Office of Planning and Research

ESE Research Update, October 2015

Research and Reports from ESE

• Last year, ESE conducted several related studies examining assessment preparation, practices, and support in districts and released a brief    highlighting findings across the studies. The studies found that:

  • A substantial proportion of the testing that occurs in districts is for district-required, not state-mandated, assessments. This is particularly true at the elementary level.
  • In a representative sample of 35 districts, the average district required 6.7 assessments with an associated 19.1 testing sessions when totaled across all grade spans.
  • Assessments are most commonly used for addressing student academic needs such as diagnosis, placement and measuring progress towards goals. They are least commonly used for students to prepare or practice for state assessments or to predict student performance on those assessments.
  
  
    

  Superintendent Survey on District Assessment Practices (October 2014)

    

  Massachusetts Study on Assessment Practices in Districts: Phase 1 Summary (March 2015)

    

  Massachusetts Study on Assessment Practices in Districts (August 2015)

• The Massachusetts School Redesign Grant Initiative Final Evaluation Report    (June 2015), conducted by the UMass Donahue Institute, examines the extent to which the receipt of School Redesign Grant (SRG) funds is associated with schools' turnaround progress and improvements in student success. The study finds that improvement or positive momentum is evident across SRG schools. Strategies that appear to support successful redesign efforts include: shared leadership, structures to support educator capacity building, systems for data use and management, and the implementation of strategies that promote both educator growth and student learning. The study also notes that SRG's focus on building the capacity of school and districts suggests reason for optimism regarding the sustainability of these school improvements.

• In September, the Department released The Impact of Municipal Health Care Reform on School District Health Insurance Spending   . The report examines the impact of recent statutory changes that made it easier for Massachusetts cities, towns, and regional school districts to purchase employee health insurance through the Group Insurance Commission (GIC), the state agency responsible for procuring health insurance benefits for Commonwealth employees. The authors examine the impact of joining the GIC on health insurance costs and highlight case studies of three districts that opted to join the GIC. The study found that the 49 districts that have joined the GIC are experiencing slower growth in their health insurance expenditures for active employees than other districts, but also that the fiscal impact of GIC membership varies across GIC districts. The authors also note positive fiscal impacts on districts that took advantage of the statutory changes to renegotiate aspects of their health insurance benefits without joining the GIC.

Research on Massachusetts Education Policy

• A recent Mathematical report, Predictive Validity of MCAS and PARCC: Comparing 10th Grade MCAS Tests to PARCC Integrated Math II, Algebra II, and 10th Grade English Language Arts Tests, (October 2015) examines how well PARCC and MCAS perform in predicting student outcomes in college, as well as whether or not students who are "proficient" on MCAS and "college-ready" on PARCC are likely to be successful in college as indicated by college grades and remedial coursework. Researchers found that in English language arts, PARCC and MCAS are equally useful in predicting college readiness. In math, scores on both assessments are also equally predictive, but PARCC's "college ready" standard is better than MCAS's "proficient" standard at identifying students who earn at least "B" grades in college and do not require remediation.

• Mass Inc and the UMass Donahue Institute collaborated to produce Building Community-Wide Social and Emotional Support Systems in Massachusetts Gateway Cities: Assessing Progress from the Perspective of Local Educators, a July 2105 report that includes data gathered through interviews and surveys with educators from 22 Gateway Cities about efforts to create community-wide social and emotional support systems. The researchers found that Gateway City schools offer a variety of social emotional supports, but often find it challenging to sustain these initiatives at scale, especially given the lack of infrastructure to support systemic high-functioning social and emotional support systems.

• Best of Both Worlds: How Massachusetts Vocational Schools are Preparing Students for College and Careers, a report published by Achieve in July 2015, provides background information about the history and structure of vocational education in the Commonwealth, as well as strategies employed by career technical education (CTE) programs to prepare students for college and careers. The issue brief also features several vocational programs across the Commonwealth that have been particularly successful in integrating real-world learning experiences into the curriculum, building strong relationships with caring adults, and engaging in continuous improvement, as well as the outcomes for students in these programs.