly. The Medford High School and the Medford Vocational Technical High School celebrated Black History Month. I would like to thank Assistant Principal Dr. Stacey Mulligan, who took the lead on this project, and she told me the students took the idea and ran with it. They really planned an incredible and entertaining event. I want to thank all of the students who took part in the program. Ebion Abshir, who acted as MC, Jovia Morambe, who performed an Alicia Keys song while playing the keyboard, Chioma Opara, our own student representative on the school committee, she read an original poem, Antonia Collins and Nadia Farmer gave the history of West Medford, and Edwins Bozeal discussed the history of African American music from 1919 to 2019. And he was assisted by Shane Colbert, who also DJed for the event. The students also participated in a fashion show. And I would also like to just extend a special thank you to Headmaster DeLeva. and the Director of Diversity, Neil Osborne, for their remarks. I'd also like to thank Tony Fonseca, a former Mustang Method High School graduate, along with the students who provided a great multicultural drum performance. So it truly was a wonderful event. I also would like to take this opportunity to thank the Citywide Elementary PTO group which put together a wonderful evening with the Harlem Wizards. I'm told that they sold over 800 tickets for the event. The gymnasium was packed and it was truly a fun event for all. I know that they worked very hard on getting this fundraising event together, so congratulations to them, and thank you. Last week, on March 14th, it was Pi Day, and I had the opportunity to celebrate Pi Day at the McGlynn Middle School, and seventh grade teachers Robin Irving and Patty Haas, they had multiple hands-on activities for students. They invited many members of central office to come and participate and it was a wonderful learning event, and they got to see how Pi could relate to the real world. So it was a fun learning time for all that were involved. An update on Tristan Howard. Last Friday, Tristan traveled to New York City to compete in the New Balance Nationals. He competed in the emerging elite division. In the 55 meter dash, Tristan finished in 11th place, completing it in 6.57 seconds. So that's pretty fast. Unfortunately, only the top eight moved on to the finals. However, we're very proud of that accomplishment. And in addition to that, in the 200 meter, Tristan finished in ninth place. completing it in 22.3 seconds. And again, only the top eight moved on. But we want to say congratulations to Tristan. It was truly a great learning experience for him. And the good news is he is only a junior, so we have another year to continue to see what wonderful things he will do. This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend the Japanese Learning School graduation ceremony. They hosted their ceremony at the high school and I wanted to thank Japanese Consul General Michi and Principal Ishikawa for inviting Mayor Burke and myself to participate in that ceremony. There were many graduates. The Japanese Learning School, which takes place at the high school, educates approximately 800 students per year from kindergarten through high school. It also teaches Japanese as a second language. So they have been with Medford High School for the past 45 years. So it is truly a longstanding partnership. And it was a pleasure to share in that special day with them. Lastly, some upcoming events. We have a transition fair getting ready to happen. So that's going to take place on Wednesday in our wonderful Bistro 489 from 6 to 9 p.m. and the Medford Public Schools and Winchester Public Schools Offices of Special Education are holding their annual transition fair designed for students 14 years of age and older with disabilities to help plan for life after high school. Parents, guardians, and students are encouraged to attend this free event to learn about community-based services available for adults with disabilities. The exhibitors will include information regarding support for independent living skills, vocational training, adapted educational programs, and recreational opportunities, and also supportive housing. So that's the transition fair, so please spread the word. And also on Wednesday of this week, it's our early release day, Wednesday, March 20th. And I know that the McGlynn Middle School is hosting a free ice skating event at La Conte for middle school students. And at Medford High School, Priscilla's Pantry will offer rice and beans from 12 to 1230 and CAF 3 for any student who might be interested. And those are my updates for this week.
[Ruseau]: Yes, thank you for that. Could we get a report that presumably would have to be given an executive session on the incident and what went well with our procedures and what improvements we would need to.
[Mustone]: A little light that I have. I had spoken to the chief of police last Friday because parents at the Roberts had just talked to me while I was at school. And when I spoke to him on Friday, he said the man was in custody. He was being held until today. And today he was being arraigned. And I do not have an update. And the chief thought he could possibly get a 30 or a 60-day psych evaluation. So hopefully, there'll be an email when I get home. But the police are very on top of it and want to make sure the Roberts parents know that they are following it very closely. Thank you.
[Burke]: Mr. Rousseau, you'd like to request a confidential document? Yes, please.
[Ruseau]: The school's handling, but also how we interfaced with the police, if there's any improvements we need to make to procedure.
[Burke]: I don't think there was any issues between police and school.
[Ruseau]: I think it was just notification.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, and there were a lot of inquiries, but we truly, I didn't have that information. Remember, Ms. Stone had more information than me.
[Ruseau]: Yeah, I'm just not really clear what our procedures are for how we're supposed to actually handle it. Not that the staff doesn't know, but.
[Burke]: Item seven, on 2018, analysis and curriculum initiatives.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Ms. Kahn's coming forward. The following three presentations from Ms. Kahn, Rocco Sieri, and Dr. Chiesa are going to address a follow-up to our presentation that had taken place in the fall, kind of where we were and what have we been doing strategically as a district, And I believe that all of these reports are going to be quite informative for you.
[Khan]: Thank you. Good evening, everybody. So I'll start from what I have on page 1. Item 1.A gives a brief overview of the report. a test layout of grades 3 through 8 MCAS. This layout with the question type, the table that you see at the bottom, question type, total points, and grade levels. This test was conducted the first time in 2018, so last year Our students took it the very first time with this different kind of questioning format. And when we go to page 2, you will see the rest of the table. And then you will see item 1.B, which is legacy grade 10 MCAS, and students took it. in 2018 for Grade 10 only. So their format still stayed the same, Legacy 1. And this year, in 2019, they will be taking it in the new format, which you will see on page 3. So that layout on page 3 is in line with what our students in grades 3 through 8 took last year. So we see that all grades from 3 through 8 and grade 10 will finally be taking it in the new format for the very first time this year altogether. Otherwise, grades 3 through 8 have already taken it. Then in item 2, this table was also in my October results table. And if we go to page 4, I believe, I hope my pages are matching with yours. We see 2018 Next Generation Mathematics MCAS elementary performance levels, and then we see middle school performance levels, and then so on and so forth. We see high school performance levels, and followed by the CUSP scores by the grade. This table is of special interest because it shows that the students who scored from to $4.99 were there per gram. Thank you. So when you see at the CUSP scores by grades, you see the CUSP data right in the middle. And then on the left-hand side, you see how many met expectations on the left-hand side of that. And on the right-hand side, you will see if these CUSP students would have made it. And 490 to 499 is really pretty close. It's a matter of sometimes having one, two questions, two and a half questions correct, if it's a constructed response. We noticed that, and then we moved on to the next table, elementary school standards slash domains, district versus state performance. You see that in grade three, we are mostly on the positive side, but when it comes to grade four and grade five, we are seeing a negative differential. I'll come back to it in just a couple of minutes. I'm going to move on to page 6, where we see grade 6, grade 7, and grade 8 also on a similar table. And then we also see grade 10. I just did some study of the history of the mathematics program that was adopted, envisions. And it seems, and it appears, and I'm quite confident that's what happened, is that the grade three that we are seeing here with positive results, that's the first class that started using envisions at the kindergarten level. So then grade four at that time, this current grade four was using everyday math, and so was grade five. So it could be that particular class, those two cohorts, did not emphasize on the curricular frameworks at that point because the program probably was out of date. Also, in grade four, we see fractions take over big time. That's a big concept. And we see a differential of negative 11. And I'm not surprised because as a high school teacher, I have seen students struggle with fractions even when Algebra 1 is being taught to them. So you'll see what steps we have taken, but we noted that. We also noted that the similar trend stayed in grade 4, in grade 5, I apologize. And then we are also seeing numbers and operations that students are having difficulty in base 10. And of course, we move on to grades 6, 7, and 8. We continue to see mostly negative differentials. And then we go to grade 10, which is where we see smaller differential in the district possible points and state possible points. What is of special interest to us and will probably help us feeling feel a little better about our scores is that our students, the district means student growth percentile stayed within line of state means, student growth percentile. So if a district student growth percentile of certain classes, SGP stays within 40 to 60, that's considered a good one year growth. Most of our, with the exception of 39.9, it's .1 differential, most of our student growths are there. And in fact, we see at grade 10, it has far exceeded 40 to 60. So that's probably almost a year and a half worth of growth. Next pages have what we have done for the readiness this year and will continue to work on those. We have K through 5. We have taken quite a few steps. They are all listed there. We have also done data coordination for grades 3 through 5, grades who are taking MCAS. And then we have also done quite some work in in-district collaboration and out-of-district collaboration at this level, elementary level specifically. We also have taken action items at the middle school level and at the high school level. And then I have listed the future steps as I foresee for mathematics department for the district.
