##VIDEO ID:a112yLmu9R8## [Music] uh good afternoon this is the curriculum subcommittee of the Grine school committee and today is October 29th 2024 y uh so welcome we are doing uh some presentations on our mcast results from last spring and before we do that we are going to approve the minutes if we get the vote so I would like to move the minutes from September 18th it's a joint meeting with Finance subcommittee do I have a second thank you Jesse uh Jesse how do you vote uh yes Stephen how do you vote Yes and I vote Yes as well and Helen is absent today so okay so we're then just start in on uh the mcast presentation uh Jody funa is going to do start us off and then we're going to go to the special Edge uh report and then we're going to go to the English language learning report here so Jody you want me to turn it over to you yes please okay thank you so oh and so what we're going to do I think is we are going to hear one presentation then open it up for questions then we'll hear another presentation open up for questions and we'll hear the third presentation open up for questions all in an hour and a half have yes just setting standards and expectations not sure we'll get there but best okay J thank you Suzanne so I wanted to open tonight with some really good news um about how our Brook line schools are doing we um receive accountability ratings from the state every year and this year the accountability percentiles for Brook line range from the 87th percentile to the 97th percentile which means that we're outperforming 97% of our schools um of the schools in Massachusetts with um that administer similar tests so that's really good news and it provides some context for what we're talking about today uh one of things that as far as setting expectations we're not going to be talking about individual schools today we're going to be talking about the district as a whole and um I as Suzanne said I have some wonderful colleagues here who are going to speak to their areas of expertise and we're going to start right so in the English language arts 70% of our students are meeting are exceeding expectations this is down from 3% um sorry I'm sorry Jody before we start I I'm just confused the agenda Suzanne for the meeting just shows mcast um was there a change no this is mcast St I think you mentioned three presentations but they're all about mcast Stephen I'm sorry oh okay I'm sorry I thought you were saying that there were presentations on topics as I'm sorry JY so so we're going to have General mcast res then we're going to have special mcast results and then we're going to have English learner mcast results got it okay thanks sorry so 70% of our students are meeting or exceeding expectations in ela this is down 3% from the previous year however it is 28% above the state average so again that is good news our average scale score remember passing score on the MCAS for meeting expectations is 500 our average scale score is 52 this is down one from the previous year the state um really um isn't focusing on where it's just 1% they say it could be something to watch but it's not really statistically significant and we're 177% higher than the state average there um one of the things that I'm very proud of uh with our mcass testing is our our our student growth percentiles so student growth percentiles measure life students and the amount of growth that they make each year and this is where we can really start to see the impact of our wonderful teachers on students and in a high performing District it often is very difficult to get scores for the standard GR percentile that are in what's considered the high range so 40 to 60 is considered the average range you'll see here that in our aggregate our student growth percentile is 58.8% at 58.8% we're almost to um 60 there and that's up 1.4 versus the previous year and it's 8.8 over the state average of course the state average would be 5050 oh that is it's a z to 100 is that it's yes yeah oh and that's a normed score across all the schools of the state so every year 50 will be the average at all schools meaning CH through 12 or high school or three it's three grades three through eight um some freshmen who are taking the tests in 10th Grade thank you you're welcome so if we look here we'll see how we're doing at each grade level when compared to the state average um we are exceeding the state average in all grade levels if I can call your attention to our grade six scores and our grade 8 scores our students were doing very well in ela in those grade levels um and are outpacing the state by a significant amount there and Che it as well yes so this chart I want to do a couple of things with which is going to be a little difficult and to follow along with me I actually might stand up to do this so here we have the PSB students that are meeing an exceeding expectations and here we have the state what you can do though it's not a direct Apples to Apples cohort comparison because we have um mobility in our district so it's not exactly the same if you read on the diagonal so in third grade 60% of our students were meeting or exceeding Ela expectations in fourth grade that number jumps to 65% in fourth grade um in 2023 our students that were fourth graders 66% were meeting expectations in 2024 that jumped to 70% in fifth grade um it was 69% that jumped to 72% and then 71% to 75% and then we stayed study at um our e8th grade Cort um the differences that you see here are the differences between 2023 and 2024 at that grade level so in grade three we're what I'm assuming and my hypothesis is all that great early literacy work that we're doing is starting to pay off and you'll see that we've increased by our great amount of difference here and where we increase by 10 um points so early indicators for what we're doing with structured literacy seems to be that it's working oh thank youy I guess it's not great oh that's okay I'll keep pointing and then if you look at student growth percentiles this is where I get really excited we don't have student growth percentiles for students in third grade because our students in third grade um are taking their first test so we can't look at what their growth was from test to test but if we look here when they were in fourth grade the student growth percentile was 46.7 that jumped to 62.3 which is out of that average range and into that high growth range um our fifth grade fell a little bit from 57 .7 to when they were in sixth grade 56.7 by a point um it's something again directionality but not something to be overly concerned about yet look at the our sixth graders though they went from 56.2% up to 71.5 for a growth percentile that is really tremendous work and shows the great work that um our teachers are doing to prepare students to have that amount of growth and then from 7th to 8th um we dropped a little bit but in my opinion the E grade test is actually the hardest of the mcast tests um so we see a little bit of a drop there and then in 10th Grade we have solid average growth a little bit down from the 10th grade um the year before and then in grades 3 through 8 we have 60.3 um% % grow which is again right on that cuss but we are we are moving and making progress how going back to that slide for a second how would this look if you added in 22 21 2019 or something so that I mean looking at just one year versus the