McAuliffe Charter School Lays Out Plan To Improve MCAS Scores

FRAMINGHAM – Like many schools across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Christa McAuliffe Charter School saw a drop in its MCAS scores, when the state released them yesterday, September 2021.

Students did not take the MCAS in spring 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and while students did take the exams in spring 2021, many students were still dealing with the pandemic.

“As a diagnostic tool, this data, along with other internal diagnostic data, informs our academic acceleration and recovery plans to ensure the continued growth and success of all McAuliffe scholars, said the public charter school for students in grades 6-7-8.

“We recognize that the pandemic served as a headwind for many of our scholars, as it did for most in the Commonwealth. Remote learning for a portion of the 2020-21 year was a particular obstacle to the fulfillment of our mission as an EL Education school, which is predicated on hands-on, active, in-person learning.,” said the school in a press release.

“Given that context, we favorably note that 46% of our scholars met or exceeded expectations in Science, 42% in English Language Arts, and 31% in Mathematics,” said the McAuliffe Charter School.

“Moreover, 51% of our scholars partially met expectations for Mathematics, and 43% partially met expectations in ELA and Science,’ said the charter school.

“Together, with our scholars, families, and faculty, we have already begun the important work of analyzing the data and assessing the needs of each scholar to accelerate academic progress,” said the Framingham-based charter school.

“Our goals and expectations for our scholars remain as high as ever. It is our charge to provide them with rich challenges paired with targeted support. As such, this year, we have intentionally designed our program to provide our scholars with instruction that will drive academic acceleration,” said the school in a press release.

Those initiatives include:

● Engagement with Lesley University’s Center for Mathematics Achievement to catalyze our math program

● Pursuit of new approaches to scholar reflection and scholar-engaged assessment in the spirit of EL Education

● Increase of Lab time, our intervention block, to three periods a week so that scholars receive
ample and personalized support in reading, writing, and math

● Adoption of new, high-level interventions for reading

● Strengthening of our existing framework for teaching and learning for all scholars based on
scientific insights into how humans learn.

These approaches ensure that all scholars continue to rapidly progress toward mastery of grade-level standards.

“Our ‘We Are Crew’ investment is in every scholar. At McAuliffe we seek scholarly growth and success not only in mastery of knowledge and skills, but also in character, high quality work, and meaningful contributions to our MetroWest community. MCAS provides useful data for
one aspect of that multidimensional work. Scholars and teachers use many metrics, including MCAS, to gauge progress and build accelerated pathways toward achievement,” said Christa McAuliffe Charter Executive Director Frank Tipton.

The Christa McAuliffe Charter School is a diverse charter public school for students in
grades 6-7-8 located in Framingham. The school’s hands-on curriculum cultivates high levels of student engagement, responsibility for learning, and enduring character growth. Students come from several communities in MetroWest and admitted via a blind lottery system.