[Ruseau]: Thank you very much. You're welcome. You gave me plenty of opportunity for questions, but I don't want to keep us here all night. So when I look at these variations between 2017 and 2018, I don't know whether or not there's any statistical significance to the differences. And I don't think the state's website provides that information as I've looked at it endlessly. And they don't tell you anything about whether it means anything. That's right. Do you have the details to be able to know does a change from 6% to 7%? It's easy to get excited when we go up 2% and then get all depressed when we go down 2%. But they could be completely meaningless and have nothing to do with anything other than it's a different set of kids who took the test. That is true. And so that's where I struggle with all this information, is that what's actually important is the state doesn't seem to really be interested in that. But do you have more details that help to understand that?
[Khan]: So if you don't mind telling me the page number and the table number, that will help.
[Ruseau]: I'm on page 4, the first table. Yes. So looking at third grade, exceeding expectations, we went from 6% to 8%, which sounds good. The state went from 7% to 10%.
[Khan]: That's right.
[Ruseau]: And if you didn't know anything about math, you'd say, well, we didn't increase as well as we should have. That's right. how many kids actually took the test, and it's a different set of kids.
[Khan]: There are way too many factors that go into play into that. You know, we – it's like it's 1 percent growth, but when you really – or 2 percent growth, but when you really look into it, it could have been a variety of factors. So it could have been As you said, demographics changed. It could have been a certain set of students were just not feeling it that day. Maybe they didn't have a good night's sleep. Maybe, you know, we failed to identify a particular kind of problem, so they missed one problem. They may have been CUSP students.
[Ruseau]: So we shouldn't get too excited by up and down a few percent is how I take that data. Going up a couple percent doesn't mean we necessarily started doing something better. Just like going down a couple percent doesn't mean we started doing something worse. Okay. And this is referenced in a couple of places. There'll be quarterly Envisioned Benchmark Assessments. That's right. Are those assessments something we – have we been doing them at less frequency, or is it all new that we're going to start doing them?
[Khan]: So we started it this year. We started the assessments this year. And we have taken them right out of envisions because we did not invest in another program that would mimic MCAS-like questions. The best we could do this year was envisions. We took it from them, but we supplemented the multiple choice benchmarks with a constructed response question, which would be more in line with MCAS questions. So the coaches put it together so that the students have a good combination.
[Ruseau]: And are these tests the tests that the teachers are using to assess grades?
[Khan]: Would you mind repeating that, please?
[Ruseau]: Are these the same tests that a teacher would use to assess the grade?
[Khan]: No. Teachers are using unit tests for that. These are benchmarks so that we know where a student is in terms of a particular concept and teachers can work on it. Sometimes we have tested students on a benchmark, on a question in a benchmark, just to see where a student initially is, where a class is initially. How much should a teacher, how much of a time should a teacher dedicate? to that particular concept. What are they coming in with? So benchmarks serve many, many purposes. It could be just to figure out where the class is. It could be to figure out certain, you know, certain subgroups of students. But we have used it for many, many, like the coaches and I actually sit down and analyze the data to see what's going on. And then coaches go back and talk to the teachers about the particular concept that wasn't that we didn't see much performance on in the benchmarks.
[Ruseau]: So, I mean, one thing that I worry about is that we spend all of our time testing the kids and not teaching them. And between MCAS prep tests or whatever the proper terminology is, and these tests, these are all in addition to unit tests teachers are doing. That's right. And so I'd like to make a motion that a report be provided to the committee by April 8, detailing all tests, including practice tests given to students K through 8th grade, broken down by grade level and school, exempting tests teachers give to assess grades, so those unit tests are not included. And I'd like this report to include frequency and duration of the tests, and practice tests need to be clearly demarcated.
[Edouard-Vincent]: How long should the test take? So the only thing with duration would be some students need more time than others, but the intention could be one instructional period that the students are allowed to have.
[Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean not actual duration, just expected duration. And I have it printed so you don't have to... Oh, okay.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
[DiBenedetto]: Thank you. So this is really good data. Even though a small variable or, you know, different kids or different classes or different people taking the test at different times, it gives us a broad area of which areas, like, which concepts in math we're stronger at and which ones we aren't. So I like seeing some of this data. But I don't know if this is broken down by subgroups and what groups of students need more time, more attention, more tutoring for these types of evaluations. So I'm just wondering if you have that data that might be beneficial for people, for us to make future determinations on what subgroups might need, if they need more time, If they need more practice, if they need more facilitators giving the exam or small groups or whatever, we just want to make sure that those students are also progressing and are successful in this and have every opportunity to be successful in this way. So for future reference, some subgroup information when this is presented would be helpful.
[Khan]: Thank you.
[Van der Kloot]: Thank you for this report. On page 5, one of the things I noticed, and you sort of did a side throwaway comment, was that, in fact, at the grade 4 level and grade 5, there really seems to be some struggle with fractions. Yes. And you said, and I noticed this as a high school teacher. So part of that is, and I do see some of your action items do include remedial help. But, you know, it seems like that this is something that we might need to work into some regular classrooms just to make sure that our students really are getting it. So apart from the remedial MCAS sessions, is there possibility to bring this into the regular math classrooms?
[Khan]: Yes. I believe the coaches are already doing that. They have been in the classrooms modeling how to teach lessons that pertain to fractions specifically. And they are also doing some professional development with the teachers to coach them how to deliver the information to the students in a smaller setting with manipulatives or using different hands-on activities.
[Van der Kloot]: Okay, thank you. The follow-up then also was on page 10. For your future items, I see you wrote, adopt an inquiry-based mathematics program that will increase higher-level thinking for a more successful mathematics experience at the high school. Yes. That seems to be a very important piece. I'm wondering whether you're thinking that adoption would take place. We haven't talked about it yet, so I'm not thinking you're suggesting this coming year, or are you?
[Khan]: So it's a great question, and thank you for asking, because it has been at the heart and soul of what I have been thinking about for middle school. I believe there are many, many programs out there, and teachers have been piloting for quite some time, as you all know probably already. And now there are a few programs that are very inquiry-based, very explorations-based, rather than you know, the heavy textbooks from which a teacher could just stand and teach. These programs actually Let students explore. Let the teacher bring the whole class to a conclusion, because the students are already getting there. And then send them back in small groups, then back again together, and then a bigger group summary. So there are a couple of programs out there. I am definitely looking more seriously into it. I have asked the teachers to pilot it. A couple of them have been piloting it for a couple of years now. So I have good data. I have gone to other districts and seen the other teachers teach off of that program. And the name of the program is Illustrative Math by Open Up Resources. And I invite everybody to give it a try if you are interested in finding out more. Then there is Big Ideas book, and then there is, of course, Envision's program as well.
[Van der Kloot]: Okay. And is that something you're going to be bringing to us during budget time? Yes. Good. Yes. Yes. Okay. We have yet to get this. Okay. So good. But we'll be on the lookout for it. Yes. That's why I want to bring it up. Thank you. Yes. Okay. Lastly, I just wanted to mention that this Saturday I was driving in my car and I was listening to NPR and there was a TED Talk on. And the TED Talk was on teaching mathematics. And the particular part that I happened to be listening to was the importance of struggle. Well, because I had the opportunity to go with the superintendent to do one of the walkthroughs in math, and that was one of the criteria that we looked at and that I saw and understood. I just thought that it was just a great thing then to be sitting and listening to the TED Talk about how we should be teaching math. So I just wanted to mention that.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Thank you. I also just wanted to make one comment back on page 5 when we were looking at the difference when you talked about number and operations fractions, and that definitely was something that, you know, stuck out. And the fact that in third grade the students seem to have truly mastered it, so it did make us really think about what Ms. Kahn said earlier about the third grade students had the benefit of using this particular curriculum since kindergarten, where the fourth grade had a different start. And so I'm very curious to see how the students will do, now that we're armed with this information, we're able to kind of be strategic and intentional. about our instruction of fractions. So I just wanted to say that it is something that we are aware of and we're paying close attention to continue to make data-informed decisions for our students. Thank you.
