Math Scores Improve At Nantucket Public Schools, But Reading Assessments Still Lagging

Nantucket Public Schools (NPS) continues to lag behind the state for student achievement in reading but has largely moved ahead of the median results for student achievement in math, according to results from last spring’s Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests.

MAP tests are administered several times a year as a district-level educational monitoring tool. The large majority of grades at the elementary, intermediate, and middle schools were below the median for student achievement in reading in the most recent round of MAP testing, and observed growth was also at or below the median for most grade levels. Most grades clustered between the 41st and 50th percentile for achievement, indicating results slightly below the state norm.

Low scores in reading are an ongoing problem for NPS, with explanations including a slow recovery from COVID-19 and the district’s large population of students who do not speak English as their first language. The program run by former Director of Curriculum and Assessment for Humanities, Mellisa Devitt, who is now the Assistant Superintendent of Academic Operations, is also still relatively new.

“This will be our benchmark year,” Devitt said, speaking about the elementary school. “Next year, we are really looking at the structures and routines that are going on.”

Things looked much brighter for the district in math, where all three schools and the large majority of grade levels tested were at or above the median achievement scores. All grade levels except 2nd exceeded the median in terms of growth, with some reaching as high as the 90th percentile.

“Overall, it's looking very good,” Mandy Bardsley, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning, said. Bardsley formerly served as the Director of Curriculum and Assessment for STEM.

The district’s MAP scores in math have been improving over the last several years, moving from well below the median to consistently above it.

“I think that...gives us hope that when we are doing this with diligence...we start to make change over time,” Bardsley said.

The data was presented to the School Committee by Devitt and Bardsley at a meeting on Tuesday. The School Committee also voted to approve contracts for Devitt and Bardsley, who are shifting into new roles as Assistant Superintendents at NPS, during the meeting. In the first year of their contracts, Bardsley will make $195,000 and Devitt will make $194,000, according to copies of the contracts included in the agenda packet for the School Committee meeting.

While there was no discussion about the contracts at Tuesday’s meeting, Superintendent Elizabeth Hallett said at a previous meeting that the title changes better reflect the duties Bardsley and Devitt will be expected to perform. School Committee members also emphasized the importance of redundancy and support for Hallett as NPS grows.

The vote to approve the contracts came after a closed-door School Committee executive session earlier the same day, which had the stated purpose “to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations” for the two positions.