next is a very very difficult to call it a trend yes for any of them because you know if you don't know what happened statistically your right yeah so I'm just wondering how this would look or do you have it um I get back I'm saying yeah it would be more powerful if we look back five years you know five years or something and then said okay now you know it's it's climbing or something like that and we definitely have that data so I get yeah it would be helpful thank you now I said I wasn't going to talk about individual schools and this is the only slide where you'll see individual schools and there's another one for math but I wanted to highlight the growth that our students are making our students are making a tremendous amount of growth in the aggregate so you'll see here um in Baker in grade seven 75.5 um growth percentile on an average that is incredibly strong growth um and so I just highlighted for you all of the areas in all of our schools where our student growth is above average um which is is really exciting to see that in that many places this is where the story gets for me a little bit more interesting um as we try as we look at our data we are a very diverse community and if we look at our data by race and income levels we start to see a story unfold a little bit here um um and what we're seeing is that our students that are not lowincome our students that don't qualify as low income are outpacing um our students that do qualify as low income when it comes to exceeding expectations where that Gap Narrows a little bit and it's not a good Gap narrowing is for our black students with our black students income isn't as much of a deciding factor and whether they meet or exceed expectations our average scaled scores now remember 500 is the score for meeting expectations um you can see that we're getting as the district we're getting close to our low-income students meeting that but not quite we're not quite there yet so we have some work to do there and our not low income students are far outpacing our lowincome students there um you can see where the greatest um discrepancy is is for our Hispanic students so that's an area of inquiry for us about why that's happening what are some of the protective factors that we can put in place for our lowincome Hispanic students so that this doesn't um happen um for them what we're seeing though is trajectories for the average um student growth percentile that are much closer together um there's still a discrepancy there but the discrepancy isn't as great as it is for meeting an exceeding expectations or the average scaled score so um it it's interesting um to just think about this and Ponder um a little bit and this is all aligned with our strategic plan right much of our strategic plan is formed around this story because this story has been true for us for a couple of years want to say a word about why it is that the low income has stronger growth than not I mean I know St well it's actually true for all yeah it's really it's interesting and I ask myself that question and I don't have a definitive answer to it but my theory is that we have a lot of protective factors um for our students we have steps to success we have metco we have things that I think are working for students when they're in school and are School dependent to be able to get that growth percentile I think a lot of the Forward Thinking things and Partnerships that the town supports allows that to um to happen but I oh and Gabe please jump in I would just also argue that some of these differences are quite small I was just right so like for the white students it's one point student growth Asian students it's two you know for the black students it's four and a half or so yeah these are not huge differences right I don't know if you guys can see me um I just have a Statistics question the the district differen um it's 35 points in exceeding expectations and 20 points in average scaled score um but it's but only Hispanic students exceed that Hispanic students are only like 12% if I recall of a student population so I don't understand how that could be especially with the average scaled score where it's it's only 24 points different and white students which is the over which is half of the student population is 16 points how could the district I just don't understand how that works statistically how can you have a 20 point differential in average scaled score when everything is beneath it except for Hispanic students how does that work page I'm not sure I understand you understand average so yeah first of all it's average right it's not top and bottom but um our our students who who experienced poverty or or low income are more heavily represented with our Black and Hispanic students and so the yeah we don't have the the end sizes here of how many students we're talking about in each group I see but um the number you explained it you explained it to yeaha thank you great question Stephen no that was great answer sorry I didn't fig F that out so that was Ela now we're going to go through the same exercise with math um just easier to stand you'll see that 73% of our students met or exceeded expectations that is not a change from the previous year that's what we were um during the 2023 testing but it's 31% higher than the state average which is good to know our average scaled score is 513 which is above that cut score of 500 for meeting expectations again that remains very flat from the year before and it's um 18 points above the state average and then our average student growth percentile we're edging closer to that 60 it's 59 it's up 2.2 percentage points from the previous year and nine points from the state average here's how our students are doing by grade level what I take away from this slide is that our 10th grade um math program is working for our students what's happening for them in ninth and 10th grade is really working but you'll also see this steady incline and what I think that is about about five years ago we adopted um a new maap curriculum and I think we're starting to see the fruits of that math curriculum payoff in the middle school where we use Desmos and I think that's why we're starting to see that and we're still seeing um a good amount above the state average with our investigations at um grades three four and five so that's an exciting development all right here's the chart again and Jesse I'll get you um the additional data thank you here the story is a little bit different um in third grade going to fourth grade in 2023 64% of our students met or exceeded expectations in 2024 that dropped to 56 so it's not all in the positive direction um as it was in ela um 63 to 66 that's a nice jump 69 to 74 slight drop 70 to 69 73 to 77 so and then um our 3 to8 is down a little bit last year our average was um 70% of our students meting exceeding in this year it's 68% um student growth percentiles again um we're seeing some strong growth percentiles in grade six grade seven in grades three through eight the rest are solidly in the average range moving to the stronger range I guess we just have an observation on this one this one and the one on Ela we're looking at compared to the state is there any wide in other words if the state is just doing say average or GSP wants to be way ahead of it wouldn't it be better for us to prepare ourselves to say I don't