Rochester Memorial School students excelled in the PARCC and MCAS standardized tests last year, but there are still areas for improvement as the school seeks to move from a Level 2 to a Level 1 school.

“I’m very proud of the work that’s going on,” said Principal Derek Medeiros, who discussed the results at the Thursday night School Committee meeting.

Students took the older MCAS for science and the newer PARCC assessment for math and English language arts. Overall, RMS students scored in the 79^th percentile of similar schools statewide, 1 percent shy of Level 1 status, said Medeiros.

In science, the number of students in the advanced and proficient categories both dipped by a few percentage points, which may have a lot to do with new “next generation” science standards that don’t match the older standards tested in MCAS. Some topics are now taught in different grades, and that shows up in low areas on the test.

“It’s a transitional time,” Medeiros said.

The school is working to improve its science, technology, engineering and math. Part of that has been hiring a STEM specialist who supplements classroom lessons and implement and advance the new curriculum.

Highlights in science included fifth grade scores, which were higher than the state average in the advanced and proficient categories.

For PARCC, results are assessed on five performance levels with Level 5 being the highest.

In English language arts, grades three to six were at Level 4 or 5 overall, but grade 3 and 5 both had low Level 5 scores, 0 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

One School Committee member asked, “What’s up with that?”

Medeiros said the school just implemented “flex time” last year to give teachers more opportunity to work with kids to address specific needs.

“We really feel good about implementing flex time, and seeing the impact it’s had so far on some or our kids, we really want to stretch it out to all kids,” he said.

In math, students scored near or in Level 5 and no students in grades 4 to 6 scored in the lowest level.

Moving toward the new MCAS 2.0 exam, Medeiros said the school will work to increase students’ access to laptops and to improve their proficiency in keyboarding. Flex times will continue to grow and teachers will continue to work on a new grading program that better assesses students’ needs as well.