Principals Rose Bowman, of Center School, and Matt D’Andrea, of Old Hammondtown School, reviewed their schools’ MCAS results on Monday night and discussed areas of improvement.

The students, in grades 3 to 6, did very well overall. Eighty-five percent of students scored "proficient" or above in English Language Arts, 75 percent in math, and 78 percent in science and technology.

“Behind every score is an opportunity for us to look backward at the MCAS score and to really appreciate the hard work that students engaged in,” said Dr. Elise Frangos, assistant superintendent of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Despite the high scores, there were several areas in which the principals said they would like to see improvement.

For the third grade, Bowman said the open response for English needs to be higher. The scores were reflective of the recent shift in using nonfiction texts, and students responses were too brief, she said.

“We are really working hard at every grade level, and I do think we’ll see an improvement in years to come,” Bowman said.

She also said the use of metric system language – millimeters, centimeters, etc. – tripped up students. Helping students solve language problems with the metric system will also be a focus.

At Old Hammondtown, D’Andrea said there has been a positive trend of students moving out of the lower scoring categories.

“We’re moving those students from 'needs improvement' and 'warning' up to proficient and advanced,” he said.

Tracking students from their 4^th through 6^th grade years, D’Andrea found that there has been significant improvement as they have advanced in school. Still, D’Andrea said there will continue to be increased focus on writing across the board.

In areas that have leveled off, there will also be efforts made to continue to increase proficiency.