know how do we sit amongst the top three districts in the state at 300 OD districts PSV versus I don't know big three towns you know that's a great suggestion St brid and who know lunenberg they're all better and then here's where we are so we know where we are relative to that because the state to me with 300 districts what does it mean I mean we know we're going to assuming always we're going to be a little higher than Port super high it's interesting because we're not and we're not going to see that in our presentation but for our black students we actually underperform the state average which um is data that I can share with you so I do think the state average is important um and for next year's presentation we can definitely take that into account comparing us to and what about that accountability number what that accountability number actually Compares us to to the other districts to all district to all districts and so um only 3% of the districts in the state are outperforming us and um in the mcast so I I think that might even re and I think something that's also really important to watch is how quickly we grow versus the other districts so as our if our growth percentiles continue to go up it means our influence on our students is really much stronger whereas if we don't see that rate of growth in other districts it helps us uh gauge so I think that that's yeah so I think it is really important to keep the other districts in mind yeah I just want to call out our grade seven grow scores and our grade eight grow scores I I've been teaching since Ed form went into place since mcast has started I've been teaching since the standard growth percentile was put in place it was put in place after the mcast I've never seen a grade level with an 84.8% um growth percentile that is outstanding and should be celebrated as should all of these but something magical that we are studying was happening in the Lawrence seventh grade classes last year um and I I know what Vanessa would tell us but that's where this data school by school really helps inform the work of our office which is why we're not getting into the weeds of school by school but I I just had to call that out and celebrate that there something like this happened sort of every year somewhere or is this just really all by itself kind of it's a really all by itself kind of thing Yeahs ofid 8s so is it is it just um probability that there's a strong codor well no not necessarily because um the achievement isn't necessarily as high it's really the growth is really our impact on what we're doing with students yeah the growth score is based on the same students and students who scored similarly over the last two prior years so like these seventh graders are compared to students who scor similar in fifth grade and then similarly in sixth grade and they're outperforming that those corts of students that are prepared to so it's yeah it's a kind of funky measure but it's two years of running data it is comparison to other students so they're outperforming folks they were scoring similarly to fit Fitness scre and here again is our comparisons by income and race and you can see the story that it tells um here um again to Stevens Point earlier our n for Hispanic students is relatively small however there is a gap um there that persists across Ela and Mathematics um what's really exciting though is we see that trend and reversed when it comes to average um student growth percentile so our non low income students um had a 53% student growth percentile whereas our lowincome Hispanic students um that increases to 58.9% so there's um a nice increase there so this gives you kind of an overview a balcony view of where we are in the aggregate so any questions on this before we turn it over to Robin and Anna to talk about our students with disabilities the question um I mean I apologize for asking so many questions now but this only came this morning I really have a chance the days till now look at it's like first time so Sor um when do you cut off uh the effect of Co people being back schoos two years before now late 20 yeah and I think we're we're still seeing the effects of Co in lots of ways and I think the state is still seeing that um I'm think I maybe this from 5ifth to 7th recognizes the uptick in students being back at school for a year or two absolutely being at home something like that so not be due to they were held back and now they're up so it's how do you measure like was it instructional or was it just being three years wor of data yeah and I really do believe that it is instructional um I you don't that 84.2 or 84.4 I forget what it was you don't that doesn't happen by accident and it's also very unusual to see a growth percentile that five a fiveing district um which we are Stephen well uh Carolyn and Stephen both have the Carolyn first okay Carolyn you go first then Stephen thanks hi it's Carolyn um from school committee Jody thank you so much for this this is must be a tremendous amount of work to pull together and this is really clear and really interesting [Music] um um I loved your framing of really good news outperforming 90% of schools in Massachusetts administr mcass um your I loved your charts with the growth percentiles and looking at them on the diagonal that's super helpful um I would love to ask and forgive me for not being familiar enough yet um on that metric growth percentile is that metric part of our strategic plan and if so what is our our Benchmark or our goal on on that metric with mcast Carolyn I don't have it memorized but and I meant to grab the Strategic plan too to bring in it is in our strategic plan okay because it is such an important metric about our impact on what's happening with and then forgive me because okay thank you and we can we can chew on all of this more I'm sure going forward and um I think I had one more question so I want to make sure I fully understand this slide that's still up and the same one on the ELA um because of course we really want to know how we are doing with our most vulnerable students um vulnerability in in in different ways so I'm going to take I'm going to take a just because it's there so the red is Asian students who are also lowincome correct and the blue is Asian students who are not lowincome correct separately yes and so and then you were talking about hispanic so with I guess Hispanic and black especially when you separate those out the ends are pretty pretty small yes but we still want to be looking at this and then so I don't know how to do the statistics on this but when you look at this for the math and the ELA does income turn out to be your predictor your strongest predictor does that I don't know if it's our strongest predictor it is [Music] um it is something that we can reliably say that um as far as average scaled score and exceeding expectations goes income is a a leading factor in determining how students will perform on this test okay okay awesome thank you gab I think notably to to kind of reinforce Jody's point that it's not the only Factor we can see that our black students who are not low income underperform white students and Asian students who are low income okay so income alone is not the only predictor okay and thank you so and so that's where like I want to look at just the red like so I want to go down the line looking at just the red