[Ruggiero]: Thank you, Mayor Burke. I've noticed this on page five here. Yes. So there's a significant drop from grade three to grade four. What do you believe? Why is that?
[Khan]: There is a significant drop overall. And that's what the superintendent said, is that we are keeping an eye in geometry. We are looking at all these different strands that are listed here. But we are also keeping in mind that these students were using everyday math. So the program could have been very outdated. I am not too sure what curriculum frameworks was it using. Maybe 2006, I'm going to assume, or maybe 2011. But these students were tested on 2017 frameworks, not on 2011. So the difference from 2011 to 2017 was huge. So we have taught them from a program for like three, four years from 2011 framework. Just one year of teaching on 2017, and now we are testing them on 2017. I believe that also probably has to do something with it.
[Ruggiero]: Do you have a sense of, in the past when we've had these breakdowns, we've been able to see which schools have been performing at what levels. Do you have a sense, are there any, disparities between different schools on these? It's in the first report.
[Edouard-Vincent]: No, but do you have the per subject breakdown on that? Yes. Ms. Lazzaro left the original, the fall reports.
[Ruggiero]: Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, the new one that was on the desk. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. I didn't catch it in the envelope.
[Ruseau]: I do have a follow-up. I forgot to ask this one question. On page nine for future steps, I was a little surprised to see the idea of kindergartners through fifth graders doing 70 minutes of uninterrupted mathematics instruction. I mean, when I was in college, we took a break in 70-minute classes. Can you explain that? Because I don't think it means exactly what I think it means.
[Khan]: Yes. No, thank you for that. This is, again, another excellent question. So in this first year that I'm learning a lot about mathematics being taught at, you know, from different levels, what I'm noticing at different schools is that there are lots, sometimes there are two different breaks during a math block. So we say we are giving them, we are giving our students 65 or 60 minutes of but it's sometimes being split in like 10 or 15 minutes and then we teach something else and then we come back to it and then we take another break and then we teach mathematics again. Sometimes it could be mixed with snack and what not. When we really look at the studies that have proven students to make significant difference in mathematics and have learned math, there's a different way of teaching rather than, or I should say math block can be interrupted, but it should not be such that the whole flow is broken. So when you do it and then maybe sometimes even a different teacher picks up, what happens is that the coherence is interrupted. So that takes away from focus. So maybe another way of looking at it is that do device a mathematics block that keeps student learning and focus at the center of that learning. That's probably a better way of putting it. And so if I may take that back and put it there, that was my equivalent version of it. But maybe again I had my high school mathematics hat on. I apologize.
[Ruggiero]: Thank you very much.
[Khan]: Thank you.
[Ruggiero]: Yes, yeah, follow-up question. So thank you very much for this that you give us today. But is it possible that we could look at, in the future, or perhaps with the report that you're sending to Member Ruseau, is it possible you could do a per-subject breakdown per school? So we could see that maybe we could get a couple more measurement and data specialists at the Columbus. That would be useful for me to see. OK. Just like you've provided the aggregate data per school, it would be very useful for me to know per subject on each school.
[Khan]: So, by per subject, what do you... Oh, by... By strength, you mean by domain standard?
[Ruggiero]: By strength, like geometry, measurement data, fractions, all of these, I guess, subtopics. It would be nice to know the breakdown per school as well. Sure. Thank you. Member Ruseau, would it be okay if I added that to your motion? make another motion. Okay, then I'd like to, or unless we have to, sorry, excuse me. I'd like to make a motion that we have the breakdown for schools that are at the convenient, by topic, thank you.
[Burke]: Excuse me.
[Ruggiero]: No, we remember.
[Burke]: Let a report be provided to the committee by April 8, detailing all tests, including practice tests given to students K-8, grades broken out by grade level and school, exempting unit test teachers to assess grades. This report shall include frequency and planned duration of tests, and practice tests shall be clearly demarcated. There's a second on the floor by Ms. Mustone. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed?
[Edouard-Vincent]: I'm concerned just about the timetable, not getting the information, but getting that information and just thinking in terms of everything else that's being done to have it by April 8th is very quick. I know you said not including the unit assessments, but I would prefer to give you a more accurate list, a more thorough list.
[Burke]: Can you be more flexible with the date that the superintendent?
[Edouard-Vincent]: Sure. Because we have two meetings back-to-back in April, and with back-to-back meetings, that ties up central office very... The time demand is... As soon as possible?
[Unidentified]: May 6th.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes.
[Burke]: Okay, May 6th. Amended to May 6th. Okay, all those in favor? All those opposed, motion carries. And on Mr. Ruggiero's, that this be broken out by school by topic. Yeah. Second by Mr. Benedetto. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, Ms. Kahn. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. OK. Report on 2018 Science MCAS Strategic Analysis and Curriculum Initiatives. Mr. Cieri.
[Cieri]: Good evening, everyone. I hope everyone is doing well. I know you've been here for some hours. I'm going to try to string together some of the strands that are in the report rather than read right from it. So if you bear with me, I'll try to look up at my audience. look back down at the report, make sure I don't miss anything, and then open up the floor for questions that you have on the report. So we'll begin with test design just as Ms. Kahn had. There are two test designs currently. There's the legacy MCAS that all the students took this past year in 2018 at grades 5, 8, and 9 or 10. And then there is the next generation MCAS, which will be administered for the first time in grades five and eight this year. In grades nine and 10, we'll still be with the legacy MCAS. The other component of the next generation MCAS, which makes it a little bit different than the legacy, is that the fact that these are computer-based tests. So we have to keep that in mind that a grade 5 and a grade 8 test in a subject area will be for the first time. They've taken it on computers, but this is the first time that they have a computer-based test in a subject area. The second thing that we want to keep in mind is that the question types change at grades 5 and 8 on this test. And so there's a chart to explain the next generation MCAS exam and the types of questions that the students will face. They will have selected response, which is the term that they use for a multiple choice question. There are multiple select answers, that the students choose from among several answer options. It may have two answers that are correct, and the students have to choose both correct answers. There are technology enhanced questions where students may drag and drop answers onto a picture. There'll be hotspots that they'll have to click. And there'll also be drop-down menus where they'll have to click, drag, and select the answers. In addition to that, it goes to a traditional constructed response, which will be a hand-scored component of the test. And that particular part is similar to what was an open response item in the past. However, you'll notice that the points allocated for that particular type of question is different. It used to be four points. It's gone over to two or three points, depending on the type of question. The second thing that you'll notice on the chart, and I'm on page two just in case you're trying to keep up There are a set of common items for the grade 5 and grade 8 exam. The breakdown tells you exactly how many questions will be of the different types of questions and how many total raw points each student will have to accumulate. And then they also add in what they call matrix questions. And matrix questions are the questions that the testing will use but they won't report. to the student or to districts, but they use them to field test a particular type of question in a topic or also for equating purposes. I believe what that means is they're trying to make sure that there's some internal consistency among different versions of tests and how the test questions are being asked within a cohort of people that take an exam. The reporting categories will more or less remain the same for grades five and eight. It was a breakdown of 25% for each of the content areas in science, earth and space science, life science, physical science, and technology engineering. And this year, In addition to the content reporting categories, they also are reporting on the science and engineering practices. So some of these items will be double-coded when the reporting comes out, and the students will be given a content score and also how they do on their science practices. This is all new to us in the science world. So it's going to be kind of our first exploration in the data in the upcoming school year. And we'll have to see how it all sort of plays out in terms of understanding what that data will tell us. The second thing that I would like you to notice is that after the table on page 3, there's a little statement about the benchmarking. And the benchmarking won't happen until this summer for the first time. So grade 5 and grade 8 exams, the first time these exams will be benchmarked to the MCAS 2.0 like achievement standards that you're used to seeing, exceeding expectations, meeting expectations, partially meeting expectations and not meeting expectations, they will be benchmarked the first time this year. So there's a lot that's going to change very rapidly during this testing period and through the next year. And what that tells us is that our data analysis for this year probably will have to change for next year based on these new data points that we're going to have. So we have to kind of keep that in mind that we're trying to adapt to a new testing type and also make sure that we understand how there's some kind of consistency within the curriculum and within the testing world. So these are new changes and something we need to think about. I'm going to go down to the second section, the data analysis. I reported the achievement data summary table, and I simply summarized it based on this past year's data. And it's essentially a repeat of the report from October 2, but it just takes this year's data and gives you the grade level achievement and the state achievement. And one of the stories that we need to pull from that, and we noticed it back then, was that the grade five scores were significantly different at grade five from the state. And one of the things that we wanted to look at was what does that mean from the district standpoint. And so I looked at different types of standards and CUSP data, very much like Ms. Kahn had done, just to see if there were areas within the content that were a challenge for kids, a particular challenge, and also whether the CUSP data could glean some information from that particular report. You'll notice that that next table from grade five provides you with information on how the district and state did in comparison to one another on the, I guess you could call them the bottom five or the top five most difficult question types of the 2018 exam in grade five, and that's the report that you see. So you see the differential between the district and the state score. For example, at item number 14, that's a multiple choice item, the district scored 66%, the state scored a 76%, correct, and there's a difference of 10%. And then I reported which domain and cluster that ended up in. There were two areas, two domains that really showed some discrepancy, and that would be the life science and the earth science. And that's going to kind of inform the next part of the report, like what do we do with that information and how can we use it moving forward? You'll also notice one of the open responses on that particular test, item number 42, across the state was a very difficult question. Students achieved less than 50% on that, so a 1.84 out of 4.0 scale. We achieved 1.58 out of a 4.0 scale, and that was in Earth and Space, Earth Systems. So again, we're seeing a pattern of content that we want to pay attention to. In the CUSP data, I reported by school, and I included the proficient or above, the needs improvement that were high scores, 236 to 238, and then 230 to 236. Yes. Mr. Russo? On the CUSP scores, wouldn't it be 236 to 239, and also 230 to 235? I believe that they score in two-point increments. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. Okay. And that's kind of unusual. Two-point increments. Yeah. Sorry. When we look at the needs improvement high-scaled scores, we're really talking about a one to three questions point swing, if a student would get one to three questions on that test or points, raw points from the exam to move them into the proficient range for these particular students. It may be slightly more, maybe four questions for that lower group, the 230 to 236, but for that high group, It's anywhere from one question or an extra point on an open response to two questions. And the reason I'm reporting it out is so that we can get a sense of how close students were to achieving a proficient or higher score. And you'll notice that the percentages of students, when we add it all together, puts us in a really different place. And that's kind of important because, again, this is a strand that we want to think about from an instructional standpoint. What is it that we can do to try to bolster a one or two question swing by students while they're taking the test? So I'll leave that. Again, I'm going to let it hang for a little bit, and then I'll pick it up a little later in the explanation. One of the things that we like to do is to get students familiar with tests, test format, the types of questions that they will face. But unfortunately, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education increased the number of questions that they were releasing from 15 to 25 in December of this year, of last year, December of 2018. So the teachers have had very little time. And that was after a request. I was at a meeting where they were explaining that they were going to release more questions. And that was in early November, the very beginning of November. And it took until December to get those questions released to us. So they increased it to one test session. That's what that represents. Those 25 questions are a release of one test session. with the hope that this could be useful to students. However, if you think about how many questions that is, in practice it's very few to begin to think about a strategy around getting students ready. What it can do is allow us to do some kind of mock or practice of one session just to see how the computer works with those particular questions. But other than that, you're really not going to get depth of understanding of whether a student is showing a weakness or a struggle with a particular test type or content area. There's simply not enough questions. Moving forward, the FOSS program includes an online assessment tool for us. that is coded and we could use that, we could leverage that purchase in that program. to allow us to collect some additional data as students move through our curriculum from K to 5. So this can be used as a tool for us. At the lower elementary grades, I wouldn't recommend that process. They're a little young and far enough away from testing that we can find other ways to assess them that is not a computer screen or a paper test to be able to gather some data. There are lots of other alternatives that we can use. In addition, students will be doing a lot of notebooking, and that record of scientific knowledge will be there for them, and we can use that to kind of correlate data and see where students' struggles might be on a particular unit or topic. One of the great things that this body has done is adopted the FOSS program. It is a fantastic program. I congratulate you on choosing this program for our students. It's great. It includes everything, soup to nuts. There were over 35 pallets of equipment sent on December 20th to Medford High School and the McGlynn School, of which we unpacked and got to classrooms. So every classroom now, we're about 99.99% delivered with all of the content materials that we will be paying for in the next couple of years. It's there, and this is an extraordinary opportunity. One of the things that we have done in addition to having this program is that we provided training on March 12th for the teachers on how to use that first unit. And we thought, based on our data, let's go with earth science. That's the area of challenge. It's the best area to begin. It's an exciting topic for the kids. It's very hands-on. And the materials that the kids will use are absolutely developmentally appropriate. And the teachers are really excited to be able to go through and use this stuff. So it's a great benefit. The second thing that will come of this is next year, when we start school, we're going to start with earth science. So even though we're switching the order of things for this first year, last earth science and first earth science, this is a huge benefit. And the teachers having that familiarity with it this year And going into next year with the training and having the familiarity is going to make it that much quicker for them to comprehend what's going on and being more comfortable with the materials. We'll then move to physical science and then to life science in the spring. It has many, many living things that'll be in the classroom. And those are a bit difficult to keep alive and to keep in a classroom in the fall or in the winter just because, you know, the springtime is when all of these things are born. So we have to order in the spring and teach life science in the spring, but it's a great time to be doing that particular unit. So it's going to match up with so many exciting things for K to 5. At the 6th through 12th level, we are refining some of our curriculum topics. One of the things that I want to advise against is using the grade 5 data exclusively to move forward and look at the deficits, because the standards change when you go to grade 6 and grade 8. And they change to a degree that they're not necessarily connected in the same way that they are in a mathematics or an ELA curriculum. They change and they're new in some cases. There are strand maps available to make conceptual connections, but that's a really difficult thing for both a teacher and a student to follow what that sort of theoretical connection is between one content area and another. And so the grade 5 exam, while an important data point, doesn't really serve a forward-looking curriculum. We'd have to look ahead to that. And that's why we work on curriculum with grade 6 and grade 7 in particular at that grade level. As we said before, the MCAS exam is still giving us some limited information to be able to use. We'll work on that as more test questions are released. Excuse me. In grades 6 through 12, I'm on page 7, just if you're following along with me. Actually, I'll start at the top at the future steps. So I'll move to page 7, future steps. Grades K to 5, we have a challenge. It's hard to know what the early indicators on struggling is. because we wait until grade five to take that test. And so it's hard to know at grade three and grade four what content areas the students struggle in. And so we're going to try to leverage those FOSS materials. A second thing that we want to think about, which I think I mentioned before with the CUSP score, If students are one or two questions away, that's test-taking strategy. That's eliminating choices. It's narrowing down. It's highlighting. It's looking at what the question is asking and using all of those skills to make sure that you understand what that one question is trying to get in terms of an answer. And then there are writing, very simple writing things like restating what the question is asking your answer, providing the evidence that is found in the question to support an argument. These are really simple things that kids can do and that they're taught. They're taught by teachers. They're test-taking strategies. They're not necessarily content or curriculum-based decisions, they're done right in the classroom. And just bringing that to the surface as we instruct and we encourage kids will be a strong, hopefully a positive way of making sure that the students move from that needs improvement category of what will be partially meeting expectations to the meeting expectations. In the grade 6 through 12, middle school, again, we've talked a little bit about content and curriculum review, but we also want to think about perhaps investing in a new program at some point for middle school. And the teachers have expressed that interest. So this year, as the year kind of wraps up, we're going to have a committee that comes together to review what's available. I've given you the name of the one program that came back with the green light. It's called Amplify Science. The good thing is this is directly connected to the FOSS program. It's the same people that developed Amplify Science. And so we're looking at maybe refining some things. keeping a program that started in K-5 moving into grades 6 through 8 with some modifications. The challenge of an amplified science program is that it does require technology. So we've got to think about, do you go with a FOSS program that has dual type opportunities, or do you invest in technology and go with a program like an Amplify Science? Something that you'll think about down the road. It's distant away, but something that we want to keep on our radar as we move forward. Again, we're not going to tie ourselves to a program. We're going to investigate. the best of the best, bring them in, have them present their programs, and then make a recommendation to this body, and then decide whether we want to pilot this year or not. We can make a decision not to and wait it out, or we can go with a pilot. Usually when you tie yourself into a pilot, the expectation from the vendor side that I've learned this year is that you will purchase a program, one or another, and you will give them some guidance about your decision making. So it's important to provide them that information, which I did for McGraw-Hill last year and for FOSS this year. So those are sort of the big pieces that are in the report. I do give you a list of some of the out-of-district initiatives. I don't want to go through them all, but I do want to just acknowledge the partners. I think Tufts University, you can tell, the chemistry department, the engineering department. the Office of the President, have been very big supporters of what goes on in Medford, in particular in the Department of Science. And so we want to continue that and nurture that partnership because it's very, very beneficial from an instructional standpoint, from a student experience standpoint, and from all kinds of other opportunities that they have, that they've provided to us, specifically to Somerville and to the Chinatown community, where their three locations are found, their three campuses are found. The second thing that you'll notice is something that we have put together through an NSF-funded program. We're in year three of a project called Precipitating Change. This particular project is enormously innovative because it uses near real-time data. It teaches kids how to analyze weather events first, and then uses data, and tries to simulate on paper and using technology how a weather event is tracked. And if we've noticed the past few months of data, even maybe the past two weeks of some of the weather events that have occurred, we know that this is sort of a very rich area of finding information. And so arming our kids with the ability to understand how that data is collected, analyzed, and looked at from a broad scale is a really powerful thing. And this is going to be shared nationally once it's done with other school districts, and also it comes home to us as a completed project so we can continue to use it. It's really, really amazing what's going on. And the data that Millersville University is involved in the data analysis, they've noticed some off-the-chart data with what the kids are performing on tests that look at them. You know, we're a district, I feel like, that has made some really positive moves. I'm hoping to see some positive moves in the data. We know where our weaknesses are and where our strengths can be. And hopefully, we can move forward. I'm going to conclude my report there and leave it open for questions. Mr. Giro. Yeah, make sure you have them.
