WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Committee last week honored one of the district's high achievers and expressed concerns about measurement of achievement for all students in the middle-high school.

 

The monthly meeting started on a high note with the annual recognition of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents' Academic Excellence Award.

 

Superintendent Jason McCandless announced that Mount Greylock senior Vincent Welch is latest in "an extraordinary collection of young people" to receive the award during McCandless' time in Lee, Pittsfield and the Lanesborough-Williamstown district.

 

"He has a true passion for learning, and questioning literature and history in order to create connections from the past to the present to the future," one of Welch's teachers wrote in a testimonial read by McCandless during the meeting. "A leader in discourse, Vincent is an engaged student who truly cares about the voices of his peers. There has never been a conversation where he has not invited his peers in, thoughtfully challenged assumptions, and encouraged everyone to be thoughtful. Vincent's insight is a reflection of both his wide sphere of knowledge as well as his charismatic personality and interpersonal skills.

 

"His cheerful nature and ability to both take an active role in conversation and learning are admired by his peers and teachers alike."

 

In addition to being an Eagle Scout, Welch has served as a class president, captained Mount Greylock's cross country and track and field teams and is a regular participant in the school's musical theater productions, band and jazz band.

 

"I've been fortunate over my time at Greylock to be in contact with so many people and to have the opportunity to see so many parts of Greylock," Welch said.

 

"To think of when I was a seventh-grader, on the cross country and track team and looking up to all the seniors, to think it's me now … it's a very bittersweet moment."

 

The main order of business on the Oct. 17 agenda was to hear reports on the district's performance on last spring's Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests.

 

Generally, the MCAS numbers were positive for the two elementary schools and the middle-high school, especially when the district's students were compared to their peers across the commonwealth.

 

But a couple of members of the School Committee inquired about one of the metrics the state provides to assess students' process that appears to be lagging.

 

"The student growth percentile is, perhaps, the most important measure in my mind, because it measures the impact our district had on the students in the year that they were with us," Julia Bowen said. "It kind of strips away their previous history as a student and says, 'What's the impact we had this particular year.' … It compares a student's performance in a year against all the other students in the state with a similar score history.

 

"I think we can be doing better. I don't think I could point to any one person and say, 'That person can be doing better,' because I think it's incredibly complex. I think the ways the supports in a school are structured are a piece of it, I think the professional development, the teacher coaching — it's all a part of it. What can we encourage as a governing body to help the team understand what levers might yield the greatest impact."

 

The student growth percentage or SGP in math for Mount Greylock in 2023 showed increases in two math grades and a decline in a third. For seventh graders, it went from 47 to 53 from 2022 to 2023, and for 10th graders, it rose from 53 to 58 in the same span. But the eighth grade math (this year's high school ninth-graders) SGP fell from 37 to 31 in the most recent testing year.

 

"Does the fact that the eighth-grade math number is consistently lower than other numbers indicate anything about our middle school math program that we should be focusing on?" Carolyn Greene asked the administration.

 

"We heard … that we want to see everything in the 50s, 60s ideally, or high 40s, and we haven't gotten out of the 30s. I'm just wondering if this is indicative of anything in particular, curricularly or pedagogically. Shouldn't that number bother us at all? I know it bothered us when it was 16 [in 2021]. So should we not be bothered when it's 31?"

 

McCandless said the MCAS numbers do highlight an area that needs attention.

 

"When we do local comparisons and statewide comparisons to schools that are, demographically, much more like us than the state is like us, you could make a case there is a slight dip in strategic grades and historically there has been — not only in performance but in the student growth percentile," he said. "I see those numbers, and I think we probably need to look at our [grade] 5-6-7-8 math sequencing. That's district-wide work that we're trying to get a handle on.

 

"The student growth percentile — to me, if comparisons have tremendous value, they have value in comparing a student to themselves in previous years and comparing themselves to like-scoring profiles from previous years from the other several thousand students in that grade level taking the test from year to year. Those growth percentiles are, to most of us, among the most meaningful. And when there is a super high growth percentage, that can say something about a set of teachers, it can say something about the program, it can say something about the previous year's program.

 

"That's sort of where we are in trying to assess: How do we get that growth profile for eighth-grade mathematics to be more in line with its neighboring growth percentiles in seventh grade, 10th grade and even looking down into fifth and sixth."

 

The MCAS tests came up again later in the meeting, when the committee discussed a series of resolutions to be voted on by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. One of the proposed resolutions would urge the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to "enact a moratorium on MCAS testing effective immediately."

 

While committee members agreed that the MCAS needs to be evaluated to identify and eliminate some of the biases that are inherent in many standardized tests, generally, the Mount Greylock committee advised Greene, who serves as the panel's delegate to the statewide body, to vote against a resolution to stop the testing immediately.

 

"Pursuant to my comments earlier, I think this is incredibly misguided," Bowen said.

 

McCandless earlier in the meeting agreed that while the MCAS is not the "end all, be all" and he has concerns about the use of a "high stakes" MCAS as a requirement for a diploma, the standardized tests are one tool the district can use for self-assessment.

 

In other business last Tuesday, the committee approved new contracts for McCandless and Joe Bergeron, who received a title change from business manager to assistant superintendent. McCandless received a 1.5 percent salary increase, and Bergeron received a 4.5 percent bump to go along with his increased duties in a six-year deal.

 

"I want to share publicly how much we appreciate Jake's and Joe's leadership and appreciate Joe's growth in this role from business manager to assistant superintendent and all the work that got you there and how the district is much stronger for the two of you being there," Bowen said when the committee emerged from an executive session.

 

The vote on the two contracts was 6-0 with one member of the committee, Ursula Maloy, not in attendance.