District black Hispanic age and white okay got it that's super helpful and thank you stepen um thanks I just want to to um second Jesse's request for uh more longitudinal grade data um because I think it would be really interesting to know if growth regularly happen or doesn't happen at a particular level because I think it have curcular implications for us that's it thanks thanks Stephen Jesse Yeah I mean from a statistics background I have a question here um the average here is being calculated just as the mean value like take everything divided by the number and get an average okay so what would be very helpful to see and it's available I mean just by getting all the data is what the shape of the distribution of all the data look like that the average coming from and the reason I say that is you could have the exact same average by looking at just a Vel curve right you could also have a triple Vel curve like the C with three h and your average would be exactly the same but the two different plots would tell you two different stories about how people are doing so quoting average everywhere doesn't tell us anything about the spread like maybe it's maybe it's like nothing and goes all the way up and then comes back down and the average smack there or maybe it's you know one of these things that go way out like that and still the average is the middle so there's no indication of what the spread is or distribution so we don't it's hard to understand what it means that's I guess what I'm saying so anytime we're showing the average it'd be good to throw in one slide that says oh okay well here's a distribution of all their data and you know here's our averages that gives us an idea of are there lumps or valleys somewhere else or big Peaks or is it or is it all like this way right and you're a is somewhere else average Val to be the highest so just for visibility and it helps other people look at it sort of place the data in a in a context so the state provides you with all this um open AR so be able to do it the data are available yeah um and in both Ela and math the white students of lower income out perform well they were about the same as gay point but slightly ahead so is there do we have a narrative to go with that so I think the math one there was like 6058 and this one again was a little higher 6159 or 6160 so is there some I think it's how we're focusing our interventions for students and I think um we are we know that income is a predictive factor and so we're focusing some interventions a tier one interventions there have your hand up yeah thank you and I think this kind of just going off from what Jody just said and it might be too much to sort of get into now but I would love to understand how this data this mcast data or or is this mcast data used to identify who is underperforming or underachieving who we need to be to be reaching um and sort of if if so how and maybe you don't have to answer that now but that's but I'm definitely thinking about this that way I could definitely answer that now um okay I'm actually more comfortable talking about that than statistical distribution awesome me too we um do identify our students that fall into these categories we share that with the building principles and last year we had two very successful cases um at Pierce and at Lawrence where the principles really came up with a targeted intervention plan uh the principes didn't the principales task the teachers who are closest to the work with coming up with a targeted intervention plan for those students and sometimes it was something just like creating more of a sense of belonging or more of a a sense of ownership in the classroom but the results that those students had um we reviewed those individually this year and we're completing the same cycle again um and actually replicating it in more schools because those um two schools had such success with what they did okay that's that's great thank you so much so it is you are we are using it as a tool and and it's useful in that way and obviously the intervention is what really matters but it's good to know that there is some some usefulness thank you so much you welcome and of course it's it's a piece of data on a student so you have to look at the classroom work you have to look at the accommodations they may need so it it is a piece but it's not the whole picture right I just want to point that and I never I thank you for bringing that up Suzanne because I'm going to get on my soap box for a minute we never want this to be the sole measure by which we identify a student this is a snapshot of a student during one day one moment in time when they were taking the test they they could have had strep throat they could have who knows where what could have happened they could have had a fight with their mother you know that morning and performance isn't that good so we are continuously Gathering um both um anti antidotal data and um and all and student work student work assessments the teachers yes because again this is this was from last last April March March Ela was March yeah so you know again we've almost gone months since then and things may or may not have changed for a particular student um so anyway it's just it's a piece in my mind it's a piece of the it's a snapshot is a snapshot yeah it's a snapshot talk that's all okay any other questions I just like to spend not now but in my mind I'm still spending time on just the low income versus the not low income and our not low income students not doing as well as other not low students so again it's it's just a piece of the picture it's not the whole thing uh it also could be some test bias a little bit I'm just there's many pieces to it then so it's a complex think about to your to your point though how does that maybe even tie in with outside of school tutoring because if you're not low income you have the resources to go to SCH and I know there's a huge cohort having spoken to the people who r at one point they just ran into them literally um no not literally you know get the idea just in in another context that they said they person you know so if you have resources then you should anticipate that story right that kids with so I just wonder what the story and the narrative could be and I think there not one answer there many many but I think it's it's worth keeping an open mind about that and so anyway that's just you two start but as you watch what we collect through the year the story changes especially for a lot of students who like jod said get those interventions or other supports and so like this is this like the foundation what you look at but lots of that changes okay Robin next we're going to just real quickly did you say that you were going to cover the topic of race-based disparities regionally they're comparing it to neighboring districts I thought I heard you say that J oh yes I didn't ask about neighboring steveen I said that should maybe we should compare against no I I thought I heard Jody make a comment about how we perform poorly compared to neighboring districts we the state we underperform the state compared to other black students yes yes compare the state average right I would just I just I didn't catch whether you had said that we were going to discuss that further or not no not today okay thanks I think they said they could provide that information