[Ruggiero]: Thank you for the report. I really appreciated the executive summary here. Can we just go to page four of your report, please? Sure. So just sort of walk me through this table at the bottom of page four. So there are a number of domains and clusters that are associated with them, and these are the highlights, the areas that we need work. Is that basically the end?
[Cieri]: Yes. So if we were to look at a strand, at the test itself, what we try to cull is the questions that the students struggled most on. And the top five on the list are reported to you. Those particular ones are showing some weakness as a group on the earth science and life science questions.
[Ruggiero]: But you don't get a whole table that says item 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10?
[Cieri]: We could do that, but these are the ones that are the most revealing to us as a district. And then we want to make sure that if there's only one question in a particular cluster, that we don't take that as the rule of what goes on for that particular topic.
[Ruggiero]: Right, right. It would be just useful to me. I mean, there's no rush on this, but if we could get like a PDF, save the paper of all the different items and the districts and state scores, it would just be helpful for me just to get a more complete sense of what's going on. I appreciate the executive summary and not like a thick binder of problem, you know, issues that we can look on now. But at home, it would be nice for me to look over these domain by domain. And if we could break that down by school, I mean, is it challenging to break down by school or just a printout? It would be really helpful to me to see what areas that we could, perhaps there might be an environment that we could leverage someone in the community that has experience with something, for example, molecules to organisms.
[Burke]: Okay, all set. Mr. Russo, point of information?
[Ruseau]: Yes. We, when we get the item number, we get item number, we don't actually get what the question was, right?
[Cieri]: You can see the question. Oh. So in these particular instances, you can actually see the question. So if you went to grade five MCAS, you can get the question.
[cflR-3VqII8_SPEAKER_20]: OK. Can we get the question? Sure. That's awesome. Thank you.
[DiBenedetto]: All right. Mr. Benedetto. Thank you. I want to thank you for the report. I'm very excited about the new science program, I'm sure. Other members are thrilled that we're going to be getting that as well. But I also would like, not for this report, but in future reports, subgroup categories as well as school categories, just to make sure that all of our subgroups are meeting similar benchmarks to our to each other. And also, CUSP scores. I know all of you present CUSP scores, and I know that that data is important and informative for planning purposes, but I also want to know, I want people to know, yeah, we were two or three questions away. I don't want to, not that you are, because I don't think you are, but in general, in past years, it was like, oh, but we were so close. We want to name what we are so we can move forward. I don't want to get too tied up on CUSP scores, like we're almost there. I want to use it for data purposes to build and think, but I also want to acknowledge this is what we are and own what we are, so that way we make concrete steps to move forward.
[Van der Kloot]: Ms. Van de Kloop. Rocco, thank you for your report. I am a little bit concerned and I just hope that the requests that members have made are not going to tie you up for hours and hours and hours to generate additional data. Is that a problem?
[Cieri]: We can pull the report. I'm not entirely sure how long it will take, but we can get it done.
[Van der Kloot]: Right. So sometimes I think that there's a problem wanting additional data, but also wanting to make sure that we're not tying up our professionals for doing the work that they need to do. So I'm a little concerned about that. But mostly exciting in your report was the suggestion that there was a middle school program that would build on what we have just adopted with the Amplify Science. So I look forward to hearing that. Is that possibly? Could that be tried out next year? Is that what you were suggesting?
[Cieri]: So what I'll do is I'll bring together a group. It'll be an open group, the same way that we did for the elementary program. Hopefully members from a variety of constituents will come together. We'll look at programs from vendors that provide them, review them, rank them, and then provide you with what we think are the top programs. I'm assuming that this one will come rise to the top. I can't say that for certain, but this is the one that has gotten the green light from Ed Reports.
[Van der Kloot]: So would that happen by the beginning of next September?
[Cieri]: So if I brought a report of that type, it would probably come out in June. This June? Yeah. Great. You know, I spend the summer just trying to work out some kind of plan if that's the direction we want to go.
[Van der Kloot]: I just think it's exciting. We can build on the momentum we have. And so thank you very much.
[Burke]: Very good. Is there a motion to accept this report, place it in the file, and follow up from some of the data points? I'm sure that the superintendent will be in touch with you on what's been requested. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, Mr. Seery.
[cflR-3VqII8_SPEAKER_20]: Thank you.
[Burke]: Item 9, report on 2018 English Language Arts MCAS strategic analysis and curriculum. Dr. Chiesa.
[Chiesa]: Good evening, everybody. Mr. DeLave is going to set up my projector, because I have a few things to showcase for you. So just wait one minute for him to set it up. Is that OK?
[Burke]: That's okay. Thank you. I don't mind. Someone move suspension and we can take some of the other. Come on. Suspension by Ms. Van der Kloot, seconded by Mr. Benedetto. All those in favor of suspension? All those opposed? Suspension is granted. New business school committee resolution be resolved that the Medford School Committee expresses sincere condolences to the family of Dorothy Palladino. Ms. Palladino was the mother-in-law of City Council President and former school committee member John Falco, Jr. Ms. Palladino was an active member of the Friends of the Medford Public Library, and we also have two under suspension. We have resolved that the Medford School Committee expresses sincere condolences to the family of Anthony Staffier. Mr. Staffier was a security officer for Medford Public Schools for over 30 years. and also be it resolved that the Medford School Committee expresses sincere condolences to the family of Phyllis Louise McCormick. Ms. McCormick was a first and second grade teacher at the Osgoode School in Medford for many years and received a key to the city when she retired. Osgoode was my home school, so I had the privilege of knowing Mrs. McCormick and her sister, Mrs. Carroll, and just amazing teachers. I ran into her often around the community, so she will be missed. If we could all please rise for a moment of silence. Thank you. Is there a motion to revert to the regular order of business by Ms. Van De Kloet, seconded by Ms. Di Benedetto. All those in favor? All those opposed? Ms. Chiesa. Hi.