okay we're going to go special is that okay no this is different than the order that's in your packet um because of Visa's unexpected illness um the packet is set up with our yellow and our go back the right here I'm right here but so with I oh here it's so it's after the and your pack okay so I'm Robin sa I'm the director of secondary special education and Anna bar mctigue is online and I'm going to be um introducing the data and then speaking towards Ela she'll be speaking for us now okay so um we're happy to walk the committee through through like broad brush stroke um of anast data for students on IEPs and um as a review as Jody shared the accountability percentiles between oh on there right now um one in 99 reported from most schools that administer similar assessments and so the number is an indication of a school's overall performance relative to other schools that serve similar grades and then calculated using multiple years of data for all accountability indicators and then the students categorizes High needs includes students with IEPs as well as El students and will talk about that and low income so it's all three of those populations um you can probably do we know what a high population is for the the district if I didn't have my computer sharing right now I could tell you I'm just so in terms of the English language arts um data on the lower leftand side you'll see the student growth percentile and um you'll see that the 52.5 is the moderate range so we're um above 5.2 versus last year and we're above 2.5 the state average and um it's important to note that students on IEPs are comp comped to at the state level of all students not students on IEPs so you'll notice that um they're really comparing apples to oranges and that's important to recognize um so these are the IEP students who take the test there are a small number perhaps who have the alternative fors that they can turn in the portfolio so the state expect is less than 1% of the district I think we're a little above that at the high school and I and I know that is because we have such a large number of students that are in District programs versus out of District programs and so we've worked very hard with students with student IEP teams to you know make individual decisions and the state actually has a flowchart that helps us determine first with certain criteria of who is eligible for the portfolio for sitting through the standard test with accommodation I'm question here I'm sorry in what way are we comparing apples and oranges are we just saying that the sample size is too small for it to be generalizable or are we saying that that there or are we saying something different I'm sorry so I'm saying that the the scores for students on IEPs are being compared to the state level including all students so not just students and iaps so the state average is all students yes all students thank you so do we have a state average for students and IEPs um not not that I'm that I'm aware of okay um so you'll see that 33% of students on IEPs are meeting or exceeding expectations um and you'll you can see that that's below last year's comparison um and then you'll see the average skill score as well um however if you were to compare that with the um this I say the state average right it's a it's below 11% so so your minus 2% Robin is a percent not units correct so it's that's basically it's basically no difference correct when say you know 2% of 33 is6 mean so basically FL Y and and I would say again you're looking at students the state average is for students with and without I right and then the next slide just shows that um another way into comparing the breeds and you'll see that the turquoise box are um the public schools of Brookline data of meeting or exceeding expectations and then the black line is the state average and again that state average is students with and without IEPs far from our average right Anna there Anna is here are you able to hear me yes go right ahead well just as uh Robin showed showed you with the um with the ELA scores we also have math scores for students with IEPs and again looking down at the lower left corner you can see the student growth percentage um um well 53.9 uh and remembering that 41 to 60 is described as moderate um uh as a growth pattern for Brookline um when we see when we look at the middle graph you'll as compared like with the ELA slide you see that the middle graph looks a little less flat with a slightly less upward tick so our math scores for students with disabilities or the growth percentiles have kind of stayed kind of consistent um and that's something we can be looking into um again it's important to note that these are the scores for students with IEPs being compared to the state to include all students in the state not just kids with IEPs so where you see on the slide that a 34% of the students are meeting or exceeding that negative 8 against the state means that 43% of all students in the state met or exceeded expectations not 42% of students with IEPs um so you know just for cont Tex 133% students with IEPs in the state met are exceeded expectation on the math mcast um if we move to the third graph on the next slide we can see um this shows the percentage of students with IEPs who met or exceeded the Expectations by grade the state average bar includes all kids in the state not just students with IEPs in math the state average for 2024 was 13 and Brookline students with IEPs exceeded the state average with 33% and just for context um Lexington was 35 and Newton was 28 on that measure um you know this is our last slide and um we believe there is absolutely work that needs to continue um and from our lens a special education lens the curriculum decisions that are being made right now in ela and math as well as the tiered supports the mtss work we're engaging with are meant to support all students and will absolutely help address the outcomes that we're looking for I think some of those growth scores that were so lovely to see are in some ways related to the intervention that's going into place and the thinking that um all the curriculum teams and all their supporters are putting into place teachers are doing a great job too um providing that kind of information that is it for our students with IEPs thank you could you just remind me what percent of our student body has eyepiece is it like 19 something like that the I think that state average is 17 I think we're above that I think we're closer to 20 maybe even 21 yeah I think my last look was a little over 20% and it varies school to school depending on whether they have District programs or not that I get down thank you why did you say 187 according to our 18 State data yeah and the state is 20 19 but the the state is 17 20.2 so we're really right there in terms of I would guess in terms of identifying and working okay any other questions and thoughts on this I want to move on to English Learners thank you an thank you thank you very much yes have your other meeting well thank you so I am going to share information about two different populations of students our current English Learners or English Learners when they took the 2024 mcast test and also our former English Learners we are responsible for monitoring the progress of former English learners for four years so those students still fall under our English language education program here in terms of accountability and their perform would you find just defining a former is someone who makes it to level five or six they have exited our program their levels May Vary but they have met the state's exit criteria based on the access for ell's score that they received so they were in our program here or in another dat or district and no longer receive direct construction I did think it would be useful to just share some participation requirements because this is such a unique population of students the mcast participation requirements does different for them and so we do want our English Learners to participate in all of the mcast testing for their grades regardless of what type of program they're in so Brook M here offers a shelter English conversion program those students would participate in mcast but there are a couple of caveats to that so English Learners regardless of what level of English they have they could be a l one brand new speaker of English or they could be a much more advanced speaker of English at a level five a level level six must take math and cast they could arrive on Monday and the tested on Tuesday they must take math and cast that is not necessarily true for the ELA MC so students who are in their first year of US schools the ELA MC test is optional once they have completed a year in US schools it is no longer optional they must take the E mcast test and then the mcast AL is available for English Learners as well those who have significant cognitive disabilities and we don't have any of that data because the number of students is under 10 so the state is number for and so the data that I have provided is slightly different than what special education and the overview that jod provided I have prepared here data that actually Compares our students some longitudinal data but also two State data for English Learners okay so we're actually comparing English Learners from work line compared to English Learners at the state and so there's a lot of information in each of these U charts but I'm just going to point out a few of them so here you'll be able to see that um in 2024 we had 1995 English Learners in grades 3 through 8 take the ELA mcast test of of those 195 15% scored either meeting or exceeding expectations compared to 4% at the state level and you can see the trend over the years where we have been and continue to to make progress and there is some variability in that data the next slide will actually show this information as a bar graph so that you can see it more visually appealing here but you can see um we had a little bit of a dip from 2023 to 2024 in terms of our Ela and I think it's really important to mention at this point how transient our population is so while I find it very useful to look at this longitudinal data we are not comparing the same cohorts of students so Brooklyn has the highest transiency rate in the state in terms of our English Learners the average length of stay here is two years and so when we look at year-to-year data it's important to note that demographics of the students are not the same we're not looking at the same demographic in this slide here you'll see that I'm comparing how our English Learners in grades 3 through eight did compared to non-english Learners so as I mentioned 15% looking at 2024 15% of our English learners Bo meeting or exing on the mcast compared to 71% of non-english Learners now non-english Learners are students who have never been in the English learner program have never been identified as requiring additional English language support So 15% for English Learners compared to 71% for non-english Learners looking at4 you can do that same calculation for the other years as well this is not a surprise right because uh for many of our students English is in progress of being developed and the mcast test is not a test that is designed for English Learners it is not measuring their progress on English language proficiency it is much more content specific it does not take into account the English factor of our students I will say in case it's important to note that our English Learners are allowed to use word-to-word bilingual resources on any of the mcast tests which does provide some level of assistance to them so I I guess I mean going back that s a second so there's nothing surprising about the difference right it's just what mirroring reality that's right that that's right I hope it right but I hope it helps keep us at that level of reality right because unfortunately our students have to take this test but it's not a test designed for them many of them are not yet prepared they're not yet ready for of course yeah it makes lot of sense you still do the used be access you still that's the test that we use another prominently right to inform many of our educational decisions sorry access oh access they usually give it in January do they still takes like a month to takes six weeks to get through that test that is a Criterion reference test that does measure English proficiency that is a test designed for so that tends to give the level Jesse that's SS we can identify what level e is it's one through six but you just take it no they don't they don't even know what so here we have our data for former English Learners these are students who have exited our program within the last four years they may be one year removed from our program or they may be four years from our program but we must monor their progress 4 Years After exiting our program and you can see here that 62% of our former English Learners grades 3 through eight on the ELA mcast reach that meeting or exceeding which that is really phenomenal data and that is compared to 33% of the state former English Learners so we are exiting students at a time when they are much better prepared to be able to participate fully in this tested demonst they learning so so if you look across that slide though oh sorry yeah that so it's so the district's going from what like 71 to 67 to 63 to 62 so slowly the number of students is different I think it needs to be considered so in 2024 we had the highest compared to all four years now you have more students that's right so students are the N is going up each year that's right and then here it's that same data just represented in the bar gra for us to be able to see and you know just to point out I had shared earlier that our English Learners only 15% of our English Learners reached that meeting or exceeding and now we have I was 62% of former English Learners So within the entire sort of population that we are responsible for we're looking at somewhere around 77% of our students are leing or exing expectations that's amazing pretty and now we'll move to grade 10 so here we have the data for our 10th grade students and I did decide to separate this not put the aggregate data for grades three through 10 that take the test and I did this because the data looks quite different for grade 10 in both Ela and math so for ELA we don't have data for 21 and 23 because the end size was too small we didn't have enough students to be able to do that um but if you look at just 24 again 20% of our students scored and meeing expectations we did not have any students for exceeding expectations level and our 20% is compared to State's 3% there's that same data just the different visual