[Chiesa]: First of all, I want to begin by thanking you for the opportunity to be here tonight. We have an opportunity in the fall to present you with the initial data. And I know that Ms. Kahn, Mr. Seery, and I are excited to be here tonight so we can showcase to you what we do after that initial meeting, which, as you've seen from both of them, is quite a lot. I'm going to begin tonight by providing you with some information about the ELA MCAS test design. And similar to mathematics, we are dealing with two different exams. one at the three through eight level, and one at the high school level. So, as you know, the elementary is involved in the next generation ELA MCAS. This is an extremely comprehensive assessment, and it's taking into account multiple layers of ELA skills. Writing, language, reading comprehension, and analytical skills. Students in grades three through five are assessed using the pre-K through five learning standards, and three content strands. So in front of you up there, you have four of the different, what they refer to as anchor standards, that encompass our entire English language arts state curriculum. Reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language. And of those four anchor standards, we are assessed at the MCAS on three out of the four. which is reading, writing, and language. And all three are present within all of the exams. The reading anchor standards, I'm sorry it's small, but I know you have this information in your report, but what I want to emphasize here is that the reading standards are much more than just decoding and fluency and the ability to decipher those words. In fact, the reading standards encompass key ideas and details, craft and structure, integration of knowledge, and ideas. And there's also a level of complexity. The writing anchor standards similarly... Is that writing or is that language? The writing anchor standards talk about much more than just the ability to write a paragraph. They are saying, does the student know the different text types and purposes? The student has to show the ability to produce and distribute writing. The student has to show the ability to research and build present knowledge. And the student also has to have a range of writing. In addition to that, we have the language standard. And the language standard is not just standard English conventions, which is what we normally think of when we hear language, but it's conventions of standard, but it's also knowledge of language, such as figurative language, and also vocabulary acquisition and use. And students in grades 6 through 12, although what you're looking at in front of you is elementary, students in grades 6 through 12 have the same anchor standards and the same domains there. You've seen the assessment as well. You have that. I provided that to you this weekend. So if any of you did some homework, you may have understood from that that this is much more than just the ability to read the passage and answer a few questions. In fact, it's quite difficult in nature. When taking the assessment, students have to read multiple passages and answer challenging multiple choice questions. This is going to give you an overview of the general sense of how a next-generation test is broken up. We have a variety of one-point questions. You can see there, there's 21 to 27 one-point questions. This is approximate, but it gives you a sense. There are also a number of two-point questions, so the student will get two points for answering those questions correctly. There are three essays that the students are graded on. However, often students will have to answer four essays over a two-course day, over a course of two days. And then it has the total points on the test. Reading, language, and writing is divided into different percentages. Generally, and again this is general, Generally, reading accounts for 50%, language 20%, and writing 30%, giving us that 100%. So we can see it's encompassing a variety of different standards, reading, writing, and language. One thing that we want to keep in mind is when we're thinking about reading comprehension, the test itself, when we switch to the next generation, had a renewed emphasis on looking at two, and sometimes at these upper levels, three passages when answering questions. Several questions that these students take are multi-tiered. So it could say, what is the main idea of this passage? And then that's part A. And then part B may be, what is the textual evidence that brought you to that response? And there's obviously, bullet three, a new emphasis on textual evidence. There are some examples of questions. It says, which statement best describes a major difference between the author's purposes in two different excerpts? So the child is looking at two excerpts, having to understand what the author's purpose is in both, and then being able to decipher what the major difference is between the two. I provide this example to show you that there are many steps in answering these questions, and that's another reason why I gave you a version of a few different grade levels. Similarly, there's a question that says, read the sentence from paragraph 13 of this passage. It gives you the sentence, and then it says, which sentence from the other passage, instead of detention, makes the same point? So again, a lot of comparing between different passages. And that's a shift for us at the elementary, middle, and high school level. It's a shift we've prepared for over the past couple of years because we had this exam last year, but it's something that we are looking at when we prepare for this exam. We have two-part questions, as I mentioned, what ideas presented in both passages, and then choose the set of details that best supported your answer. And then there is that new emphasis on textual evidence, which I already talked about. You received in your packets the paper version of the test, but our kids receive, except if you were a third grader last year, received the... take the... the test is administered, excuse me, obviously, on the computer. So if I'm taking the test as a fourth grader, I am seeing two different passages pop up. And I have my little pointer here. If you notice, sometimes we deal with some technological issues. So we see that sometimes a child would think that that stopped there, but they had to scroll down to see more. See what I'm saying there? So we have a technology component that we're working with as well that often will hinder someone. They'll say, oh, this is in front of me. But no, we have to get them used to the fact that, no, you need to scroll down to see the end of the story. When they are answering questions, students have the ability to toggle between the two passages. So this is tab one, and then this would be tab two. And they can go back and forth when they have different sets of questions. Again, taking into consideration that that is not always an easy thing for a fourth grader, an eight-year-old, to do. I've had my own eight-year-old practice He's back and forth, toggling back and forth. It can be challenging. So we deal with these technology issues as well when we think about the MCAS. I know it's late, so I won't go through all these questions. I do want to show you that we also, in addition to textual evidence questions and analytical questions, they also have something called technology enhanced questions, which are generally two points. A technology enhanced question is going to have the student answer a question about the reading passage, but now they're going to have to maybe drag and drop a response. Or here they're going to have to choose different pieces using the trackpad on the Chromebook or the mice on the desktop. When we look at writing, so those are the reading comprehension questions, the multiple choice questions. When we look at writing, We also have to keep in mind that we are dealing with writing now in response to the text. So all of the writing that is asked of the next generation test relates back to an excerpt and often excerpts that they will read. Writing types can include argumentative, informative or explanatory, and a narrative. And there is one rubric used for all writing types, which is, let me find it, I'm going to go out of order for a minute, the rubric. I know it's small, but the rubric grades you on idea development and standard English conventions. So two separate scores, one for idea development and one for standard English conventions. I share this with you because these are things that we look at with my staff, K through 12, three through 12, to figure out where are we falling down in the writing or where are we doing well. So it's split up. The essay questions can range. I have a few examples for you here. The second bullet says, based on drive-ins, the last great picture show, write an essay explaining why drive-in movie theaters appeal to families. Be sure to use information from the article to develop your essay. Another essay could ask the child to write an essay explaining the themes in Celeste's heart and principles and principles, and be sure to use how they are similar. and be sure to use information from both passages to develop your essay. So it's really giving the kids not just superficial knowledge of reading an essay and giving me the main idea, but digging deeper, getting into that analytical, not just what is the theme, but how is it similar and what can I do to get there. When I'm answering an essay online, if I'm asked to answer between two passages, I'll have this ability to toggle. and then I'll have my space to write. Some students, especially at the elementary and middle school, have to be reminded that they can go beyond this box. So that's another technology issue that may seem obvious to us, but certainly not to a child. So we work with them on that, in addition to, obviously, the writing ability. And this is an example of an informative explanatory essay. What we are seeing at the grades 3 through 8 has been a narrative essay where the child is asked to continue writing a story using dialogue or retelling a story in a different point of view. That's our narrative. Here it is again. And what we're seeing for our other type of essay is we're seeing that analytical piece where they're reading one or two essays, identifying perhaps the theme, the mood. You had the examples in your packages, so you can see different types of questions. And then they're writing about that, always using textual evidence to support. At the high school, this will be the first year we're using next generation tests, we're seeing them use editorials. But the state has made it very clear that any writing genre is up for grabs. So we have to plan accordingly. We can't just focus, you know, when we're preparing for that MCAS, we need to be aware that all the genres in our sequence need to be, the child needs to be exposed to them throughout the year, which they are. When they were graded, as you know, they're graded on exceeding expectations, meeting expectations, Progressing to expectations or not meeting expectations. The test includes common and matrix questions, as Mr. Seery talked about. Common questions are counting to the score, and matrix are not. But we don't know which is which, so we could have that kiddo at the end of that second day just complain old exhausted when they're writing that fourth essay over the course of two days. So we deal with the issues of stamina as well when we're preparing for a test such as this. At the last school committee meeting when we talked about the MCAS, Mr. Russo, you asked me why grade 3 said reading instead of English language arts. So I don't know if you recall that question, but on the school report card, it lists grade 4 English language arts, grade 5 English language arts. So when we're going to the school report card, we are seeing how our school performed in the English language arts. But grade 3 said reading. misnomer, which we talked about. But what I did is I took it upon myself to email the state and ask them, why are you listing this as reading when clearly there are many different anchor standards you are noting? They actually responded to me late tonight, or earlier today, and they have said, and I have a copy if anyone's interested, which maybe, can I pass it to you? What they said was that this wasn't a misnomer, that they thank Medford for calling this to their attention, and that they will be submitting a request to change grade three to read as English Language Arts and not reading, because as I said in my email to them, I was correct that it is much beyond just reading. And as you can read from this email, it says, reading is one of the three reporting