so that 27% in 2024 that did not meet expectations of 10 technically up two more years and because that whole size is yeah how many three two oh of that 27% is two or three Okay now what's interesting though about our 10th grade student says that many of those students are the same that cohort is very similar to the 2022 more than 75% of those students were the same that took that in 2022 compared to 2024 and I think it is worth noting that we increased you know 20% of our students did end up getting into that meeting expectations category so West progress being for most best student students going back to going back to that other slide is there any um easy explanation for why it jumped by like 1500 more students to over at at the state level it's like 4,000 up 5500 that's and it continues to grow immigration into the city pic that's also where restrictions start to return so like 2017 2018 numers prepandemic might look up at that L it might I know we've had this experience during the pic is moror or something during the P yes yes that's why the data actually goes back to 2021 yeah 21 was a partial 21 was a partial exam and at the high school level it was also a new exam so there's a whole bunch of things that were happen and here we have just yeah there we go our um comparison just to English Learners compared to non-english Learners and again this should be no surprise this is very much expected 20% of our students who met or seed expectations compared to 80% of non-l learners and then we have our former English Learners these again students who did receive English language support and for our grade 10 for ELA you'll see we have 62% of our former English Learners met or exceeded expectations compared to 39% at the state the our former English learners very well positioned to do quite well this test he so are there are they are there data ahead of non non- English alars so for saying they well positioned are they better positioned so 6 native speakers are 80 80% reach meeting are exceeding and for will start is 62% oh 62 oh I saw okay 62% but again this is for the ELA test yeah now wait till we see ma any so here we have our math data now let's begin with grades 3 through eight and you'll be able to see here that 50% of our students in grades 3 through eight their achievement level was at the meet or exceeding expectations compared to 10% state level and if you look at that across the years that data did go up from 23 to 24 22 to 23 we did have of 10 and again this is a test that students must take regardless of what their level of English is regardless of how much schooling they've had in the US here that's right and although it is a math test it is actually quite happy still with language in it move there and here's just a visual bar graph to see the differentiation from year to year in terms of how students have performed here's the comparison of English Learners to non-english Learners now this one is much closer where 50% of our English Learners reached me are exceeding compared to 73% of our non-english Learners so we have 23% differential of students who have never needed English language support compared to our students who were actively receiving and then our former English Learners so here we can see that 76% of our former English Learners in the meat are exceeding category and that's compared to 37% at the state level so again 76% for our former English Learners very very there 64 yeah Prett and if we look at our former English Learners here we go into the grade 10 for our English Learners 73% of our English Learners were at the meat are exceeding LEL what's really fascinating about this I mean again our numbers are small we have 15 students but that's compared to 5% at the state so 73% clients grade 10 students compared to 5% state level I mean it's possible some of those come in even with the middle school or high school for our 10th grade cohor that does particularly last a little bit longer than the 3 sh8 yeah and they have probably had some of them have had strong math in the native FL absolutely and as a reminder it's only 133% wouldn't have considered pass which is very few students from a graduation standpoint from a graduation standpoint have partially meeting for gradation only one or two exactly that's what I'm saying like it's a very small number and here we um are just looking at our El's versus our non-els here the numbers are much closer so 73% of El's meet are exceeding compared to 79% of nonel so we are almost at par with our non English Learners in terms of their performance of the math and again they can use dictionaries they can only word to word dictionaries there are no definitions important to right we get the online We Them paper paper so there's always you have this many Ukrainian I Wason say we move them around Japanese dictionary and we provide that for both our English Learners and our former English Learners who would like to have that resource so the former get it as well they are eligible for those as well if they want to we try to give every student at least two resources to use one would be a dictionary that is the word to word yeah dictionary and the other one is a Content vocabulary guide which is also word to word but those are content specific technical terms as subject area we do do that so in math you saw you're seeing 7379 right I think that's what you sh that's right 73% English leers 79% non- Engish leers which is basically the same sort of close yes very toal but on but on the 3 to8 for math it was big difference right bigger difference which is a large 50% interesting well it's I don't think that's so surprising really Jesse math is kind of considered universal language right if you know math you know math well but in the problems like word problems may be but the reading is all about comprehension part of the point that Mindy made is our younger students are in District for a fairly short period of time yeah whereas the students who are older tend to have been here longer right so it's it's not the same kind of student experience and the other data point that might be important is the majority of students like about 85% of our students in grades p through five are all at levels like one through like level three proficiency English proficiency um that number goes down as we go through the grades our upper grade students have are coming to us B more okay and then our former English Learners here we have 82% of our former English Learners reach the meat or exceeding level and that's compared to 34% of the state but if you go it's not fa there but that's compared to 79% of our non-english Learners oh that's because it was the previous slide so former English Learners are scoring 82% 82% of our former English Learners compared to 79% of our non-english Learners reaching that me or exceed so we our former English Learners are outperforming our non-english learners in grade 10 math which I think is really phenomal it speaks to a lot of the work that we've been doing around content support for our students preparation to make sure that they can reive their do these also get U I guess I don't know it's a very small group it's subdivided by income do you have the same issue with you know low income and non longcome students I don't think our theend would be large enough to that it would be much much smaller smaller yeah we have about um just under 3% of our population English are duly identified as students with disabilities um I anticipate that number will be slightly higher this year is a small percentage of our population that's to be identified that what you would expect I mean that's a different conversation I I guess just because the length of time that the majority of our students are here sometimes we give a little bit more time to acquire some English people we can really distinguish between a language difference or langage and depending on country of orig they may not come in with any sort of diagnosis then there's like a lag you discover what's going they exit our system there's no particular reason why that number would be 3% of give of a given population versus I mean all things being equal I guess I don't know I mean it may be worth unpacking a little bit I'm not sure I'm just just curiosity okay thank you um wow we did a great job you gave us a lot of information just to remind anyone that might be watching that this is recorded So if you want to go back and review some of what we just said are there any questions from um spook many people I just want to thank the presenters for another really clear data Rich presentation these have really been great thank you Stephen and and I guess we just want to say too that the Strategic plan is is just completely wrapped up in all this so and some of our news is so good that we'll have to adjust our Targets in our strategic plan because we read them already it's a nice problem it is a nice problem okay I have a question if that's right um I'm really curious to know if there are any um there there's so many ways you can like cut and disaggregate the data around mcast when you were when you coming up and I feel like in the curriculum subcommittee we get the special privilege of the Deep dive um were there any um topics that you were considering putting into this presentation that you left out that were that were close to being the presentation that if we wanted to you know look a little bit more into mcast on our own or if we we had dashboard access we might poke around and find interesting all smiling I'm not sure what that means no there's so much information um where we're really getting to the point where we're very data rich and the deciding factors for tonight were what what's the district story that is happening with the district and what can we talk about as far as curriculum and interventions and things that go along with that um but you know clearly the longitudinal data is there the shape of the data that um Dr heer was referring to is um also um something that can be provided and we can look at I could spend hours and days and weeks just diving into the dashboards for this you might also say that desie has all its information online and you can compare any District or any school within the state you could just spend hours doing that yeah but not in the way that Panorama lets you display it so in in such a visualized way I'm wondering is there a way for us to get you're G to I can't tell if you're rolling your eyes so that's good for me is that we could get dashboard access to play around with mcast data I I would just love to be able to see some of the longitudinal data myself and just uh see what I could learn for myself kry we can do what we did with the M class and because your M Class should also still be populating we probably can do a redacted dashboard that will allow you to do some of that actually and it provides Like Jesse asked for the Scatter Plots it will do that too for you that would be not but the distrib distribu I'll do that for you I feel like that would make our all of our nerdy Hearts very happy you need a little time yeah get it running but this is all coming from the desie website all no no well it's from the state data it's from our state data yes there's a level of detail we get that is not public like we have individual students and their actual written responses like to we have access to that but but to generate these flots you don't have to have their individual responses right so that is Desi data yeah it's what's reported through Des then it goes into some system called Panorama which you guys open open architect open Architects is your your view into the data just generate these plots of tables and it allows us to compare cohort to different groups it allows us to cut and dice it in a way like the desie reports are static these would done does but does desie have the the income non- low income and [Music] race there's a lot of information what you can't do is anytime that like some intersection of dual identifications you can't do that there so I for example would love to have the El data that's specific to English Learners who are also lwi income right English Learners who also have an IEP or English Learners by race or English Learners by you know gender that part you cannot segregate Thank You Caroline thanks um and I'll Echo the others thanks for this this was super clear um and really useful and um I was really interested in all of it so what I'm saying is not remotely critical or corrective I think I'm hearing too from other school committee members um I would love to hear I don't know if this then also comes to full school committee um but I'll really appreciate um ongoing um information from from you guys from our experts about how this is is useful for you how it's useful for teachers how you're using it to identify um interventions that you want to do um and the connection to the Strategic plan and including if it means that there's some revision um right we don't want to have a a solution looking for a problem so I'm super interested I love the good news and I want to keep hearing the good news and I'm also interested in how it's how it's useful um so just thanks for all of it and uh that's it okay well thank you every um says old and new business I don't know if we want to talk about the November meeting we can't meet on the 19th and um Stephen Jesse I don't know Monday the 2 works of November this is that town meeting the 19th is our meeting was to have been at four o'clock on the 19th but that date no longer works so just think about that let me know that works for me the 25th great than that's what the 19th at four you're saying the 19th at four no longer works it doesn't work that's what that's the data okay changing what about the 25th just the uh the next Monday you can let me know but just sure yeah so let me I don't know about yeah and I'll I'll upate thear you saying oh you so that's going to be the date until yeah because we've got the three and so it'll populate it'll populate yes another another email from me just what you want as long as it auto populates the calendar then grow that that's what 112 sixes yeah just one comment okay just one comment in terms of the new business is that I think I mentioned it during the presentation as well um but it would be great if we had this information the day before or the the night before the day before because between 8:30 you want G to my box and now there was it's not happening so then I'm looking at it for the first time and I'm like it's hard to get your head around that's yeah we that there are some extenuating circumstances this we that's a goodal okay thank you everyone thank you have a good evening we'll see of us tomorrow that's true