categories in addition to language and writing. So I want to be very clear that we are looking at a multi-tiered exam. So tonight, when I go over the analysis, what I'm looking at is the overall analysis which you had provided to you in the fall, the cusp analysis, the anchor standard analysis, the domain and standard analysis, and the student growth percentile. These are just examples of some of the analyses that we do as a three through 12. And I say 12 because we do have 12th graders that are still sometimes working to achieve that competency determination. I've heard subgroups come up a few times tonight. That is something we look at, but I don't have it in this report provided tonight. But I do want the committee to know that that is something that we look at as a staff. So if I look at the grade level, the first page three of your document has how these are pieces of information that you were provided with at the fall report, how we did overall in comparison to the state. I know that one of the questions looked at statistically significance. You can recall that in grades three and four we were above the state. I'm not going to go over that with you all. I know it's late and you've had a long night. But some of the things I might call out to refer to What does this percentage mean is if we look at grade three, for example. Grade three in 2018, we're dealing with almost the same amount of kids in 2018 versus 2017. So we had 339 third graders in 2017. In 2018, we had 332. I share that with you because in 2018, we had 183 kiddos achieve exceeding and meeting expectations. And in 2017, we had 153. So I want to give you some numbers there to see that we really moved that dial about 30 kids into that meeting and exceeding expectations. Again, just giving you some numbers instead of just the percentages. Similarly, in grade four, we had 28 students in our district exceed expectations in fourth grade in 2018. And in 2017, we only had 17. For meeting expectations in 2018, you see it's 45% of our district met expectations, which equates to 149. And in 2017, we had only 34%, equating to 96. So we do have some jumps in number, and I don't know if that helps answer some of the concerns in terms of what is statistically significant. You've already seen data on pages 4 and 5, but I included it there just to remind you. A reminder that the high school took the legacy MCAS this year, which had really very little to do with referring to an excerpt when they were writing the long composition. The writing was more about pulling from their prior knowledge of novels or different excerpts. And now this year, the high school is moving to the same format that the elementary and middle school have been accustomed. So we are preparing for that. When I look at the CUS scores, which is on page 6, what I've done for you is I have provided you with the percentage of students in each grade level that met or exceeded expectations. I then looked at the CUSP, which was the range of 490 to 499, and looked at that percentage of students. And then that third column, which says meets expectations performance level with CUSP differential, will show you what it would have been had those CUSP kids achieved the 500 mark. So again, I know Rocco has mentioned this, this is not where we were, but you can see it would have made a significant difference. If our CUSP kiddos had met that 500 mark, we would have had 78% of our third graders meeting or exceeding expectations, which is quite significant. We would have had 68% of our fourth graders, 67 of the fifth, 64 of the sixth, 57 of the 7th graders, and for 8th grade, 62%. Further into this report, I'm going to provide you with additional information on the various initiatives that we do to support these students, including departmental-specific interventions and deficit analysis to try to move the needle and support them into getting into the meeting expectations range. Similar to some of the other reports, the ELA MCAS, as I showed you earlier, is broken into what we call the anchor standards. So one of the things we do as a department at the first stage of analysis is we look at how we performed in the three different anchor standards. And so that is provided for you grade by grade. I won't go over all of it, but the last column shows you how the district did in comparison to the state. So if we're looking at grade 3, we see that we have a good story there. We are plus 3 in language. We are on par for reading. And we are plus 2 for writing. Grade 4, we have some minor deficits in reading and writing. And you can go through the different grade levels to see how we stand. But they're minor. They're like 1 percentage point above, 1 percentage point below as you go through the different grade levels. And there's some variances in there as well. have it for every grade. But again, I know it's late. I know you've had a long night. I'm happy to answer any questions on this. One thing I want to mention is that as we go forward, this for us as a department is just stage one. What we then do is we dig deeper as much as we can. And we look at the domain and standard analysis. So that's when we're digging into the questions. And we look at what the type of question was, what exact standard it was and where the deficit lied. So then we try to go to the question if it's available by the state and see, you know, is this something that's going on with our curriculum? Are we not teaching figurative language early enough? Did the question, was the question just very wordy and confuse the students? What was the issue with the standard? And so what you see on the screen, is just a basic example of where we might begin as a group. So we may start pulling out, okay, this is our area of strength, this is our area of weakness, and then pulling into the standard and seeing, was it the question or was it the standard? Was it something in our journeys curriculum that we need to change the sequence of? Was it something at our middle school level that we need to move around or we need to add to? And these are where we make some decisions. And sometimes we say, you know what, it was just the question. If you look at some of these examples, you'll see the same standard could be a strength in one example, and it could be a weakness in another. So grade four, we have a strength of 1.01, but it's also a weakness. So again, sometimes it depended on the type of question. Something that's very important to me is the student growth percentile. And what you'll see here is looking at the mean SGP. So at each grade, the mean SGP was strong for Medford students in grades three through eight, taking the next generation ELA MCAS. In each grade, we were higher or equal to 48%. We have our fourth grade's mean SGP at 49%. 5th grade, 49, 6th grade, 48, 7th grade, 51, 8th grade, 61, and 10th grade, 58%. So we are growing as a district year by year. Any questions I can answer before I move to what we do next with this data? Okay, so what we do next, working with myself and my two lead teachers, Mr. Bowen Flynn and Ms. Sanford, one of whom is here tonight, we look at, we do a variety of different things. And instead of going through each piece, what I want you to think about this is themes. Our first step is data analysis. The data I'm sharing with you is really the first layer for them. Every teacher at the secondary, middle, and high school level have a data drive that I've established for them where they have the MCAS data, data from Study Island, other pieces of data to make data-informed decisions in their classroom. And what those drives may look like, for example, would be they would have the item analysis, so step-by-step of how each of their students, their former students did, So they can see where the curriculum areas are where we struggled and where we were strong. And then they also have their current students. So we build a macro in order for them to see how their students that are in front of them are doing. So they can work on deficits with the children. It's not an easy task, but I believe it's very important. So every single teacher has that there. At the elementary level, I personally go and meet with each grade level. and go through with them the different kids that are on the cusp, the areas where we saw strengths, the areas where we saw weaknesses, and how we can grow from there. And similarly at the high school level, although we're switching, moving courses, we're doing a similar amount of work. The second theme would be professional development. We look at where, once we've dug very deep, we look at where we need additional support. So at the elementary level, we may say, you know what? We need to look more at what our online platform for journeys has. And we've done some PD on that. Or we might say we need more support on our response to intervention. And we've brought in professional development for that as well. At the middle school, we recently just had somebody come in and do power writing strategies for us because we saw that we needed a little bit more support for writing. We also dig very deep with the analysis, and we've had different PDs led by myself and also led by the lead teachers on looking, how do we really analyze this data and take the next steps? And then at the high school, we've similarly had PD on writing, and we have one coming up this week on instructional strategies for poetry and student-led discussions, which is an MCAS, but again, We're not driven by that. It's a piece of what we do. We then also look at instructional shifts. So we may say, you know what, we need to do a little bit more analytical piece at the middle school. We need to move more to excerpts. Or certainly the high school is having some dramatic shifts as they move away from the long composition, and we looked at refining our writing sequences to support the students. and a variety of different pieces. And then we look at what materials we need. You may notice that at the elementary level, to support both our wind block and beyond, we have purchased learning A to Z for our first and second grade kiddos, allowing them to, those independent readers that want to do a little bit more can do that with that, and then the ones that are struggling, we can do a little bit more practice with them. We also look at schedule changes, which is very important. We've done quite a lot of work on our WIN group, which is at the elementary level. I run, not only have we fully implemented WIN in grade one and two, we have also, I am also running the WIN advisory committee, where we are looking at what are we going to need to focus more on? Do we need more on blending segmenting? Were our assessments on the blending, segmenting, decoding enough? And we have been able to carve out time in the elementary schedule to support those kiddos more effectively and efficiently. At the middle school level, we've looked at what our reading specialists, what students they serve, and we've made some changes as well. So we didn't always have the reading specialists targeting intervention groups at grade 6. We've done that now. We've seen a deficit in our sixth graders this year. Not a deficit, but we've seen some extra needs for intervention. And we have made some steps working with Mr. Tucci and Mr. Downs to allow for that schedule shift so the sixth grade readers can have a little bit more support if they need that. And similarly, at the high school level, I've worked with Mr. DeLeva quite a bit on how are we supporting the ELA literacy piece for those kids that need some additional support. We also have an MCAS challenge class for our 10th graders at the high school who have shown that they need a little more support. We do practice to reduce test anxiety and to try to overcome some of those technological issues that we are seeing come up. And we also have recently, with the support of central administration, implemented in ELA Enrichment Academy, which looks at the literacy needs of our kids in elementary grades 3, 4, and 5, middle school 6, 7, and 8, and really working to hone in on those students that need some additional support. The last piece, and again, I'm trying to summarize because I'm sure you're all very tired, is we do look at the technology piece as well. You know, do we need... something as simple as a mouse for those kids to take that test. We saw problems on our drag-and-drop questions. When we went to the question to say, why are we struggling here, we found out it was a drag-and-drop question. And we saw the question, the kids, it was not a difficult question. They should have performed a little bit better on that. And so we look at providing some additional supports. in those areas as well. Yes?
[Mustone]: Sorry, thank you. I was surprised at what the fourth graders are expected to do with the technology. Does the computer teacher at the elementary schools do any of those preps or practice, or is it only in the classroom?
[Chiesa]: So we've worked with, I've worked with Ms. Layden to determine what piece of, like the keyboarding, for example, is a real struggle for the little guys, right? And how, what is going on in their classroom to support the general classroom teacher. So we do do some of that. The practice tests that are available online, which I could send you all a link to, because it is quite different from taking that paper version, we do have the kids do, there's three sections to it, and so throughout the year, we have them spend one literacy block only, because we don't want to take too much of the time, but we feel it's important for them to see it. One literacy block, three times a year, to actually do the practice test, so they're seeing those areas. The first one, the teachers walk them through. And I don't know if you've had a chance to see it, but there are different tools, like a highlighting tool, and so the teacher can walk through some other pieces that may not be as obvious. So yes. But that, you know, is something that we struggle with, particularly in the English standard conventions. Why is our convention score low? Is it because they just didn't put period, shift, you know, for the capital letter? Or is it because they don't know how to use apostrophes? And working at the elementary and having a lot of really good conversations with those teachers, we're seeing some of it. Not all, but some of it is related to tech. So I've really taken an interest in trying to overcome those barriers as well, especially where this year our third graders will be doing it online, too. I'm curious to see how that will impact the overall scores as well. Thank you. I feel like I'm talking too much, so I can end, but you have a list. Mr. Russo has a question.
[Burke]: Mr. Russo?
[Ruseau]: You know, I mean, there are several computers in my house, and we haven't had a mouse in my house in a very long time.
[Chiesa]: A real mouse or a technological mouse? Well, I have real mice.
[Ruseau]: The one attached to a computer.
[Chiesa]: Gotcha, I know.
[Ruseau]: And you know, one of the things that's really interesting, you can go to YouTube and watch videos of people who've never used a mouse, try to use a mouse. It's like trying to drive, just no instruction. Yes. And so, you know, I guess I'm just really concerned about third graders being expected to use this technology, but all the way up, if, I mean, my daughter gets her first computer and my son gets their first computer, they're not getting one with a mouse, they're getting one with a trackpad.
[Chiesa]: Right.
[Ruseau]: And it's a completely different eye-hand coordination effort, and I guess I'm just complaining.
[Chiesa]: No, what's funny, one Saturday morning I had, so I have a seven-year-old and a ten-year-old, I had the 10-year-old is used to the touchscreen Chromebooks, and so is the 7-year-old. So she's my patient one, and she's trying to touch that screen to make the drag and drop work for her. I had her do a practice. She couldn't do it. And she gave up. And she never gives up. So that, to me, was a little bit eye-opening. That trackpad for her as a second grader, almost third, was too much. So we have provided the mice for those that are a little bit more comfortable. It's still going to be a struggle. But that trackpad is very difficult for them, especially. So we're trying to work with what we have. And think of things that may sound small, but when you're seeing your eight-year-old struggle with it, they're very real. So I appreciate you saying that. We're working on it. Thank you.
[Burke]: Mr. Ruggiero.
[Chiesa]: What we did do is we have typing.com. Have you heard of typing.com? It's an online platform. A lot of the technology specialists, which I should have said to your question, Mrs. Stone, is that they have set up accounts for the kids, and they track it. And some of the principals have done, like, are typing titans or are top five typers. Something that's not going to make any child feel bad if they're not the top five typers, but just gives that extra incentive to work at home. I don't know how many words they can type. Most of the research, if you talk to Ms. Layden, will tell you that they shouldn't really be typing at this age. They're little fingers. But again, that's beyond our control. In terms of the English impact to our test, I do get concerned about stamina for the writing. And I do get concerned about the conventions. But of course, it's just one piece of all of this as well. I believe they're human graded for now. They are human graded for now, but a recent report had mentioned something about switching that. I don't know if Dr. Vincent, you have more information on that. But I do recall that there's some talk of it, but it hasn't happened yet. It's still human graded for now. Yeah. So they use this rubric. So they follow the rubric, which all of our teachers utilize in the classroom. And it has the different idea developments with the different numbers. And you can see there's a variety of different pieces that you need to have to achieve a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and so on and so forth. Similarly, you can see that for standard English conventions, a variety of different criteria in order to determine the number. One thing we have noticed, because we do dig very deep into this analysis, grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10, is that we've seen the state providing acronyms now for certain scores. And what I mean by that is, if I see an essay written, sometimes instead of a 1 or a 2, they've put the acronym, and this is new this year, not new, but it seems more prevalent this year, DC. direct copy or OT off topic. If you see an acronym OT, the child has received zero points. Even though according to this rubric, they have maybe developed their idea and given some detail, they're getting zero points for that. So they are taking into consideration some deviations from this rubric. But generally speaking, this is how they score. all the teachers are very aware of. So we've talked a lot about if you see a kiddo off topic, be prepared that when they get their MCAS score, they're not going to get a one or a two anymore. That's a change. So we're digging deep so that they can, you know, hone in on these things. We're trying to make data-formed and strategic decisions as we, you know, meander, go through all this.
[DiBenedetto]: Ms. Domenico. I just want to thank you all for presenting the MCAS data in this way and unpacking all of this data and bringing it down to our classrooms and our teachers so that way they're making informed choices of how they're presenting to our children. It seems like a lot of information that doesn't go anywhere, but it actually is very important work and even though we're It's late for us. I mean, the data you provide is very important for us moving forward. Again, subgroup information is something that I like to see, and I don't like to hear the cusps, because we didn't make those benchmarks, so I don't like announcing, well, if we did a little bit better, then we would have got 78%. It's just not my favorite thing.
[Chiesa]: I agree with you on that. I think it's confusing to people.
[DiBenedetto]: We almost got a 78, but you didn't. But we didn't. Right. So I like to put out exactly what we did so people remember the accurate numbers. That's just a personal thing. I don't know if other members feel the same way.
[Chiesa]: As you can see through the pages, too, there's a lot more that we do, and you have it in front of you. I know it's late, so I don't want to go step by step with you, but we are making some real changes as we look at data. and beyond. You know, this is just one piece of data we look at as we make informed decisions, we make scheduling changes, we make changes to the student's curriculum if we need to in the instructional to make sure that we are leaving, each child's leaving the grade with the strengths and having their needs attributed, needs taken care of. So I won't read them all, because I know you're tired, but they are there in front of you.
[Burke]: Thank you very much.
[Chiesa]: Thank you very much.
[Burke]: Is there a motion to receive this report and place it on file by Ms. Villanueva? Second. By Mr. Russo. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Thank you very much. Thank you. At this time, we have negotiations in legal matters. Motion to adjourn. Motion to go into executive session. Now executive session. Into executive session. By Ms. Villanueva, seconded by Mr. Benedetto. Roll call vote, please. Yes. Yes, seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. We will be entering executive session and we will open up executive session in the other room to adjourn the meeting. We will not be back here.
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